Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393700984 ISBN 13: 9780393700985

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1990

Use of letter-writing in family therapy.

White and Epston base their therapy on the assumption that people experience problems when the stories of their lives, as they or others have invented them, do not sufficiently represent their lived experience. Therapy then becomes a process of storying or restorying the lives and experiences of these people. In this way narrative comes to play a central role in therapy. Both authors share delightful examples of a storied therapy that privileges a person’s lived experience, inviting a reflexive posture and encouraging a sense of authorship and reauthorship of one’s experiences and relationships in the telling and retelling of one’s story.

From the Back Cover:

This book presents a respectful, often playful approach to serious problems, with groundbreaking theory as a backdrop. The authors start with the assumption that people experience problems when the stories of their lives, as they or others have invented them, do not sufficiently represent their lived experience. In this way narrative comes to play a central role in therapy.

About the Author:

Michael White (1948–2008), one of the founders of narrative therapy and co-director of the Dulwich Centre, an institute for narrative practice and community work in Adelaide, Australia, made significant contributions to psychotherapy and family therapy. He is the author of Maps of Narrative Practice and co-author of Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends.

David Epston, M.A., C.Q.S.W. is coauthor of Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends (1990) and Playful Approaches to Serious Problems (1997). He is a visiting professor at the School of Community Studies, UNITEC Institute of Technology in Auckland, and is the codirector of the Family Therapy Centre in Auckland.