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Therapists with a narrative orientation typically view client stories through a political lens—particularly those stories that oppress people’s lives (racism, sexism, gender or class bias, gay bashing). Here they are extending Foucault’s analysis of society to the personal or family levels, arguing further that certain internalized narratives (for example, what it means in our society to be successful or worthwhile in life) often become oppressively self-policing and lead to a self-subjugating narrative of failure for falling short of the arbitrary achievement mark. Moreover, internalizing these narrow, culturally based, dominant discourses leads to a self-defeating outlook about the future and restricts alternative ways of thinking about and being in life.

A THERAPEUTIC PHILOSOPHY

A narrative therapist’s efforts are respectfully directed at liberating the client from the forces of hopelessness, helping that person render more visible the previously subjugated plots and subplots of his or her life. Instead of attempting to play the role of expert and objectively diagnosing someone’s motives, needs, drives, ego strengths, or personality characteristics, the narrative therapist is interested in collaborating or consulting with people, giving what they have to say equal privilege, and helping them substitute alternative dreams for true dreams, visions, values, beliefs, spirituality, and commitments. For example, consistent with his poststructural outlook, White wants to explore with a client what a particular belief or act reflects about the client’s visions or outlook or dreams (and not the structuralist outlook of what it reflects about the person’s need or strength or personality type).

Such a poststructuralist approach is intended to open up conversation about client values, beliefs, and purposes, giving them the opportunity to consider a wide range of choices while freed from personal or cultural oppressive demands. To White, any interpretations the therapist gives to the client’s thoughts or visions is not“privileged”or honored over the meaning the client gives about his or her own views. The narrative therapist is thus decentered—still influential, without being at the center of what transpires therapeutically.

For example, the narrative therapist might ask such questions as “What was that experience like for you?” followed by “What effect did it have on your life?” or “Why was this so important to you?” In asking such questions, the therapist is focusing on the person’s expressions of his or her experiences of life, and the preferred interpretative acts he or she engages in that give meaning to those experiences. An important therapeutic twin goal here is the deconstruction of domineering self-narratives and the reestablishment of freedom, individually and as a family, from the dominant discourses of the culture. Re-authoring conversations are intended to invigorate clients in understanding what has happened in their lives, how it happened, and what it means, leading to a consideration of more positive options to lead their lives more fully.

THERAPEUTIC CONVERSATIONS

Externalizing the Problem

Because many clients are apt to internalize problems (“I always manage to get things wrong. I’m hopeless.”), White developed externalizing conversations to help them place the problem outside of themselves and thus attach new meanings to their experiences. The aim here is to help clients recognize that they and the problem are not the same.

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By de-centering the problem or personal characteristic in people’s lives, narrative therapists hope to expose the noxious influence the old story has had on client lives as they begin to consider new outlooks and alternative stories. As light is shed on the problem, it begins to be understood as socially constructed (likely a product of a predominant self or cultural narrative) and changeable.

Externalizations, then, are designed to help separate the person’s identity from the problem for which help is sought, while helping the client revise his or her relationship with the problem and its restraining influence over his or her life. This therapeutic stratagem is based on the premise that the client is not the problem, and the family is not the problem; the problem is the problem. Consequently, no time is devoted to discovering family patterns or exploring family dynamics, nor to searching for critical events in the past that led to the current situation. Narrative therapists are not concerned with how family interactional patterns affected the presenting problem; on the contrary, they are interested in how the problem affected the family.

Narrative therapists helps families “externalize” a restraining problem—in effect, by deconstructing the problem as an internal deficiency or pathological condition in the individual and redefining it as an objectified external and unwelcome narrative with a will of its own to dominate their lives. The therapist then encourages the family to unite against that problem. Starting with the family’s set of beliefs and use of language in describing the problem (an adolescent daughter’s anorexia, a mother’s depression, a young boy’s tendency to soil his underpants), the family is encouraged by the therapist’s questioning to view the problem as existing outside the family. To effect this viewpoint, it sometimes helps to personify the problem, making it a separate entity (sometimes giving it an agreed-upon name based on the family’s description of the problem) rather than an internal characteristic or attribute of the symptomatic person. Instead of finding fault with that person for giving the family problems through the appearance of symptoms, the family now looks at the problem as an external entity and is better able to collaborate in altering their way of thinking about developing new options for their lives.

When the adolescent identifies herself by saying, “I am anorexic,” the therapist might ask,“What do you believe Anorexia’s purpose might have been in deceiving you by promising you happiness but bringing you despair?” Or perhaps the mother will be challenged to look at her depression not as some internalized, objective truth about herself, but rather as an external burden: “How long has it been now that Depression has been controlling your life?” The encopretic young boy might be assisted in externalizing the problem by giving it a name (“How did Mr. Mischief manage to trick you all this time”?); it was Mr. Mischief who caused the boy to soil his underclothes. Although the child has told himself previously that he is helpless to

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do anything about the encopresis, now he can begin to construct more hopeful ways of viewing and dealing with Mr. Mischief. Guiding clients to separate themselves from the problem can be a useful first step in helping them to notice other possible choices for their own behavior or for their expectations of others (Zimmerman & Dickerson, 1996).

Externalizing conversations, then, are poststructural procedures that emphasize language and meaning attached to an experience. They are intended to pave the way for reducing self-blame and generating thickly described alternative stories not previously considered when the problem was located within the individual. It is these elaborated alternative stories that provide people with expanded options for new actions, allowing for significant life change.

Externalizing is apt to hold great appeal for families who see their inability to rid the symptomatic person of the problem as a reflection of themselves as failures. Or perhaps they have blamed the symptomatic person (“It’s Harry’s nature to be depressed”or “His constant depression is destroying the family”). Now they are presented with a nonpathological, externalized view of the problem (“Sadness sometimes overtakes Harry”), one in which no one is to blame. Perhaps they begin to realize that the symptomatic person doesn’t like the effects of his feelings any more than any other family member does.

Next, they are offered an empowering opportunity to co-construct with the therapist a new narrative that provides an alternate account of their lives. Two related processes are operating here: deconstructing or unraveling the history of the problem that has shaped their lives, and reconstructing or re-authoring an alternate (but previously subjugated) story that has been obscured by the dominant story. Holding externalizing conversations with all family members present enables them to separate from the stories they have told themselves about themselves; they can then begin working as a team on the now-externalized problem they hope to defeat (Payne, 2000).

Employing Therapeutic Questions

The judicious use of questions that open up new avenues for thought—rather than therapist observations or interpretations—characterizes narrative therapy. White’s gentle, respectful, but nevertheless persistent questioning typically is directed at what the person is experiencing (“What is Self-Consciousness trying to talk you into about yourself?”) and how the problem is being experienced (“How does SelfConsciousness affect you socially? With women? When you want to ask the boss for a raise?”). To achieve a “rich” or “thick” description, the therapist might ask the client to describe the problematic story—and later, the alternative story—in various ways and in varying situations, often interweaving questions regarding the new story, for example, with the stories of others. Cultural discourses might be questioned in the same way: “How do you think society views aggressive and unaggressive men, and what does that say to you about your self-consciousness?”

White employs directed questions (unlike Anderson and Goolishian’s more unstructured, conversational tone) that encourage families to view the problem as some entity or thing situated outside the family, separate from their sense of identity. Stated another way, his intent is to counter the family’s previously unworkable and self-defeating assumption that the person who has the problem is the problem. Parents with a symptomatic adolescent (say, a teenager who is refusing to attend school) might be asked: How has the problem affected Johnny’s life? Your life? Your

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identify previously obscured subjugated stories involving success or alternative views by locating “facts” about themselves (times when Harry overcame his sadness and was fun to be around) that they were not able to perceive when they held problemsaturated accounts of their family life. Seen in a new light, these“facts”commonly contradict earlier self-descriptions of their failures or feelings of impotence in dealing with the problem.

Seeking Unique Outcomes

Following externalization of the problem, the narrative therapist listens for a description of events or experiences that do not fit the problematic story, when the problem’s influence was less apparent or nonexistent. These are possible entryways to engaging in re-authoring conversations leading to developing alternative story lines (Freedman & Combs, 2000). Alternatively, the therapist might ask the family to search for unique outcomes—perhaps exceptional events, actions, or thoughts contradicting their dominant problem-saturated story,2 when the problem did not defeat them.

“Can you think of a time when you refused to go along with Sadness’s commands?” “How were you able to trust your own thoughts or desires?”

“What did this tell you about yourself ?”

Unique outcomes open doors to exploring alternative narratives—the beginning of a new family story line. They involve any instances or events that do not fit with the dominant story. They may be a plan, action, feeling, statement, quality, desire, dream, thought, belief, ability, or commitment (see Box 15.3). As noted, they may pertain to the past, present, or future. In the following example, a couple caught up in the limiting stories about the possibility of change in their lives seeks help with marital problems. In the first session, the narrative therapist begins looking for ways that unique outcomes deviate from the dominant discourse about the hopelessness of the couple’s situation:

HUSBAND: I’ve carried your phone number with me for over a year and just now got up the courage to call.

THERAPIST: What does it say about you that you did it this time?

WIFE: I actually started to dial you several times last year, but when you answered I hung up. It was frightening. But this time, I forced myself to stick with the task until I completed the call.

THERAPIST: What does this new step tell me about the two of you? Can you think of any other times when you were scared but went ahead and did what you knew you needed to do?

HUSBAND: One thing that comes to mind is how I hated my job but stayed in it because I couldn’t get up the courage to leave and try something new. Finally I’d had it, and scared or not, I quit, and within a week I found this job I really like.

WIFE: I remember being frightened too, but encouraged him because we were both miserable and both knew something had to be done.

2The reader will detect a resemblance between this deconstruction tactic and that employed by solutionfocused therapists such as Steve de Shazer. Both approaches direct clients to move away from talk about problems that have a central place in their thinking and to search for exceptions—experiences that contradict a problem-dominated story. Both also attempt to help clients restory their lives and find more empowering alternative stories.