Narrative
Therapy

One of the major principles of Narrative Therapy, developed by Michael White and David Epston in the 1980’s, is that people make meaning through stories. Narrative Therapy highlights the ways in which people’s narratives reflect wider cultural, dominant stories, as well as the ways in which these dominant discourses mould and shape people’s stories. Narrative Therapy incorporates a social, contextual lens that consistently links the personal with the political.

Narrative therapists work collaboratively with clients, co-creating space that externalizes problems from the person. Employing a narrative emphasis in counselling also means that there is a focus on people’s alternative stories that give voice to their preferred values, strengths and resources.

Art can be a creative and powerful way to externalize and thicken these alternative stories even further.