Narrative Therapy: Realization of Practice of Respect

This paper presents one of the fastest growing trends in modern psychotherapy – narrative approach to therapy and community work. Michael White (1949 2008) was the founder of narrative therapy. He lived and worked in Australia. This approach is associated with the ideas of postmodernism, post-structuralism, and social constructionism. Narrative therapy seeks to be a respectful, non-blaming approach to counseling and community work, which centers people as the experts in their own lives and views problems as separate from people. It is based on narrative metaphor. As these descriptions suggest, stories are central to an understanding of narrative ways of working. People link the events of their lives in sequences that unfold through time according to a theme or plot. These stories became a way of explaining or making sense of events. This meaning forms the plot of the story. When people are faced with problems, their stories often take a problem-saturated character, and begin to dominate in their lives. Narrative therapists, when initially faced with seemingly overwhelming thin conclusions and problem stories, are interested in conversations that seek out alternative stories which they would like to live their lives.

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