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ChiefTurtle3211
CHAPTER 14 Social Construction Models: II. Narrative Therapy 270….
CHAPTER 14 Social Construction Models: II. Narrative Therapy
270. Consider one of the “stories” told and retold in your family. How did its content shape your life?
271. How did the above story become established for you as the “truth?” Do you personally feel it to be the truth?
272. Was there a negative, self-defeating story told in your family as you were growing up? Describe.
273. Assume you are a therapist working from the perspective of narrative therapy. Your client strikes you as a difficult and unpleasant person. You know he has no friends, and his family has rejected him. He tells you that he believes that he was born into a cruel world, and he is just the product of it. Would you seek to replace this “truth” with a more benign story, such as “it’s not your fault,” or “the world is neither cruel nor nurturing; it just is”? What might be a more useful and honest way to employ narrative therapy? What narrative might you consider developing instead that somehow still accounts for this man’s experience?
274. What has been the “dominant story” in your life?
275. Was a “thin” description of you ever imposed by others (parents, clergy, teachers) in your life when you were young? Were you labeled as bad, lazy, greedy, selfish, rebellious, or something similar? Give an alternative “thick” description of your behavior.
276. Have you kept a letter, a newspaper clipping, a fortune cookie prediction, or e-mail in your wallet? How does such an act relate to your personal story?
277. Describe a primary self-narrative in your life (e.g., “my illness as a child made me introspective”, “my grandmother’s business success inspired me”, “my mother’s craziness made me wary of close relationships”).
278. Discuss a dominant narrative of your culture (e.g., “a woman can’t be too rich or too thin,” “men wear the pants in the family,” “such and such a group is inferior to us”). How has it affected you?
279. How has society controlled you with its definition of what it means to be a “real man” or “real woman?”
280. Who, outside of your parents, (extended family members, teachers, friends, clergy, doctors, therapists) held the most power in determining your view of what was true and proper in society?
281. Which one of the following political forces has most affected your life: racism, sexism, class bias, or homophobia? Discuss.
282. Externalization often has the therapeutic effect of objectifying a problem and placing it outside the family in order for family members to begin to establish alternative narratives. Consider a problem in your family, indicate how it might be externalized, and speculate on the consequences.
283. Describe a “problem saturated” story or self-defeating narrative that is told in your family. How does it reflect despair, frustration, or a sense of powerlessness?
284. Is there a subjugated story hiding in the above narrative? Retell the story from this new perspective.
285. After you (as therapist) help a wife and husband to realize that her depression was related to an internalized negative narrative about woman’s subordinate position in society, the woman becomes very angry, not only with her husband but with all men. For weeks she tells you that “all men are pigs.” Her husband blames you and emotionally withdraws. How might narrative therapy help this couple?
286. Think of a problem you have had in your family where the attempted solutions always seemed to bring more trouble. Can you identify a “unique outcome,” a time when you took some action, and the problem did not get worse? What was the difference about that set of circumstances? What can you learn from the experience?
287. How would you feel if you had a problem and your therapist asked you about bringing in an “outside witness group?”
288. What would it feel like to receive a summary letter following each therapy session you attended?
289. If you had a family member reluctant to attend a family session, how would he or she respond to a “letter of invitation?”
290. Compose a “redundancy letter” to a family member informing him or her that they no longer need to take the role they have been playing with you (e.g., an older sister playing mother).
291. Discuss how membership in a “league” might be useful in developing an alternative view of a problem in your family (e.g., anorexia, depression, alcoholism, chronic illness).
292. An elderly married couple along with their adult children come to you for help in coping with the elder man’s provisional diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. You are told that for his entire life, he viewed his responsibility to be to face reality directly without sugar coating anything. He says that he does not want to deny his current situation or the likelihood that soon he will longer be conscious of himself and his world, a turn of events that he understands will end with death. While you are impressed with this bravery, you also sense that the elderly man is very. How might narrative therapy help with the depression?
