A core tenet of narrative therapy is not to seek “truth” as an objective reality, but avoiding it inhibits the therapy from recognising impacts of power structures on client’s lives. This article explores why – and what can be done about it.
Related article: Therapies for First Nations Australians: Post-modern.
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Introduction
Ever since the 1980s when social worker/therapist Michael White from Australia and family therapist David Epston from New Zealand developed the therapeutic approach known as narrative therapy (Guy-Evans, 2023), it has heralded a welcome counterpoint to therapies which tell the client, “Here is reality. You need to accept it to have a better life.” The general multi-disciplinary movement of the 1980s and 1990s was away from strict adherence to empiricism (an objective reality “out there” waiting to be discovered) toward an understanding that human beings negotiate meaning and thus create their own subjective realities together in a socio-cultural context. The new approach, quickly gaining popularity, drew on sources such as family therapy, postmodern philosophy, social psychology, feminist theory, and literary theory to hear clients’ distressing, “problem-saturated” stories and find evidence to co-construct alternative narratives: stories which began to help clients manage their lives with greater empowerment and happiness.
Societal awareness and zeitgeists are always shifting, however, and now in the 2020s of increased power structure awareness, we have come to see that, in its original conceptualisation, narrative therapy is useful, but not a panacea. Clients can create the most empowering narratives possible, yet still be held back by out-of-awareness hegemonic structures which continue to oppress them. In this article, we briefly review the assumptions of narrative therapy, discuss where it has limitations, and suggest reflections that can help mitigate the effects of those.
The basic assumptions of narrative therapy: It’s all about the realities
The most crucial difference between the earlier prevailing paradigm of empiricism and the more recent notions of postmodern social constructionism, which can express as a narrative approach in therapy, is that of how we can know reality. In empiricism, there is a single “truth” waiting for us to recognise it. Conversely, narrative therapists, working from the postmodern, social constructivist approach, recognise that the operative word is not “reality” but “realities”, as individuals, families, and cultures come to create their own. This basic philosophical stance shows up in four main assumptions, which narrative therapists assure us are more important to the successful practice of narrative therapy than the utilisation of any particular technique.
Realities are socially constructed
This assumption asserts that our interactions with others weave the psychological fabric of our reality: over time, through everything from laws, beliefs, and customs to ways of dressing and food choices. To anyone living within a particular culture – let’s say the general culture of English-speaking westerners – it may be taken for granted that people “should” work Monday to Friday between nine and five, or that they “should” say, “How are you?” when they greet another person. Yet collective agreements to do things in these ways are actually negotiated through complex social interactions over a long period of time. First formed as individual behaviours, then common behaviour patterns, such practices come to be established as customs and then (often) institutionalised in the form of things such as religious practices, government laws, and cultural customs (Ackerman, 2017; Archer & McCarthy, 2007). We have only to travel to another, different, country to experience the different construction of their reality. In Palau, Micronesia, for example, people greet others with the Palauan equivalent of “Where are you going?” “How are you?” is reserved for occasions when there is concern about a person’s health!
Realities are influenced by and communicated through language
The modernist view of language proposes that it corresponds in a one-to-one way with the external world. That is, it is said to accurately represent external realities so that our internal experience of them accurately mirrors the outside world. Conversely, the postmodernist view focuses on how language is used to constitute our worldview and beliefs rather than mediate between those and the outer world. The narrative therapist does not see language as neutral, but as something that, collaboratively with others, brings forth a reality. Thus, notions such as integrity, human rights, or sexual identity only gain legitimacy as they become part of the dialogue of a group of people. We can share a consensus as to what reality is, but this understanding is continually shifting over time as new voices, practices, and people come into the dialogue. With respect to narrative therapy, we can see how therapists and clients are constantly negotiating new meanings for beliefs, emotions, and behaviours which cause problems in the clients’ lives. The new language chosen offers clients new possibilities for making meaning and choosing courses of action (Ackerman, 2017; Archer & McCarthy, 2007).
Realities are organised and maintained through stories
In other words, this assumption declares that stories and narratives help us make sense of our experiences. Language is the mechanism by which people construct their truths, and it is stories that maintain their truths. This assumption seems exciting to anyone leaning toward a narrative approach, yet it is a double-edged sword. We must acknowledge the limitations of it, including that – no matter how hard a person tries – not all experiences of their life can be “storied”; the individual’s reality will always be a narrative in which far more has been left out than can ever be included. Shortly, we will address other, more oppressive, limitations that have come to figure largely in the power of narrative therapy to be effective for change.
Of course, we are free to acknowledge the other “edge” of the sword, and how it can serve us. Therapists in narrative therapy are intensely interested in how clients have chosen certain elements of their lives to construct the narrative. Unfortunately, if they are distressed enough about something to show up for therapy, it is because they have selected for inclusion incidents, beliefs, values, or behaviours which are somehow limiting or hurting them. Thus, their narratives contain “stories that have gone awry or outlived their usefulness” (Doan, 1997, p. 131). If a client is trying to change their life, the good news from this assumption is that there is likely to be a substantial amount of material that wasn’t included before because it didn’t fit with the dominant (and probably unhealthy) narrative, such as “I’m worthless at relationships” or “I’ve failed at my career”. This means that, when a client goes to re-edit their narrative – with coaching from the therapist – they are likely to be able to find many counterexamples to the dominant narrative (Ackerman, 2017; Archer & McCarthy, 2007). Let’s pose the case of a woman feeling like she has failed at their career. She may be able to find many examples of times when she did enjoy career success, when she was lauded for work achievements. She may have ignored them before but will be able to include them now as part of a new, more positive narrative about her relationship with work.
There is no “objective reality” or absolute truth
This assumption, the lynchpin of narrative therapy, insists that what is true for us may not be true for another person, or even for ourselves at another point in time. In the narrative, social constructionist paradigm, there are no essential truths, and we cannot know reality; we can only interpret experience. While the empirical world view urges us to be like technocrats, following the rules to arrive at the correct conclusion about what is happening, the narrative mind frame exhorts us to bring forth our novelist selves. This means that we can understand our client’s story from many perspectives. The work of narrative therapy is to elicit various experiences of the client’s whole self, determine which selves (parts of the client) are preferred in the new narrative, and then support the growth and development of those new selves and their accompanying stories (Ackerman, 2017; Archer & McCarthy, 2007).
These main tenets of narrative therapy have served many clients well over the years. However, the current prevailing paradigm calls for serious scrutiny of the power structures which undergird society and create and maintain inequity. Thus, as a therapy which avoids recognition of those power structures (as part of an “objective reality” which is ignored), narrative therapy is seen to have some limitations in how much it can help its clients.
Narrative therapy bumps up against limitations in the “objective reality” whose existence is not recognised
We look at three principal limitations: to do with oppressive social structures, power dynamics in the client-therapist relationship, and the neutral moral framework of narrative therapy.
Oppressive social structures are ignored, but shouldn’t be
If, as therapists, we see that our clients are struggling with narrative stories about their life which are limiting them and making them miserable, the narrative approach, with its post-modern constructivist lens, can help us help the client to question and then deconstruct aspects of their experience, presumably then co-constructing (with us) a more empowering, hope-filled story.
But here’s the problem: the client’s originally constructed narrative might very well be realistic in its assessment of societal structures which function – sometimes out-of-awareness – to limit them. The obvious example is that of a member of an underrepresented group – it could be an aboriginal person in Australia, a woman of colour in the United States, or perhaps a wheelchair user in the U.K. – whose career narrative proceeds along the lines of, “I’m never picked for the job because employers just don’t want to hire someone who is ____ (say, aboriginal, female, or having a recognised disability) like me.”
What do you do at this juncture if you are a narrative therapist? The narrative approach, naturally, is to enable the client to construct a more helpful narrative in understanding their sense of self and the options they have. But the statistics relevant to minoritised individuals in the workplace are clear; such persons often are at a disadvantage compared to those who are (unconsciously or consciously) granted “privilege” (typically white, middle-class males who have no obvious disability). The new narrative created may be more hopeful for the client, but ultimately we have to face that narrative therapy in itself does not have the capacity to remove, or even lessen, such constraints of structural oppression which have real impacts on both the mental/emotional and material wellbeing of such a client.
While it is true at one level that we have all socially and collectively created the reality that privileges some and disadvantages others, if we focus merely on the languaging that has shaped a person’s situation, we may, first, distract ourselves from helping the client sort out material needs created by the situation. Second, while changing their perspective on the problem may help them to create greater understanding of their identity (to one not limited by the former narrative), it doesn’t change the root of the problem, which is that structural inequities exist whether we recognise and acknowledge them or not (Matthews et al, 2020).
There’s a power imbalance dynamic between therapist and client
As therapists, we hold a significant role when supporting a client. We must skilfully guide the conversation with languaging and questions that help the client to tell their story (more on the essential qualities in the therapeutic alliance here) and gently work to deconstruct harmful or unhelpful narratives by identifying alternative stories or themes and co-constructing with them an alternative narrative. We are not unbiased outside observers with no input here. We hold substantial power in this, especially with respect to how our positionality and perspectives may influence a client to voice their problems or develop their second story. Are we aware enough of our own assumptions and biases to get them out of the client’s way? Are we able to account for how the position power given to us as therapist may unduly influence the client in the creation of their narrative (including the impact of transference and projection)? We may recoil at the thought that we would ever do anything to undermine the empowerment or burgeoning autonomy of a client, but these things mostly operate out-of-awareness and are thus difficult to identify and own (this article explores five ways in which clinicians may inadvertently build resistance in their clients, lowering their capacity to engage).
A neutral moral framework
Postmodern theories talk about the complexity of meaning. They reject universal “truths”, and so cannot entertain moral and political standings which are essential for social justice. Similarly, narrative therapy is indefatigable in separating the person from the problem, explaining that, once that disidentification is achieved, clients can work on their relationship with the problem. While this stance has advantages, it doesn’t take into account how problems are understood or explained by either the counsellor or the client.
Thus, when no “objective reality” is seen to exist, there is no perceived need for guidelines around who is to be empowered, and for what. Unless important questions such as what the new narrative will be empowering for – and for whom – counsellors may be left perpetuating oppressive structures for a client (Matthews et al, 2020).
Clearly, these three limitations, not so obvious when narrative therapy was in its infancy, have emerged as limitations threatening the efficacy of narrative therapy in an overall, longer-term sense. How can we deal with them as therapists?
A Critical Race Theory x intersectional feminist-infused approach
Hannah Matthews and colleagues (2020) have proposed a response to the above limitations in which therapists are encouraged to use the critical theoretical lens of CRT (critical race theory*) and intersectional feminism to address the issues we’ve noted. If you haven’t explored these concepts, you can read a short article about them here.
Acknowledging oppressive structures with a critical framework
Critical race theory and intersectional feminism deeply examine structural forces of oppression in society which impact people based on their identity, especially with regard to race, and thus provide a helpful framework for practice of narrative therapy. It is a stance which applies a critical perspective, helping clients to become more aware of the impact of societal structures, such as systemic racism, colonialism, xenophobia, homophobia, and/or patriarchy (for women), on their narratives.
You may argue: what good is it to acknowledge these impacts when the root of the problem is beyond the client’s individual capacity to change? If so, you are alive to the issue! We say, along with Matthews and associates, that merely by increasing awareness of how embedded these structures are in society, the client can change how they view the problem in relation to their sense of self. This includes ways in which, in the reconstruction of their narrative, they can influence discourse at the micro-level to challenge such structures.
Questions to reflect on
Accordingly, therapists can usefully entertain these questions with respect to their narrative clients:
- What structures are seen to impact the narrative of a client?
- How do connections between hegemonic structures magnify clients’ experiences of oppression?
- How do such structures impact the respective narratives:
- Of white supremacy
- Of patriarchy
- Of white supremacy and patriarchy
- Of a person who is racialised/indigenous?
- Of a female client?
- Of racialised women?
Acknowledging the inherent imbalance in power between therapist and client
As mental health professionals, we have multiple intersecting identities. A male therapist, for example, has at least two identifiers – that of health professional and that of male – which carry greater “power” than what a female client has. It’s important to reflect on how power dynamics within the therapist-client relationship are generated and maintained. Recognising these dynamics can be instrumental in lessening the oppressions in narrative therapy sessions, because the mental health professional can reflect on how their perspectives may influence their language when framing questions and other interventions. Acknowledging their position’s influence on their perspectives (given the intersecting identities) can help the therapist apply critical reflexivity in therapeutic conversations with their client. Thus, both therapist and client may come to a greater understanding of the influence of power dynamics based on their respective (intersectional) positions.
Questions to reflect on
- How do language, dialogue, and interventions you use reinforce or diffuse power?
- How does your (intersectional) position impact your interpretation of a client’s narrative of self?
Asking how we can apply a critical moral framework to our narrative therapy
In a true narrative approach, the therapist supports the client to realise their narrative and to reconstruct their story of self. By using the CRT/intersectional feminist framework suggested by Matthews to position their values and beliefs, the therapist can more precisely orient their aims and facilitate their goals in session. Specifically, the framework asks mental health professionals to recognise the inherent inequalities between people which are maintained by complex, intertwined categories of oppression and social structures which reinforce each other. This stance can provide a moral framework for how narrative therapy can challenge various oppressive structures, avoid reinforcing inequalities, and collaboratively and respectfully engage clients’ own beliefs and understandings.
Questions to reflect on
These questions can help you to apply a critical moral framework in session:
- What values and beliefs orient your practice?
- How can you apply an anti-racist and intersectional approach to narrative therapy?
- How can you help a client to challenge oppressive structures which impact their narrative? (adapted from Matthews et al, 2020).
*Critical race theory remains a controversial and debated framework. Some critics argue that it can be overly deterministic or emphasise racial identity to the detriment of other social issues; while proponents note that it provides a crucial lens for understanding and addressing systemic racism and injustice. The purpose of this section is to explore how understanding and integrating CRT concepts may be useful within the context of narrative therapy.
Conclusion
Among the limitations of narrative therapy which have emerged in recent times is the realisation that avoidance of any objective “truth” or “reality” inhibits the therapy from both recognising the impacts (including material ones) of oppressive structures on clients’ lives and also from providing a way of addressing such structures at individual and community levels. The lens of CRT and intersectional feminism may offer a useful way to address such limitations by examining the links between oppressive structures and a client’s narrative. The lens also provides the therapist with guidance on how to avoid reproducing such oppressions, as well as enhancing awareness of them in the client.
Narrative therapy training
Parts of this article were adapted from Mental Health Academy’s narrative therapy training course, Narrative Therapy: The Basics. This 3-hour course covers the basic assumptions, concepts, and techniques of narrative therapy, showing how it leads to greater empowerment of clients through a shift from problematic stories to more adaptive ones.
Other narrative therapy training courses you may be interested in:
- Narrative Therapy in the Face of Grief
- Solution-Focused Narrative Therapy with an Adolescent
- Solution-Focused Narrative Therapy with a Mother and Daughter
- A Narrative Approach to Working with Sobriety and Life Transitions
- Therapies In-Action: Narrative Practice with Couples (Collection)
Note: Mental Health Academy members can access 500+ CPD/OPD courses, including those listed above, for less than $1/day. If you are not currently a member, click here to learn more and join.
Key takeaways
- Limitations to narrative therapy have emerged in recent times around the avoidance of acknowledging the reality of oppressive social structures, the imbalance in the power dynamics between counsellor and client, and the consequent lack of a moral framework of the therapy.
- Matthews and associates have proposed mitigating the impact of the above limitations by applying a critical race theory/intersectional feminist lens to both the therapist’s and the client’s understanding of how oppressive structures (often out-of-awareness) impact the client’s narratives and understanding of self.
- Questions for therapists to reflect on are included to help examine the links between oppressive structures and a client’s narrative, thus lessening their impact.
References
- Ackerman, C. (2017). 19 best narrative therapy techniques and worksheet (+pdf). Positive Psychology. Retrieved on 8 July, 2024, from: https://positivepsychology.com/narrative-therapy/
- Archer, J., & McCarthy, C.J. (2007). Theories of counselling & psychotherapy: Contemporary applications. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Education, Inc.
- Doan, R.E. (1997). Narrative therapy, postmodernism, social constructionism, and constructivism: Discussion and distinctions. Transactional Analysis Journal, 27 (2). Retrieved on 8 July, 2024, from: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/036215379702700208
- Guy-Evans, O. (2023). Narrative therapy: Definitions, techniques, and interventions. Simply Psychology. Retrieved on 8 July 2024 from: https://www.simplypsychology.org/narrative-therapy.html
- Matthews, H., Sibbald, S., Szoke, T., & Vareja, T.S. (2020). Narrative therapy + CRT x intersectional feminism. Critically Infused Social Work. Retrieved on 9 July 2024 from: https://www.criticallyinfusedsw.com/narrative-therapy-crt-x-if
- Mental Health Academy. (n.d.). Narrative therapy: The basics. Author. Retrieved on 9 July 2024 from: https://www.mentalhealthacademy.com.au