2021: Issue 3 Archives - The Dulwich Centre

A book review of “Narrative psychology and Vygotsky in dialogue: Changing subjects” by Jill Bradbury — Tom Strong

Dulwich Centre — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 01:48:33 +0000

A book review of "Narrative psychology and Vygotsky in dialogue: Changing subjects" by Jill Bradbury — Tom Strong

Tom Strong is a professor and counsellor-educator who recently retired from the University of Calgary. He writes on the collaborative, critical and practical potentials of discursive approaches to psychotherapy – most recently on concept critique and development (particularly with respect to therapy and research), and critical mental health. Among Tom’s books are Medicalizing counselling: Issues and tensions; Social constructionism: Sources and stirrings in theory and practice (co-authored with Andy Lock); and Furthering talk (with David Paré). For Tom’s website and contact details, please see: https://wpsites.ucalgary.ca/tom-strong/

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A response to ‘Jewish metaphors in narrative practice with people resisting addiction’ — Jill Freedman

Dulwich Centre — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 01:39:19 +0000

Jill Freedman is the co-director of Evanston Family Therapy Center in the US and an international faculty member of Dulwich Centre. Jill teaches internationally, has a therapy and supervision practice and consults to nonprofit agencies and schools. Jill can be contacted by email: eftc@narrativetherapychicago.com

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Jewish metaphors in narrative practice with people resisting addiction — Robert T. Jury

Dulwich Centre — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 01:36:21 +0000

This paper presents examples of the use of Jewish metaphors in narrative practice with people resisting addiction. Deconstructing conversations using the multiple meanings of Israel as a metaphor made space for identifying new meanings and deconstructing social discourses. Re-authoring conversations drawing on the metaphor of t’shuvah supported people in moving from totalising stories of addiction and relapse to multi-storied narratives of resisting addictions. Conversations externalising Yetzer HaRa and Yetzer HaTov supported the discernment of multiple voices and values in relation to doing the next right thing. The Rashi question opened new ways of seeing the absent but implicit in the questioning that can accompany early recovery. Using the daf as the basis for therapeutic documents helped to transmit Jewish ways of knowing as Jewish people in recovery told their preferred stories.

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Using narrative declarations with women who are taking a stand against injustice — Kathryn Thompson

Dulwich Centre — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 01:33:07 +0000

For women who have been subjected to rape or intimate-partner violence, experiences with police and criminal justice systems can bring additional harms and trauma. One of the ways this can happen is through processes of professional verification of women’s accounts of violence. Counsellors and others can be called on to elicit women’s stories and to provide validation of their victimhood. In addition to validation, such professional accounts can reinforce single-storied understandings and make it difficult for women to move away from identities shaped as a result of harm. This paper shows how narrative declarations can be used as an adjunct to such ‘modern documents’. Narrative declarations can call attention to the ways in which women have taken a stand against violence and harm, and remind them of hopes and values that may have been subjugated by abuse. These declarations can take a range of forms, and may be brief enough to be recorded on note cards that can accompany the woman in the courtroom.

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Working with victims of police brutality: Conducting and documenting multistoried interviews — Nicolás Mosso Tupper

Dulwich Centre — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 01:30:36 +0000

It can be difficult to find opportunities to tell and reconsider stories of police or state violence. Speaking out can pose a risk to the person, particularly if the story might connect them to protests or persecuted groups. When a person does tell a story of police brutality, it is likely that they will more richly describe the violence they have experienced than the ways they responded and continue to respond to that violence. This paper reflects on particular considerations when working with people who have experienced or been affected by police brutality. It offers a structured series of questions for inviting double-storied testimonies that attend to both the violence and the person’s responses to the violence. One of the effects of state violence is to separate people from movements, so this paper has a particular focus on how people maintain connection to values that are important to them, and to social movements that seek to further these values.

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From seeds to a forest: Nurturing narrative practice in an adolescent mental health program — Beck Paterson

Dulwich Centre — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 01:28:06 +0000

This article describes the author’s experience of incorporating narrative practices into an in-patient crisis treatment program in Calgary, Canada. It was written to offer solidarity to new and emerging narrative practitioners, and to highlight some examples of how narrative practice can be used in a setting in which pathologisation is dominant. Exploring examples that emerged in their work both organically and intentionally, the author describes their process of bringing narrative ideas – such as externalising practices, honouring insider knowledge, and using definitional ceremony and rites of passage – to the forefront of their own practice and influencing change in the larger program.

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Dreamtelling: Making meaning from dreams using narrative practices — Carla Galaz Souza

Dulwich Centre — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 01:25:22 +0000

This article explores the consideration of dreams in narrative practice, applying a broad feminist and anti-colonial politics and philosophy. In Latin America, psychology and its practices of dream interpretation have a strong influence on folk cultures. These have located dreams as an unconscious dimension of the internal which require expert interpretation. In taking steps to counteract hegemonic thinking, informed by feminisms and considering narrative practice efforts to reinforce people’s sense of personal agency, the author explains how dreams were invited into conversations with Nina, a woman from northern Chile, to support reflexive engagements with life and re-generation of meaning. The article applies narrative ideas to engagement with therapeutic meaning-making about dreams to support the development of alternative stories in culturally appropriate ways.

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Using the Soundtrack of Your Life to engage with young people — Ian Maund

Dulwich Centre — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 01:20:04 +0000

This article is made up of two elements. First, the development of the Soundtrack of Your Life (SOYL) narrative therapy methodology. Second, a practice story that trials its application. SOYL uses folk psychology to engage young people in narrative interactions. It was created to incorporate many narrative therapy techniques, including externalising, experience-near description questions, identifying survival skills and responses to a problem, re-authoring, re-membering, social histories and outsider witnessing. SOYL was trialled as an engagement tool with a young Aboriginal boy who was entrenched in the youth justice system. The methodology facilitated meaningful engagement, unique outcomes, the development of a preferred story line and reconnection, for the boy and his family, to a lost loved one.

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Journeys of faith, strength and persistence: Stories of new arrival Afghan mothers — Fariba Drokhshan Ahmadi

Dulwich Centre — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 01:03:36 +0000

This paper describes the development of a collective document: ‘Journeys of faith, strength and persistence: Stories of new arrival Afghan mothers’. Over six meetings, the migration stories of a group of newly arrived Afghan mothers were recorded in the Dari language and translated into English. The collective document we produced from these stories was presented to the staff of the school the women’s children attended. The presentation included not only the document, but treasured expressions of culture that had sustained the women and that they were proud to share, including music, food and embroidery. After the presentation, outsider-witness responses were gathered from the staff members. These responses were recorded and became part of the evolving collective document, which will become a resource for other families making a new home in Australia.

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