2010: Issue 4 Archives - The Dulwich Centre

Overcoming Overwhelming— Ross Hernandez

Dulwich — Tue, 06 Dec 2016 00:38:44 +0000

This paper explores ways to richly describe parents’ skills and knowledges in dealing with problems that threaten to overwhelm their lives, especially in the context of raising children with significant challenges. The narrative practices of externalising conversations, tracing values, outsider-witness conversations, and therapeutic letters and documents were used with parents facing various problems.

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Letter Writing: Possibilities and Practice— Susan Stevens

Dulwich — Tue, 06 Dec 2016 00:36:50 +0000

This article revisits the use of therapeutic letter writing in narrative therapy contexts. The purposes, types, and content of letters are explored, with examples given of various letters written in different therapeutic contexts. The article discusses how letters can support the various maps of narrative practice, as well as workplace and professional development considerations, such as time pressures and funding considerations, as well as how letterwriting can support learning various aspects of narrative practice.

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‘Standing Together on a Riverbank’: Group Conversations about Sexual Abuse in Zimbabwe— Sipelile Kaseke

Dulwich — Tue, 06 Dec 2016 00:35:03 +0000

This brief article outlines a community response to sexual abuse in a rural community near Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Local community workers developed a culturally-appropriate methodology for exploring young people’s responses to sexual assault in ways that did not rely on individual disclosure or public shaming and, instead, contributed to a collective voice which would question, resist, and protest against sexual abuse. This methodology employed the technique of a ‘personified’ externalisation; one of the community volunteers ‘played’ the role of Sexual Abuse, allowing children to ask about its various purposes, histories, and effects – and ways of limiting its effects in the community.

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Community Therapy: A Participatory Response to Psychic Misery— Adalberto Barreto & Marilene Grandesso

Dulwich — Tue, 06 Dec 2016 00:32:30 +0000

This collection introduces ‘community therapy’ which has been developed in Brazil to respond to various forms of social suffering and ‘psychic misery’. The collection includes an introduction to the history, key tasks, and stages of a community therapy gathering; a description of one example of a community therapy meeting; and a brief exploration of how ideas from narrative therapy have been introduced into community therapy practices.

Note: includes reflections by David Denborough and Cheryl White

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Yahav’s Story: My Way of Living with Tourette’s— Ron Nasim

Dulwich — Tue, 06 Dec 2016 00:29:00 +0000

This article documents narrative therapy with a young man who is dealing with the effects, of Tourette Syndrome, and began to experience thoughts of self-harm and doing harm to others. Through an externalising conversation, a conversation to trace values and ideals, and using ideas of ‘the absent but implicit’, the author assisted the young man to achieve some distance from these problems. Together, they then documented some of the young man’s lifestory as a therapeutic document, and used this to engage in a form of definitional ceremony via the written word.

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Narrativising’ a Vocal Tic: The Use of Narrative Therapy in the Ridding of ‘Mr Squeeky’— Miguel Fernandez

Dulwich — Tue, 06 Dec 2016 00:26:32 +0000

Using the narrative therapy approach of externalising the problem, the author interviewed a ubiquitous vocal tic, called Mr Squeeky, that had afflicted a nine-year-old girl for more than two weeks. Within a week after the first session, more than 90% of the tic had disappeared, with the remaining expressions of it extinguished by the beginning of the third session. At the third session, the tic was brought into the session in an airtight container labelled ‘Squeeky lives here’.

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A Child’s Voice: Narrative Family Therapy— Lisa Johnson

Dulwich — Tue, 06 Dec 2016 00:14:42 +0000

This article recounts an approach to working with a seven-year-old girl in response to a problem that had muted her voice. The narrative practices employed included absent but implicit questions, therapeutic documents, re-authoring conversations, definitional ceremony, and the use of an ‘Anticipated Petitioner’ to support a ‘consulting your consultants’ interview.

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