Jo Viljoen, PhD
Clearview Clinic
Kameeldrift
Alcohol and Substance Abuse Recovery
29 August 2011

This conversation rests on the shoulders of Narrative Therapists all over the world
With particular mention to
Michael White, David Epston, Jill
Freedman, Gene Combs, Peggy Sax,
Alice Morgan, Dirk Kotze, Christina
Landman, Anton Fick, and the members of the Reauthoring
Teaching study group

Before I often felt stuck
When I did not have words or answers, I gave advice

AND USED WORDS LIKE
I was the expert, the analyst, the behavioural specialist with the power to tell people the right or the wrong way of living their lives. I gave them advice and they had to follow it. If they did not, it justified my using words like:
UNCO-OPERATIVE
MANIPULATIVE
RESISTANT TO TREATMENT
NON COMPLIANT
The patient was the seeker of health and I the health care provider. That gave me a lot of power.

Meeting of Minds
I met Grace and Narrative ways of working almost at the same time

“The doctors used to tell me to take my medication and live with it. That meant there was nothing they could do for me. I also always felt that they were not giving me all the information, as if they kept some coveted information for themselves.
It felt as if they did not offer me any way to change; they were not prepared to partner with me to change; it felt unsolvable. It felt as if that was who I was and that I had to accept it as such.” (Grace)

I was very ill before I met Pieter. I overdosed and cut myself repeatedly. He did not realize how ill I was, but I was as mad as a hatter.
When I fell pregnant, the doctors told me that I was too mentally ill and could not bring up a child. They insisted that
I have a legal abortion based on my history of mental illness.
Pieter and I decided to take responsibility for the baby, refused the termination of pregnancy and got married.
I decided to "pull myself together" and become a wife for Pieter and a mother for Anne.
It was like putting a lid on a volcano.

“I put myself under pressure to prove that I was not crazy.
I was scared that I would somehow be exposed as a lunatic, as a crazy, evil, sick person.
I even baked my own bread.
I looked around me and saw what other happily married women were doing and I copied them. I managed to be the perfect person for seven years.”

“I researched all the diagnoses they gave me, because if something was wrong, I wanted to know how to fix it. I felt like a horrible, hysterical, over-the-top hopeless case. Nobody believed me that I wanted to be well.“

• De-centred
• NOT KNOWING
• Always curious
• Wondering
• Collaborative

Co-creation of new narratives
• Together we set out to try and understand her lived experience as a woman struggling with mental illness for many years
• I tried very hard to maintain a position of not-knowing, curiosity and interest
• I soon found that whenever I felt out of my depth, I became directive
• I learnt to speak a new language in which problems are seen as separate from persons

• Decentred but influential (White 1997)
– Not giving advice, solutions or opinions
– Not normative judgements or evaluations
– Or positions of authority
(Morgan 2000)
• Narrative practices hold the person’s ideas and resources at the fore
• And decline invitations to be the expert in people’s lives.

• The person is not the problem
• The problem is the problem

• Feelings
• Problems between people
• Cultural and social practices that assist the problem, e.g. inequality
• Metaphors
• More than one problem at a time

• A person who uses drugs is called a .....?
• A person who drinks a lot of alcohol is called a...?
• This way of speaking about problems internalises problems and affects identity

Internalized
• I am a drunk
• I am a junkie
• I am a depressive kind of person
• I am a worrier
• I am as failure as a person
Externalized
• Ask client to name the problem
• Personify the problem
• Explore the voice and words the problems whispers or shouts into the persons ears
• Explore the problems tricks and strategies

Shift in language and attitude
• It separates the persons identity from the problem
• Speak differently about problems
• Not just a technique or a tool, its a belief system
• Enables the therapist to join with the client against the problem
Create space
• Untangle problem saturated identities
• Creates space where clients can renegotiate their relationships with the problem
• Provides relief and a course of action to take
• Reduce guilt and blame
• Leave room for responsibility

• Speak of problem as separate to the person
• Therapists language,
choice of words and choice of phrase
• Phrasing of questions
• Use clients own words
• Use the word THE e.g.
The Worry, The Fear,
The Fighting

• Be aware of the politics involved in naming the problem
• Consult the client about the name of the problem
• Collaborate to come up with a name that is truly representative to the client’s experience.
• Bear contextual factors in mind: recent life changes, losses, moves, social attitudes etc

• Due to prevalence of abuse we should check out whether it is part of the social context of a person’s life
• Important to do this to prevent silencing a victim of abuse
• Need to constantly check the broader social context
• Externalising conversations need to be seen in the context of these checking out processes and a constant awareness of the broader context of peoples lives

• The influence of the therapist has to do with their skills in consultation and asking questions in particular ways
• This stance invites people to become the primary authors of their own lives
• And put people’s views, preferences, desires, hopes, dreams and purposes at the centre of the conversations

• Landscape of action
• Landscape of identity
• Landscape of experience

• I became more aware of practices of power in the relationship between me, the therapist and the person seeking help
• I started taking notes differently
• I started speaking in different ways, externalizing problems in language
More transparency

• I started listening for the absent but the implicit
• Seeking alternatives to the dominant problem saturated stories that bring the clients to therapy

• I stopped giving advice
• I ask questions I genuinely do not know the answer to
• I listen for times when the problem had less or no influence on the persons life
• I asked more questions
• I make fewer assumptions
• I collaborate more
• I seek more supervision
• I practice, practice, practice

Ask about the effect of conversations
– What have they found useful, what interested them and why?
– Offer a range of options as to directions that could be followed and then ask the client which direction they would most want to pursue?
– I began to create a different rhythm of conversations in which I would offer scaffolding and options, and the client would make decisions that I would then follow.

• Two way nature of therapeutic conversations
• Find ways to reflect back to those consulting me about a difference a particular conversation might have on my future work and other aspects of my life as therapist
(White 1997:132)

Positioning myself as a therapist differently opened space for me to more fully appreciate the competencies, abilities and resources available to people

• A de-centered position of the therapist opened space for me to more fully appreciate the competencies, abilities and resources available to people.
• Focusing on these seem to fill the conversations with hope and to direct them away from problem saturated descriptions and negative identity conclusions.

• Therapist responsibility is to be skilled at facilitating conversations that would allow people to resource their own ways forward, in ways that suited them.
• This position opens room for curiosity, a curiosity that has become one of my closest companions in therapeutic conversations
(Morgan)

Morgan A. 2000.
What is narrative therapy?
Adelaide: Dulwich Centre Publications.
Morgan A. 2002.
Beginning to use a narrative approach in therapy. The International Journal of Narrative
Therapy and Community Work
Viljoen, HJI. 2002. Deconstructing harmful religious discourses on the lives of Afrikaans women. Pretoria: UNISA
White, M. 1997.
Narratives of Therapists’ Lives.
Adelaide: Dulwich Centre Publications. www.narrativeapproaches.com
www.reauthoringteaching.com
www.dulwichcentre.com.au
www.narrativepractices.com.au