The “Literal” Art of Narrative Therapy: Finding an Authentic Perspective for Adolescents
Preliminary research into a solution to my essential question led me quickly to Narrative Therapy. Although this is only one method for a therapist to help adolescent clients work past peer and adult expectations in order to help them uncover or rediscover their own needs and desires, Narrative Therapy responds to this concern in a way that also appeals to me as a creative writer who thinks philosophically about how stories can make us look more deeply at ourselves even if that isn’t their overt intent. Examining the connection between these two interests should at least begin to answer my question.
As the term “Narrative Therapy” has no single, cohesive definition — except that it utilizes storytelling as a method of discovery, what makes it valuable as a tool for enabling adolescents to remove the judgement of others from their stories is how it causes clients to consider sources of power influencing them. Haugaard (2016) defines Narrative Therapy as a process that takes a “philosophical and ethical position” (p. 2) on the treatment of the various discourses affecting clients. He emphasizes that the voice of the therapist remain as absent as possible in order for the client’s storytelling to remain no more diluted than it already is. His definition of Narrative Therapy includes identifying values of those defining characteristics we ascribe to ourselves and examine their meaning, which is “particularly revealing of the presence of another story” (Haugaard, 2016, p. 5). The peeling away of each discourse that affects clients is what both Haugaard and Kahn & Monk (2017) consider a form of social justice. Although scholars such as these tend to write about social powers on large scales (society, civilization, gender, race), the messages young clients receive and absorb tend to come from smaller groups and individuals regurgitating the discourse of the larger groups. For Kahn & Monk, Narrative Therapy sheds light on these stories and then “persons are able to stand against the oppressive effects of this modern power in how it shapes their lives and their identities” (p. 9). In short, Narrative Therapy aims to allow clients to become metacognitive of their personal perspective. By thinking of Narrative Therapy as such a tool of empowerment, one could define it as a method for repositioning perspective.
The stories from society, culture, and other forms of the larger self-image making machines that form self-image are often delivered to adolescents through individuals who were in turn bombarded by similar messages. One message is the stereotype. In their analysis of gender and stereotyping, Hoffman & Pasley (1998) point out that stereotyping is our way of organizing and making predictable various types of people. The problem with it is that stereotypes make assumptions of all people within a type whether or not the individual actually exhibits that characteristic. What makes matters more difficult is that each individual interprets the stereotypes differently depending on how she or he views the characteristic (p. 190). The effects of stereotyping come from countless sources, including families. Not only can family members perpetuate these assumptions, they can also force generational expectations on adolescents. These expectations often cause mental hardship on young people, whether or not it is intentional. A recent study (Covarrubias, Romero, & Trivelli, 2015) found that first-generation college students, for example, exhibited exceptional feelings of guilt for their academic achievements in college. Latino students with culturally strong family ties became depressed because they spent less time at home and African American students felt badly discussing their achievements with family members who were less fortunate. For adolescents in particular, one major source of stories comes from peers, and their messages often impact perception more than any other group, especially those perceived as firends (O’Connor, Burt, VanHuysse, & Klump, 2016, p. 359). With so much stimulation on their self-perception, the role of Narrative Therapy would be to help clients identify and strip them away.
Becoming metacognitive of the outside stories influencing self-perception is a process that resonates not only through therapies but also through the arts, which is why writers such as me consider writing novels a way of sorting out which messages plague us at the moment. French philosopher Jacques Derrida founded the Deconstruction literary movement in the 1960s. Deconstruction is applied to the analysis of language, asking us to step away from the words in context and look at them also through the lens of the factors influencing the author, the lens of the language itself, that of us as reader, and others. He suggests that we are trapped within language until or unless we acknowledge that it is a trap. Deconstruction built on the psychoanalysis theories of Jacques Lacan, who a few years earlier explained that we are all both victims of and contributors to The Gaze, the lens through which we view the world and ourselves viewing it. The Anamorphic style of visual arts conceptualized The Gaze for us by explaining that essentially what we see depends on where we are standing: it all depends on our perception. Deconstruction and The Gaze teach us that what is on the surface is definitely not all there is; we take that for granted and therefore look no deeper. Writers apply The Gaze as a natural course. Our narrators only reveal to readers what they want readers to know, often leaving unsaid things the narrator wants readers to discover only if they are paying attention. An attentive reader looks for the unsaid and, if the writer has done her job well, changes as a result. Along those same lines, Narrative Therapy as a metacognitive tool for self-discovery allows clients to look deeper, gaze from a different angle and take apart the language that forms their view of themselves, giving them agency to reposition their perception toward a more authentic vantage point.
The role of Narrative Therapy is to help clients separate the outside noise from their own inside voices. As a tool to help clients realize the social, cultural, familial, and peer influences on their stories in order to see past them to their own truths, Narrative Therapy is a tool for social change as well. To quietly teach a young person how to become conscious of these various lenses and change the meanings of language used about them and by them takes a long time and an equally as meta-cognizant therapist, but it can be done. Narrative Therapy allows the client to step back and be the storyteller, the narrator, deciding which voices should matter to the outcome of their story.
References
Covarrubias, R., Romero, A., & Trivelli, M. (2015). Family Achievement Guilt and Mental Well-being of College Students. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 24(7), 2031–2037.
Haugaard, C. (2016). Narrative Therapy as an Ethical Practice. Journal of Systemic Therapies, 35(1), 1–19.
Hoffman, R. M., & Pasley, K. (1998). Thinking about the sexes: The relation between cognitions and gender stereotypes. The American Journal of Family Therapy, 26(3), 189–202.
O’Connor, S. M., Burt, S. A., VanHuysse, J. L., & Klump, K. L. (2016). What drives the association between weight-conscious peer groups and disordered eating? Disentangling genetic and environmental selection from pure socialization effects. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 125(3), 356–368.
