This essay will discuss the concept of interpersonal relationships and the strengths and weaknesses of Narrative Therapy within professional and family relationship environments.
The client is the expert on her/his life and the therapist focusses on the person and not the problem, conducting therapeutic conversations that externalize the problem. This is the concept of Narrative Therapy (Goldenberg & Goldenberg, 2004, pp. 343-344). Narrative Therapy views problems as separate from people and assumes that people have many skills, competencies, beliefs, values and abilities that change their relationship with the problems in their lives (Freedman & Combs, 2000, pp. 400-404). For example, were someone to say they had been thinking about killing themselves, the therapist may ask, “How long have you been subject to these ideas?” The phrase ‘subject to’ begins to separate the person from the problem (Carr, 1998, pg. 486). Michael White and David Epston, both founders of Narrative Therapy, explain that the therapist works collaboratively; the therapist is not the expert and does a lot of curious asking and not much telling (White, 2009, pg. 207). Furthermore, this therapy helps people identify and explore their relationships by identifying values, knowledge, beliefs and skills that are obscured by certain circumstances of particular ways of thinking (Payne, 2006, pg. 21). Re-authoring conversations assist people to link events into an alternative storyline according to a particular theme. One of the techniques that narrative therapists are using is the “landscape of identity questioning” where therapists encourage people to explore a different territory and invite them to reflect differently on their own identities and the identities of others. They relate to the implications this alternative storyline has in terms of the person’s understanding of their identity (Carey & Russell, 2003, pp. 6-8).
According to Winslade & Monk (2000, p.6), building an interpersonal relationship between client and therapist is part of any kind of therapy that desires a successful outcome. An interpersonal relationship is a close relationship between individuals or groups, such as a romantic or intimate relationship, a family relationship, or some other type of social relationship. Interpersonal relationships are formed in the context of social, cultural and other influences. In addition, interpersonal relationships change continuously; they grow and improve when people get to know each other or they deteriorate as people drift apart and form new relationships with others. (Berscheid, 1994, pg. 81)
In the context of romantic and intimate relationships, Gershoni, Cramer, & Gogol-Ostrowsky (2008, pg. 4-6) said that Narrative Therapy is widely used for couple therapy to deal with differences that couples often have in their stories about their relationship, body image and sex. They added that the significant way to disentangle storylines of relationship, intimacy, body image and sex was by looking at the relationship between these stories. What this implies is that during the narrative process, couples have the opportunity to reconstruct their preferred unique sexual story; and by doing this, they increase their interpersonal relationship. The professional interpersonal relationships between the therapist and client developed through Narrative Therapy has a positive impact on interpersonal relationship as it demonstrates care, interest, respectful curiosity, openness, empathy, and fascination. (AIPC, 2016)
McLeod, & McLeod (2011, pg. 4) explained that narrative concurrently embraces the individual and the social. When stories are told, they can be retold. People use stories to communicate the important or memorable things that happen on a daily basis with each other. With these stories saved in our memories, we live out a story of stories and make our identity and sense of self through creating a story of our life. (Morgan, 2000, pp. 7-12). Every telling of the same story is different as there is always an aspect of improvisation, depending on the listener or the audience. The stories includes information about an experience that develops over time, involves intention and purpose, exposes the relationships between people, and communicates feeling and emotion (White, 2005, pp. 10-11). Considering these factors, it is important to note that interpersonal relationships require effort to nurture and maintain, be it between couples, family members, friends, or within a professional set-up.
A study conducted about professional interpersonal relationships by Winslade & Monk (2000, p.6) said that when people are hurt by the actions of others, they might express their stories in a kind of way to reinforce their own self of injustice, betrayal, victimization or mistreatment. Winslade & Monk (2000, p.41) argued that in the business world, in relation to conflict management, mediators need to have confidence in their stakeholders. They continued that when stakeholders compensate in their interpersonal relationships, the problems that have brought them to the mediation table in the first place, are more likely to be solved faster. Winslade and Monk related this back to Narrative Therapy, stating that the interpersonal relationship between a therapist and a client is essential to make therapy work.
Narrative Therapy draws attentions to the way people tell their stories and on their use of language. As such, a person could experience an issue of concern in relation to the way they talk and how they use language. In the context of interpersonal relationships, when people do not use the same language, different stories may develop in an individual’s head. This could make a person feel that there is no movement forward (McLeod, & McLeod, 2011, pg. 4).
Vromans, & Schweitzer (2011, pg. 7) conducted a study to provide empirical support for the effectiveness of Narrative Therapy in treating adults with major depressive disorder. The results showed that it is difficult to arrive at a conclusion since the research was limited by a small sample. Nevertheless, this study clearly indicated the strengths of Narrative Therapy through four phases towards interpersonal relationships. In the first phase of Narrative Therapy, the therapist empower the client by showing respect, questioning curiosity and prioritizing the client’s knowledge and recourses, rather than assuming a pathologist-like stance to implicit the relationship. In the second phase, the problem stories get positioned outside the person through externalizing or non-pathologizing conversations rather than through common descriptions associated with modernist categories of disorder. The third phase is through listening and discussing the construction of the problem story, by telling the problem apart from the assumptions and beliefs. In the last phase, the therapist encourages the client to tell alternative stories compared to the previous ones with as result that the stories become more richly described and the client holding on to the story s/he prefers. This preferred story becomes stronger and the person can reposition her or himself in relation to the story. The client can tell the preferred story outside the therapy session in a social environment, which makes that story become an element of the client’s interpersonal relationships.
Schaal, Elbert, & Neuner (2009, pp. 3-7) conducted a study on trauma-related symptoms (PTSD, depression, and guilt cognitions) over a period of 6 months to measure the stability of PTSD symptoms in a sample of Rwandan orphans who met DSM-IV criteria of PTSD at the initial assessment in individual Narrative Therapy and group Interpersonal Psychotherapy. The results showed that Narrative Therapy led to improvements in posttraumatic stress symptoms on participants who demonstrated a larger effect size of PTSD and depression. A number of other studies demonstrated that Narrative Therapy leads to reductions in depression symptoms and that the improvements made during therapy are maintained even 9-12 months after therapy. In one such study, depression was placed in clients’ current and past interpersonal relationships. Due to the large number of clients, this was only sampled with group Interpersonal Psychotherapy. The study concluded that PTSD, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder have a positive effect on individual Narrative Therapy. Relating this back to the theory of interpersonal relationships, this could imply that the clients that had a reduction in depression, stress and PTSD had a good interpersonal relationship with the therapist. However, it should be noted that due to the large number of people and the limited resources available, it was difficult to compare the individual and the group to get effective results.
While the positive effects of Narrative Therapy cannot be denied, it is important to look at some of its weaknesses. In the case of Narrative Therapy used with couples, when couples come forward to renew or fix their relationship by addressing difficulties through communication, there is the expectation that the therapist will be the mediator. This expectation could limit the possibility for couples to recognize the consequences of negative constructions in the shaping of their relationships and limiting the options for both partners to explore an alternative interpersonal journey. This gives rise to further restrictions to the development within the couple’s relationship itself (White, 2009, pp. 201-203). Another weakness of individual Narrative Therapy occurs when a client has a lack of confidence, intellectual capacity or other issues that undermine the her/his expression. The client might be expecting the therapist to act as the expert instead of having a conversation with the therapist. Finally, Narrative Therapy lacks a clear-cut formula, recipe or agenda. Because Narrative Therapy is grounded in a philosophical framework, it can become subjective or a widely interpretative process (AIPC, 2016).
References
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