Pros And Cons Of Narrative Therapy

For its time, narrative therapy was considered radical and unlike past therapies used. The major contributors, Michael White and David Epston, put aside the main idea and view of the preceding and dominate psychological theories and focused on the person’s story. Both White and Epston were influenced by French post-structural philosopher Michel Foucault. His ideas were largely based on existentialism, which gave worth to a person’s own experience. Narrative therapy became a tool to help people see the problem that that they are facing but also the ability to see how the problem arose. This therapy takes power away from the problem and also empowers the person. The main point of narrative theory is to that the stories people tell about …show more content…
The first assumption is the theory that personal stories are built around societal customs. Each narrative constructed by a person is based off what the person considers their reality, beliefs and values.. The postmodernism perspective lends some of its underlining theories to narrative therapy. One of the points of the postmodernism perspective is the awareness that one’s belief is not solely based on one’s own assumptions, but also on the belief of the person’s society (Grenz, 1996). The idea of what is real is determined by the person’s dominant culture. When listening to a story it is important to understand that person’s story based on the cultural context. The audience must have an understanding that there will be underlying cultural expression in a person’s narrative (Yarhouse, …show more content…
A person’s belief about themself comes from ideas placed on them by the dominant culture they are a part of or their own family system (Piercy et al., 1996). The language that is used to transfer ideas into a person can be derived from that person’s own family structure. What a person thinks are their own beliefs about their shortcomings or prevailing points in a situation could be related to that family structure or that dominant culture. The third assumption is that a person’s reality is preserved through their narrative. A person’s reality is influenced by the society in which that person is a part of and so is their narrative. It is important to deconstruct the narrative, so the person is not the problem, but the problem is the problem. The narrative is created by the person surrounding their problem, so it is important to understand all the aspects of that narrative to get a full understanding of the assumptions placed on that person by society (Brown & Augusta-Scott,