Narrative therapy
The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order, a timetable not necessarily — perhaps not possibly — chronological. The time as we know it subjectively is often the chronology that stories and novels follow: it is the continuous thread of revelation. —Eudora Welty
Michael White is an Australian psychotherapist identified with the development and promotion of a psychotherapeutic technique he calls “narrative therapy.” Kudos aside, from my point of view, all psychotherapy is a kind of narrative therapy. Boil down any mental health treatment and what you get is a psychotherapist helping you rewrite the meaning of the story you tell yourself about your life and who you think you are.
Welty continues, “Connections slowly emerge. Like distant landmarks you are approaching, cause and effect begin to align themselves, draw closer together. Experiences too indefinite of outline in themselves to be recognized for themselves connect and are identified as a larger shape. And suddenly a light is thrown back, as when your train makes a curve, showing that there has been a mountain of meaning rising behind you on the way you’ve come, is rising there still, proven now through retrospect.”
