“THICKENING THE PLOT”

PART I

Overview of the narrative approach:
Primary aims

THE NARRATIVE AGENDA

• Humanize people, foster personal agency
• Put people in relationship with problems
• Fostering responsibility
• Allying people
• Appreciating the power of story

“Narrative”:
The guiding metaphor

A “HUMAN” METAPHOR

• Meaning-making
• Story as prescriptive more than just descriptive
• Story and identity formation
• Four elements of a narrative
• Multi storied

A “map” of narrative therapy

FROM OBJECT TO SUBJECT

• Externalizing
• Giving “air time” to marginalized stories
• “Thickening the plot”

PART II

A posture that develops stories and relationships...

THE NARRATIVE POSTURE

• Anthropological
• Empowering
• Creative
• Humanizing

Practices that help draw out the whole truth of our lives...

NARRATIVE PRACTICES

• Externalizing
• Unique outcomes or “sparkling events”
• “Thin” versus “thick” storylines

RESOURCES

• Freedman, Jill, and Gene Combs. Narrative Therapy : the Social Construction of Preferred Realities / Jill Freedman and Gene Combs. New York : Norton, 1996.
• Morgan, Alice. What is narrative therapy? Adelaide, Australia: Dulwich Centre Publications, 2000.
• White, Michael (Michael Kingsley). Maps of Narrative Practice / Michael White. New York : W.W. Norton & Co., 2007.