Narrative Counseling Research Articles

Re-storying wilderness and adventure therapies: healing places and selves in an era of environmental crises

This paper begins by examining the therapeutic work of wilderness and adventure therapy through the lens of narrative counselling and the concept of the narrative-self. The terms wilderness and adventure are unpacked and attention is drawn to the risks of working uncritically with these concepts. Illustrations of alternative understandings of people in relationship to the more-than-human world are offered. In keeping with the principles of narrative therapy, rather than providing definitive answers, which risk foreclosing on alternative storylines, this paper seeks instead to open up new possibilities for being and acting within the field of wilderness and adventure therapies and within Western societies more broadly. As long as critical attention is paid to the discourses and stories wilderness and adventure therapies draw on and promote, the paper concludes that these fields are well positioned to help individuals and societies move towards greater environmental sustainability.

Awakening: Career Opportunities After the Storm

Immediately following natural disasters, basic needs are provided; however, the long-term needs of individuals are neglected. The narrative approach (Brott, 2001; Cochran, 1997) to career counseling is offered as method to assist survivors of natural disasters to tell their story and create new meaning related to their career paths. ********** In 2008, the Centre for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters (2009) reported an increase in the number of economic losses and deaths attributed to natural disasters compared with the annual numbers from 2000 through 2007. Natural disasters occur all over the world with global implications, and the Centre for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters estimated that from 1980 to 2002, natural disasters took place in 73 nations. Many individuals are affected by the short-term and long-term devastation of natural disasters. Humanitarian agencies, such as the American Red Cross (ARC; 2011), defined natural disaster as a calamitous event which suddenly and seriously inhibit the functioning of community resulting in human, environmental, and economic losses which exceed the communities' resources (Introduction section). Most of these natural disasters create devastating effects on the lives of individuals (del Moral & Walker, 2007). Kahn (2005) reported that the budgets of humanitarian and emergency response agencies have significantly increased in anticipation of meeting the sizeable needs created by future disasters. Natural disasters affect all aspects of survivor's life. Because of the prevalence of natural disasters, man-made disasters, and catastrophic events, media outlets such as the television, radio, or the Internet frequently inform the public when disaster occurs. As we wrote this article, several disasters occurred, including the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (ReliefWeb, 2010), and an earthquake and tsunami in Japan (U.S. Geological Survey, 2011). Regardless of whether the event is natural disaster or manmade disaster affecting nature, individuals, families, and entire communities have short-term and long-term changes as result of these events (Cohan & Cole, 2002; Green, 1991; Kahn, 2005). Our purpose in this study is twofold: first, to explore the comprehensive and long-term impact of natural disaster on vocationally displaced adults, and second, to explore the benefits of using the narrative career counseling approach (Brott, 2001; Cochran, 1997; Peavy, 1996) for future life planning for these survivors. The subsequent sections include information related to the population of adult survivors of natural disasters, followed by review of short-term supports, vocational impact of natural disasters, theoretical approaches influencing the services provided to this population, and, finally, case study that provides model of using the narrative counseling approach with an adult natural disaster survivor. ADULT DISASTER SURVIVORS Most of the literature related to the impact and subsequent recovery from natural disasters examines the impact of the disaster on children (Madrid & Grant, 2008; Tuicomepee & Romano, 2008), whereas other researchers focus on the mental health needs of individuals immediately following natural disasters (Cohan & Cole, 2002; Haskett, Scott, Nears, & Grimmett, 2008; Jones, Immel, Moore, & Hadder, 2008; Jordan, 2002; Levy, 2008). Few, however, focus on providing life planning (Peavy, 1996) to adult survivors of natural disasters 3 months to 1 year following the event. Short- and Long-Term Supports When humanitarian agencies initially respond to catastrophic event, immediate services are provided by first responders. First responders are people who live in the area (ARC, 2011), who balance their own needs and responsibilities while providing food, shelter, and clothing to other survivors (Haskett et al. …

Three approaches of Narrative counseling and its articulation into narrative moral education

Three approaches of Narrative counseling and its articulation into narrative moral education

Using Stories in Elementary School Counseling: Brief, Narrative Techniques

This article describes using stories and story-telling techniques so that elementary professional school counselors can facilitate brief, narrative counseling. These approaches help counselors and students build rapport while assisting in understanding and externalizing the problem. Additionally, these interventions may help generate ideas for unique and positive academic, personal/social, and career outcomes. This article will address four story-based techniques for use in elementary school counseling: biblionarrative, displaced communication, bibliocounseling, and using movie clips.

Using Stories in Elementary School Counseling: Brief, Narrative Techniques

This article describes using stories and story-telling techniques so that elementary professional school counselors can facilitate brief, narrative counseling. These approaches help counselors and students build rapport while assisting in understanding and externalizing the problem. Additionally, these interventions may help generate ideas for unique and positive academic, personal/social, and career outcomes. This article will address four story-based techniques for use in elementary school counseling: biblionarrative, displaced communication, bibliocounseling, and using movie clips.

Ethics of Family Narrative Therapy

Narrative therapy allows the family to create new meanings for each member of a family while integrating family history. Narrative family counseling should be examined by family counselors for its effects on families and individuals. Potential ethical issues arise when the counselor using narrative methods explores the family's knowledge of itself and each individual's experience within the family. In this article, ethical dilemmas in narrative family therapy are examined and discussed.

Book Review: Shaping the Story: A Guide to Facilitating Narrative Counselling

Book Review: Shaping the Story: A Guide to Facilitating Narrative Counselling

Exploring the Impact of Narrative Arts Activities on the Self-concept of Grade 9 Learners in Group Context

ABSTRACT In this study we investigate the impact of a narrative arts learning programme on the self-concept of Grade 9 learners in the Life Orientation classroom. The programme was designed in response to a suggestion contained in the government guidelines for Life Orientation. The aims of narrative counselling were employed to allow the learners to tell their stories to themselves and others, and the arts component allowed the learners an opportunity to give visual substance to their individual and collective narratives. Brief video recordings were made of each group's interactions during the narrative arts episodes in order to compile an edited video overview of the process. The aims of positive psychology were embedded in the structure and design of the arts episodes and activities.

Working With Gay Men From a Narrative Counseling Perspective: A Case Study

ABSTRACT Narrative counseling continues to gain attention in the family counseling field as a contemporary method of treatment. Scant attention has been given to the application of narrative counseling in working with gay males. Narrative counseling provides a framework to explore how cultural values, worldviews, power, and privilege influence the stories we live and impact emotional well-being. This article summarizes narrative counseling's major concepts, while concomitantly exploring issues that gay males deal with in relation to Western societal attitudes. A case study is provided to illustrate how narrative counseling may be implemented with this population.

Macrogenre

Research on social activities that consist of multiple genres, also termed macrogenres, remains a relatively unexplored area in the linguistic sciences. Furthermore, representations of genres and macrogenres tend to be constituency based, highlighting ideational meanings as opposed to interpersonal and textual ones. In this paper, I illustrate how Halliday’s tripartite metafunctional (ideational, interpersonal, textual) model can be applied to a narrative counselling interview macrogenre. I argue that each metafunctional perspective can provide a different angle through which to observe, represent and explain counselling logogenesis. The data from this study were taken from audiorecordings of 2 cases of 6 conjoint narrative counselling sessions, involving 2 couples and a male counsellor. Using the methods of Genre & Register theory and Systemic Functional Linguistics, it was found that, for both cases of counselling, counsellor and couples drew from similar sets of linguistic resources to collaboratively construct the counselling process. Furthermore, these linguistic patterns were shown to cluster together, forming identifiable generic stages and genres in which couples problems were constructed and subsequently effaced. Finally, it was found that representing the counselling macrogenre from different metafunctional perspectives provided a more comprehensive picture of the purposeful and goal directed unfolding of the counselling process.

Using “Undercover Teams” To Re-Story Bullying Relationships

Responding to bullying behavior in schools through punitive methods can reproduce the same power relations that are inherent in the bullying. The undercover teams approach by contrast addresses bullying behavior by using peer group relations strategically to interrupt bullying. This approach is inclusive of bullies, as well as victims and bystanders. In this article we draw from a narrative counseling perspective and from the restorative practices literature to explain how undercover teams work as a counterpractice to bullying power. An illustrative story shows how school counselors can use this approach to respond to bullying.

A Review of Critical, Person‐centred and Clinical Approaches to Reminiscence Work for People with Intellectual Disabilities

The present article reviews reminiscence research with regard to people with intellectual disabilities. Although the term “reminiscence” is not often used in intellectual disability research, the concept offers a useful framework for charting the different approaches in literature, thanks to its multidisciplinary character and eclectic theoretical background. Three main perspectives are identified: a critical approach, in which reminiscence is stimulated to let people with intellectual disabilities become critically aware of their past; a person‐centred approach, in which reminiscence serves informational and social purposes; and a clinical approach, in which reminiscence is presented as an alternative diagnostic instrument and/or a “low‐threshold” narrative counselling method for people with intellectual disabilities. The three approaches differ in language use, aims, and backgrounds, but there is congruency amongst the approaches in that reminiscence work can strengthen the identity of people with intellectual disabilities, raise self‐esteem, and enhance social contacts. The review concludes that a more balanced view of reminiscence, better methodological procedures, and more evaluation studies on the effect and process of reminiscence work are needed in future research.

Huckleberry Finn Reconsidered: An Interview With David Nylund

This article describes the views of author and therapist David Nylund on working with children and adolescents diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In this interview, Nylund shares his views on how pathologizing language can interfere with the bringing forth of the inherent skills, knowledge, and talents that parents, teachers, and children might otherwise adopt in coping with the problems associated with ADHD. In addition, Nylund shares his ideas about how the stances and techniques of narrative counseling can engender possibilities for therapeutic change.

Utilising discursive positioning in counselling

ABSTRACT Foucault's concern with the production of subjectivity has led to the development of positioning theory, as it has been called by Bronwyn Davies, Rom Harré and Luk van Langenhøve. The concept of discursive positioning has particular value for counselling because it shows how people are positioned in discourse in particular moments by their own and by others’ utterances. Positioning theory also points to the efforts people make to resist and refuse discursive positions they are called into in conversation. This article demonstrates how listening to the nuances of discursive positioning in a conversation can enrich professional practice. I shall use several examples from narrative counselling conversations in order to demonstrate these principles in action.

Transition in Career Counselling Practice: What Can Solution-Oriented Counselling Offer?

The counselling profession has been challenged to respond to the demands of an Increasingly complex and rapidly changing world. In personal counselling, the response has seen the increased adoption of principles, processes and approaches informed by the constructivist worldview, such as solution-oriented counselling and narrative counselling. Such a response is less evident in career counselling, which continues to be dominated by the approaches of the traditional positivist worldview. However, the early stages of a transition in career counselling are becoming more evident. This article overviews the antecedents of transition in career counselling and explores the influence of the constructivist and traditional positivist worldviews on elements of career counselling. Further, it examines the possible contribution of solution-oriented counselling and illustrates its application to career counselling.

Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family Duong Van Mai Elliott,Cross‐Cultural Practice With Couples and Families Phillip Brown and John Shalett (Eds)Context: A Magazine for Family Therapy and Systemic PracticeThe Answer Within: A Family in Therapy Re‐Examined Moshe Lang and Peter McCallum.Time Bombs in Families and How to Survive Them Averil Earnshaw.Relationships into the New Millennium 1999: Papers to Celebrate 50 years of Relationships Australia Gail Bateman and D. Lamont.Narrative Counseling in Schools: Powerful and Brief: Practical Skills for Counselors J. Winslade And G. Monk.You Just Don't Listen: A Parent's Guide to Improving Communication Suzie Hayman.

Stories As Academic Counseling Resources

Abstract This article explores narrative activities in academic counseling encounters. It shows that academic counselors actively initiate, solicit, narrate, and collaborate on stories so as to display knowledge and expertise, assess and articulate students' counseling problems, and problematize otherwise nonproblematic situations. It suggests that narrative discourse is a resource for shaping knowledge, role identities, and problemsolving activities specific to the counseling setting. This article considers conversational stories as deeply situated within the interactional and institutional processes. By highlighting the narrative nature of both the counselor's and the student's talk and by documenting the counselor's narrative counseling strategies, it also extends existing research on conversational stories in interview settings, which focused on responses to interview questions. Illustrative data are drawn from video- and audiotaped, one-to-one academic counseling encounters that took place in an American university.(Linguistics)

Narratives and Counseling, Part 2: From Stories of the past to Stories for the Future

After a summary of sources of power contained in narratives as proposed by Kilpatrick (1986), a case history of Christian narrative counseling is presented. Emphasis is on a narrative conclusion to the counseling process that focuses on the client's future. This future is understood as a story constructed by the client in response to God's call: the working out of a vocation. The vocation story, interpreted in the framework of Northrop Frye's (1957) four narrative archetypes, is primarily a comedy or romance, not tragedy or irony. The therapist's role in a narrative ending to therapy is interpreted as similar to that of a coach. Narrative models in psychology are also identified as part of a major paradigm shift to a less positivistic psychology, one that is much more compatible with Christian Scripture than is the traditional scientific paradigm.