Foucauldian Influences in Narrative Therapy: an Approach for Schools

Abstract

It may be that one of the defining characteristics of European approaches to the development of narrative-informed counselling and psychotherapy is that being philosophically grounded represents an alternative to the pragmatic, empiricist, instrumental therapies and health-care systems that have come to dominate the global psychotherapy scene in recent years (McLeod, 2000a p 333).

In this paper I explore the impact of the work of Michel Foucault on ‘narrative therapy’ as initially developed in Australasia by Michael White and David Epston1 (1989, 1990). European strands of narrative-informed therapy are by no means alone in being informed by philosophy. Narrative therapy is part of the ‘narrative’ turn that occurred as part of a broader movement within philosophy, the humanities and the social sciences – the linguistic turn (Rorty 1967) – which promised agreement among philosophers by shifting discussion to the meta-level to study the language of representation rather than the referents or objects themselves. The turn to narrative, while part of the wider linguistic turn, can also be seen as a response to the formalism and scientific pretensions of structuralism by what we might loosely term ‘poststructuralist’ thinkers (Onega & Landa 1996). The importance of language and meaning to counselling, as exemplified by structuralist and poststructuralist modes of thought, is profound and had been largely unexplored by counsellors until narrative therapy emerged. On this account, it is held that language not only affects how we frame our notions of the ‘self’ and ‘identity’, but also how counsellors deal with people and their sense of meaning of the world they live in. Since the late 1980s, various strands of narrative-informed therapy have developed in Australasia, USA and Europe, along with a burgeoning literature (see for example White & Epston 1989 1990; Parry & Doan 1994; Freedman & Combs 1996; Smith & Nylund 1997; Monk et al 1997; McLeod 1997; Winslade & Monk 1999; Payne 2000; Speedy 2000). The pioneering form of narrative therapy as formulated by White and Epston owes much to several poststructuralist theorists and to earlier Foucauldian themes. These are briefly examined in first section of this paper.