The Dulwich Centre and Narrative Therapy

The Dulwich Centre is an independent centre in Adelaide, Australia involved in counselling, community work, training and publishing. For the last dozen or so years, the Dulwich Centre has been the world leader in books and training on what is called "Narrative Therapy".

So just what is Narrative Therapy?

Well, it starts with the assumption that people have have a great wealth of skills, beliefs, values, etc. and that there is no single "correct" way of interpreting events (or more specifically, problems). When people think about themselves, they create a (dominant) narrative, i.e. they make up a story about their actions, beliefs, etc. and then they find events that reinforce that position. What Narrative Therapy tries to do is to allow people to reinterpret events and thoughts in their lives, which (according to Alice Morgan's What is Narrative Therapy? ) involves "re-authoring and re-storying".

Then to quote Jill Freedman and Gene Combs:
"Narrative therapists are interested in working with people to bring forth and thicken stories that do not support or sustain problems. As people begin to inhabit and live out the alternative stories, the results are beyond solving problems. Within the new stories, people live out new self images, new possibilities for relationships and new futures."

For more on this, check out Alice Walker's excellent introduction What is Narrative Therapy? An Easy-to-Read Introduction .