Techniques of narrative psychotherapy. Narrative approach in psychology

- Tell us more about what a narrative approach is.

- It is based on the idea that we master our life experiences through stories. Since people are not able to remember absolutely everything that happens to them, they build logical chains between individual events and sensations. And these sequences become stories.

We are not born with these stories. They are constructed in a social and political context. We are not born in a vacuum, free from opinions about what a "normal" person should be. Moreover, there are nuances here: a “white person” in Australia is judged according to one standard, people of other cultures and races, even if they are also Australians, according to others. We explore these cultural histories, discourses. The ability to see particular stories in a broad context is the foundation of narrative practice.

- How do you work with these stories?

Everyone uses them to make sense of their own experiences. And it often happens that people who come to us for therapy comprehend their experience through the prism of problematic stories. This is evident in what they say about themselves, in repetitive trauma. “I am bad”, “I am hopeless”, “I am a terrible person” - such conclusions can really take over the mind. They become like a magnifying glass through which people look at the world. Focusing in the perception of the present occurs only on certain things. The ones that fit the traumatic story. They simply cannot see anything else in their experience.

The narrative approach allows you to separate the context and see these stories not as defining, but as situational. He teaches to look under the problem for other stories hidden. We call them alternative or preferred. When they are found, life-defining trauma stories that lead in the wrong direction dissolve and go.

- Can you give a specific example?

- In Australia, I work a lot with women and children who have experienced domestic violence. I will tell a story about a woman named Lisa. We met when she was in her early thirties and was raising her two children aged 4 and 6 by herself. About a year before, Lisa had left her husband. She was anxious and depressed. She suffered from social isolation - did not keep in touch with relatives, did not have friends.

Lisa considered herself a bad mother, despite the fact that she loved children very much and took care of them. For example, I took my daughter to prepare for school. In addition, she thought that those around her were judging her. She wanted to go to school to get a profession. But at the same time, she could not decide to call and sign up for courses. “I can’t, I won’t succeed,” her inner voice said.

This often happens: women defeatistly believe that they are not able to change anything.

We were able to separate this voice when we began to analyze the experience of living everything that happened with Lisa. In narrative therapy, this is called externalization. And I began to ask: how long does this voice live in her head? when did it sound for the first time? what happened to her then? My questions were meant to make clear the difference between Lisa's real life and the way she imagined it.

It became clear that Lisa had been hearing this voice for a long time. He was the voice of the family: Liza, the only girl in the family, grew up among numerous brothers. And I constantly heard that boys are better and only men are worthy of respect. In addition, the girl was regularly abused by her uncle. And she was afraid of publicity, because her uncle repeated that people would certainly condemn her if they knew what was happening.

We gradually made this mechanism visible: we showed how the voice prevents her from doing what she wants for her children. Lisa felt like a bad mother also because ex-husband abused children. A good mother, she thought, wouldn't let that happen. In essence, she was taking responsibility for the violence her partner inflicted! And of course it was painful. This often happens: women defeatistly believe that they are not able to change anything.

Of course, Lisa was also afraid of the consequences of divorce for children. Her anxiety was understandable: single mothers have far less money. The financial situation of the family worsened, and the voice constantly reminded of this. And Lisa got into debt buying Christmas presents for the kids… Just to drown out that voice. It took us a long time for her to understand that this was just a voice, and not the ultimate truth.

How did you manage to help her?

- Researching the problem, I tried to find the tiniest hint of an alternative history that I could cling to. Lisa was very lonely. But there was one woman, Brenda, whom she became friends with. We began to develop this story: how did she decide to open up to another person and start visiting? How do we generally do what can then be considered useful skills? There is a lot of room for thought here. According to the approach, you need to look for what is significant for a person, what he values, what he hopes for and what he wants. understand his aspirations. What was Lisa aiming for in making this friendship?

Recall that she sent her daughter to the garden, although psychologically it was not easy for her. It was an example of resistance to the inner voice. And I began to find out the details. It turned out that Lisa called Brenda, and in the conversation she reminded her of the scarf given by her beloved aunt. Brenda knew that Lisa sometimes wears it - as a protection, a talisman. Lisa tied a scarf in the morning and thought how important it was to send her daughter to school. So there was a story that Lisa wants her daughter to have friends, classmates, some kind of occupation. To enjoy being herself. Responses to this were found later in the life of Lisa herself: when she was eight, she was taken under the wing of a Sunday school teacher.

I asked what to do with a child if you want him to feel this way. And Liza began to give touching examples, such pieces of everyday stories - for example, how in the evening she spends time with each child in turn, and every Sunday they go somewhere together, but where the children decide.

Lisa did not immediately begin to appreciate her maternal efforts. We had long conversations with her for a long time. But in the end, she became more successful as a mother and was able to never allow violence in her life again. When she lived with Jim, the inner voice was very loud, because it coincided with the voice of Jim himself: “Don't even try to leave me, because guardianship will take the children. You are a bad mother." It wasn't until another story was found and developed that Lisa began to understand why the previous one was so powerful without being true.

A problematic story breaks, bursts at the seams, loses power over a person when he realizes that this is not true. Represents "it" as a voice or as something separate from it. Since traumas are often rooted deep in the past, it takes time to overcome them. For this it is important to know how more details preferred stories to make them distinguishable in human experience.

- I know that you can explain how the narrative approach works in terms of neuroscience as well.

- Indeed, I am fond of this science and have an idea of ​​how the brain works, including in the context of memory. When we create new stories, new connections are formed between neurons. Hanging on positive stories is useful: the more people rely on their preferred stories, the faster the corresponding neural circuits in the brain become mainstream. And there is no need to return to the injury. You can live the life you want.

Stories do not only live on a conscious level. They also live in the body. When we hear an unpleasant inner voice, it is a heavy and painful sensation. Any violence, including emotional, causes pain that remains in the body.

In the process of evolution, we have developed the ability to react very quickly to danger. If a tiger runs towards us, we usually do not begin to think what to do. Our response is automated. A surge of adrenaline and cortisol - and we are ready to run away or fight. Or freeze - that too a good option if the attacker is stronger. The same thing happens as a result of trauma or violence - an automatic response. Everyone is familiar with these bodily sensations: the heart beats faster, breathing becomes short and intermittent, the stomach cramps.

What does this lead to? To the fact that people who have gone through trauma are able to experience these sensations again and again under the influence of a trigger. Anything can be a trigger - a place, a voice, a smell. And the person is thrown away at the moment of injury. The same hormones are produced, and although there is no real danger, the sensations are the same. This can be a source of real stress. Favorite stories turn pain into words, help to verbalize it, to understand what it means.

- What does she mean?

- Pain suggests that some valuable idea of ​​​​life has been broken, violated, betrayed. For example, a man has been crying every day for twenty years. Friends say: listen, pull yourself together. Get your life right. And he feels hurt and helpless. Like there's something wrong with him. Because of this automatic reaction. And this happens because his pain was not verbalized, he did not find a word for it. It is hidden, not reflected, sits in the body like a splinter. And this is where our work begins.

It is necessary to understand what these tears are talking about, what is the story behind them. What is important to you and lost man mourns? Suppose a person suffers because the value of justice has been betrayed. "So unfair, I was just a kid." Now you can build history. We can ask: what does justice mean to you? has it always been important to you? who else knew about it and supported it? So we "pull out a splinter." Pain matters, it's not meaningless. And the story gradually manifests itself, takes shape in words, moves into consciousness and can no longer freely roam the body, waiting until the next trigger activates it. Words have been found for her, which means she has much more control over her. This is what it means to make sense of your experience.

People themselves can manage their lives, not their problematic stories. But in order to gain control over life, you need to know what steps to take.

Can anyone put their traumas into words?

- Yes. Ultimately, the approach appeals to human free will. People themselves can manage their lives, not their problematic stories. But in order to gain control over life, you need to know what steps to take. Everyone can reflect on their experience in all its versatility - not just trauma and pain. There is always a good story for a bad story. People resist injury. They don't like what's going on. And we clothe the protest in words. Just by talking, every day, year after year, we give a traumatic experience a completely different meaning. That, for example, the idea of ​​justice is so important to me that I will not give it up. This struggle becomes a sign of strength, not weakness.

What are the most common consequences of a traumatic experience?

People blame themselves. They hate themselves. They stop appreciating themselves and anything in general. This happens very often. Traumatic experience destroys a person's value range. The ability to reflect, to reflect on what I want, what I value, is very fragile. When we first meet people with traumatic experiences, we see that they have very little spark, few prerequisites for preferred stories. Weak connection with what is dear to them. And this often leads to isolation. People feel unable to connect with others because they cannot connect with themselves, with their values ​​and principles. And we need to carefully return this opportunity to them.

How did you get started with the narrative approach?

- I studied psychology at the university, but in the early 70s it was terrible: solid behaviorism, nothing about people. So when I learned about narrative practices, I was very happy. Although the meeting with Michael White was completely random. This happened 25 years ago, and since then I have been doing narrative therapy. I travel constantly. I spent a lot of time in Scandinavia, in India (there is a whole community in Mumbai), in Mexico and Chile.

It is difficult to say where people live harder. There is corruption and drug trafficking in Mexico, and terrible things happen to people. There is a lot of poverty in India. How to survive and find meaning in life? Scandinavia is a different story - you need to be successful, develop, move somewhere, grow. This too can lead to isolation and despair. It is very interesting to observe how people respond to life's challenges in different contexts. But stories are very important everywhere. The contexts are different, but everyone has the same stories - about desires, values, dreams. And the problems are the same. So at this level, all people are alike, and making connections is easy.

Year of publication and journal number:

We live with each other in a world of conversational narrative, and we understand ourselves and each other through changing stories and self descriptions.
Anderson, H. and Goolishan, H.A.

From the fact that it seems to me - or to everyone - that this is so, it does not follow that this is so.
L. Wittgenstein

The reality of the second order, which is nothing more than our worldview, thoughts, feelings, decisions and actions, is generated as a result, so to speak, of our imposition of some specific order on the kaleidoscope and phantasmagoric diversity of the universe; thus, it is not the result of comprehending some "real" world, but itself constructs a completely definite world (one of the worlds). Design is carried out unconsciously, but we naively believe that its product exists independently of us.
P. Watzlawick

Narrative Therapy: Authors' Interpretation

At the Dulwich Center, whose directors are the founders of narrative therapy, the following description of this approach has been formulated.

The basic premise of narrative therapy is idea that people's lives and relationships are formed:

• knowledge and stories that have been created by communities of people and are drawn on by these people to reflect on and describe their experiences

• certain practices of "I" and relationships in which ways of life are associated with these knowledge and stories.

Narrative therapy helps people solve their problems by:

• allowing them to separate their lives and relationships from those knowledge and stories that, in their opinion, have already exhausted themselves;
• helping them to challenge the ways of life that they perceive as dominating, subjugating
• and by encouraging people to rewrite their life histories according to alternative, preferred (by the people themselves) stories of their identity and according to the preferred (by the people themselves) ways of living.

Brief description of the approach

In the broadest sense, narrative therapy is a conversation in which people retell, that is, tell in a different way the stories of their lives. For narrative therapists, "story" is some events linked in certain sequences over a certain time period and thus brought into a state endowed with meaning plot.

People are interpretive beings. Constantly experiencing an endless string of events, they strive to see them as interconnected and explainable, that is, meaningful. The narrative is like a thread that weaves various events scattered in time and space into history.

We are all made up of many stories: about who we are and who we are not, that is, about our selves, about our abilities and achievements, about failures and defeats, about interests and intentions, about work and career, about relationships and connections, about actions, desires, plans, etc. What exactly these stories will be depends on what events we paid attention to, how we connected them together and what meaning we gave them.

The life of any person consists of a much larger number of events than those that he selects for his stories.. Which of the newly arriving events will be included in the history is determined by the already constructed dominant stories this person.

For example, someone might have a dominant story that he is an altruist. This story has developed from many episodes of his past, where he behaved, felt and thought in accordance with the description of altruistic behavior and attitude accepted in his society and shared by him. He could move an old woman across the road, help a lagging student in the classroom, feel compassion for a dead cockroach, join the movement to protect rare species of animals, etc.

Each such act or event made his story that he was an altruist more intense and dense. As the story condenses, inconsistent or contradictory events—for example, a man killed this cockroach himself or left an apparently incapacitated old woman across the street because it was already too difficult to get her home—come to be seen as irrelevant, accidental, or completely ignored.

Stories are never created outside the multiple contexts of the surrounding world.. From these contexts - family, friends, colleagues, cultural media and texts - a person learns what meaning should be attributed to this or that event, as well as how this event and this meaning are approved and recommended. That is, the dominant narratives of our lives, the dominant narratives of all the communities in which we are included, and the dominant narratives of our culture are all closely interconnected.

The personal story "I am an altruist" is connected, for example, with the cultural story "Altruism is better than selfishness", with the family story "Vasenka is so caring - all like his grandfather, thank God", with the professional story "Everything in our business only on enthusiastic altruists and rests ", etc.

The stories of the past and present form the stories of the future: seeing a drowning person, a person who knows that he is an altruist will go to save him and calmly write this episode into his dominant history. Moreover, such a person will even look for situations in which he can prove himself as an altruist. Just like a person whose history says that he is inclined towards family life, he will look for situations that will gradually lead him to create a family.

In fact, our lives are multi-historical. Each moment contains space for the existence of many stories, and the same events, depending on the meanings attributed to them and the nature of the connections, can develop into different narratives. Any story is not without some degree of uncertainty and inconsistency. And no story can contain all life circumstances.

If the little outlaw from The Snow Queen found herself carrying an old lady across the road, or the mafia hero from Analyze This crying over a dead cockroach, they would try to attribute the event to the status of an accident. And if such episodes became so frequent or so expressive that it would be difficult to ignore them, then this would probably give rise to the development alternative histories.

Events that do not fit into our dominant stories, other people's interpretations, or our own interpretations can all serve as an impetus for the birth of a new narrative. Having survived the invasion of insects in his apartment and systematically destroying them all, the "altruist" may decide that he is "an egoist, an insensitive person and generally a killer by nature." And the mafiosi, who was upset because of the cockroach, began to describe himself as "a complete weakling without a future and hope."

For a while, depending on many factors, conditions and environment these alternative histories can become powerful, become dominant, and people will live them. At the same time, none of the stories (neither "I am an altruist" nor "I am an egoist") will be free from inconsistency and the possibility of multiple interpretations inherent in it.

In addition, any "big story" of a person, that is, the story of his life or just his life, always consists of many smaller stories that exist simultaneously and are interconnected - about his past, present and future, about him as a member of various communities, about his family. , its culture and society. And each new event will be interpreted in accordance with the meaning that dominates at the moment in all this variety of stories.

From this point of view, at every moment of our lives, with every act of our lives, we interact between our dominant and alternative histories, again and again giving meaning to our experience.

So, narrative therapists think in terms of stories and plots - dominant and alternative. Thinking in terms of a narrative metaphor, people enter therapy when dominant stories (personal and/or cultural) prevent them from living out their own preferred narratives. Or when a person actively participates in the embodiment of stories that he finds useless. Or when, as in the case of the mafia, a person can no longer find the resources to support his chosen story, new events are interpreted by him in such a way that it threatens the old preferred narrative, and he does not like the emerging new one at all.

In any case, working within the framework of the narrative approach, the therapist meets with the people who seek his services in order to join forces with them to explore the stories of their lives and relationships, the meanings and influences of these stories, as well as the contexts in which they were "written and accepted as their own.

Some of the most common characteristics of narrative therapy are:

• Narrative therapy is a counseling and social work approach in which people are seen as experts in their own lives, and the professional stance is one of respect, non-blame, and concern for any human story.
• This approach assumes that the problems are separated from the people, and that the people themselves are sufficiently competent, capable and have a large number of abilities and skills that can help them change their unsatisfactory relationship with the problem.
• Important principles of work in this approach are genuine curiosity on the part of the therapist and his sincere desire to ask questions to which he really does not know the answer, and, therefore, is ready to hear and accept anyone.
• A therapeutic conversation can take any direction, there are always many possible paths (there is no one "correct" course of the conversation known to the therapist as an expert).
• The person consulting the therapist plays an essential role in determining the course of the therapeutic process.

Theoretical Contexts of Narrative Therapy and Narrative Practices

Narrative therapy arose and exists in certain contexts - postmodernism, constructivism, poststructuralism, social constructivism.

Implemented right now in this text, the idea of ​​the inseparability of any phenomenon from the contexts in which it exists or is seen is post-structuralist.

In post-structuralism (originally a method of text analysis that replaced structuralism), there are several interrelated ideas used by narrative therapists.

The idea of ​​intertextuality- that is, the existence of a text in the space of other texts. The text may refer to those texts that are not even formally mentioned in it. Everything that the author read before writing his text breaks through in his own work, even against his will and consciousness.

The idea of ​​endless text interpretation- how many readers, so many interpretations (hence the impossibility of having an expert, a critic, a final interpreter).

And finally, summarizing these two ideas the concept of the inseparability of text from context, where the context is understood as a reference point, relative to which events, actions, etc. are interpreted. Depending on the context, the same text (behavior, action, thoughts, word, theory) can be evaluated differently.

Thus, we will consider narrative therapy that shares these ideas in unity with the contexts of its existence.

Narrative therapists generally agree that their approach is postmodern and refers to the many theories and stories that define themselves as postmodern. Therefore, speaking about this or that aspect of narrative therapy, we will first of all point to the references and boundaries that make this approach not modernist, or postmodernist.

About constructivism, radical and social, will be discussed in detail below. In the most general form, in both cases, this is an interdisciplinary discourse, the main provision of which is that the so-called objective reality is a product of human communication and that knowledge is not acquired in a passive way, but is actively constructed by the cognizing subject.

Now let's look at the various dimensions of the contextual space in which narrative therapy exists and, accordingly, at itself.

1. Time

Literature: Hypertext. Kartasar. Eco. Borges "The Garden of Forking Paths".

Equivalent variety of moves at each point in history. The plot is not linear, but unfolding, with an endless possibility of choice. This cancels the idea of ​​an ultimate glorious goal.

Time opens step by step. Everyone who moves in time lives it in his own way and marks on the map of time what is important to him.

Borges. Internal dialogues.

"Sometimes the paths of this labyrinth intersect: you, for example, came to me, but in some of the possible versions of the past you are my enemy, and in another - a friend. [...]

Unlike Newton and Schopenhauer, your ancestor did not believe in a single, absolute time. He believed in an infinity of time series, in a growing, dizzying network of divergent, convergent, and parallel times. And this canvas of times, which converge, branch, intersect, or century after century never touch, contains all conceivable possibilities. In most of these times, you and I do not exist; in some you exist, but I do not; in others I am, but you are not; in others we both exist. In one of them, when a lucky chance fell on me, you came to my house; in another, you, walking through the garden, found me dead; in the third - I pronounce the same words, but I myself am a mirage, a ghost. [...]

"Not in any," he muttered with a smile, "eternally branching, time leads to innumerable futures. In one of them, I am your enemy..." (Borges. The Garden of Forking Paths).

"And yet, and yet... The denial of the time sequence, the denial of myself, the denial of the astronomical universe - all these are acts of despair and secret regret... Time is the substance of which I am composed. Time is a river that carries me away, but I myself am a river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I myself am a tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I myself am a fire. The world, unfortunately real; I, unfortunately, Borges. (Borges H.L. New refutation of time; cited in: Prigogine, 1994: p. 260)

Architecture- this is a roof with decoration. There are no meaningless elements of architectural decoration. Equality of utilitarian and symbolic levels.

Psychotherapy. Time, irreversible time, with a past, present and future full of possibilities, first appears in constructivist approaches - in SFBT (solution focused brief therapy by Steve de Shazer) and narrative therapy. In both schools, the therapist, using time-oriented questions, can suggest that the client move into the future, a multivariate future, where the client can choose for himself the option / options he prefers, from there look at the present and / or past and re-describe them in such a way that they contributed to this desirable future. The opposite option is possible, when, with the help of unique episodes, the therapist helps the client to see in his past the preferred experience for this client (family) and extend it to the present and future.

The idea of ​​a unique episode, some kind of experience (behavioral acts, communicative acts, experiences, thoughts, etc.), inappropriate, breaking out of the logic and meanings of problem-rich stories, telling which people describe themselves and their lives, was formulated by Michael White.

For example, for a married couple who declare constant conflicts as a problem, a unique episode will be an hour, a day, a month, a period / periods of their life together when there were no conflicts.

Once aware of the existence of such episodes, the next step is for the therapist to determine whether this unique episode is a preferred experience for these clients. Then he asks about aspects of the past that have something in common with the unique episode or the meaning of the unique episode ( Who from your environment could predict that you would not quarrel on vacation? Did it happen before the holidays that you suddenly noticed this tolerance (the client's term) in yourself?). Next, the therapist asks questions that connect the past experience with the present ( When you think about this vacation or about your peaceful relationship before the birth of your son, does it change anything in how you perceive the experience that you had this month?). Finally, the therapist asks questions that extend the story into the future ( Given your views on the events that we discussed today, what do you think the next week (month, year) will be like for you? If you start using your tolerance skills again, as you did on vacation, how do you think your daughter might react?).

So, it is unique episodes that are the main resource used by narrative therapists to create an irreversible time in which the past, present and future are ambiguously interconnected and full of possibilities.

Another important resource that made this time travel possible was borrowed by Michael White from the French post-structuralist Jacques Derrida. It's about deconstruction. In fact, the identification and distribution of unique episodes over time is a method of deconstructing a life narrative.

According to J. Derrida, deconstruction is a strategy in relation to the text, including both its destructuring and reconstruction. At the same time, marginal, suppressed motives are highlighted in the text, which are opposite to the "main" direction. The text in this case turns out not to be a peaceful homogeneous unity, but a space of repression. The purpose of deconstruction is to activate intratextual centers of resistance to the dictates of some "main meaning" (10).

Narrative therapists use deconstructive listening. Unlike the Rogerian therapist, whose active listening is to reflect the client's story like a mirror without distortion, the narrative therapist looks for hidden meanings, spaces, and gaps, signs of conflicting stories.

This practice allows:

• open space for those aspects of people's life narratives that are on the periphery and have not yet found their own history, and loosen the grip of dominant, limiting stories;
• help people view their life narratives not as passively received facts, but as actively constructed stories;
• question the "factuality", the immutability of people's life narratives;
• to show that the generally accepted or officially sanctioned meaning of a particular story is just one of the possible interpretations;
• avoid giving the character of expertise to the possible interpretations of the therapist;
• create a new story, a new construct and develop it if it turns out that, in the opinion of this person, it is more desirable for him.

Note that, contrary to the stated relativistic position, some attitudes regarding what is better for a person, narrative therapists still have. This is a setting for a positive story and for an active position of a person.

The first comes from the essence of the therapeutic project as a whole - psychotherapy helps people improve their lives. It is assumed that a person who is satisfied with everything will not go to a psychotherapist. A person who has come to a psychotherapist will tell you what does not suit him. In terms of narrative therapy, this will be a problem-rich story. A positive story is a story in which there is no such problem. Thus, what is or is not a problem for him, the person still decides for himself, and the term "positive" is conditional here.

The second setting essentially means that narrative therapists are "more attentive to events that can be retold as stories of 'struggle against injustice' than to those that are told as 'man as victim' stories" (Friedman, Combs, 2001: p. 73). This installation owes its appearance to Michael White's acquaintance with the ideas of Michel Foucault. This French philosopher believed that the basic, "generally understood" ideas that people usually take for the "laws of life", "orders of things" and "eternal truths" about what a person and society are, actually change in the course of history. In each specific society, at each specific moment / period of history, there are discourses that determine what knowledge should be considered true - including knowledge about what is mental pathology, mental norm and not norm, crime, disease, sexuality, and how to the basis of this classification of a person is to identify, isolate, punish and infringe. Those who control discourse control knowledge, and at the same time, the dominant knowledge of a given environment determines who can occupy positions of power in it.

For example, in a society where there is dominant knowledge (with the status of truth) that psychotherapy is best practiced by women under 25; the power to determine what psychotherapy is and who can do it will be given to women under 25, and, say, men after 45 will be deprived of voice and power in this special area of ​​discourse.

Thus, for Foucault, power is knowledge, and knowledge is power. White, following Foucault, believes that we tend to internalize the dominant narratives of our culture, easily believing that they contain the truth about our identity. These dominant narratives hide from us the possibilities that other narratives could offer us.

"People come into therapy either when the dominant narratives prevent them from living their own preferred narratives, or when the person is actively involved in the realization of stories that he finds useless" (Friedman, Combs, 2001: p. 65).

Thus, submitting to the power of these discourses of Foucault and White, which are dominant for narrative therapists, these therapists seek to encourage a person to take an active position in relation to discourses and metanarratives that are useless for him, which will allow him to resist their power and rewrite his local narrative in a way that suits him. .

"... All discourses (even the discourse of discourse, cf. Foucault) are potentially capable of exploiting and controlling, since hierarchy and opposition are immanent characteristics of thought in general."

Do narrative therapists leave the individual free to choose to be (describe themselves as) a victim? What will a narrative therapist do if he finds that describing himself as a victim is the person's preference?

What will happen to the narrative enterprise if a person refuses to act as the author of his story?

It is clear that if narrative therapists accepted the idea of ​​equality of all lifestyles and ways of constructing reality in all its paralyzing fullness, any psychotherapeutic enterprise would turn into an excess or, in terms of deconstructivism, a marginal element in the field of human interaction.

What are therapists and clients to do in the same room if, after all, every construction of reality is as good as all the others? Or they are all equally neither good nor bad.

Even before the term "postmodernism" was popularized, W. Perry noticed the paralyzing effect of relativism and proposed to overcome it with the help of what he called obligation and defined as follows:

The assertion of personal values ​​or choices under relativism. A conscious act or awareness of identity and responsibility. The process of orientation "I" in the relative world.

L. Botella (Botella, L., 1997) believes that obligation W. Perry is an essential element of constructivism. The same opinion is shared by J. Efran and L. Clarfield, stating:

"In our interpretation, the constructivist framework asserts that (1) everyone has personal preferences, (2) people have the right to express those personal preferences, and (3) these choices should not be confused with objective truths. For us, "truth" is a set of widely shared opinions"(cited in Botella, 1997).

Thus, practicing the type of therapy that was formed in the process of including psychotherapy in a constructivist context, the narrative therapist acts for the client as a kind of temporary professional accompanist in the process of choices made by the client based on his personal preferences, accepting responsibility for these choices, describing his own, comfortable his identity and client orientation in a world dominated by the discourse of relativism.

Speaking of time in narrative therapy, let's mention one more thing. Each session here is also constructed as a separate episode. Following the idea of ​​hypertext and position non-knowledge, which will be discussed later, the narrative therapist does not plan his work two or ten sessions ahead, he does not lead the family / client to some goal that he understands, the moment when the family becomes functional or the client turns into an actualizing personality. There can be many paths, at every moment there are options and the whole path is unpredictable. The criterion for terminating therapy is the opinion of the client/family that he has solved the problems that he set for himself.

Practical part

Unique Episode

So, unique episodes are everything that does not fit into a problem-rich story and does not support the problem. Unique episodes can include intentions, plans, actions, statements/statements, beliefs, qualities, desires, dreams, thoughts, views, abilities, decisions, etc. Unique episodes can be in the past, present and future. When asking about unique episodes, the therapist should start with those that are still very fresh in the client's memory. These questions are easier to answer and are more likely to result in a rich description.

Unique episodes are doors leading to new stories.

Together with the client, the therapist tries to trace the history of unique episodes, bring them to life, make them more visible and noticeable, and weave them into a new emerging story. As more and more unique episodes are found, connected and endowed with meanings, a new plot emerges, and an alternative history becomes more intense and fully described.

Attracting through questions attention to unique episodes, the therapist helps clients move these events from the periphery of the story to the center, make them conscious and visible. When these events are endowed with meaning and connected in time, a new story begins to live.

This story is usually "anti-problem", and in the center or in the foreground it talks about the decisions made by people, their abilities, competencies and skills - all that was previously difficult to notice in the shadow of a problem-rich story.

Bringing these resources to the fore helps people reconnect with their true preferences, hopes, dreams, and ideas, which in turn should have an effect on their behavior in the future. During this process, the therapist constantly consults with clients about how the emerging story matches their life preferences.

Research and development of details of unique episodes

Having discovered some event, thought, feeling that is out of the problem-rich history, the therapist tries to find out as much as possible about them. His questions often begin with "Who", "What", "When", "Where", and the unique episode is thus saturated with detail. The therapist tries to identify and understand all the minutiae of the unique episode. Questions of this kind explore the so-called action landscape(this term was first proposed by Jerome Bruner and introduced into therapy by Michael White).

"The action landscape consists of events connected in time according to a certain plot. It gives us the elementary structure of stories. If we throw out one of the dimensions - whether it be the experience of events, their connections or sequences, time or plot - there will be no story. All together events form the landscape of action" (White, 1995).

Questions to explore the action landscape

• Where were you when it happened?
• Were you alone or with someone else?
• When did it happen?
• How long did it take?
• What happened immediately before the event and immediately after it?
• Did you somehow prepare for this?
• What did your friend say when you told him this?
• Did you make this decision yourself or is there someone else's input?
• Have you ever done this before or did it for the first time?
• What steps or what exactly led to this act?

Thus, questions of the action landscape are aimed at revealing not only the details of the unique episode itself, but also its connections with other events and their details.

Questions may be about any events that led to, followed, or occurred in the unique episode, but may be related to it.

Exploring the Meanings of a Unique Episode

The therapist then invites clients to explore or attribute meanings to the unique episodes described. In such a study, it is revealed that unique episodes mean in terms of human desires, intentions, beliefs, hopes, values, qualities, plans, decisions, abilities, goals, etc. consciousness).

"When people talk about certain events, they also express their thoughts about how these events reflect the characters, desire motives, etc. of various people belonging to their" social network ". They also reflect on what these events say about these or those relations, about their qualities. Thus, the landscape of identity, or meanings, contains interpretations that arise as a result of reflection on the events unfolding on the landscape of action" (White, 1995).

Questions aimed at exploring the landscape of identity:

Desires and preferences:

• Does the fact that you agreed to go out to dinner with your friends say anything about your life preferences? About what you want from life?
• Does the fact that you were able to communicate with the instructor of this course say something about your values? What do you consider important in life?
• Does what you have said say something about what kind of relationship you really hope for with your daughter?

Individual values:

• What do you think your personal values ​​were based on such a plan of action?
• When you did call your grandmother after a fight, what did it show? What exactly do you value in your relationships and in human relationships in general, if you decide to do just that?

Relationship characteristics:

• At the time this happened, how would you describe your relationship with Vasya?

Abilities and competencies:

• How did you manage to do/achieve this? What abilities are required for this?
• Is the ability to be frank that you mentioned related to some other of your abilities?

Intentions, motives, plans, goals:

• When you took this step, what were your intentions?
• What does this episode say about your plans?

Beliefs and Attitudes:

• So, you continued to show respect for other people, despite the pathological attitude towards employees and clients that was adopted at your work. What does this say about your beliefs? What do you believe?
• I would like to understand better what, from your point of view, are your attitudes and views, based on the episode that you told?

Individual qualities:

• If you did this, what would such an act say about you as a person?
• What did this action require of you? What personal qualities did you have to use to make it happen?

Questions can be asked in any order, depending on the situation and the course of the conversation. The therapist "drifts" between the landscapes of action and meaning and switches from one to the other. In addition, he remembers to constantly ask questions of preference, clarifying whether the versatile experience of a unique episode and its meanings are truly preferred by clients.

Examples of preference questions:

• When you decided to stay as a guest, despite feeling out of place there, was it a good experience as a result?
• You said that this act says that you can be a strong person. Do you like to know about yourself that you can be a strong person?

“In the process of storytelling, we invite people to move through both landscapes (action and meaning), reflecting on what alternative events on the action landscape might mean, and deciding which of these events most coincide and reflect preferred characteristics, motives, beliefs. etc. Thus, alternative landscapes of action and identity are born" (White, 1995: 31).

2. Observer

Modernism.

Positivist approach: an ideal observer is possible, which does not affect the observed.

Physics: Quantum mechanics. The quantum paradox - many physicists have come to the conclusion that the observer and the changes he makes are elements in our description of nature.

The researcher/observer becomes a factor in the research, influencing its results. In radical constructivism, the thesis sounds "Everything that is said is said by the observer." This does not mean that everything is in the "head" or in consciousness, and "reality" does not exist - such a thorium is possible, but it is impossible to prove it or the objectivist position opposite to it. Maturana and Varela have a metaphor for the epistemological odyssey as a journey between Scylla (the rocks of dogma) and Charybdis (the maelstrom of solipsism). This metaphor can serve as an illustration to all constructivist theories.

Movie: Kurosawa "Rashomon".

Constructivism.

"Constructivism" is a generic label for an epistemological position that (a) denies that individual knowledge directly accesses and uniquely reflects "objective reality", and (b) instead declares individual knowledge to be a "constructed" observer in response to the environment. environment, but in terms and on the basis of the constitutional features (such as the ability to conceptualize, ways of performing operations, etc.) of the observer himself" 17) .

radical constructivism.

Main figures: W. Maturana, F. Varela, H. Von Foerster, E. von Glasersfeld.

Essence:"All knowledge depends on the structure of the knower" 18). Therefore, no objective knowledge is possible.

Maturana:

"1) We cannot connotate any integrity or natural dimension that exists regardless of what we do as observers (humans); 2) in our Everyday life we use the word "time" to mean or refer to an abstraction of our experience of process continuity. In other words, I have shown that in any field the foundations of the ideas of time lie in the biology of the observer, and not in the field of physics, which is the field of explaining certain kinds of coherences of the observer's experiences ... Thus, we exist in this delightful situation of experience in which we as observers present in the present, we are the source of everything, even that which we, in our coherence of the experiences of observers, can see as wholes, which, through their operations, cause operations of observation and explanation of their occurrence in the closed field of explanations. The great temptation is to transform the abstractions of the coherences of our experience, which we subdivide into ideas such as reality, existence, causation, space, consciousness... or time, into explanatory principles.

Psychotherapy: The therapist cannot be a detached "objective" observer.

The development of second-tier cybernetics has allowed narrative therapists to take a more evaluative stance towards their thinking and practice and to place the therapist and other professionals within the system. This assumption replaces the previously widespread idea that the therapist deals with problems localized in the system/family, while remaining, as it were, above this system or outside it.

Therapists began to strive to make their assumptions, assumptions, and practices transparent to clients. One of the means of implementing this project was reflective teams, which could consist of professionals of different levels, include students and volunteers, and in different variations discussed various aspects of family history (problems, goals) in front of this family or in dialogue with it. This allowed the family to ask the therapists questions about the questions they were asked.

The main change was the complete disappearance of the concept of resistance from narrative therapy and its replacement with the idea of ​​cooperation. If a person/family/system "resists" therapy, then the therapist is offering them something that does not suit them.

Therapists began to ask people about what tasks, rituals, ways of organizing therapy they find useful for themselves. These rituals, strategies, etc. often developed jointly with the family, and if the family did not then implement them, then this was also discussed in the context of finding more effective ways. For narrative therapists, as for professional practitioners of BSFT, these are not manipulative devices, ways to overcome or circumvent resistance. There is no "resistance". There is a co-evolutionary process of a system that includes both the therapist (and the reflective teams) and, trying different forms of cooperation, tries to change.

3. Knowledge / Truth / Language / Meaning

Modernism.

Knowledge: Knowledge as an internalized representation of an external, independent reality.

Locke: Knowledge is the result of "imprinting" the outer world on the tabula rasa of the knower.

For the modernist the world cognizable.

True: Logocentrism. The idea of ​​the existence of one finite transcendent meaning. Truth is the signified. It is of interest to everyone, and language, the word is the signifier for this truth.

Modernism is characterized by totalitarianism - the all-encompassing power of one idea, group of people, etc. over the "less significant" variety of another.

Postmodernism.

Knowledge: The ambiguity of the known. Probability. The microworld is probabilistic. For example, an electron moves from one orbit to another randomly. Divergent, equiprobable model.

Postmodernism strives for pluralism, equality of diversity.

Constructivism.

Knowledge is a hypothetical design.

Botella: "Thus, subject and object are constructions (or operations) of the observer, and not independently existing wholes. Even if there is an ontological reality, we can know it only by evaluating how well our knowledge corresponds to it. Von Glasersfeld (1984) 20 ) clarifies the idea of ​​correspondence with the metaphor of a key and a lock: even if a key opens a lock, we cannot be sure that it matches it (perhaps we could find another key that would also open the lock).Thus, radical constructivism sees in the knowledge of construction" (Botella, L., 1997).

Kant: "Knowledge is an invention of an active organism interacting with the environment."

Popper:"Knowledge comes from pure observation, since every act of observation is loaded with theory."

social constructivism.

Knowledge is a social construct. Meanings are created in the process of social interaction. Knowledge is not in people (in individual consciousness) and not outside (in objective reality), it between people. Knowledge is created by people in the process of interaction and discussion of common meanings for these people..

True: Instead of truth, now you can talk about interpretation, theory or view of something. All interpretations are, of course, equal. There is an idea in social constructivism that in every society certain interpretations, shared by a large number of its members, eventually acquire the status of "truth" and are taken for granted by the next generations. No one remembers that these "laws of life" arose as a result of the negotiations of their ancestors. Negotiations were carried out through language.

Language: Postmodernists are interested in signifiers - the word, the text itself, the text in context, the interpretation of texts, the play of signifiers with each other.

For a social constructivist, language does not reflect truth, language creates the truths we know.

Some relevant theories.

The idea of ​​social construction of reality. Four postulates:

1) The world does not appear objectively to a person, a person comprehends reality through experience, and experience is influenced by language.

3) Understanding reality at the moment depends on what has been formed in society (on the current norms of social conventions).

4) The socially formed understanding of reality determines many aspects of human life.

Gibbs' ecological approach: It is not so important what is in a person's head as what is in the head (Umwelt). Man in interaction with the environment.

Wittgenstein: Three ideas (later theories of speech acts developed from here):

1) Language is inseparable from the context of use = language is a form of life.

2) When a person speaks, he acts.

3) Language is a form of conventional behavior.

Theory of linguistic relativity. Designed by Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf. Almost a hundred years ago, these American anthropologists, like many thinkers, were interested in the question of the power of the influence of language on thinking. The essence of their hypothesis was that language, at least, predisposes to the choice of certain forms of behavior and thinking, or even completely determines thinking.

Social responsibility(Schotter): 1. Human experience is inseparable from communication 2. The central link between communication and experience lies in the process of explanation (through language). Hence social responsibility = a person is obliged to explain his behavior, and this explanation is built in terms of the rules of society. Behavior planning is carried out in the light of the following explanation. Our understanding is largely determined by how we speak.

Narrative psychotherapy is based on the ideas of social constructivism. Moreover, for narrative therapists, a significant shift turned out to be a shift from a constructivist focus on the biology of the observer towards a social constructivist interest in the interaction between observers.

Narrative therapists believe that realities are constructed by people through language and organized and maintained through stories.

According to Michael White (White, 1995), narrative therapy focuses on how people express their experiences. These acts of expressing experience, experiencing the world or life, are interpretations (through language) by which people give meaning to their experience and make it understandable to themselves and to others. Meaning and experience are inseparable.

Acts of expressing experience are units of meaning and experience. How the experience will be expressed depends on the extent to which people have access to interpretive resources capable of providing the so-called framework of intelligibility, something that brings the events of life in relation to each other.

The acts of expression of experience have a cultural context and are filled with culturally given knowledge and practices. How people interpret their experience constitutes their life: the world they live in, people themselves, their relationships, ways of experiencing, and so on. Interpretations, expressions of experience are in constant production and life is changing.

Action relies on meaning - what people will do is based on how they interpret their experience. People prefer those meanings that are shared by their community. The meanings of personal experience, which are initially vague and unclear, are defined and spoken out in communities of people in accordance with established procedures. In this way, people shape and reshape their lives through the expression of experience, through stories.

These stories are not an abstraction, not something that is outside, to which people can relate their experience, not points of view or "mirrors of the world" - this is life itself.

Based on these theoretical assumptions, narrative therapy offers people the opportunity to tell and retell, embody and re-enact their preferred life stories; turn the unique, contradictory, random, and sometimes deviant events of one's life into meaningful episodes of the presence of the alternative; spread this presence in time as they please; discover alternative knowledge and skills that are contained in these new expressions of experience and determine their cultural context, which may not correspond to the stories that dominate in this culture, that is, these knowledge and skills can be repressed in this culture; to discover ways of life in which these alternative knowledge and skills are embodied (for example: it is possible to live cheerfully and I like it; to live cheerfully is to live like this; and here is how to do it).

There are, of course, no objective truths for the narrative therapist. The purpose of narrative therapy is to create new stories, open space for a wide field of alternatives, a sense of choice.

Between this theoretical premise and the pragmatic goal lies the position of the therapist. It's not hard to guess what it's called ignorance".

Narrative therapists have a genuine interest in their clients' stories and are always ready and excited to hear something amazing and unique.

Because the narrative therapist does not have access to the global foundations of life, if any, and is not familiar with the universal nature of man; does not think that behind the superficial lies the deep, to which he alone, as a trained expert, has access; is not familiar not only with the classifications and typologies of people/systems, patterns of behavior, etc., but also with the idea of ​​a norm - in connection with all this, it is difficult for him to determine what is preferable for a given family/client (to be functional, dysfunctional, or else some) or where she/he should be taken (say, from a psychotic level to a neurotic one). And most importantly, the narrative therapist has no idea who is sitting in front of him. But he knows for sure that he is different from these people in some way (gender, age, race, religion, etc.), and these differences affect how he understands the stories of his clients. Accordingly, the narrative therapist tries to reflect on this “not-knowing” of people in a postmodernist way and ask more questions about those moments in stories where he feels especially ignorant.

J. Friedman and J. Combs write about how previous clinical experience and knowledge can make it difficult for a narrative therapist to deal with the “Aha” response to “clinically significant moments” 22). It is difficult to give up "expert filters" and "although our education tells us what we know, try to listen to what we do not know" (J. Friedman, J. Combs, 2001).

According to Michael White, understanding arises in the minds of those who involved in interpretive acts, in the expression of experience, and in actions, the practical consequences of these expressions. A narrative therapist in therapy tries to understand what meaning people's stories have for themselves. To know here essentially means to understand, and there are as many understandings as there are stories.

So, the key words in the position of a narrative therapist are: refusal to be an expert, not-knowing, respect, interest, cooperation, transparency.

Another basic idea of ​​narrative therapy, based on its ideas about the role of language in people's lives, is: "People are not problems. Problems are problems."

So, people are not problems, but the relationship a person has to the set of sources by which he makes sense of his situation can place him "into" problems.

According to narrative therapists, many of the ways that were originally designed to help people cope successfully with problems actually keep them in the problems in a hidden way and increase the strength of the problem and its power over the person. The reason for this is that language, which we have inherited in our (especially Western) cultures, encourages us to think about ourselves and our relationship with the world in certain ways (the theory of linguistic relativity and the social construction of reality).

There are resources in the language that allow us to interpret our problems in the following way: "There is something wrong with us: I am an alcoholic, not I have such a problem - alcoholism; I am angry, not I have a problem with anger" . The last formulations sound strange to us, and the unfamiliarity of this interpretation is due to language 23). Many therapeutic approaches are based on the implicit premise that the Self or the Individual is the right place to put the problem. Thus, they help to position people as "individuals who are not all right" 24) .

A linguistic practice that helps people to separate themselves from problems (that is, from problem-rich stories that they perceive as their own identity), look at them from the outside, look at their relationship with the problem, take more responsibility for the nature of these relationships and feel able to largely determine these relationships - such a linguistic practice is called externalization and is another basic technique of narrative therapy.

Externalization also eliminates the effect of "sticking labels" and encourages the whole family to come together and direct their efforts towards fighting problems, not people (alcoholism, not an alcoholic mom; inattention, not terrible (and as if to spite relatives) an inattentive child, etc.). This reduces the number of accusations in the family, reduces the guilt of its members and increases the effectiveness of their efforts.

Practical part

As already mentioned, externalization is a linguistic practice, and it is carried out with the help of externalizing conversation. This conversation consists mainly of questions aimed at various stages of externalization (separation of the problem, changing the relationship with it, etc.).

In order to make it easier for the most narrative therapist, who begins to practice externalizing conversations, to see the problem separately from the person sitting in front of him, he can first imagine it right during the conversation as a separate “entity”, sitting, say, on the client’s shoulder or in another chair. As you have already understood, a critical point in externalizing conversation is the construction of the phrase by the therapist.

For example, in response to a client's phrase: "I'm a depressed person, I don't want to do anything or go out anywhere" - the therapist can say: "So, is depression preventing you from going out and being active?" The therapist listens carefully to the client, noticing how the client describes the problem and their relationship with it, and then uses those words to ask questions and paraphrase what the person has said in such a way that the problem moves outward. This is how the conversation gradually transforms from internalizing to externalizing.

Sometimes the procedure of personification of the problem is carried out - a name is attributed to it or it is endowed with a certain identity. Many people, especially children, can draw a problem and this helps them separate from it. It is essential that the language of the problem description and the name for it must come from the client. The therapist may simply ask something like, "I wonder if you could suggest a name for this problem?"

An externalized problem can appear in various forms, it can be feelings - anxiety, guilt, fear, etc.; aspects of relationships - struggle, quarrels, mutual accusations, etc.; cultural and social practices - attribution of guilt to the mother, parents, woman, heterosexual dominance, child-centrism, etc.; and even metaphors in which people often talk about problems: "a wall of misunderstanding", "waves of despair", "a locked door behind which horror lurks", etc.

Sometimes several problems are externalized in the course of a conversation. In this case, the therapist can list the names of these problems and ask the client to prioritize. You can also try to identify links between these issues - perhaps some of them have entered into a coalition and support each other. For example, depression in friends can have self-criticism and self-doubt.

During the conversation, the therapist must constantly double-check and take into account the larger contexts of the existence of the problem. An issue name chosen out of context may support the issue. For example, if the family applied for fears and nightmares in a child, it is necessary to exclude the possibility that the child is being abused, and fears are a consequence of it. If you call the problem "fear" and start externalizing it, while the real problem is domestic violence, then this will only add to the experience of silence for the child and family.

The named and separated problem is first carefully examined and personified. The therapist is interested in her tricks, tactics, ways to act and talk to the person, intentions, ideas, plans, preferences, rules, desires, motives, dreams, allies and adversaries, etc.

The more the problem is personified, the more it separates from the person.

In an externalizing conversation, a person reconsiders his relationship with the problem. The therapist may ask, "Could you tell me how your relationship with Perfectionism has evolved? How would you characterize that relationship today? Is it a happy or unsatisfying relationship? Is it more joyful or sadder?" People may describe these relationships as conflicting, friendly, contradictory, tiresome, etc.

Once the current relationship has been described, the therapist may begin to ask the person what changes they would like in that relationship. Then a person has the opportunity to explore and formulate his own opinion, separated from the problem, about these relations and determine the further path of their development. The person may want to end the relationship with the problem or make it more calm and regulated. For example, in certain situations, a person would like to voluntarily enter into friendly relations with Perfectionism and take energy from him for work. And in personal relationships, during entertainment and recreation, he can do without Perfectionism.

A technique involving both externalization and a unique episode is called tracing the history of the problem. When the problem is first named, the therapist, not forgetting to double-check the name of the problem, begins to be interested in its history, asking appropriate questions:

When did you first notice the problem (meet it)?

I would like to clarify when the Depression had the greatest power and influence in your life? When was she at her weakest? At what moments, periods of your life did you feel most capable of resisting Depression?

In order to ask such questions, the problem does not have to be named - you can just say "problem". It is often useful to use questions of relative influence - allowing to notice and track changes in the degree and nature of the impact of a problem on a person's life at certain time intervals. This immediately loosens up the problem-filled narrative, reduces the power of the problem, and makes it possible to see alternatives. The therapist may ask, "If 10 is the maximum impact of the problem, how influential was it 6 months ago, 10 years ago, now, what do you expect in a week?" Etc. Or more radically: "If 10 is your life, then how much of ten did the problem own and how much did you have six months ago?" The client may respond, "She had 6 and I had 4." Therapist: "And a week ago?" Client" "She has 8, I have 2." Therapist: "And 5 years ago?" Client: "She has 1, I have 9."

The forms of such questions are very different - the influence is expressed in percentages, degrees, other numbers, is depicted graphically, etc.

Example 1

A graphical representation of the history of the problem and the change in its impact on a person's life:

Example 2: Reducing the impact of a problem on a person's life by researching the history of the problem. (by Morgan, A. (2000)

Raul suffered from severe depression. He spent most of his adult life in solitude, with almost no contact with people. Depression was his companion from a young age. He was repeatedly hospitalized and came to consult a therapist, feeling that he was ready to commit suicide.

In the course of the conversation, the story of the entry of the Depression into his life gradually emerged. Then Raul was able to name the exact date when she first appeared. It was the day his mother died, after which he was sent to a foster home where abuse and violence were practiced.

By tracing the history of the Depression and reconstructing the moment when it entered his life, Raul was able to talk about how he lived with his mother when there was mutual love and care in the relationship. He was also able to trace the strategies and tactics of the Depression and the role that abuse played in them, which kept the Depression alive and allowed it to dominate his life for many years.

Putting the Depression within a certain story, spread over time and with a story of its own, allowed Raul to rebuild the ways he had used over the years to counter the Depression (some of which were successful). By discovering these stories of resistance to the problem, acknowledging them and reconnecting with the image of the mother, Raul significantly changed the balance of power between himself and the Depression in his life.

Another related technique that can be used at any time during a conversation is study of the effects of the problem.

The therapist may be interested in how and in what ways the problem has affected and affects:

• on how a person perceives himself, what kind of person he sees himself;
• on what kind of person sees in himself a parent, partner, mother, wife, sister, brother, employee, etc.;
• on his hopes, dreams and sense of the future;
• on his relationship with children, partners, parents, colleagues, etc.;
• to his work;
• on his social life;
• on his thoughts;
• on his physical condition;
• on his mood and feelings;
• to his daily life.

How has Bulimia affected and is affecting your mood?

How does Fear change your perception of other people and the world?

Have your violent outbursts affected your professional life in any way?

Without such exploration, it will be difficult for people to feel that the therapist really understands their problem and listens to them at all. In the process of family counseling, when each family member talks about the impact of the problem on his life, you can see the similarities and differences in experience. The study of influences must necessarily take place in the course of an externalizing conversation, otherwise it can only increase the power of the problem. Such research often contributes to the discovery of unique episodes.

Having discovered the effects of a problem, it is useful to invite people to evaluate them. The therapist never knows in advance what this or that effect means for a particular person.

Questions might be:

• Is it good or bad?
• Do you enjoy it or not?
• Is it more happy or sad?
• Is this a positive or negative experience for you?
• How does it suit you?

After learning about people's position regarding the effects of the problem, the therapist simply asks "Why?". With such an assessment of the effects of the problem and its explanation, the construction of new history. For example, when a person says: “Laziness often convinces me to watch TV instead of doing household chores, and this leads to the fact that later I don’t allow myself to go out to have fun or talk with my family. Because I have to do things. But Laziness again convinces I don't do them, and I watch TV again. And so constantly. It doesn't suit me at all. I would like to communicate and have fun more, I don't really like TV. I think I'm a sociable person, and communication is a value for me, " - at this moment, space is already opening up for the development of a new story, and you can ask when Sloth is weakening, etc.

Deconstructive conversation - considering the problem in different contexts

From the point of view of narrative therapists, problems can only persist if they are supported by certain beliefs, ideas, and attitudes. For example, neuroses such as anorexia and bulimia can only exist in cultures where thinness is valued, where success and competence can be judged by body size, and where individualism and introspection are encouraged. Such ideas, coming from the culture and supporting the problem, often have great power and are perceived by people as "laws of life" and "eternal truths". In progress deconstructive conversation the therapist invites clients to explore these ideas and practices, identify them, critique them, and trace their history. During such a conversation, the therapist is interested in finding out:

• What hidden assumptions allow this story to take on the meaning given to it by these people?
• What unspoken assumptions allow this story to work and be viable?
• What ideas can be invoked to explain such behavior of people?
• What "taken for granted" ways of life support the existence of the problem?

Deconstructive conversation helps people unpack dominant stories, look at them from new perspectives, and see how they were constructed.

Example 3

Deconstruction of Lucy's relationship with Concentration (Quoted in Morgan, A. (2000), pp. 47-49)

Lucy came to me about difficulties with "concentration" when writing an important text. Many areas of Lucy's life were affected by this problem. The problem led Lucy to believe that she was an "unproductive person". She tried to convince Lucy that in the future she would hardly find a job - and the truth is, when they see her mindlessly wandering around the office, instead of doing business, people will certainly guess that she is a "freeloader" and does not deserve the money paid to her at all. "Stress" often occupied her thoughts and affected her physical condition - Lucy constantly felt heaviness in her stomach, felt weak and general discomfort.

He tried to impress a lot on her: “You basically have the wrong approach to the task”, “You chose the wrong methods”, “You should have done more during each day”, “If you hadn’t lost so much time, you would have wrote everything", "The text should turn out perfect and exactly match what the teacher wants to see."

Lucy said Trouble criticizes her every time she takes a coffee break or calls a friend, saying she's trying to "hide from the task" and that "she'll never finish like this."

I asked Lucy what "being productive" means to a problem. In the course of the conversation, we found that the problem has rather strict criteria in this regard. The problem was that Lucy should sit in a chair and work a certain amount of time each day. The problem was that during this time, Lucy was obliged to think only about the content of the text and either read, or print, or make comments, or edit.

Talking about the sources from which the problem was enriched with these ideas, I began with the question of what "productive activities" are. This led to an exploration of the history of these ideas in Lucy's life.

Lucy said that ideas about "productive learning" were maintained throughout her time at school and university. My earliest memory was in the sixth grade at school. She was then an 11-year-old girl. From that time on, ideas about "productive learning" were reinforced by poems and articles she was asked to read, special "study skills" talks she attended at school, and study talks with friends.

I asked Lucy how these ideas have affected her life, how she feels about them, and how much she considers useful or useless for herself. Lucy stated that these ideas destroy and tire her - she constantly compares her work with some criteria, and what she does never seems good enough to her. These ideas hurt her as a student. She often felt worthless and incompetent, agitated and worried, as if she would never be able to live up to expectations.

Next, we explored what Lucy experienced when she wasn't influenced by these ideas. It turned out that at such moments she knew: "I will succeed. It's a little difficult, but fun and interesting, and it will end." Lucy felt confident: "My quest will be crowned with success." Lucy reported that when she broke free from the problem's ideas about learning, she saw that it wasn't the "how" that mattered. This led to a detailed discussion of exactly what "no matter how" means to Lucy ("no matter how" became an alternate story that we built up in the course of our further conversation). We talked together about what we both know about the way an artist "works". Here, Lucy and I had similar experiences: often the artist just sits and thinks, drinks a lot of coffee, calls friends, explores color combinations and experiments with their combinations on the palette. It may take many days before the artist touches the canvas with a brush. For artists, it doesn't matter how the process is organized, and they often achieve great results.

We also talked about other knowledge and experience that helps develop an alternative history and opens up new ways for Lucy to act. This conversation challenged "taken for granted truths" and beliefs about learning and helped Lucy free herself from the ideas that kept her going. For Lucy, this meant a lot - she was able to complete her work on the text and began to feel much freer and more fun, taking part in this project.

After I asked Lucy about the problem's ideas about being productive and unproductive, she felt relieved and was able to laugh at many of the ideas. This turning point in the conversation helped Lucy break out of the circle of dominant problematic ideas and head towards an alternate history centered around her abilities, knowledge, and competencies as a student.

In this way, deconstruction can lead to the shattering of "taken for granted ideas" and open space for alternative histories that help people break free from the grip of the problem and reconnect with their own preferred ideas, thoughts, and ways of living."

Exercises

Externalizing conversation exercise

Performed in groups of three. The first plays the role of the problem, the second - the role of a person who is affected by the problem (the subject of the problem). The third - plays a reporter-researcher (journalist-detective), deftly exposing evasions and cunning. If there are more than three participants, then there may be two reporters or several observers who share their impressions at the end of the exercise.

First part

Participants distribute roles and name the problem. The problem person learns that problems can be quite haughty and boastful, and are willing to talk about their successes and how they got there. They are so self-confident that they betray their secrets and thereby ruin themselves. Therefore, the person who plays the Problem is fully cooperating with the reporter during the interview.

It is important that the Reporter investigates the impact of the problem and its features, and does not try to somehow change or treat it. Sometimes it's hard for the person who plays the Investigative Reporter. Sometimes he has to consciously restrain the desire to be useful.

Topics that the Reporter asks questions about in the first part:

a) In what areas of the Subject's life has the problem already penetrated, where its influence is especially strong? Does it affect the subject's relationships with other people, his feelings, does it interfere with his thoughts, how has it changed the Subject's understanding of himself and his life history? Etc.

b) How exactly does the Problem manipulate the Subject: what strategies, methods and tricks does it resort to, trying to control his life?

c) What abilities and qualities of the problem help to devalue certain abilities, knowledge and skills of the Subject? For example, maybe the Problem is very energetic and persistent, never relaxes and keeps repeating the same thing, achieving the effect through repetition, and the Subject simply does not have enough energy and time to doubt what she is saying, but instead he doubts himself. The reporter immediately asks the Problem about the ways in which she tells the subject about herself, how she declares her influence on his life.

d) What are the objectives of the Problem? What does she ultimately want to achieve by influencing the life of the Subject, as she imagines his ideal future? What are her hopes and dreams?

e) Who supports the problem? What forces are with her at the same time? These can be other Problems or features of the Subject (for example, Laziness can be in alliance with Fear), and People, and social institutions, and ideas, etc.

f) What coping strategies will the problem use if its dominance is threatened? What "shock methods" does she have in store for emergencies?

Second part

The impact of problems on human life and relationships is never unconditionally successful. However, Problems usually do not want to talk about their failures, they prefer to hide them. Therefore, it is important for the Reporter to familiarize himself in advance with the facts of such failures, which simply cannot be hidden. This is necessary so that in the second part of the exercise, the Problems begin, albeit reluctantly, to confess their failures.

The Reporter has many opportunities to find out about the failures of the issue:

a) In what areas of the Subject's life is the Problem still planning to spread its influence, which is still beyond its control? Where has the Subject not let the Problem go yet?

b) How does he counteract it? Has the Subject invented any techniques, strategies, tricks that prevent the Problem from running his life?

c) What qualities, skills, abilities does the Subject have that it is still difficult for the Problem to discount? How does the subject communicate to the problem that he will not obey?

d) What plans, goals and dreams does the Subject have that the Problem does not like at all, as they contradict its own plans for him?

e) Who supports the Subject (relatives, friends, acquaintances, teachers, therapists, groups of people, etc., his internal allies - for example, Curiosity, which interferes with Leni)? How exactly do they make the Problem recede? What role do they play in causing the Problem to abandon its intentions and claims?

f) What abilities does the Subject have that make him stronger than the Problem and help him push it out even from the conquered territories?

The third part

In this part of the exercise, participants share their experiences. If there were several groups, then everyone unites and first they say Reporters, then Subjects, then Problems. If the group is alone, then the Subject speaks first, then everyone exchanges comments.

Deconstruction exercise 1

Choose any area of ​​life or history. Take five or more pieces of paper and write on them the statements or stereotypical statements that dominate in your culture (these can be quotes, proverbs, sayings, and just common phrases and opinions) regarding this area of ​​\u200b\u200blife. Formulate any event or story of your personal life from this area. Now take the pieces of paper one by one, read the statements written on them and see how the meaning of your event or your story changes in the context of these statements (in other words, falling into these interpretive frames). Then evaluate whether such an understanding of the event in your life suits you or not.

For example, the topic: differences between men and women. Sayings: men are the stronger sex, and women are the weaker; we live in a man's world; women are much more emotional and have a richer emotional world than men; men are focused on arranging the world, and women are focused on family and relationships; men love freedom, and women love dependence, etc.

It is more interesting to do this exercise in groups of three to six people. Then everyone writes three pieces of paper, then they all add up in a pile, and then the first person names the event, and successively pulls three pieces of paper, in turn entering his experience into different semantic frames, and watching how he changes from this. Then the second person does the same, and so on.

Deconstruction exercise 2

This exercise works well in groups of three to six people. One person formulates a certain idea, attitude, knowledge, life practice, under the influence of which he is and which at the moment either causes him some doubt, or does not seem so unambiguous, or frankly interferes with him, or he simply would like to explore it. After the idea is voiced, he asks other participants the question: "How did I know this?". And they tell him about social practices, ideas, institutions, people, folk wisdom, etc., which support his thought.

For example, the setting "A woman should not be the boss (at work)". The ideas and practices that support her are as follows: a woman is very emotional and cannot make informed decisions with a "cold head"; there are indeed fewer female bosses than male bosses, this has developed naturally, which means it’s more correct; the boss must be aggressive and competitive, must be able to defend power and his business at a high level - these are the natural qualities of men, and a woman will be unhappy, performing such an unusual role for her, and will turn into a man in a skirt; by the way, the phrase "man in a skirt" referring to tough, domineering, independent women, speaks for itself; "A man is a head, and a woman is a neck," that is, a woman, if she can lead, then only gradually, and not openly, like a boss; even Freud and Rousseau talked about the passive, masochistic nature of women, and these people have influenced our entire culture; the leaders of the pack, pride, etc. are males, as it is in nature, etc.

The bearer of the idea just listens. In the second part, the same people, with the same enthusiasm, tell stories that are alternative to this attitude, that is, those social practices, stories, stereotypes, etc. that do not support this idea. In this case, they remember Cleopatra, Catherine II and Kandaliza Rice; the fact that women from childhood are more relationship-oriented and more expert in them, and also have more developed linguistic abilities, which means they can better manage people, understand what is happening, negotiate, make the working atmosphere less conflicting and more productive; remember the countries of victorious feminism, their parliaments and economic successes, etc.

Finally, in the third part of the exercise, the bearer of the idea shares his impressions, reports how his perception of the idea has changed in the first and second parts, and what has happened to it now. The main thing that happens in this exercise, as in therapy, is not the conviction of a person in the correctness or incorrectness of his idea, but namely deconstruction - the opening of stories that support it, awareness of the non-absoluteness, conditionality of this idea, the discovery of alternative stories, the separation of a person from the idea and the emergence he has a sense of choice.

Deconstruction exercise 3

Performed in groups of three. The roles are distributed as follows: one person is the bearer of the idea (attitudes, beliefs), the second is the idea itself, the third is the interviewer. The interviewer talks for several minutes with the bearer of the idea and helps him formulate its name well. Then the Host only listens and the Interviewer talks to the Idea.

In the first part, the Idea tells its story, the Interviewer asks when it appeared, whether it was present in all cultures and at all times, who gave birth to it, whose interests, at what time it served - what groups of people, social institutions, etc., what were her functions in society, when she had the best, and when times were hard, who are her social allies and who are her opponents in the world of people and in the world of ideas, etc.

The second part examines the relationship of the Idea with this specific Carrier. The interviewer asks the Idea (the host is still silent):

1) about the history of the relationship between the Idea and the Carrier: when she met him, how he first reacted to it, how the relationship developed;

2) about contextual influences, that is, about in which areas of life the Idea dominates and which are free from it; what are her plans - will she capture all spheres and how; whether it acts all the time during the day or its influence depends on the environment and the mood of the Carrier, etc.;

3) about the consequences of the influence of this Belief on the life of the Carrier, that is, what practically leads to the presence of this Idea in a given person;

4) about the relationship of this Idea with other practices, attitudes, beliefs with which the Carrier is associated;

5) about what methods of persuasion this Idea uses to explain to the Carrier that it is very valuable for him.

In the third part, if there were several groups, everyone unites and, in turn, Interviewers share their experience, then Ideas, and then Carriers. If the group is one, then the exchange takes place within it, starting with the Carrier.

In a real psychotherapeutic process, such questions are asked to the client himself, the real personification of the idea is not performed, but the effect is the same as in the exercise.

Exercise for unique episodes

Recall and formulate unique episodes of several types for any dominant story of your life. Indicate what time these episodes belong to.

For example: Action: I sit and read this book, despite the fact that my Laziness extremely persistently convinces me to turn on the TV (real). The problem-laden story that this episode breaks out of is "I'm lazy and can't handle it." Come up with a name for the alternate history that these episodes open up.

Option for working in pairs / groups: A formulates a unique episode, B names the problem story behind it, time and type. Then A and B together come up with possible names for the alternative story: "I am a person who can overcome Laziness" or "I am an interested student", etc.

Think about or discuss what has changed in your history, how these changes may affect other areas of your life and other stories, who in your environment will notice these changes, what effect this may have on your relationships with others.

Problem story and unique episode exercise

Performed in groups of three. Roles: Interviewer, Client, Problem. The client formulates a topic or problem with which he would like to work, and, together with the Interviewer, clarifies its name. When the name is qualified, the Problem records what it is called. Next, the Interviewer talks with the client according to the following scheme:

1) Clarifies the history of the development of the problem, while speaking about it in an externalizing way. Together with the Client, the Interviewer graphically sketches the history of the development of the problem, while identifying unique episodes, that is, periods when the power of the problem in one form or another weakened or when it did not exist at all.

2) The interviewer asks the client in detail about the unique episodes, asking the action landscape and identity landscape questions described above.

Throughout the conversation, the Problem is silent, listens and writes down the moments when she felt especially good, what exactly in the Client’s texts made her strong and pleased, and vice versa, when she felt threatened, when she felt bad.

After the Interviewer's conversation with the Client is completed, the Problem, using his notes, talks about his feelings. Then, if there were several groups, everyone unites and, in turn, Interviewers, Clients, Problems share their experience. If there is only one group, then the exchange takes place within it, starting with the Client.

An exercise in deconstructive perception and the emergence of an alternative history through the study of unique episodes.

Practice deconstructive reading and creating alternative stories using the types of questions described above based on a fairy tale or other story you know well.

For example, imagine that an unshaven and tired Kolobok came to your reception, a few years after a memorable meeting with a fox. This event deeply shocked him and gave rise to the development of a new story, which at the moment is dominant and problem-saturated. Kolobok tells you that his problem is that those around him are constantly trying to absorb him, depriving him of his will and individuality. And they succeed. He feels lost, unable to resist the many influences, and in general, he does not know if they need to be resisted.

Now ask Kolobok questions focused on identifying unique episodes. Alternate questions of landscapes of action, meaning, and questions of preference.

Did Kolobok always feel lost? Did all the characters encountered manage to "eat" it? When he left the wolf, what kind of bun did he see himself as? Does this feeling that he is free and independent correspond exactly to how he would like to feel or see himself (depending on Kolobok's terminology)? Etc. Think of as many questions as possible.

When you come up with questions, you will most likely have many of your own interpretations of the Kolobok story. These interpretations will be generated by the vast amount of professional knowledge and the diversity of your personal history. For example, Murray Bowen's interpretative model can be actualized in you, and you will instantly see that Gingerbread Man is low-differentiated and before the episode with the Fox, he simply illusoryly "solved" the problem of emotional merging through flight (breaks).

When you find that thought, look at it and let it pass. Remember that you are now in the position of a narrative therapist, and she assumes that Kolobok, and not you, is an expert on the history of Kolobok. By classifying Kolobok and starting to treat him in accordance with the label "low-differentiated", you take the place of an expert, pathologize Kolobok and introduce significant restrictions into the psychotherapeutic process.

Conclusion

Teaching postmodern approaches to psychotherapy opens up many dilemmas for us. For example, how can we teach narrative practice while circumventing the modernist teaching tradition that the teacher's knowledge is "better" than the student's? Or, if postmodernism criticizes the idea of ​​"norm," how do we measure student learning progress? How do we assess competence in ethics - after all, this is one of the key points in the work of a narrative therapist. So far, these dilemmas remain an occasion for reflection and the search for practical solutions. However, their presence does not and should not prevent people interested in this approach from exchanging experience and sharing knowledge.

Narrative practice is becoming more and more popular all over the world and attracts, first of all, with its harmonious ethics for modernity and the collaborative, respectful position of the therapist. Working in this approach is suitable for those whose personal preferences coincide with the narrative ethics and who are ready to meet the unique and unpredictable in their daily practice.

Notes

18) Maturana, H.R., & Varela, F.J. (1987). The tree of knowledge: The biological roots of human understanding. Boston: Shambhala. p. 34.

19) Maturana, Humberto R. The Nature of time. November 27, 1995. http://www.inteco.cl/biology/nature.htm - Chilean School of Biology of Cognition // The Web Page of Humberto Maturana.

20) von Glasersfeld, E. (1984). An introduction to radical constructivism. In P. Watzlawick (Ed.), The invented reality (pp. 17-40). New York: Norton.

21) Vaclavik: "... We are dealing with a seemingly self-evident assumption that there is some real, objective, human-independent reality that a normal person is more clearly aware of than the so-called mentally ill. The idea of ​​​​such a reality has become philosophically untenable since the time of D. Hume and I. Kant, but scientifically it has been untenable since the time when the opinion began to be affirmed that the task of science cannot be the search and discovery of some final truths.

As far as I know, the assumption of a "real" reality has survived only in psychiatry. In this connection, it would be useful to make a fundamental distinction between the two aspects of reality, which is brought out quite clearly in a simple, oft-cited example. The physical properties of gold have been known for a long time, and it is quite unlikely that they (as well as numerous other natural scientific facts established experimentally) have been questioned as a result of new research, or significantly enriched due to subsequent fundamental discoveries. In this case, if two people have different opinions about its physical properties, then it is relatively easy to provide natural scientific evidence that one of them is right and the other is not. We call these properties of gold first-order reality (in order to somewhat simplify the picture, we disregard the fact that, as H. von Foerster says in his report, this aspect of reality is the result of a fantastically complex process of constructing reality at the neurophysiological level, which necessarily suggests the presence of the same linguistic and semantic environment). In addition, it is quite obvious that there is a second-order reality with respect to gold, namely, its value. This last has nothing to do with the physical properties of the metal, but is a convention allowed by man. It is generally accepted that this reality of gold is, in turn, the result of the interaction of other factors, such as, for example, the relationship between supply and demand or the latest statements of Ayatollah Khomeini. All these factors are united by the fact that they are human constructions, but in no way a reflection of independent truth.

Thus, the so-called reality that we deal with in psychiatry is a second-order reality, and is constructed by assigning meanings, meanings, or values ​​to the corresponding first-order reality. The difference between the two realities mentioned is well brought out in the well-known joke question about the difference between an optimist and a pessimist: an optimist - as the answer goes - will say about a bottle of wine that it is half full. complete, the pessimist is the same - that she is half empty. With one and the same reality of the first order, there are two fundamentally different realities of the second order" (quoted from: Vaclavik, 2001).

22) Victor Pelevin has an excellent illustration for this practice - the story "Sigmund in a cafe."

23) In the same way, while walking in the mountains, it would be strange for us to hear from a representative of a tribe (I don’t remember which one) that, they say, they are stoned. Stones would fall for us. If we imagine that these stones are endowed with consciousness and come from different cultures, like, say, ours and this tribe, then some of them heard from childhood that they were going to stone, while others were preparing to fall.

Imagine now that a stone from the society of falling stones came to a psychotherapist, a native of the stone tribe (this psychotherapist would most likely call himself a "psychotherapist"), with a problem of fear of falling ....

"What kind of fall?" - a modernist psychotherapist would think, already at that moment joyfully foreseeing that this patient will be with him for a long time and during the time that they walk towards the stony reality, he, the therapist, will probably have time to bring this reality to the correct state in which he is known to everyone as the discoverer of the "syndrome" fear of falling "in stoners."

"Aha! So, falls!" - would think a modernist psychotherapist who read the work of the previous psychotherapist in the second year, already at that moment doomedly foreseeing that this patient would certainly stubbornly call him a psychotherapist, despite the fact that the inseparability of action from the agent of action has long been scientifically proven and a normal patient is completely obvious.

“Wow!” would think a postmodern psychotherapist (who for many years tried with great interest to understand all those who called him a psychotherapist, an ear-throat and a test pilot). “He says that he has such a problem - the fear of falling. Very, very interesting! " Out loud: “You know, the culture I grew up in didn’t even have such a word for “fall”… Some narrative therapists, including myself, believe that… My mother often told me as a child. .. I would like to try to understand... Imagine that a year has passed and you are already "with quiet dignity waiting for the fall and do not hear fear", will this be a good state for you? .. Who will be the first to notice that you no longer hear fear? .. Were there any cases in the past when you managed to negotiate with this Fear of falling, so that he would be silent for a while? (Thinks: "Amazing! Amazingly interesting! How much is unique and unknowable in the world! Here is the process of psychotherapy, for example...")

24) "Take, for example, the idea of ​​talk therapy, which it was no coincidence that we glimpsed at the beginning of our discussion of narrative therapy. These two words could capture some of the essence of what "therapy" is. They suggest, implicitly, that someone that is, a problem and that problem needs to be cured The therapist is thus like a doctor who can diagnose what needs to be cured Doctors are trained to be experts in solving the problem When a doctor finds what the real problem is he can, as an expert to define "what's really going on here" and based on that, take a series of actions that will put everything in order, and thus whoever had a problem will not have it again, since everything has been brought into order has become right, and man can now live a little better, at least for a certain amount of time.This is such a caricature of the modernist view of language and practice...

Voicing the postmodern approach, we could ask questions here: who determines what is right and wrong, what is right and what is wrong? What effect does it have on a person when he is told that he must submit to the expertise of another? On what grounds, why on earth does one person have the right to have his knowledge considered as more serious/better than someone else's? Language operates in accordance with scientific method so that it brings us closer to contact with the true facts of nature, with the true state of things? Or is language more of a constructivist thing and creates and maintains some problems on its own?" (Jenny Pinkus, August 1996).

25) Author: Michael White. Provided by Natalia Savelyeva, psychologist, teacher of psychology at SUM, based on materials from the 5th International Narrative Therapy & Community Work Conference in July "2003 (Liverpool, UK).

26) In 1973, the American psychologist D. Rosenhan published his sensational research under the heading "Healthy Surrounded by Sick" (" On being sane in insane places"). This work is a summary report of a research project, according to which D. Rosenhan and some of his employees were voluntarily placed in a psychiatric hospital on the basis that they allegedly hear voices and want to undergo psychiatric treatment. However, immediately, as soon as they were admitted for treatment, they declared that they no longer heard voices, and from that moment began to behave as if they were normal people outside of a psychiatric clinic.The period of their "cure" lasted from 7 to 52 days, and all of them were discharged with a diagnosis of schizophrenia in remission. None of them was exposed as a pseudopatient, and, moreover, any features of their behavior were considered as evidence confirming the correctness of the diagnosis. Instead of being guided by the facts of observations, the diagnosis was made spawned some "reality" sui generis which, in turn, justified and made necessary the applied clinical measures. As a special curiosity, it should be mentioned that the only ones who did not take part in the construction of this reality were many "real" patients: "You are not crazy, you are a journalist or a professor" - such and similar statements have been heard quite often , and sometimes in a sharp form (Vaclavik, 2001).

Literature:

1. Budinaite G.L. Classical systemic family therapy and postclassical directions: freedom of choice // , 2001, № 3.

2. Vaclavik P. Constructivism and psychotherapy // Questions of psychology, 2001, № 5.

3. Zhornyak E.S. Narrative psychotherapy: from debate to dialogue // Moscow psychotherapeutic journal, 2001, № 3.

4. Ilyin I.P. Poststructuralism. Deconstructivism. Postmodernism. M., 1996.

5. Ilyin I.P. Postmodernism from its origins to the end of the century: the evolution of the scientific myth. M., 1998.

6. Ilyin I.P. Postmodernism: a glossary of terms. M., 2001.

7. Kuznetsov S. Lectures on cultural studies. M.: RGGU, 1995.

8. Prigogine I., Stengers I. Time, chaos, quantum. M., 1994.

9. Family psychotherapy., S.-P., 2000.

10. Modern Western Philosophy. Dictionary. M., 1991.

11. Friedman J., Combs J. Construction of other realities: Stories and stories as therapy. M.: Independent firm "Class", 2001.

12. Eco U. Notes on the margins of the "Name of the Rose" // Rose's name. M., 1994.

13. Botella, L. (1997). Personal Construct Psychology, Constructivism, and Postmodern Thought.

14. Combs, G. & Freedman, J. (2002). Narrative therapy with couples… and a whole lot more! A collection of papers, essays and exercises

15. Deconstructing Psychotherapy. (1999). Edited by Ian Parker. Sage Publications Ltd. London. Thousand Oaks. Delhi.

16. Gleick, J. (1987). Chaos. New York: Viking.

17. Hart, B. Re-authoring the stories we work by: Situating the narrative approach in the presence of the family of therapists. // Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy, 1995, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 181-189.

18. Morgan, A. (2000) What is narrative therapy? An easy-to-read introduction. Dulwich center publication. Adelaide, South Australia.

19. Shotter, J. (1990) Toward a third revolution in psychology: from inner mental representations to dialogical social practices. // First draft of chapter for David Bakhurst and Stuart Shanker (Eds.) Culture, Language, Self: the Philosophical Psychology of Jerome Bruner, Sage Publications, London.

20. VanderVen, K. (1998). Play, Proteus, and Paradox: Education for a Chaotic and Supersymmetric World. // Play from birth to twelve and beyond: Contexts, Perspectives, and Meanings. Garland Publishing, Inc., NY & London.

21. White, M., & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative means to therapeutic ends. New York: Norton.

22. White, M. (2000) Reflections on narrative practice: essays and interviews. Dulwich center publication. Adelaide, South Australia

23. White, M. (1989) "The process of questioning: A therapy of literary merit." In The Selected Papers of Michael White. Dulwich Center Publications, Adelaide.

24. White, Michael. (1995) Re-Authoring Lives: Interviews and Essays. Adelaide: Dulwich Center Publications.

Before proceeding to the description of such a phenomenon as narrativity in modern times and also to designate its characteristics and structures, it is necessary, first of all, to define the very term "narrative".

Narrative - what is it?

There are several versions about the origin of the term, more precisely, several sources from which it could have appeared.

According to one of them, the name "narrative" originates from the words narrare and gnarus, which in translation from Latin mean "knowing about something" and "expert". IN English language there is also the word narrative, similar in meaning and sound, which no less fully reflects the essence of the narrative concept. Today, narrative sources can be found in almost all scientific sociology, philology, philosophy, and even psychiatry. But for the study of such concepts as narrativity, narration, narrative techniques, and others, there is a separate independent direction - narratology. So, it is worth understanding the narrative itself - what is it and what are its functions?

Both etymological sources proposed above carry the same meaning - the communication of knowledge, the story. That is, to put it simply, a narrative is a kind of narration about something. However, this concept should not be confused with a simple story. Narrative narrative has individual characteristics and features, which led to the emergence of an independent term.

Narrative and story

How is narrative different from simple story? A story is a way of communication, a way of receiving and transmitting factual (qualitative) information. Narrative is the so-called "explaining story", if you use the terminology of the American philosopher and art historian Arthur Danto (Danto A. History. M .: Idea-Press, 2002. P. 194).

That is, the narrative is, rather, not an objective, but a subjective narrative. Narrative arises when subjective emotions and assessments of the narrator-narrator are added to an ordinary story. There is a need not only to convey information to the listener, but to impress, interest, make them listen, cause a certain reaction. In other words, the difference between a narrative and an ordinary story or narration lies in the attraction of individual narrator's assessments and emotions of each narrator. Or in indicating cause-and-effect relationships and the presence of logical chains between the events described, if we are talking about objective historical or scientific texts.

Narrative: an example

In order to finally establish the essence of narrative narrative, it is necessary to consider it in practice - in the text. So, narrative - what is it? An example demonstrating the difference between a narrative and a story, in this case, can be a comparison of the following passages: “Yesterday I got my feet wet. I didn’t go to work today” and “I got my feet wet yesterday, so I got sick today and didn’t go to work.” The content of these statements is almost identical. However, only one element changes the essence of the narrative - an attempt to connect both events. The first version of the statement is free from subjective ideas and causal relationships, while in the second they are present and are of key importance. In the original version, it was not indicated why the narrator did not go to work, perhaps it was a day off, or he really felt bad, but for a different reason. However, the second option already reflects the subjective attitude to the message of a certain narrator, who, through his own considerations and appeal to personal experience, analyzed the information and established causal relationships, voicing them in his own retelling of the message. The psychological, "human" factor can completely change the meaning of the story if the context provides insufficient information.

Narratives in scientific texts

Nevertheless, not only contextual information, but also the perceiver's (narrator's) own experience affects the subjective assimilation of information, the introduction of assessments and emotions. Based on this, the objectivity of the story is reduced, and one could assume that narrativity is not inherent in all texts, but, for example, it is absent in messages of scientific content. However, this is not quite true. To a greater or lesser extent, narrative features can be found in any messages, since the text contains not only the author and the narrator, who in essence can be different actors, but also the reader or listener, who perceive and interpret the information received in different ways. First of all, of course, this applies to literary texts. However, there are narratives in scientific reports as well. They are present rather in historical, cultural and social contexts and are not an objective reflection of reality, but rather act as an indicator of their multidimensionality. However, they can also influence the formation of causal relationships between historically reliable events or other facts.

Given such a variety of narratives and their abundant presence in texts of various contents, science could no longer ignore the phenomenon of narrative and began to study it closely. Today, various scientific communities are interested in such a way of knowing the world as storytelling. It has development prospects in it, since the narrative allows you to systematize, streamline, disseminate information, as well as individual humanitarian branches to study human nature.

Discourse and Narrative

From all of the above, it follows that the structure of the narrative is ambiguous, its forms are unstable, there are no samples of them in principle, and depending on the context of the situation, they are filled with individual content. Therefore, the context or discourse in which this or that narrative is embodied is an important part of its existence.

If we consider the meaning of the word in a broad sense, discourse is speech in principle, language activity and its process. However, in this formulation, the term "discourse" is used to denote a certain context that is necessary when creating any text, as one or another position of the existence of a narrative.

According to the concept of postmodernists, narrative is a discursive reality, which is revealed in it. The French literary theorist and postmodernist Jean-Francois Lyotard called narration one of the possible types of discourse. He sets out his ideas in detail in the monograph "The State of Modernity" (Liotar Jean-Francois. The State of Postmodernity. St. Petersburg: Aletheia, 1998. - 160 p.). Psychologists and philosophers Jens Brockmeier and Rom Harre described the narrative as a "subspecies of discourse", their concept can also be found in the research work (Brockmeier Jens, Harre Rom. Narrative: Problems and Promises of an Alternative Paradigm // Questions of Philosophy. - 2000. - No. 3 - S. 29-42.). Thus, it is obvious that in relation to linguistics and literary criticism, the concepts of "narrative" and "discourse" are inseparable from each other and exist in parallel.

Narrative in Philology

Much attention was paid to the narrative and narrative techniques by linguistics and literary criticism. In linguistics, this term, as mentioned above, is studied together with the term "discourse". In literary criticism, it refers rather to postmodern concepts. Scientists J. Brockmeyer and R. Harre in their treatise “Narrative: Problems and Promises of an Alternative Paradigm” proposed to understand it as a way of ordering knowledge and giving meaning to experience. According to them, narrative is an instruction for making stories. That is, a set of certain linguistic, psychological and cultural structures, knowing which, you can compose an interesting story in which the mood and message of the narrator will be clearly guessed.

Narrative in literature is essential for literary texts. Since a complex chain of interpretations is realized here, starting from the point of view of the author and ending with the perception of the reader / listener. When creating a text, the author puts certain information into it, which, having traveled a long text path and reaching the reader, can completely change or be interpreted differently. In order to correctly decipher the author's intentions, it is necessary to take into account the presence of other characters, the author himself and the narrator, who themselves are separate narrators and narrators, that is, narrators and perceivers. Perception becomes more complicated if the text is dramatic in nature, since drama is one of the genres of literature. Then the interpretation is distorted even more, passing through the presentation of it by the actor, who also introduces his emotional and psychological characteristics into the narrative.

However, it is this ambiguity, the ability to fill the message with different meanings, leave the reader ground for reflection, and is an important part of fiction.

Narrative Method in Psychology and Psychiatry

The term "narrative psychology" belongs to the American cognitive psychologist and educator Jerome Bruner. He and forensic psychologist Theodore Sarbin can rightfully be considered the founders of this humanitarian branch.

According to the theory of J. Bruner, life is a series of narratives and subjective perceptions of certain stories, the goal of the narrative is to subjectify the world. T. Sarbin, on the other hand, is of the opinion that facts and fiction are combined in narratives that determine the experience of a particular person.

The essence of the narrative method in psychology is the recognition of a person and his deep problems and fears through the analysis of his stories about them and their own lives. Narratives are inseparable from society and cultural context, because it is in them that they are formed. The narrative in psychology for a person has two practical meanings: firstly, it opens up opportunities for self-identification and self-knowledge by creating, comprehending and speaking various stories, and secondly, it is a way of self-presentation, thanks to such a story about oneself.

Psychotherapy also uses a narrative approach. It was developed by Australian psychologist Michael White and New Zealand psychotherapist David Epston. Its essence is to create certain circumstances around the person being treated (client), the ground for creating one's own story, with the involvement of certain people and the performance of certain actions. And if narrative psychology is considered more of a theoretical branch, then in psychotherapy the narrative approach already demonstrates its practical application.

Thus, it is obvious that the narrative concept is successfully used in almost any field that studies human nature.

Narrative in politics

There is also an understanding of narrative narrative in political activity. However, the term "political narrative" carries a negative connotation rather than a positive one. In diplomacy, narrativity is understood as deliberate deception, concealment of true intentions. Narrative story implies the deliberate concealment of some facts and true intentions, perhaps the substitution of the thesis and the use of euphemisms to make the text harmonious and avoid specifics. As mentioned above, the difference between a narrative and an ordinary story is the desire to make people listen, to impress, which is typical of the speech of modern politicians.

Narrative Visualization

As for the visualization of narratives, this is a rather complicated issue. According to some scientists, for example, the theorist and practitioner of narrative psychology J. Bruner, a visual narrative is not a reality dressed in a textual form, but a structured and ordered speech inside the narrator. He called this process a certain way of constructing and establishing reality. Indeed, it is not the “literal” linguistic shell that forms the narrative, but the consistently presented and logically correct text. Thus, it is possible to visualize the narrative by voicing it: telling it orally or writing it in the form of a structured text message.

Narrative in historiography

Actually, the historical narrative is what laid the foundation for the formation and study of narratives in other areas of humanitarian knowledge. The term "narrative" itself was borrowed from historiography, where the concept of "narrative history" existed. Its meaning was to consider historical events not in their logical sequence, but through the prism of context and interpretation. Interpretation is key to the very essence of narrative and narration.

Historical narrative - what is it? This is a story from the source, not a critical presentation, but an objective one. First of all, historical texts can be attributed to narrative sources: treatises, chronicles, some folklore and liturgical texts. Narrative sources are those texts and messages in which narrative narratives are present. However, according to J. Brockmeier and R. Harre, not all texts are narratives and correspond to the “concept of storytelling”.

There are several misconceptions about historical narrative, caused by the fact that some "stories", such as autobiographical texts, are based only on facts, while others have either already been retold or modified. Thus, their veracity is reduced, but the reality does not change, only the attitude of each individual narrator towards it changes. The context remains the same, but each narrator connects it in his own way with the events described, extracting situations that are important, in his opinion, weaving them into the outline of the story.

As for autobiographical texts specifically, there is another problem here: the author's desire to draw attention to his person and activities, which means the possibility of providing knowingly false information or distorting the truth in his own favor.

Summing up, we can say that narrative techniques, one way or another, have found application in most of the humanities that study the nature of the human person and his environment. Narratives are inseparable from subjective human assessments, just as a person is inseparable from society, in which his individual life experience is formed, and hence his own opinion and subjective view of the world around him.

Summarizing the above information, we can formulate the following definition of a narrative: a narrative is a structured logical story that reflects an individual perception of reality, and it is also a way of organizing subjective experience, an attempt at self-identification and self-presentation of a person.

Hello, dear readers of Valery Kharlamov's blog! Narrative psychology is a direction in psychology that considers stories created by people to better understand themselves and the world around them, thus helping to get rid of stereotypes and incorrectly created ideas that do not benefit, but only hinder. And today we will consider the main approaches and topics in which this direction is most effective.

History of occurrence

Paying attention to narratives, which translates from English as a plot, began back in 1930 thanks to Harvard psychologist Henry Murray. He created an effective and well-known thematic apperception test. The essence of which is that the subject, on the basis of the proposed black-and-white pictures, must make detailed story about what happens there, which of the characters is represented and how it all ends.

Henry believed that a person will inevitably endow the listed characters with a characteristic that is characteristic of him. Those features that he recognizes or denies in himself, thus identifying with them.

And already by 1980, cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner put forward the assertion that a person uses stories not only to convey information about himself, but also to structure, organize the experience gained. He believed that the child learns to create narratives before he speaks or even begins to understand what is being said to him. And around these years, Michael White and David Epston created this direction, helping to heal, become more aware and change your life.

essence

Description

Each person, communicating, shows the interlocutor the experience gained with the help of a story about him. Have you noticed that participants in the same situation describe it differently, weaving sometimes the most contradictory experiences and thoughts into the story? Not because one of them is lying, but because they perceive it based on the prism of different views on life, ideas about themselves and lived, gained experience.

And they noticed that different people you absolutely differently tell about the same case? This is due to the fact that you take into account the characteristics of the personality of the other person and the ways of his reactions, as well as the need that you want to satisfy. And for everyone the same situation will sound differently. After all, you want to get support from someone, recognition from someone, and it is important for someone to demonstrate their superiority.

This approach helps to see some problem from a completely new perspective, which allows you to cope with it and improve your life. After all, everything that happens to us, we perceive too subjectively, focusing only on significant and familiar nuances.

Example

When a child is born, he has no ideas about himself, and at first he generally considers himself an integral organism with his mother. And only then, growing up, does he find out what gender he is, what his name is, what characteristics he is endowed with, and what is the name of each state that he has to live through.

If the parents, whom he unconditionally trusts, claim, of course, with the best of intentions, wanting to motivate him to prove the opposite, that he is evil and not obedient, then he will rely on this information in the future. That is, there will be a case where he really will show aggression, after which he will weave it into his image. Having formed a story with proof of this character trait. And then the rest of the episodes, where he will feel compassion, the desire to help, will be ignored.

This is called selective attention, when a person is looking for confirmation of some of his judgments. So, unconsciously feeling the need for all episodes in life to be consistent and complementary, he did not volunteer to go to African countries to take care of starving children. Although, if you think carefully, such thoughts and desires periodically arise, only instantly suppressed. A cruel and aggressive person cannot contradict his own image.

In the same way, nice and good-natured people have their skeletons in the closet, situations where they showed insensitivity and violence, immediately crowding out such experiences so as not to disrupt the storyline.

Narrative psychology, making a thorough analysis of the information provided, allows you to get a more realistic picture. Helping to find events that contradict the client's beliefs. Can you imagine how often we limit ourselves, and how many false ideas about our own personality we have just because we decided to rely on the opinions of other people?

Topics covered by this approach

1. Difficulties in interpersonal relationships, as well as family problems.
2. Inside personal. For example, if a person cannot find the meaning of life, understand his purpose, if he does not know what he wants or how to achieve what he wants. When a conflict of needs arises, and he does not understand how to act and which one to choose to satisfy. If a distorted self-image has formed, as well as in the event of complexes and excessive living of negatively colored emotions.
3. Organizational. Allows you to build relationships in a group and put everything in its place.
4. Social. In the event of violence, emergencies and violations of human rights.
5. trauma and crisis. In the case of dangerous or fatal illnesses, it is quite likely to “negotiate” with them, realizing what they are given for, and also learn how to deal with them.
6. It helps children and adolescents to understand what they really are, teaches them to rely on their own opinion and look for opportunities in life.

Basic tricks

Step 1: Externalization

This terrible word means an attempt to "carry out" a person beyond the boundaries of the problem. So that he can look at her from the outside, without getting particularly emotionally involved and without “pulling up” the experience gained earlier in a similar situation. Because, for example, while the appropriated information about his own personality “lives” inside him, it will influence his actions, relationships, and so on.

A story can cause feelings of guilt and shame that are toxic to the body. Why can't a person feel the pleasure of life. Because it will be in a state of expectation of condemnation, punishment, and so on. Methods such as research, clarification, mapping are used. Sometimes it happens that the client presents a difficult episode from life, which he considers a problem. But the therapist discovers completely different reasons for his difficulties.

Therefore, it is important to conduct a thorough analysis of the material. If everything is clear, then you should map - to study the degree of influence of the problem on the being of the client, to which areas it extends, and what kind of harm it causes.

For this process, it is important to consider aspects such as:

• Duration. That is, how long it worries him, when exactly it started, and what changes have occurred during existence. In some cases, you can dream up and try to anticipate the likely outcome of the situation.
• Latitude. In the study of the breadth of the negative consequences of complexity, such areas as feelings, relationships, resources, condition, health, activity, success, achievement, etc. are affected.
• Depth. It becomes clear how serious the problem turned out to be and how much it causes inconvenience. To do this, you can simply ask questions about how painful, scary, etc., or ask them to indicate on a scale, say, from 1 to 10, how much it interferes with life, where 1 - does not interfere at all, and 10 - there is no strength to endure.

5 more tricks

Deconstruction. During this period, the question of who and what benefits from the condition that arose in the one who turned to the therapist is being investigated.

Recovery. Invite other people to give feedback on the client's story. That is, what they felt while listening, what thoughts and images arose.

Working with external witnesses. That is, the above participants in therapy share their experiences. They put forward theories about how the story turned out to be useful and what it can teach, warn.

Writing letters. In addition, certificates, diplomas and certificates are created.

Communities. Virtual groups are organized, where various techniques and exercises are indicated, which help to cope with life's troubles.

Conclusion

And that’s all for today, dear readers! To support your desire for self-development, I suggest that you read the article. Take care of yourself and loved ones!

The material was prepared by Alina Zhuravina.

0

Bulletin of St. Petersburg State University. Ser. 17. 2016. Issue. 4

D. B. Volkov

NARRATIVE APPROACH AS A SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM OF IDENTITY

The psychological approach to solving the problem of personal identity, according to many modern philosophers, is the most promising. However, it does not allow explaining the individual's special concern for himself in the future and the foundations of moral responsibility in the past. These difficulties are solved by the narrative approach. It incorporates the features of a psychological approach, but has some advantages. According to the narrative approach, the person exists as an entity extended in time, and the relationship between its parts and the whole creates the basis for moral responsibility and special care. The unity of personality is ensured by the unity of the narrative. The author of the article considers possible options for criticizing the narrative approach and comes to the conclusion that this criticism is not final. Bibliography 9 titles

Key words: personal identity, psychological approach, narrative approach, ultimate statement, moral responsibility, special concern.

NARRATIVE APPROACH AS THE SOLUTION TO THE PERSONAL IDENTITY PROBLEM

According to the majority of contemporary philosophers, the psychological approach is the most promising solution to the problem of personal identity. However, it fails to explain the special concern of a person about her future and the grounds for moral responsibility. These difficulties can be solved by the narrative approach. This comprises some of the aspects of the psychological approach but has significant advantages. According to the narrative approach, a person exists extended in time and the relationship between the temporary parts and the whole create the grounds for moral responsibility and special concern. The unity of a person is preserved as a unity of narrative. The author of this paper analyzes the criticisms of the narrative approach and suggests that it is far from being conclusive. Refs 9.

Keywords: personal identity, psychological approach, narrative approach, extreme claim, moral responsibility, special concern.

The problem of personal identity and traditional approaches to its solution

The problem of personal identity is the problem of identifying the nature of the relationship between the states, actions and properties of a person throughout its existence. There are traditionally several approaches to solving this problem in philosophy: substantial, psychological, biological. According to many philosophers, of the traditional approaches, psychological is the most promising. "For the last half century, there has been considerable interest in the development and defense of psychological approaches to personal identity ... There are dozens of versions of the continuity of psychological traits and many talented proponents of this general approach." According to

Volkov Dmitry Borisovich - Candidate of Philosophy, Co-Director of the Moscow Center for the Study of Consciousness, Russian Federation, 119121, Moscow, st. Burdenko, 14A; [email protected]

Volkov Dmitry B. - PhD, Co-director of Moscow center for consciousness studies, 14A, ul. Burdenko, Moscow, 119121, Russian Federation; [email protected]

© Saint Petersburg State University, 2016

In this theory, personal identity is determined by psychological characteristics. A person at time ti is identical to a person at time t2 if the identity or continuity of psychological characteristics is preserved: memories, beliefs, desires, character. A person does not have identical personalities at another time when there are no heirs of these qualities.

One of the first supporters of this approach was J. Locke. He believed that of all psychological characteristics, it is memory that determines identity: "... So that everything that has consciousness of present and past actions is one and the same personality, to which both those and other actions belong" . Locke was convinced that the existence of the individual extends into the past as far as the past can be accessed in memory. And according to this principle, he proposed to attribute actions in the past. Intuitively, this approach seems plausible. After all, first of all, thanks to memories, we identify ourselves with some person in the past. However, when analyzing counterexamples, it turns out that such a criterion is vulnerable: a person can lose memories, they can be partial, episodic, have gaps and inconsistencies. This may give the impression that the person does not cease to be the same. Actions, states and properties committed by him in the past do not become “alien” in case of their partial or complete oblivion.

Modern supporters of the psychological approach (among them E. Kinton, P. Grice, and partly S. Shoemaker, J. Perry) have tried to adapt the theory to counterexamples. They expanded the list of psychological characteristics and suggested using their continuity (psychological continuity) instead of the relationship of identity. Psychological continuity can be explained through the concept of psychological connection. A psychological connection between subjects A in the present and B in the past exists when the current psychological states of A are explicable and causally related to states of B. Psychological continuity exists between subjects A and Z if their states are connected by a series of psychological connections. But even this solution does not avoid problems.

The first problem is that the identity of the psychological characteristics of the various stages of personality does not provide grounds for "special care" and moral responsibility. “This is an objection. was called the "limiting statement" by Parfit. It has traditionally been one of the strongest objections to theorists of the psychological approach. The psychological approach reduces the personality to a temporary stage with certain psychological characteristics. But why should a stage with these characteristics take special care of the next stage, even if it has the same (or inherited) characteristics? One of the supporters of the "ultimate statement" writes: "Obviously, I have every reason to worry if the person who will be in pain is me, but it is not at all obvious that I have reason to worry if the person who will be in pain will have certain memories." . Similar reasoning makes it possible to doubt the rational foundations of moral responsibility.

The second problem for the psychological approach is the violation of the transitive connection in some cases of psychological continuity. Identical-

ness is a transitive relation, but psychological continuity is not. Psychological characteristics can in principle be copied. And this means that there can be several people with the same or successive psychological properties. Such situations are described in thought experiments (with division or cloning of personalities). One of them was proposed by the most famous researcher of personal identity - D. Parfit and is called "Teletransporter".

The philosopher proposes a futuristic way to travel: in one terminal, a person's body is scanned and a complete accurate description of its physical structure is created. The description is sent to another terminal. After that, the body in the first terminal is completely destroyed, and at the same moment an exact copy of this person is recreated in the second terminal. Under the terms of the thought experiment, all psychological traits of this person are recreated (psychological properties supervene over physical ones), so the personality, according to the psychological approach, should be considered the same.

In a thought experiment, Parfit proposes to imagine that one Teletransporter machine does not work, and the body in the first terminal is not destroyed after scanning and sending data. It turns out that there are now two people in the two terminals - two identical people. In this scenario, it turns out that there are two successors, and at the same time they are not just similar, but, according to the psychological approach, are identical to each other. This opens up the possibility of paradoxes. For example, one successor may be hungry after a while, while the other is full. Then two people will exist, they will be in different states, and yet they will be identical to each other.

Perhaps the disadvantage of the psychological approach is due to the fact that its proponents are focused on a question that has an abstract meaning. They are looking for an identical connection. In this form, the question of personality at different points in time becomes similar to the famous paradoxes of "Theseus' ship" or "heaps of sand", when a certain judgment is impossible due to the vagueness of the definition. The answer in such cases cannot be given because the question is empty. An empty question is one where all the relevant information is known, but not enough to give a definite answer. But the situation can be improved by focusing on practical issues. These are questions of survival and attribution of moral responsibility for actions. It is quite possible that for these pragmatic purposes it will be possible to get by with some other relation, less problematic than the relation of numerical identity. Theorists of the narrative approach are guided by such considerations.

Narrative approach

The narrative approach is partly close to the psychological one, but differs in that the focus has been changed in it - the formulation of the question has been corrected. Supporters of the psychological approach are busy with the issue of re-identification of a person at different times. To establish identity, they try to determine what makes one person at time 12 the same person that existed at time t (or, more precisely, determine what makes one temporal stage of personality identical to another temporal stage of personality), i.e., establish criteria asynchronous

numerical identity between person time-slices, or person-stages. Their opponents, supporters of the narrative approach, in particular M. Shechtman, D. Dennett, K. Atkins, interpret identity differently. They are busy not with re-identification, but with the question of personality characterization. Proponents of the narrative approach explore the relationship of belonging between individuals and their properties, the relationship of parts and the whole. They believe that a person exists as an irreducible entity lasting in time, and not a stage, not an episode. Due to this, their definition and formulation of the question is much closer to practical problems. It is much clearer why separate parts of the personality, separated in time, are more important for the whole personality than one temporal stage of the personality for another (previous or subsequent). But how can a person consist of parts spaced apart in time? And how can these parts be related?

According to the supporters of the narrative approach, the connection is based on the possibility of consistent inclusion of properties and actions in the biographical history of a person, i.e. psychological characteristics, mental events and physical actions can belong to one person and are part of it when they can be included in its biographical history. structure. This biographical structure is the usual sequential account of events, mostly in the first person. It is inclusion in a coherent realistic autobiography that makes events and characteristics part of a psychological entity, a basis for moral responsibility and just compensation, a condition for survival and a basis for specific care.

However, how to determine what is included in the biographical structure, in the contour of the narrative, and what is not? What are the requirements for the relationship between the parts of the narrative? What can unify the story, and what can serve as a filter for irrelevant elements?

The construction of a characterizing biographical narrative

Different authors describe the requirements for biographical narratives in different ways. Sometimes their descriptions are not clear enough. However, it seems that the following three key criteria for internal unity can be identified. First, history must be united by perspective. Stories are usually told from the point of view of the author, or a character, or several characters in turn, but at every moment this perspective is determined. “It turns out that it is theoretically correct to organize interpretations (of circumstances. - D.V.) around a central abstract entity ...” . Perspective is a view from a point with clear temporal and geographical coordinates. The movement of these points in the developing history is basically sequential and continuous both in space and in time. The specific location of the point determines a selective attitude to circumstances and is expressed in descriptions from a certain, specific angle of view. Perspective acts like a searchlight, snatching out the main from the infinity of admissible descriptions. Based on this point, from the “center of gravity” of the narrative, some of the circumstances stand out as significant, important, and some (actually, most) are simply ignored. Significant events depicted

more detailed, their time frames seem to be moving apart. And minor circumstances pass fleetingly or are not indicated at all. The relationship between the plans of different importance is systematic: the main and side characters, key events and random circumstances are separated. Key events form the outline of the plot or biography milestones. Thus, the laws of perspective allow you to select and correctly arrange the elements of the story.

The second unifying principle and filter for the elements of the narrative is the intelligibility of the trajectory of mental life. A story usually consists of the events and actions of the characters. Actions, as we already know, are associated with mental states, and these mental states, combined with each other, are consistent with the essential characteristics of individuals. Mental states explain actions, and the character and inclinations of a person explain mental states. From one mental state others flow. Thus, the entire life trajectory must be intelligible in history. “The concept of intelligibility is important because in our discourse and practice there is a fundamental difference between people and other creatures,” writes one of the supporters of the narrative approach, the ethicist A. McIntyre. This does not mean, of course, that the subject's intentions or character are unchanged. The circumstances of history affect the hero, they can significantly change his state, characteristics and even essence, but all these changes do not occur without reasons. The reasons are included in the story and explain these changes. Thus, the whole story becomes understandable, consistent, meaningful, and the trajectory of the character's mental life does not cease to be continuous. Moreover, the personality itself is to some extent aware of this trajectory and finds it appropriate to its own character. The narrative concept of personality "assumes that a person has a self-image that binds, [separate personality traits] into a certain character" .

The third binding element of biographical history, and at the same time its filter, is its teleological orientation. History can be united by the movement of the individual towards some long-term goals. To say that a person's life is narrative in character "is to say, at least in part, that no stage can be wholly intelligible - or even definable - outside the context of the life in which it takes place." The hierarchy of goals may be crowned with some basic landmark, the main beacon in the journey of the individual. It is this main landmark, the ultimate meaning on the scale of all life, that gives meaning to individual actions and states. The main landmarks may be different. It can be survival, personal well-being, dominance, imposing one's will on others, or obtaining maximum pleasure. But some supporters of the narrative approach (primarily the hermeneutical direction) insist that the true “personal good” must coincide with goodness as a universal value: with the desire to live well with others and for others in a just society. Only the presence of such a main ethical guideline, in their opinion, makes life meaningful in general and each action separately.

The characteristics listed above make it possible to fasten the narrative, the life story into one whole from the inside. They are internal requirements

The ability to formulate a complete life story in a first-person narrative that satisfies internal requirements is not an absolute necessity for the attribution of action and responsibility. In the end, the agent may not understand the motives of his behavior, not always distinguish the final goals, even not have the ability to consistently and in detail describe the events of his life. But it is important that the agent be able to organize his experiences and representations into a life story. Perhaps there is empirical evidence for this ability without the verbalization of the story. However, in the absence of such opportunities, evidence of its presence is the ability to express in history at least part of life events and explain them. I mean the ability to describe one's actions in the first person, refer to their internal mental causes, and justify one's judgments of experience. If an agent is capable of such a description of fragments of life, then he is able to structure his experience in the form of a narrative, and, therefore, what fits into this narrative and meets the minimum requirements of realism can serve as its characteristic.

The credibility of a biographical story is the second, but no less important external criterion. The requirement of plausibility, like the requirement of the ability to verbalize experience, cannot be absolute either. The storyteller tends to make mistakes. But at least part of the judgments in the narrative of events must coincide with the judgments of other personalities. In other words, first-person descriptions of events must at least partially coincide with their third-person descriptions of other participants and witnesses of the events. Otherwise, it will be a fantastic narrative, and it will not be possible to attribute actions and responsibilities to it. “Each of us, being the protagonist of our own drama, plays minor roles in the dramas of others, and thus each drama serves as a limitation for others,” writes A. McIntyre. The work of internal and external criteria can be demonstrated in the following situation.

Suppose someone mistakenly calls himself Napoleon and claims to have been a commander at the famous Battle of Waterloo. Participation in this battle, he justifies the desire to restore the greatness of the French Empire, and considers the rout a personal responsibility. Now his goal is world recognition. How does such a story relate to the requirements for a narrative? History is articulated. It has a certain teleological integrity. But other criteria are not met. The continuity of the point of perspective is broken: for example, it will be difficult for a deluded person to explain what he did between 1821 and 2015 and how his biography and mental life fit with the facts of Napoleon's life. Most likely, the requirement for intelligibility will be violated: for example, it will be difficult for this person to explain why in the 20th century. he entered elementary school, if at the end of the XVII century. already finished college. But the main problem will be the inconsistency with reality: for example, it will be difficult for this person to explain the physical differences between Napoleon and himself. Thus, his story will not match

comply with the criteria of intelligibility, unity of perspective and credibility. Therefore, it cannot be a characteristic of this person and the basis for the attribution of the described actions. A completely different characteristic would be more suitable for this person: he is either a dreamer inspired by history, or a mental patient.

Advantages of the Narrative Approach

The narrative approach is partly an improvement on the psychological approach. It takes advantage of the latter. To be intelligible, the narrative must reflect psychological continuity. But the new approach makes it possible to better solve practical problems: to explain the existence of moral responsibility and special concern for the future of the individual. M. Shechtman writes that the narrative approach "was developed as an alternative to theories of psychological continuity and was supposed to capture the original Lockeian intuition, while bypassing criticism with the help of the" limit statement "" . Bypassing criticism becomes possible because the proponents of the narrative approach represent a personality distributed in time, consisting of different time parts. Personalities are not reducible to some separate states, but are primitive long-term entities. They are formed from the story and, accordingly, have characteristics located in different time coordinates. Personality is realized in a life story, an autobiography, and is an integrity, a personal history extended in time. And the whole obviously depends on the parts. Therefore, taking care of your own future is just as much taking care of yourself as taking care of your present self. It is especially important for a person that the narrative is realized as safely as possible. The individual has reason to expect fair compensation within the framework of this narrative and is responsible for the actions included in the narrative. This is the rational basis for moral responsibility and concern for survival.

The narrative approach also resolves some situations that are an obstacle to other approaches, and also explains specific psychological phenomena. We are talking about a hypothetical situation with division and real situations with a syndrome of dissociative identity disorder.

Broken teletransporter and multiple personalities

It was shown above that the situation with a broken teletransporter presents a difficulty for a psychological approach. It is difficult for its supporters to carry out re-identification because there are several psychological copies and they have equal grounds to be considered the original personality. But for supporters of the narrative approach, this should not be a problem - they are not limited by the requirement of a one-to-one ratio, since they do not raise the issue of reidentification. From their position, in relation to these situations, it would be more correct to ask other, practically significant questions. For example, does a person survive in a situation where a broken teletransporter creates many instances? And are instances responsible for the acts committed by the prototype?

It seems to me that both answers from the standpoint of the narrative approach should be positive. If the narrative of each new instance includes the previous biography without violating the requirements outlined above, then the prototype personality survives, and each instance of the personality is responsible for actions committed in the past. For example, it may turn out that for a crime committed by one instance of personality in the past, the punishment in the present will be carried by several instances. But this should not be surprising: in retrospect it seems that if a deliberate and voluntary crime was committed, then this crime was committed by all instances and was an "overdetermined" event. The number of participants in normal practice does not reduce the guilt of each individual, if the participants had equivalent roles. Therefore, it should not reduce liability in this case either. Evil intent and evil character are causally related to the current state of all instances.

No more problems for the narrative approach is the reverse process - the process of personality integration, which can be seen in the example of a successfully treated person with dissociative identity disorder (DID). It seems that the narrative approach should consider the case of genuine DID as the existence in one body of several personalities, of which only one will remain after integrative therapy. But in practical terms, this does not mean death, but the survival of the individual with the appropriation of all actions committed in the past. Moral judgments about actions will depend not only on the actions themselves, but also on the nature of the derived personality. Therefore, guilt for some of these acts can be reduced. In any case, this situation can be explained in a consistent way in the narrative approach and does not provide grounds for its criticism.

Situations with division and integration of personality are not problematic for the narrative approach. And the narrative approach better than the psychological one explains the grounds for moral responsibility and special care. These are the advantages of the narrative approach. But how vulnerable is this approach to criticism from the other side?

Objections to the narrative approach

Objection 1. Variety of modes of life

The narrative approach assumes that the essence of a person is a consistent life story and that the ability to structure one's experience is necessary for the realization of this essence, as well as the ability to at least partially articulate it: to describe actions in the first person and connect them with one's mental states. But such abilities are absent in people in infancy and sometimes in old age or in certain mental illnesses (in a state of dementia, in a chronic vegetative state, etc.). Thus, it seems that the narrative approach forces us to exclude these stages from the life of the individual. And this is contrary to intuition and gives rise to a new problem - "the problem of someone else." If a person in chronic vegetative

state (HVS), not the same person as before this state, then who is this person? Who is this "someone else"?

The narrative approach does not necessarily require the exclusion of such stages from the history of the individual. They can be included in the history of the individual through related narratives. When talking about the requirement for realism of the narrative, we have already talked about the need to reconcile the first-person narrative with narratives from other perspectives. Thus, it was already obvious that other personalities were relevant to the biographical narrative. To include special stages in the history of a personality, the following condition should be added: even in a situation of its complete “silence”, others can supplement, expand and refine the autobiographical narrative. That is, an autobiographical narrative is a story written not only in the first person, but also supplemented by other participants, witnesses of events. If children and the weak-minded cannot "express their own narrative", it can be expressed in cooperation with others. This version of the narrative approach circumvents the "problem of someone else."

Objection 2. Episodic personalities as counterexamples

The narrative approach can also be criticized with the help of counterexamples. This tactic is offered by the American philosopher G. Strausson. In his opinion, there are people of this type who do not seem to fit the criteria of personality presented by the proponents of the narrative approach. G. Strausson calls these people episodic. Episodic people are those who do not consider themselves to be something that has existed in the past and will exist in the future. At the same time, episodic people naturally understand that the biological being in which their "I" is realized has a temporal duration, but they do not consider the "I" itself to last. Episodic people do not see their lives as an unfolding narrative, in that sense they live only in the present, fully in the present. Strausson contrasts them with diachronic people: those who are aware of themselves as something that existed in the past and something that will exist in the future. Perhaps diachronic people are in the majority. But, according to Strausson, episodic ones also exist. He refers himself to episodic people. Be that as it may, it is possible to conceive the existence of episodic people. At the same time, it seems that episodic people should belong to the category of individuals. This means that there is a contradiction in our intuitions. From this, according to Strausson, it follows that, according to intuitions, the narrative is not an integral and essential element of personality. So the narrative approach is false.

Strausson foresees the arguments that a narrative proponent might put forward in his defense - an argument supposedly proving the narrative structure of even episodic personalities. The life of episodic people is development, as is the life of diachronic people. In this sense, the life of episodic people is also a sequence. This sequence can be described both by these people themselves and by their environment. Consequently, episodic personalities are also realized in narratives. But Strausson believes that this argument is unfortunate, since it reduces the narrative approach to triviality. If the life of an episodic person can be considered to be realized in a narrative, then the life of any person will be narrative in this sense. Moreover, even life

horses or dogs can thus be considered to be realized in the narrative - in the end, and in their lives there will be development and succession. Thus, Strausson offers a kind of stratagem: either the narrative approach is trivial, or it is refuted by a counterexample. Is it so?

It seems to me that Strausson's critique can be effective for some narrative conceptions of personality. But it misses the pragmatic thesis. Its essence is that it is the moral responsibility for the actions of the individual in the past and special concern for one's own future that are based on the narrative structure of the individual. The pragmatic thesis must be distinguished from the psychological thesis about the narrative nature of personality. According to the psychological thesis, all people experience their life as a story, a narrative. It is the psychological thesis that is vulnerable to criticism with the help of counterexamples with episodic people, and not the pragmatic one. The pragmatic thesis assumes only that the basis for the application of moral responsibility is the narrative structure and unity of the individual. But personality can exist without such a structure. In this case, the application of moral responsibility to a person will be inappropriate, unjustified, groundless. Moral responsibility is like a fruit on a branch of a narrative: the branch falls, the fruit also falls. Does this mean that episodic people are not responsible? In particular, does this mean that this category cannot be applied to Strausson?

In a strict sense, yes. Indeed, episodic individuals should not be held responsible for actions. But whether a person is episodic or diachronic is not such an unambiguous question. In resolving this issue, not only the personality itself is important, but also the ideas of others about it. A person can declare a lack of special attachment to his past and special concern for his future, as G. Strausson does: “I have a past, like any other person, and I perfectly understand that I have a past. I have enough factual knowledge about it, and I also remember some of my experiences in the past "from the inside", as the philosophers say. Nor do I in any way experience my life in narrative form or as a narrative without structure. I don't worry at all. I don't have much interest in my past and I don't have much concern for my future." And at the same time, the opposite may follow from his behavior (at least sometimes). In this case, this person cannot be considered episodic. For example, if a person still sometimes regrets the events of his past or is proud of them, if he is sometimes more anxious about possible experiences in the future of his own pain than the pain of others, then he is not an episodic person, but a diachronic one. And he bears moral responsibility for actions that should be attributed to his biographical history, even if he himself does not explicitly attribute them to himself. What kind of person is Galen Strausson? It is difficult for me to imagine that a person living a completely ordinary life would be an episodic person.

However, I can certainly imagine a person living an extraordinary life who would be an episodic being. Such a person could be a hermit who spends time in meditation and who has realized Buddhist ideals: a person devoid of suffering and freed from desires. There is nothing contradictory in thinking of a person with such psycho-

hygienic characteristics. But his behavior, in my opinion, should be radically different from the behavior of ordinary people, and this would be obvious from the outside. Such a person could hardly be considered an ordinary person or a person at all. Moreover, I think it would be difficult for him to attribute the existence of an “I” at all.

This is partly confirmed by the descriptions of the experiences of the existence of episodic personalities of G. Strausson himself. “I have no meaningful feeling that the 'I' - the 'I' now thinking about this question - existed then in the past. And for me, it's not a misperception. But rather, the registration of a fact about me - about who is now thinking about this problem. Strausson refers to the fact that he does not have the feeling that the "I" was present then, in the past, but he also does not explain what is the meaningful feeling of the existence of the "I" in the present. If "experiencing the perspective from within" is not enough to experience the "I", then neither in the past nor in the present can the "I" be discovered by introspection. It suffices to recall Hume's reasoning on this score. Thus, in response to Strausson's stratagem, I propose another: either most people who consider themselves episodic are actually diachronic, or such people are really episodic, but then they are not only not persons, but also do not have a "I". These special cases of episodic people are possible, but they are not a threat to the narrative structure thesis of personality. Thus, I consider Strausson's critique to be harmless for the narrative approach.

An analysis of the advantages of the narrative approach and comments in relation to it allows us to conclude that it is the most successful solution to the problem of the connection of events and their attribution to a person. The narrative approach allows you to combine the attributes of a person over time. The attribution of events, in turn, provides a basis for moral responsibility for actions performed by a person in the past. Thus, this is the most promising solution to the issue of personal identity in its practical perspective.

Literature

1. Schechtman M. Staying alive: personal identity, practical concerns, and the unity of a life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. 224 p.

2. Locke J. Works: in 3 vols. Vol. 1: Experience on human understanding / ed. I. S. Narsky. M.: Thought, 1985. 560 p.

3. Shoemaker S., Swinburne R. Personal Identity. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991. 168 p.

4. Parfit D. Reasons and persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984. 560 p.

5. Schechtman M. "tte constitution of selves. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007. 192 p.

6. Dennett D. "tte Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity // Self and Consciousness: Multiple Perspectives / eds F. Kessel, P. Cole, D. Johnson. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum Associates, 1992. P. 103-115 .

7. Atkins K. Narrative identity and moral identity. A practical perspective. Oxford: Routledge, 2010. 184 p.

8. Macintyre A. After Virtue. A study in moral theory. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007. 312 p.

9. Strawson G. "tte Self? / ed. by G. Strawson. Malden: Blackwell publishing, 2005. 129 p.

For citation: Volkov D. B. Narrative approach as a solution to the problem of identity // Bulletin of St. Petersburg State University Series 17. Philosophy. Conflictology. Culturology. Religious studies. 2016. Issue. 4. S. 21-32. DOI: 10.21638/11701/spbu17.2016.403

1. Schechtman M. Staying alive: personal identity, practical concerns, and the unity of a life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2014. 224 p.

2. Lock J. Sochinenia: v 3 t. T. 1: Opyt o chelovecheskom razumenii [Works: In 3 vols. Vol. 1. Experience in human understanding]. Ed. by I. S. Narsky. Moscow, Mysl Publ., 1985. 560 p. (In Russian)

3. Shoemaker S. Swinburne R. Personal Identity. Oxford, Blackwell Publ., 1991. 168 p.

4. Parfit D. Reasons and persons. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1984. 560 p.

5. Schechtman M. The constitution of selves. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2007. 192 p.

6. Dennett D. The Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity. Self and Consciousness: Multiple Perspectives. Eds F. Kessel, P. Cole and D. Johnson. Hillsdale, NJ, Erlbaum Associates Publ., 1992, pp. 103-115.

7. Atkins K. Narrative identity and moral identity. A practical perspective. Oxford, Routledge Publ., 2010. 184 p.

8. Macintyre A. After Virtue. A study in moral theory. Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 2007. 312 p.

9. Strawson G. The Self? Ed. by G. Strawson. Malden, Blackwell Publ., 2005. 129 p.

For citation: Volkov D. B. Narrative approach as the solution to the personal identity problem. Vestnik SPbU. Series 17. Philosophy. conflict studies. culture studies. Religious studies, 2016, issue 4, pp. 21-32. DOI: 10.21638/11701/spbu17.2016.403

home » Accessories » Techniques of narrative psychotherapy. Narrative approach in psychology