Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends

by David Epston, Michael White

Use of letter-writing in family therapy. White and Epston base their therapy on the assumption that people experience problems when the stories of their lives, as they or others have invented them, do not sufficiently represent their lived experience. Therapy then becomes a process of storying or restorying the lives and experiences of these people. In this way narrative comes to play a central role in therapy. Both authors share delightful examples of a storied therapy that privileges a person’s lived experience, inviting a reflexive posture and encouraging a sense of authorship and reauthorship of one’s experiences and relationships in the telling and retelling of one’s story.

256 pages, Paperback

Published November 28, 2023

About the author

David Epston is a co-director of the Family Therapy Centre in Auckland. Along with Michael White he is a co-originator of Narrative Therapy. He has a world-wide reputation as being one of the most creative and effective psychotherapists currently practising. He currently holds an Adjunct Professorship at John F. Kennedy University, San Francisco, and is a member of the visiting Faculty of the Department of Psychiatry and Epidemiology, Albert Einstein School of Medicine, New York. He regularly holds invited workshops and training seminars in Australia, North America and Europe.