Narrative practices
What is this
It is an approach to helping and working with communities based on respect and non-judgment and defending the idea that people are experts in their own lives. It distinguishes between problems and people and considers that each person has talents, skills, beliefs, values, commitments and abilities that can help them to reduce the influence of problems in their lives. It has been developed since the 1980s, initially by the Australian Michael White and the New Zealander David Epston, both therapists.
The introduction of Narrative Practices in our country is more recent: it dates back to 2004, when Isabelle Laplante and Nicolas de Ber, the founders of Média Coaching, invited Michael White for the first time to France.
Originally, its field of application is family and individual therapy and work with communities facing problems that prevent them from living together and often from living at all (exclusion, alcoholism, violence, suicide, etc.). It is no coincidence that it was born in Australia. This continent was the site of a particularly violent colonization. The original population there was the victim of a double genocide.
The Narrative Approach is a committed practice, it is based on the idea that the stories we constantly produce about our lives can either lock us in or free us, and that a situation, a person or a group cannot be summed up in the way some people view them.
Everything revolves around a founding principle: the person is the Author of his life. It is having the perception that we have a choice. It is living in accordance with our values, our hopes, our principles. It is getting closer to what is important to us.
The purpose of narrative support is for the person to become the Author of their life again. And, to become the Author of their life again, Narrative Practices offer the support person a specific posture and concepts.
