Plenary V: Taking culture seriously – new developments in narrative therapy with young people

ABSTRACT

Narrative practice is based on the assumption that cultural discourses are influencing people’s way of living. We could however, think the other way around and ask: How might changes in the cultural contexts require new developments in our therapeutic practice?

In this plenary we will look into the following questions: Are we still practicing in relevant ways? Are we actually doing what we think we are doing? The idea this morning will be that practitioners of narrative therapy (and other forms of therapy) have a central task in adjusting their ways of working to current cultural contexts. This is of importance if we want to assist the young people that consult us today and if we want to make room for important and interesting new adjustments and concept developments in therapeutic work.

The therapeutic conversations with young people and the feedback they themselves have given us have brought forward a lot of interesting insights. If we don’t pay attention, narrative therapy might unintentionally support and confirm dominant discourses instead of deconstructing the standards, norms, and ideals that young people might struggle with today.

Using examples from therapeutic work with young people this plenary will present specific ways of doing culture-sensitive narrative therapy in the current cultural contexts. Furthermore we will address practices and ideas around themes such as

• critical and associative thinking in therapeutic conversations
• ways of working with agency in a time of individualization and
• regret as an over-looked phenomenon in therapeutic work

The plenary will draw upon ideas from psychology and philosophy as well as from research on living in a digital era.