ABSTRACT
A narrative is a `story' about our world and our experience in it over time. It is based both in language and in our phenomenological and contextual experience. There has been an increasing interest in narrative in psychotherapy from a range of perspectives. In an interesting study of children's narratives between the ages of four and six Daniel Stern (2003) compared videotaped experiences with the reconstruction of these after the event in conversation with the mother. What was striking about this research was the way in which co-constructions functioned as a regulatory strategy in terms of the developing narrative of the family, thus highlighting a socially constructed experience (see Berger and Luckmann, 1966; Gergen, 2009). It was in the 1985 edition of his book that Stern popularized the notion of the RIG. In the second edition of the book Stern (2003) makes the point that he now prefers to talk about `ways-of-being-with', a phrase that highlights the lived experience rather than a rei®ed structure. This points to a dif®culty in so many of our formulations and narratives, and brings to the fore a key aspect of an integrative approach and the importance of holding languaged structures lightly, knowing that in action they will not look so simple.
