ABSTRACT
Constructivist and narrative approaches to therapy (see Kelly 1955; White and Epston 1990; Neimeyer and Mahoney 1995; Freedman and Combs 1996; Smith and Nylund 1997; Mahoney 2006; White 2007) focus on understanding the meaning of life experiences (i.e., meaning making) as a personal process embedded within social contexts that both offer and constrain possible ways of organizing these experiences. Meanings are shaped by the person’s engagement in social processes, within which constructions or stories of experiences are enacted, validated or invalidated, and maintained or revised. Healthy personal and social processes involve the ongoing creation of new meanings that are respectful and inclusive of personal experience. Both therapists’ and clients’ personal meanings, including ways of nurturing the self and being with others, evolve within social and cultural stories. Therapists’ and clients’ positions within and experiences of these stories may be very different, leading to differing constructions of themselves, each other, their therapeutic relationship, and larger social processes. Within the therapeutic relationship, the therapist and the client collaborate to “deconstruct” or to evaluate and break down stories that limit the client’s possibilities for creative elaboration of new meanings, to consider alternative constructions, and to create new possibilities (Harker 1997; Harter 1988, 2004). Disordered eating and related behaviors can be considered to stem from limiting stories of identity, gender, and relationships located within cultural practices (Gremillion 2003; Maisel et al. 2004).
