ABSTRACT
Introduction There is growing interest across a range of disciplines and practices in ‘narrative’ and the co-construction of narratives as a useful root metaphor for understanding the ways that human beings construct, make sense of and transform their lives. The collection of ideas and practices that has become known as ‘narrative therapy’ might be regarded as a ‘practice of writing ‘in a number of ways. It is a ‘storied’ therapy that has strong roots within narrative, poststructuralist and literary theory and uses much of the language of these traditions. Narrative therapy presents quite a challenge to therapeutic practices that focus primarily on individual potential or ‘inner state’ psychology (see White 2001, for a discussion of these differences). It positions personal agency firmly within social and political discourses, and the cultural and historical traditions and ‘local’ stories that are available to people. In this way the construction of ‘alternative’ or preferred stories in therapeutic conversations, however fleeting or tentative, may be seen as something of an extraordinary achievement that warrants a written record in order to be more firmly captured and embraced.
