ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author discusses two issues: the relation to experience and the relation to time. Therapy consists of bringing problems and their possible solutions into the present. The present can change the past and create new alternative narratives that again will have significance for the future. The focus is no longer on guilt but on curiosity, understanding, and reconciliation. The understanding of the anxiety is not locked up in a childhood that cannot be changed, but in a narrative of adolescence that one may dream of confronting. They walk on tiptoe, become impatient, but dare not say anything for fear of increasing his anxiety. Narrative therapy—whether within the psychoanalytic or the family therapeutic tradition—deals with topics connected to time, to experience, and also to identity. Daniel Stern discusses the strong tendency to emphasize language in preference to action.
