ABSTRACT
Postmodern thought, currently permeating many disciplines, argues for the subjective nature of knowing and rejects the modernist “search for scientific truths, the quests for certainty, objectivity and rationality” (Ornstein and Ganzer, 2005, p. 566). Postmodernism encompasses diverse points of view, but its underlying constructivist premise posits “that there is no fixed reality, only constructed versions of reality determined by the perspective of the one doing the describing” (DeLaCour, 1996, p. 214). So, while people are affected by their social and cultural contexts, they are nevertheless active agents in their own lives, have the capacity to change and to create meaning. Constructivist thinking has contributed to relational therapy (and relational psychoanalysis) and to narrative theory, the subjects of this chapter. Resilience, discussed in the final section of this chapter, is a corollary issue.
