ABSTRACT
The purpose of narrative inquiry is not to persuade someone to see things one's way, or to solve problems for them. It is to create opportunities for people to think about their stories in new ways. This chapter is devoted to the art of narrative inquiry. It briefs the guidance that describes what we think is effective practice in this respect. The guidance draws principally on the ideas of a group of Italian psychiatrists known as the Milan Team. The Milan Team proposed three guidelines or principles for effective inquiry, or what they termed "interviewing": hypothesising, circularity and neutrality. Later, one of the team, Gianfranco Cecchin, proposed a fourth principle: curiosity. The principles of the Milan Team were subsequently developed into a framework for questioning by Karl Tomm, a Canadian professor of psychiatry. He called it "interventive interviewing". Tomm divided questions into four categories: lineal, circular, strategic and reflexive.
