ABSTRACT
Occasionally a therapist decides to use a method that focuses on specific traumatic experiences, whereas the client would actually prefer to relate the whole story, because they feel a need to testify everything about their experiences. This need of the client may conflict with the focus required by a detailed procedure such as exposure or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). Testimony therapy was developed in South America when psychologists discovered that writing testimonies for lawyers had a 'cleansing effect' on the health of clients. It is used in the Netherlands in the form of a protocol of twelve sessions in which clients relate their complete chronological life story in a structured way. The essence of narrative techniques is that the traumatic episode is embedded in the client's life as their story. Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) is a brief form of treatment that was developed by Schauer and colleagues as a combination of narrative therapy, testimony therapy and exposure.
