Gergen, K. J. (1992).  Beyond Narrative in the Negotiation of Therapeutic Meaning.  In Sheila McNamee and Kenneth J. Gergen (Eds).  Therapy as Social Construction.  London: Sage, 166-185. 

In my opinion Gergen is one of the most interesting social constructionist thinkers for us therapists.  He has had a big influence on the work of people like Anderson & Goolishian, Peggy Penn, Lynn Hoffman, Tom Andersen and others.  Although he is not a therapist, he has published some very relevant articles about therapy. Notably his article in the textbook, Therapy as Social Construction, Sage Publications, London, is important, not only for family therapists, but for other therapists as well. 

In that article (Beyond Narrative in the Negotiation of Therapeutic Meaning) Gergen and co-author John Kaye examine therapy from a social constructionist perspective.  They talk about a postmodern approach, as opposed to a modernist approach. More importantly they explore the metaphor "narrative" and it's pragmatic relevance for therapists: They ask, "In precisely what way(s) is the narrative to be useful?" Is a story a kind of lens that determines how we see the world, or is it an internal model of the world that guides our behavior?  After describing these two models of narrative, they raise critical arguments against these conceptions of narrative and propose we go beyond narrative.  They reject the narrative model on the grounds that it is individualist (p.178) and opt instead for an action model. Although narrative may function well in some circumstances it functions miserably in others (p.179), and so they opt,  instead, for narrative multiplicity (p.179). Each person is to have multiple inner lenses that remain fluid and are produced in a collaborative dialogue that generates meaning (p.181). "For the postmodern practitioner a multiplicity of self-accounts is invited, but a commitment to none." (p.180) 

This has serious consequences for therapeutic practices.  One consequence that may be quite  unexpected for a lot of therapists is that the simple adoption of the narrative metaphor is rejected as a guiding metaphor for psychotherapy: "We would argue, rather, for embedding the emphasis on narrative and narrative thinking in a broader concern with the generation of meaning via dialogue."  (p.181)  This results in a criticism of Michael White's approach: "Re-authoring or re-storying seems to us a first-order therapeutic approach, one which implies the replacement of a dysfunctional master narrative with a more functional one.  The new narrative may in some ways be an improvement, but, at the same time it  carries the seeds of a prescriptive rigidity - one which might also serve to confirm an illusion that it is possible to develop a set of principles or codes which can be invariantly applied irrespective of context."  (p.181) 

Instead of White's approach Gergen and Kaye  seem to favor Anderson & Goolishian's ideas about the importance of the conversation-metaphor as a context in which new meaning can be generated. 

Isn't this food for thought? 
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