Comparing Systemic Models

Witnessing and Positioning: Structuring

Narrative Therapy with Families and

Couples

Jill Freedman, MSW Evanston Family Therapy Center, Evanston

In this paper, the author describes a way of structuring family therapy that fits with the narrative metaphor, creat- ing space for stories to be understood, deconstructed and further developed. In this process, people move between positions of telling and witnessing. Family members engage in shared understanding and meaning making.

Keywords: narrative therapy, positioning, outsider-witness, couple therapy, family therapy

Key Points

1 For narrative therapists, family therapy is a context where we can deconstruct problematic stories, tell and retell preferred stories, and witness family stories and individual stories of other family members.

2 A witnessing structure in which family members listen to another member tell his or her story can contrib- ute to understanding and meaning making.

3 Through responding to questions we ask members in the witnessing position, they can contribute to thick- ening preferred stories.

4 If it is difficult for family members to listen and understand while witnessing, we can facilitate a particular position from which to listen, such as listening as one would to a friend.

5 If more distance would be helpful for people to really listen and understand, we can offer other options, such as using video so that the witnesses are actually hearing and seeing family members tell their stories at a later time.

The narrative metaphor suggests that people make sense of their lives through stories (Brown & Augusta-Scott, 2007; Duvall & Beres, 2011; Freedman & Combs, 1996; Madigan, 2011; White & Epston, 1990; White, 2007; Zimmerman & Dickerson, 1994). Although each of us has a huge number of experiences, only a few of these become the stories that shape us and through which we shape our lives. Some of these stories are about individual people and others are about family and relationships. When couples or families come to therapy each person may have different stories that are prominent for them and that they think are most relevant; there may be some shared stories that different family members tell; and there may be similar stories that different family members tell but that they have made different meaning of, perhaps emphasizing different aspects of the same event or maybe understanding the same event in different ways.

Narrative therapists focus on rich story development – the telling and retelling of pre- ferred stories. Rather than a single-storied life we are interested in helping people develop

Address for correspondence: Jill Freedman, MSW, Evanston Family Therapy Center, 1212 1/2 Elmwood Avenue, Evanston, Illinois 60202 USA. narrativetherapy@sbcglobal.net Jill Freedman is the Director of the Evanston Family Therapy Center. With Gene Combs she is the author of ‘Narrative Therapy: The social construction of preferred realities’ (W.W. Norton).

Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy 2014, 35, 20–30 doi: 10.1002/anzf.1043

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multiple stories. Our focus is not on solving or eliminating problem stories. We are interested in multiple stories contributing to people’s experience. Often when a problem story becomes a single strand of a multi-storied life, the problem looks quite different or becomes less significant and people have different options about how they relate to it.

Additionally, we think of our identities as both storied and relational (Combs & Freedman, 1999; Freedman & Combs, 2004; Hedtke & Winslade, 2004; White, 1989; White, 2007). We make ourselves up as we go along in relation to each other. So not only are the stories we tell ourselves important, but the stories we tell others about our- selves and our lives, and the stories others hear us tell, and the stories that they tell about us, are important because they shape our identities.

We think of family therapy as a context where we can deconstruct problematic stories, tell and retell preferred stories, and witness family stories and stories of other family members.

This process is not quite as simple as it sounds. One complication is that people often orient to therapy not as a place to tell and retell stories, but as a place in which a ‘neutral’ third party will weigh in on different versions of a problem or advise people in terms of solutions or evaluate the situation to determine the ‘real problem’ or ask questions to connect the problem with family history or teach communication skills.

We are up to something quite different.

A Witnessing Structure

In order to accomplish the telling, retelling, and witnessing of stories, it is very useful to set up a structure. We can call this a witnessing structure (Freedman & Combs, 2004, 2008). As one family member tells a story we ask the others to be in a reflect- ing or witnessing position to hear and understand the story as it is told by the first family member. We then ask those who have been acting as witnesses to contribute to the telling and meaning making of the story. We think of their contribution as a retelling that thickens and adds richness to the story. The original speaker becomes a witness to the retelling of the story that he or she has told. We may then ask ques- tions to invite the family member who spoke originally to engage in a retelling of the retelling. Through this process family members gain understanding of each other’s stories and engage in developing and thickening preferred stories.

Initiating and/or Negotiating a Witnessing Structure

We can initiate this structure informally by beginning to engage in it or we can explicitly describe it and ask family members to join in. We usually begin informally with the therapist simply talking directly to one person and respectfully referring to the others in the third person. It is important to watch other family members to make sure that they are engaging in the process. If they seem not to be engaged or if they interrupt, it can be helpful to explain the process. We might say something such as, Would it be okay if I talk to Bethany for a bit? Then I’ll ask you some questions about our conversation. At another point each of you will also have some time to talk and I’ll ask everyone else to listen. If family members continue to interrupt or indicate by their actions that they disagree it can be helpful to reassure them about how we are listen- ing by saying something like, I am guessing that your experience of this and what you think is most important to talk about may be different than what Bethany is describing.

Witnessing and Positioning

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I understand that family members often have different understandings of the same events. I am keeping that in mind and I will make sure there is time for us to listen to what you think is most important, too.

If even after this kind of reassurance family members continue to interrupt or state their disagreements we may say something like, Have you had a conversation already about this? Did it go this way with each of you saying how you disagree and what you think? Was it helpful? Is it okay if we try something different? These questions pave the way for explicitly negotiating the witnessing structure.

We may say, In our experience when people talk directly to each other about some- thing problematic, what they are listening for is how they disagree or what they want to say to counter what is being said. It is extremely hard to really listen and understand when your attention is on what you want to say next or on how someone is wrong or how they are leaving something out. We would like to create a space where you can really listen to each other. Would that be okay?

Our questions – Is it okay if we try something different? and Would that be okay? – are real questions. On occasions people have told us that they have not spoken at all about something and that they were waiting until they came to therapy to say some- thing to other family members, which they would like to do directly. We are negotia- ble about the structure. Usually though, we find the witnessing structure extremely helpful and most families and couples are happy to join in with this kind of conversa- tion.

Unpacking Problem Stories and Identities

Once we have set up the structure our task is to ask questions that will eventually help family members move into the development of preferred stories. In order to be able to do this it is usually important to have some understanding of the problem and its effects. Often it is very meaningful for people to have the experience of other family members listening to and understanding what they find problematic. As we lis- ten we can ask questions to deconstruct or unpack the problematic story. Through deconstruction we hope to expose how the problem was constructed. We are inter- ested in deconstruction to the extent that we can develop gaps that allow people to see beyond the problems to other events that may be openings to preferred stories and so that problems do not take over people’s identities. One very basic practice of deconstruction is externalizing. Through externalizing conversations we unpack prob- lem identities that are constructed through psychological and linguistic practices that identify people as problems (Epston, 1993; White, 1988/1989; Russell & Carey, 2004).

For example, a family came to therapy because in their words, Sean, the 7-year- old was ‘fearful’. His father had worries that a boy at the end of first grade who was afraid to spend the night at a friend’s house, clung to his parents’ legs at the top of the sledding hill as the other kids reveled in the snow, and would not go on a class field trip unless one of his parents went along, was likely to be made fun of by the other kids and that that was just the beginning of things that Sean deprived himself of.

At the beginning of my conversation with Sean he didn’t answer verbally but he did nod for yes and shake his head for no. In this way we determined that he agreed

Jill Freedman

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with his parents that the fears were a problem and that they were even responsible for denying him a voice in the conversation with me. When I asked Sean if the fear talked to him he shook his head no. When I asked if it showed him pictures, first he shook his head again but then stopped and said, ‘Sometimes’.