Suggested citation:
Kelly, T. L. (1998). "Towards a "Common Sense" Deconstruction in Narrative Therapy." (Published in Narrative News Network, Australia, April 2002. From a graduate paper, Portland State University, October 1998). Portland, OR: Author.
Introduction
Narrative is that structure which has historically been considered what we use to make sense of things. Hayden White has called narrative a metacode for making sense. "To raise the question of the nature of narrative is to invite reflection on the very nature of culture and possibly even the nature of humanity itself ...far from being one code among many that a culture may utilize for endowing experience with meaning, narrative is a metacode, a human universal on the basis of which transcultural messages about the nature of a shared reality can be transmitted." (H. White, 1987) Narrative is subject to cultural, interpersonal, linguistic and cognitive variables.
In his "Notes Toward a Phenomenology of Narrative," Christian Metz, a theorist of film and semiotics, summarizes qualities for a definition of narrative:
A narrative is a temporal sequence, doubly so in that it is framed by "the time of the thing told and the time of the telling."
A narrative is a "discourse", by which he means that it is "made by someone" or some(ones). It is "language being performed" as oppposed to language as a potential but static system.
Its recognizable character as a narrative object results in the understanding of the recited object as unreal, as separatedly, even only slightly "from the fullness of here and now."
Its most "basic units" are events, ("successive predications").
A narrative "represents one of the great anthropological forms of perception (for the 'consumers' of narratives), as well as of operation (for the inventors of narratives) (Metz, 1991).
Narrative Therapy
According to Bill Lax, one of the directors of Narrative on Tour, The Dulwich Centre (where he practices, in Adelaide, Australia) premises "Narrative Therapy" on the idea that people's lives and relationships are shaped by the stories that people tell and engage in to give meaning to their experiences. We construct certain habits and relationships that make up ways of life by staying true to these internalized stories. A "Narrative Therapist" assists persons to resolve problems by enabling them to deconstruct the meaning of the reality of their lives and relationships, and to show the difference between the reality and the internalized stories of self. The narrative therapist encourages clients to re-author their own lives according to alternative and preferred stories of self-identity, and according to preferred ways of life. Narrative therapy has particular links with family therapy and those therapies which have a common respect for the client, and an acknowledgement of the importance of context, interaction, bonding, and the social constructlon of meaning (Lax, 1999).
Narrative therapy arises out of recognition for a postmodern view of how we internalize information, as opposed to the modernist "talking cures" upon which psychology has relied upon. By that reliance failing to "cure" clients, psychology has shown that it is time to move beyond a modernist perspective of self-identity. In postmodernself-identity, the search for "truth" is complicated by the natural impulse to capture a static "truth" in a system in which all stated "truths" are co-dependent. They flow, like a narrative, and each part counts on the other parts to make the internalized story "true." A deconstruction of those parts of the internalized story can reveal exactly where a falsehood may be construed as a truth, simply by virtue of having been interjected to fill gaps in the natural inclination for narrative flow, to explain the unknown, or to build segues so that the story can continue to validate self-identity.
Narrative Theory
Traditionally speaking, narratologists for the most part have concentrated their criticisms on the narrative plot [1]. Contemporary narratologists have brought to the party an emphasis on the narrative act, or the presentation of a story, as a key component of the story's meaning. (Culler, 1983). Henry McDonald in his thesis on Narratology and Wittgenstein argues that the more definite the account of story or plot, the more indefinite the account of the narrative act -- and vice versa (McDonald, 1994). Along that same argument, in his discusssion of statis in relation to narrativity, George Baker notes that statis is often opposed to narrativity, and "has been regarded as that force which disrupts the repressions of narrativity, or conversely, as a force of repression itself, as an imposition of the monolithic and unmoving." [2] (Baker, 1996)
Abbe Pierre Daniel Huet, in Treatise On The Origins of Novels (1669) wrote: "This inclination to fables which is common to all men doesn't derive from reason, imitation, or custom; It is natural to them, as a basic disposition of the mind and soul; for the desire to learn and to understand is peculiar to man and distinguishes him from the other animals no less than his reason." (emphasis mine) [3] Collectively, these approaches to narrative can be summed up as concentrating on three basic parts of meaning in narrative: the story itself, the telling of the story, and the cognition of the story.
For the purposes of deconstruction, however, one must be certain (as far as one can be) what actually constitutes "the text" of the story. Roland Barthes defines an ideal textuality:
Theories of Deconstruction
The narrative therapist is actively involved from the outset in delving into the meanings of the client's life. The notion of looking for hidden meaning has an interesting history, deriving from the work of French philosophers such as Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. Derrida, in short, says "it" all comes down to a sort of yin-yang dichotomy. "It" cannot exist without its opposite, and derives its meaning in part from that polar opposite. Derrida, however, was not so good at explaining what "it" is, so he pretty much always called it "text." (He used the coin analogy to play with his concept - two sides of a coin make up the coin, though the two sides are polar opposites and never see their own reflection nor each other.) (Derrida, 1993) So, deconstruction is basically a process of tearing "it" down to to its root state of polar opposites - always aiming for annihilation of the meaning of the thing itself (again, akin to a Hindu or Buddhist conceptual view of reality) but, due to the annoying omnipresence of infinity, the annihilation can never be complete.
The first four notes in Michael White's outline on Narrative Therapy (M. White, 1997) can be a starting point for four methods to deconstruct from a narrative approach: [4]
2. These are expressions of people's experiences of a world that is lived through, and all expressions of lived experience engage people in interpretive acts.
3. It is through these interpretive acts that people give meaning to their experiences of the world. These interpretive acts render people's experiences of life sensible to themselves and to others. Meaning does not pre-exist the interpretation of experience.
4. Expressions of experience are units of meaning and experience. In all considerations of people's expressions of life, meaning and experience are inseparable.
White most likely had not intended for these four points to be parts of a method for deconstruction. However, I find that in context and meaning, they can be useful in conjunction with the very practical nature of Chip Morningstar's five steps of deconstruction: [5]
2. Decide what the text or object is "saying."
3. Identify within the reading a distinction of some sort. This can be either something which is described or referred to by the text directly or it can be inferred from the presumed cultural context of a hypothetical reader. It is a convention of the genre to choose a duality, such as man/woman, good/evil, earth/sky, chocolate/vanilla, etc.
4. Convert your chosen distinction into a "hierarchical opposition" by asserting that the text claims or presumes a particular primacy, superiority, privilege or importance to one side or the other of the distinction.
5. Derive another reading of the text, one in which it is interpreted as referring to itself. In particular, find a way to read it as a statement which contradicts or undermines either the original reading or the ordering of the hierarchical opposition. (Morningstar, 1993)
Conclusion
So, using the first four notes in White's outline as a premise and Morningstar's five steps as a way of making sense of the premise, a deconstruction in narrative therapy could conceivably go like this:
2. These are expressions of people's experiences of a world that is lived through, and all expressions of lived experience are subject to interpretation (cognition). The narrative therapist must decide then what "the text" is saying.
3. It is through these interpretive acts that people give meaning to their experiences of the world. These interpretive acts render people's experiences of life sensible to themselves and to others. Meaning does not pre-exist the interpretation of experience. One way to bring to light the meaning of the text is by a process of elimination of what the text is not saying, by identifying that which would be considered its polar opposite, so as to create a balance of the duality within the text.
4. Expressions of experience are units of meaning and experience. In all considerations of people's expressions of life, meaning and experience are inseparable. Locate"segues" in the structure of the meaning and the text, and point out to the client how these segues are not part of the meaning itself as much as part of the objective construction material of the story one is telling oneself and others about oneself.
5. One way to reveal these segues is to derive another reading of the text, one in which it is interpreted as referring to itself, and which is not referring to the client.
Footnotes
[1] Traditionally, "plot" means the causal ordering of a basic sequence of events, as the defining feature of fiction, according to McDonald's reading of E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1927). (This footnote, and this section of this paper, relies in part on the sources culled from Henry McDonald's essay: The Narrative Act: Wittgenstein and Narratology.)
[2] Baker uses this terminology in an essay about photography but he draws it from discussions about textuality, in general; and about Freudian psychoanalytic text and Roland Barthes.
[3] This premise, in my view, is true for both structuralist and post-structuralist criticisms, and for frame narratives (for those who treat criticism of frame narration as apart from either a structuralist or post-structural methodology).
[4] Michael White is arguably the "mother" of all narrative therapy theories and methodology.
[5] With all due respect, Morningstar came up with his five (tongue-in-cheek) steps after reading and applying common sense to Jonathan Culler's book, On Deconstruction, cited in the bibliography. These five steps make sense and have always provided me with the best "fresh start" when applied to a difficult deconstructive analysis.
Bibliography
Baker, George. 1996. "Photography between Narrativity and Stasis: August Sander, Degeneration, and the Decay of the Portrait." October76; Sping 1996.
Barthes, Roland. 1974. S/Z. Trans. Richard Miller. New York: Hill & Wang.
Culler, Jonathan. 1983. On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism After Structuralism.. Cornell University Press.
Derrida, Jacques. 1993. Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money. University of Chicago, 1993.
Landow, George. 1992. Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Lax, Bill. 1999. "Definition of Narrative Therapy." Dulwich Centre Conference on Narrative, February 1999.
McDonald, Henry. 1994. "The Narrative Act: Wittgenstein and Narratology". Surfaces, Vol. IV, 1994. University of Montreal (Canada) Press.
Metz, Christian. 1991. Translator: Michael Taylor. Film Language : A Semiotics of the Cinema. University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Morningstar, Chip. 1993. "How To Deconstruct Almost Anything: My Postmodern Adventure."
White, Hayden. 1987. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
White, Michael. 1997. "Narrative Therapy Outline." Presented at the Dulwich Centre Conference on Narrative, February 1999.