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Narrative psychotherapy with children and adolescents. To demonstrate the integration of developmental theory with narrative approaches to psychotherapy as a means of accessing self-development during childhood and adolescence. Published literature and the author's experience in using narrative therapy with an 8-year-old and his foster mother. When informed by developmental theory, narrative approaches can be used effectively with children and adolescents to assist them in constructing positive life stones that can influence their identity formation. Child psychotherapy, life stones, narrative psychotherapy, self development
Advanced practice psychiatric nurses who work with children and adolescents are often faced with the challenge of integrating an understanding of development into their choice of psychotherapy models for practice. With the exception of play therapy and expressive therapies, most models of psychotherapy have been written with the assumption that the clients are adults. Theories of human behavior that underlie these therapy models are likewise frequently derived from adult levels of understanding and functioning. Thus, a clinician in child psychiatry who aspires to practice from a theoretically derived, evidence-based psychotherapy model is often faced with the need to adapt the approaches of the model to the developmental level of his/her clients. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how developmental theory informs the application of narrative approaches to psychotherapy with children and adolescents.
Narrative approaches to psychotherapy are derived from postmodern philosophies that emphasize the significance of shared language in the social construction of reality (Anderson, 1995; Corey, 2001; Murray, 1995; White & Epston, 1990). Social constructionism holds that individual behavior, relationships, aspirations, and expectations emanate from the social construction of self, formed through shared language. From this perspective, one's view of reality, and ultimately one's view of self, is always a selective representation. It is never possible to narrate all of one's life experiences: some experiences are attended to and interpreted, while others are pruned from awareness. The selective attention to events that become incorporated in a life story is based upon the individual's dominant beliefs about self and attributions assigned by others. In the interest of coherence, narrated experiences congeal around consistent themes in a story line. Behavior follows language, reinforcing and perpetuating a particular life story, to the exclusion of other possibilities. Once formed as a reasonable representation...