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clients to apprehend and appreciate our respect for them? How does
one dignify the other? Here, clients, in a manner of speaking, take
into their own custody the regard of another. In the case of OWPs,
the regard is conveyed by strangers or outsiders; in the case of IWPs,
the regard is conveyed by an intimate other (e.g., their therapist)
(Bakhtin, 1993; Carlson & Haire, 2014; Levinas, 1981). Both OWPs
and IWPs are descendants in a long line of similar performative
narrative practices (e.g., consulting your consultant, co-research, the
articulation and archiving of insider knowledges, performative letter
writing, collective practices, relational accountability in couples, etc.).
(Carlson & Epston, p.19).
More specifically, David Epston and Tom Carlson (as cited in Sax, 2017) describe
this new practice as follows:
Through a one-session performance, clients become witnesses to a
hope-biased portrayal of their lives as performed by their therapist.
[&] As a result, clients become both an insider and outsider to their
own lived experiences and are afforded the unusual opportunity to
experience their own selves as if they were an 8other.9 From this
insider/outsider vantage point, they are able to experience
heightened levels of meaning making, self-compassion and selfappreciation. (para. 2).
Here is the process. To make things clearer and help you understand who is who
and who does what, I am applying it directly to the case that Sophie and I present
in this article:
1. Sophie brings up for supervision the story of a woman she is coaching,
Sandrine. Sandrine is not present; it is a classic supervision session, albeit a
narrative one!
2. Sophie expresses the difficulties she feels she is encountering at this stage.
I Could See Myself in Her … Practising Insider Witnessing in Supervision
Journal of Contemporary Narrative Therapy, August 2026 Release, p. 111-135.
www.journalcnt.com
