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3. Catherine initiates a conversation with Sandrine (who is not there) through
Sophie, addressing Sandrine directly.
4. Sophie 8plays9 Sandrine. This conversation is recorded.
5. During their next scheduled session, Sophie plays the recorded
conversation to Sandrine, and they use it as a basis for continuing the
conversation.
But before going any further, I would like to clarify some ideas regarding the
terminology chosen in French. Insider/Outsider have been translated literally as
Intérieur/Extérieur, which I feel diminishes the meaning. Without insider
knowledge, the outsider witness can only make assumptions. Here, Sophie was
introduced by Sandrine to her life story. In French, I would rather say initié, which
is another meaning for insider. When she speaks as Sandrine, Sophie therefore
does not intervene from outside this story, as an outsider witness would, but
from within the story.
It is therefore more about acknowledgment than resonance. The idea is not to ask
Sophie how Sandrine's story resonates in her own life. The idea is to show
Sandrine how much her story has been acknowledged by Sophie. Again, our
French word reconnaître seems a poor translation of the English 8acknowledge9.
Here is what I found when I looked up the etymology of acknowledge, intuitively
finding the French verb reconnaître too weak to convey the narrative meaning, or
at least what I believe it to be: a mixture of Middle English acnowen (to admit, to
show one's knowledge) and knowlechen (to discover, to reveal). There seems to
be a difference in English between recognise and acknowledge: acknowledge is
more than recognise (but maybe I9m wrong), and that is why the word is very
narrative. To recognize is to identify a past knowledge internally; to acknowledge
is to accept this knowledge as true publicly. It seems like 8acknowledge9 needs an
audience. This is the idea I use when I write letters of recommendation for the
people I coach, letters in which I acknowledge the person's (preferred) story to
the point of vouching for them to others, which gives the acknowledgment an
additional and very powerful dimension, regardless of how the person
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
