Journal May 2026 Release_Full Edition - Flipbook - Page 28
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therapy. It wasn’t until the late nineteenth century that psychology became a
scientific discipline, separated from the vital and the spiritual through a logical
positivist emphasis on what is measurable, generalizable, and evidencebased. This framing of psychology is less relevant in light of current views, such as
quantum research and new materialism. Alan Lightman (2023) broadens my
understanding of science by aligning it more closely with art, nature, and wonder.
Every atom of the universe mixes and scatters the past, present, and future,
reenergizing a sense of awe and belonging that extends far beyond psychology’s
reductive accounts of the human and more-than-human world (Lightman, 2023).
Across cultures and time, science, art, and narrative converge in the storytelling of
the earth and the cosmos. Art connects me to the miraculous in ways that
psychology often denies.
Aesthetics remind me that narrative therapy can evoke virtual energies and
encounters that confront the operations of modern power. Our artistic
expressions and therapeutic conversations can spark creative resistance to the
domestication of daily life. David Epston and Michael White celebrate Bourdieu’s
exoticizing of the familiar, which highlights the extraordinary in the ordinary
(Cotter, 2023). Whereas psychology can support forms of rationalism that
regulate conduct, art and narrative can contest the tyrannies of spirit that
separate us from untamed innovation. White and Epston write that narrative
therapy aims to challenge “… the techniques that subjugate persons to a
dominant ideology” (1990, p. 29). Art offers multi-perspectival alternatives that
free us from fixed mindsets and overturn dominant truth claims. Incorporating a
variety of visual, spatial, and temporal languages into narrative therapy can
disrupt systemic ideas that reduce mental health to a single story of isolated
individual traits and behaviors.
I am becoming more aware of the connections between my clients’ inner and
outer experiences, beyond psychology’s socially constructed divisions. One client,
Jenny, is considering her next steps and says, “We’re all participating in this life
thing. It’s not about me. We’re all woven into the fabric as a collective.”
Concerned about the world, my client Christopher says, “… fear overwhelms
everything, and it becomes a power struggle that dims everyone’s light.”
Breaking the Frame: Aesthetic Encounters with Narrative Practice – Part Three
Journal of Contemporary Narrative Therapy, May 2026 Release, p. 25-51.
www.journalnft.com
