Journal May 2026 Release_Full Edition - Flipbook - Page 60
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when discussing the craft of narrative questions. Let’s take a closer look at this
idea for the purpose of better understanding how the notion of unique outcomes
came to be.
“News” isn’t new unless what’s new about it is newsworthy
In what is consider to be one of Michael Whites most groundbreaking articles,
“Negative Explanation, Restraint, and Double Description: A Template for Family
Therapy” (1986), Michael argues that change within family systems can occur
when “news of difference” – otherwise known as information about difference
(Bateson, 1979) – breaks through the bulwark of established “presuppositions,
premises, and expectations that make up the family members’ map of the world”.
The ability to select out and respond to information about difference
depends very much upon the recipient's restraints, the network of
presuppositions. This network provides a map that is the context for
the receipt of new information that ascribes meaning to percepts.
News (information about difference) of events "out there" is
transformed into descriptions in the form of words, figures, or
pictures, and it becomes "stories" via explanation (p. 1).
Difference-making news (information) can only be noticed as having the potential
to make a difference when it is different enough to be noticed as distinct, such
that the new information might endure as a meaningful meaning-making
resource. When families come into therapy, rehearsed meaning-saturated stories
are shared about the problem that has come to make trouble for the family; what
Linde Hildemann called ‘problem-saturated stories.’ These stories, supported by a
host of resource-rich stock plots, supply members in the family with knowledge to
map their understandings with explanations for why the problem. These plots are
embedded in culture and are circulated in society through various sites of
distribution, such as entertainment media, and "tell" of what’s normal, healthy,
developmentally appropriate, and so forth.
News, new information that can make a difference within a family system, can
only break through if the news is different (interesting, sparkly, compelling,
Animative Descriptions and Vivifying Discovery: Inviting Clients Into The Marvel Of Their Understory
Journal of Contemporary Narrative Therapy, May 2026 Release, p. 52-79.
www.journalnft.com
