Journal May 2026 Release_Full Edition - Flipbook - Page 69
68
Unstories are the “antithesis of a story” (Paljakka & Carlson, 2024). They displace
the story-ability of lived experience by centering ideas rather than telling tales of
the terrible, magnificent, strange, and wonderful things that result in a
protagonist who struggles, puzzles, pushes, and/or prevails over problems. They
make fallow the landscapes where meaning-making might otherwise take
place. Explanations like complicated grief, personality disorder, or major
depressive disorder obscure what might otherwise be revealed if the story of
what the person is up against were more thoroughly developed. In many kinds of
therapy, clinical descriptions for problems are offered as a starting point for
providing help, often resulting in conjecture masquerading as therapy; a plot that
is “something mechanical encrusted upon the living” (Bergson, 1900, as cited by
Baroni, 2015).
Narrative therapy is interested in thickening stories up by rescuing details,
resurrecting and historicizing experience (White & Epston, 1990), and making new
meaning – unique meaning – in the rendering of stories that might not otherwise
be crafted due to the obscuring nature of professionalized language. Below is a
continuation of David and Lee-Marie’s conversation. In our continued analysis of
how questions help to bring a unique experience to life, such that they might help
to thicken up a person’s storied experience, we are going to look at how David
uses his questions to set the stage for storytelling by painting, with poetic
description, potential leads for Lee-Marie to narrate her life further. I would like
to call attention to how David uses animative language and energizing verbs to
intrigue the curiosity of Lee-Marie.
Let's pick up where we left off…
David:
By any chance, were you the apple of your grandfather's eye?
Lee-Marie: I think so...YES! (nodding her head in agreement and smiling
generously).
David:
Can you tell us a story that might convey that to us?
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
