Journal October 2026 Special DISPUK Release_Full Version - Flipbook - Page 116
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but wonder what it must be like for them. Does it also make them freeze up and
withdraw? And soon I also started to wonder if I might be one of those people
who, every now and then in connection with my work—and in life in general—
calls others something that makes them cringe?
Perspectives on Narrative Practice
I have been enthusiastic about narrative practice throughout my professional life.
Since 2004, I have been employed at DISPUK, where I both teach narrative
practice and, as part of my work, conduct conversations and, among other things,
work with conflict management.
When I was hired more than twenty years ago, Michael White and Maggie Carey
were regular guests at DISPUK, teaching both our students and the staff. Since
then, a string of narrative-inspired practitioners—such as John Winslade, Art
Fischer, and most recently Travis Heath, Tom Carlson, and Sanni Paljakka—have
regularly visited us and shared their practices with us.
Ever since I first saw Michael White and David Epston at work on a slightly blurry
VHS tape, I have been inspired and moved by seeing the people they spoke with
emerge in new ways in the conversations. People who, often both by their own
perception and that of the world around them, had been regarded as having
serious problems, as powerless, hopeless, or not good enough—who, in the
conversations I witnessed, in an often loitering journey between questions and
answers, gradually emerged in new ways. Both for us who witnessed it, and
apparently often for themselves as well.
These were conversations in which we heard about small and large steps and
about initiatives people had taken. They were conversations in which I was often
moved when I heard these people talk about their thoughts and intentions, and
how they had tried, in often creative and fearless ways, to take care of what was
important to them. And these were conversations where I was touched when
they spoke of the people around them—friends, neighbors, grandparents, stuffed
animals, and all sorts of other wonderful beings—who had inspired or supported
them and had mattered to them and their sense of purpose in life.
Afterword: What Is the Spirit of Narrative Practice?
Journal of Contemporary Narrative Therapy, October 2026 Special Release, p. 113-130
www.journalcnt.com
