British Journal of Guidance & Counselling,

Vol. 30, No. 2, 2002

Foucault and the turn to narrative

therapy
A. C. (TINA) BESLEY
Faculty of Education, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QH, UK

ABSTRACT Narrative therapy evolved in the family therapy arena in the late 1980s in Australia and
New Zealand. Since then it has been extended to other counselling settings and a burgeoning literature
has arisen around it. It is situated in the social constructionist, postmodern, poststructuralist discourses
that challenge and force a re-evaluation of humanism and traditional psychological and counselling
discourses. Its pioneering authors,White and Epston, state clearly that, amongst others, they have been
influenced by the work of the French theorist Michel Foucault to not only question the dominant
assumptions underlying humanism and psychology, but also to address issues of meaning, subjectivity,
power and ethics. This paper briefly outlines some features of narrative therapy, examines the
Foucauldian themes in White and Epston’s theory, and explores narrative therapy’s poststructuralist
challenge to humanist assumptions in `therapy culture’.

Introduction
This paper has a theoretical orientation set out in three major sections, a brief
introduction and a conclusion. The first major section explores what narrative
therapy is and the second uncovers some of the poststructuralist and Foucauldian
themes in narrative therapy. The last major section explores how, by taking a
Foucauldian, poststructuralist stance, narrative therapy challenges many of the
humanist assumptions in `therapy culture’ and in traditional psychological and
counselling discourses.
Narrative therapy was initially developed in 1989 by Michael White (Adelaide,
Australia) and David Epston (Auckland, New Zealand) as a form of family therapy
(White & Epston, 1989, 1990). Narrative therapy is part of a broader movement
within philosophy, the humanities and the social sciencesÐ the linguistic turn (Rorty,
1967)Ð which promised agreement among philosophers by shifting discussion to the
meta-level to study the language of representation rather than the referents or objects
themselves. The turn to `narrative’ , while part of the wider linguistic turn, can also be
seen as a response to the formalism and scientific pretensions of structuralism by
poststructuralist thinkers (Onega & Landa, 1996). Poststructuralism is explored
further in the second major section of the paper.

ISSN 0306± 9885/print/ISSN 1469± 3534/online/02/020125± 00 € 2002 Careers Research and Advisory Centre
DOI: 10.1080/03069880220128010
126 A. C. (Tina) Besley

This paper provides only an overview of narrative therapy because detailed

descriptions of the main features, arguments and practice-related examples are
provided elsewhere (see, for example, Freedman & Combs, 1996; McLeod, 1996;
Monk et al., 1997; Parry & Doan, 1994; Smith & Nylund, 1997; White & Epston,
1989, 1990; Winslade & Monk, 1999; Payne, 2000; Speedy, 2000). Narrative therapy
was not developed from psychological discourse, but is a synthesis of the work of
several social theorists including Foucault and is philosophically grounded in
poststructuralism. It `represents an alternative to the pragmatic, empiricist, instru-
mental therapies and health-care systems that have come to dominate the global
psychotherapy scene in recent years’ (McLeod, 2000a, p. 333). The way narrative
therapy challenges and forces a re-evaluation of the dominant and to a large extent
unquestioned/unquestionable `truths’ of traditional psychological and counselling
discourses could be considered something of a `counter-therapy’ and is examined in
the last section of the paper.
The importance of language and meaning as elucidated by poststructuralist
thinkers and especially by Michel Foucault has been profound in many social
sciences, but had been largely unexplored by writers in counselling until White and
Epston’s (1989) pioneering formulation of narrative therapy emerged. On the
poststructuralist account, it is held that language not only affects how we frame our
notions of the `self’ and `identity’, but also how counsellors deal with people and the
meaning they make of the world they live in. In the late 1990s an emerging discourse
in the British Journal of Guidance and Counselling has discussed the narrative approach
(McLeod, 1996), traditional assumptions of the `self ’ (Edwards & Payne, 1997;
Russell, 1999) and issues in social constructionism (Erwin, 1999; Lynch, 1997;
Russell, 1999). Edwards and Payne (1997) refer to some of Foucault’s work in their
discussion of the self in guidance and McLeod (1996) refers to White and Epston but
not to Foucault. Narrative therapy has tapped into several poststructuralist theorists
and Foucauldian themes.
In his early work, Foucault displayed his professional interest in psychology,
psychopathology, madness and psychiatry (Foucault, 1965, 1973). Later he clarified
his aims:

`My objective . . . has been to create a history of the different modes by

which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects. My work has dealt
with three modes of objectification which transform human beings into
subjects . . . The first is the modes of inquir y which try to give themselves the
status of the sciences . . . In the second part of my work, I have studied the
objectivizing of the subject in what I shall call ª dividing practicesº . . .
Finally, I have sought to studyÐ it is my current workÐ the way a human
being turns him- or herself into a subject. For example, I have chosen the
domain of sexuality . . . Thus it is not power, but the subject, that is the
general theme of my research.

`It is true that I became quite involved with the question of power. It soon
appeared to me that, while the human subject is placed in relations of
 Foucault and the turn to narrative therapy 127

production and of signification, he is equally placed in power relations that

are very complex’ (Foucault, 2001/1982, pp. 326 ± 327).

By taking up poststructuralist and Foucauldian themes and analysis that include an

examination of self, cultural contexts, power/knowledge, the way power relations
shape, legitimise and constitute personal narratives and the assumed neutrality of
institutions (such as counselling)Ð that often seem unaware of their power/
knowledge relationshipsÐ narrative therapy offers new ways of thinking about people
and about therapy and counselling.

What is narrative therapy?

The Dulwich Centre, Adelaide, founded by Michael White, describes narrative
therapy as being premised:

`. . . on the idea that the lives and the relationships of persons are shaped by:
the knowledges and stories that communities of persons negotiate and
engage in to give meaning to their experiences: and certain practices of self
and of relationship that make up ways of life associated with these
knowledges and stories. A narrative therapy assists persons to resolve
problems by: enabling them to separate their lives and relationships from
those knowledges and stories that they judge to be impoverishing; assisting
them to challenge the ways of life that they find subjugating; and,
encouraging persons to re-author their own lives according to alternative
and preferred stories of identity, and according to preferred ways of life.
Narrative therapy has particular links with Family Therapy and those
therapies which have a common ethos of respect for the client, and an
acknowledgement of the importance of context, interaction, and the social
construction of meaning’ (http://www.massey.ac.nz/ ~ Alock/virtual/
narrativ.htm).

From these premises narrative therapy has developed its own specific `language’
or set of terminologies that describes the general sequence of its therapeutic
processes. A detailed explanation of these processes is not pursued in this paper
because they are available elsewhere (see Monk et al., 1997; Payne, 2000; White,
1995, 1997; White & Epston, 1989, 1990; Winslade & Monk, 1999). Instead the
following list is provided as indicative of the terminologies used in narrative therapy
and is compiled from several different sources: problem-saturated descriptions;
dominant stories; externalising and naming the problem using metaphorical language
(`sneaky poo’; `voice of doubt’; `black thoughts’ ); externalising conversations; using
relative influence questions to map influences; externalising internalising discourses;
deconstructing the problem to find searching for alternative stories and unique
outcomes; inviting the person to take a position; client and counsellor uniting against
the problem; using therapeutic documents; constructing a history of the preferred
story; re-authoring the story by telling and re-telling to enrich the self-narrative;
128 A. C. (Tina) Besley

creating an audience of sympathetic outsider witnesses to revised stories; re-

membering; preparing for the future through possibility questions; ending ceremony
(Monk et al., 1997; Payne, 2000; White, 1995, 1997; White & Epston, 1989, 1990;
Winslade & Monk, 1999).
Both the language and how it is used are important. Language can blur, alter or
distort experience as we tell our stories; it can condition how we think, feel, and act and
can be used purposefully as a therapeutic tool (White, 1995). The above list indicates
how narrative therapy often uses familiar words in new and particular ways with new
meanings. Narrative therapy has started to turn the `gaze’ (Foucault’s terminology for
objectification ) back on itself and to decentre the therapist so the person is at the centre
of their own therapy. The language used is deliberately non-sexist, ethnically neutral,
and avoids medical model terms that many mental health professionals use that
unthinkingly objectify and pathologise people (e.g. referrals, case notes, clinical work).
Therefore,White never uses `cases’ or `case histories’ and has replaced the term `client’
with `person’ (Payne, 2000). In the spirit of narrative therapy this paper follows White’s
lead and generally uses `person’ rather than `client’ . `Speaking’ and `voice’ are used as
metaphors for the agency of the client (Drewery & Winslade, 1997, p. 43).
`Externalising the problem’ has shifted to become `externalising conversations’
because it reflects the idea of fluidity and that there is seldom only one problem
(Winslade & Monk, 1999, pp. 36 ± 37). `Externalising’ language is used throughout
therapy because the problem is seen as outside the person, not embodied within as part
of their psyche, personality or being. However, abuse or violence are not addressed in
this manner but are named directly. `Unique outcomes’ has sometimes become
`sparkling moments’ or `unique experiences’ (Bird, 2000).
In the therapeutic conversation narrative therapy uses a variety of techniques to
deconstruct, expose and subvert the dominant patterns of relating; patterns that the
person often finds problematic. This process opens up spaces for possible change.
The conversation is based on shared contributions because the narrative therapist
respects that the person has personal or local knowledge, skills and ability that they
can tap to solve their problems. Externalising conversations are aimed to stop people
being disabled by the problem. Naming the problem is something that therapists
invite the person to do and negotiate with them, but the actual decision on the name
or whether or not to use naming is up to the person. They can then challenge how the
named problem has been taking over things or dominating in their life. Unlike some
other therapies that see questions as intrusive and threatening and so avoid them, the
narrative therapist asks creative, curious, persistent questions, yet this is nothing like
an interrogation but is part of a dialogue. The questions aim to learn about the
meanings of the person’s world, to examine socio-politico-cultural assumptions in
that world and to find sub-plots that are richer and closer to actual experience and to
facilitate co-authoring the person’s unique story. They are also used as a means of
checking how the person is finding the direction of the conversation, their comfort
with what and how things are proceeding, to ask their permission about taking notes
and about using `therapeutic documents’. By working out sparkling moments when
the problem wasn’ t around, people are assisted to find unique outcomes and
alternative ways in which they prefer to describe themselves.
 Foucault and the turn to narrative therapy 129

The earliest forms of narrative therapy discussed and provided examples of the
style, intent, and effect of using letters as therapeutic documentsÐ a form of literate
means that can be used in narrative therapy practice (White & Epston, 1989, 1990).
The literate mode enables the recording of linear time and can be checked for
accuracy. It maps experience onto the temporal dimension and becomes an
important mechanism for producing meaning in people’s lives. It assists short-term
memory and enables people to be `more active in determining the arrangement of
information and experience, and in the production of different accounts of events
and experience’ (White & Epston, 1990, p. 37). Possible literate means include:
letters of invitation to engage people who are reluctant to attend therapy;
`redundancy’ letters that refer to roles people have assumed over some time that have
now become redundant, such as `parent-watcher, parents’ marriage counselor,
brother’s father’ (White & Epston, 1990, p. 90); letters of prediction as a form of
follow-up; counter-referral letters; letters of reference; letters for special occasions
and brief letters (see White & Epston, 1989, Chapter 2; 1990, Chapters 3, 4). More
recently, Payne (2000) builds on White’s 1997 work and describes these as
`therapeutic documents’ and provides a detailed discussion and some cautions and
reservations about using them. He suggests they might include visual elements,
`letters, statements, certificates and creative writing’ to `. . . encapsulate new
knowledges, perspectives and preferred changes which have become part of the
person’s enriched but still perhaps slightly fragile view of her remembered
experience’ (Payne, 2000, p. 127). Engaging an audience that is significant to the
person and harnessing the power that is so often assigned to the written word become
effective ways of validating the person’s alternative story by briefly documenting the
changes that he or she has made in their life.
Narrative therapists do not present themselves as distant, objectively neutral
experts who diagnose problems and prescribe solutions and treatments, but as
curious, interested and partial participants in the person’s story. Narrative therapists
adopt an optimistic, respectful but a `not-knowing’ , tentative or curious stance using
listening, language and therapeutic skills to assist people to find inconsistencies,
hidden assumptions and contradictions in their stories. Alternative and enabling
narratives are not just consistent stories, but are stories that are `richer’ rather than
`thin’ and are more meaningful for people because they are closer to people’s
experience (see Geertz, 1983). People regularly work to make sense and meaning of
their lives, so to respect their knowledge and stories and to empower them, narrative
therapy considers that it is not the counsellor’s task to apply `expertise’ to interpret
or to make sense of other people’s lives. Empowerment is seen in a general sense of
`teaching’ people ways to understand the discursive conditions and power relations of
their lives, how they might `re-author’ their lives and to find and use their own voice
and to work on the problem to find their own solutions (Drewery & Winslade,
1997).
Although person-centred to the extent that the person is the focus, paradoxically,
narrative therapy is directive and influential in its use of questioning, but empowers
people to find their own voice (Drewery & Winslade, 1997; Speedy, 2000; Winslade
& Monk, 1999). Unlike traditional counselling practices, it does not privilege the
130 A. C. (Tina) Besley

client’s voice or the binaries of the dominant versus the marginalised, hidden voices,
or local versus expert knowledges (hooks, 1984). According to Speedy (2000, p.
365), accepting the equal validity of each voice but acknowledging that `some voices
have more meaning-making power than others’ impacts on power relations for the
client as well as on counsellor practices. The aim is to avoid the unintentional
objectifying professional gaze that can occur when the therapist is unaware of their
role as professional expert in constructing a therapeutic dialogue.

Poststructuralist and Foucauldian themes in narrative therapy

`. . . the tradition, thought and practice that has informed its [narrative
therapy’s] developmentÐ that is, the tradition of poststructuralist thought’
(White, 1997, p. 217).

This section examines the philosophical foundations of narrative therapy. Since

narrative therapy claims to be in the tradition of poststructuralism, an outline of what
is meant by this is provided. Poststructuralism developed initially in France in the
1960s from the work of Derrida, Lyotard, Foucault, Deleuze and Baudrillard (Peters,
1996). It draws from a variety of sources to provide a specific philosophical position,
strongly informed by the work of Nietzsche and Heidegger, against the social
scientific pretensions of structuralism in `a reappraisal of the culture of the
Enlightenment and its notion of universal reason’ (Peters, 1996, p. 1). Peters (1999)
argues that the theoretical development of French structuralism during the late 1950s
and 1960s led to an institutionalisation of a transdisciplinary `mega-paradigm’ where
the semiotic and linguistic analysis of society, economy and culture became central to
the scientific analysis of socio-cultural life in diverse disciplines such as anthropology,
literary criticism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, history, aesthetic theory and studies of
popular culture. Structuralism helped to integrate the humanities and the social
sciences but did so in an overly optimistic and scientistic (science as an ideology)
conception. While poststructuralism shares structuralism’s radical questioning of the
problematic of the humanist subject, it challenges the way structuralism’s scientism
and totalising assumptions had been elevated to the status of a universally valid
theory for understanding language, thought, society, culture, and economy, and
indeed, all aspects of the human enterprise (Peters, 1999).
Poststructuralism can be defined in terms of both its affinities and continuities
on the one hand and its theoretical innovations and differences with structuralism on
the other (Peters, 1999). The affinities centre on the critique of the humanist
(Cartesian± Kantian) subject as rational, autonomous and self-transparent. Post-
structuralism also shares with structuralism a theoretical understanding of language
and culture as linguistic and symbolic systems. The two related movements share a
belief in unconscious processes and in hidden structures or socio-historical forces
that constrain and govern our behaviour. Finally, they share a common intellectual
inheritance and tradition based upon Saussure, Jacobson, the Russian formalists,
Freud, Marx and others. Poststructuralism’s innovations revolve around the
 Foucault and the turn to narrative therapy 131

reintroduction and renewed interest in history, especially as it involves the `becoming’

of the subject, where genealogical narratives replace questions of ontology or essence.
Poststructuralism offers a challenge to the scientism of structuralism in the human
sciences, an anti-foundationalism in epistemology and a new emphasis upon
`perspectivism’ in interpretation (that there is no one textual `truth’ but that texts are
open to multiple interpretation ). Poststructuralism challenges the rationalism and
realism that underlies structuralism’s faith in scientific method, in progress, and in
discerning and identifying universal structures of all cultures and the human mind. In
other words, it is suspicious of meta-narratives, transcendental arguments and final
vocabularies. These views involve the rediscovery of Nietzsche’s critique of truth and
his emphasis upon interpretation and differential relations of power, and also
Heidegger’s influential interpretation of Nietzsche. More recently, poststructuralism
has developed a political critique of Enlightenment values, particularly of the way
modern liberal democracies construct political identity on the basis of a series of
binary oppositions (e.g. we/them, citizen/non-citizen, responsible/irresponsible,
legitimate/illegitimate ) that exclude `others’ or some groups of people. In this sense
poststructuralism can be seen as a deepening of democracy. Perhaps, most
importantly, poststructuralism explores the notion of `difference’ (from Nietzsche
and Saussure, and developed by Derrida and Lyotard), which serve as a motif not
only for recognising the dynamics of `self ’ and `other’, but also contemporary
applications in multiculturalism and immigration. Poststructuralism invokes new
analyses of power, particularly Foucault’s `analytics of power’ and the notion of
`power/knowledge’ , both of which differ from accounts in liberal and Marxist theory,
where power is seen as only repressive (see Peters, 1996, 1999).
In 1989/1990 the resonance of the broad sense of the political in Foucault’s
thoughts on power and knowledge was discussed in the introduction and in the first
chapter of their books (White & Epston, 1989, 1990). Apart from Foucault, the
major influences on White’s thought include the family therapist David Epston; the
anthropologist Gregory Bateson; the ethnographer Edward Bruner; the psychologist
Jerome Bruner; the philosopher Jacques Derrida; the social constructionist Kenneth
Gergen; the anthropologist Clifford Geertz; the sociologist Erving Goffman; and the
anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff (Payne, 2000; White, 1989, 1997; Winslade &
Monk, 1999). By 1997, White has firmly rejected the structuralist notions of
permanent deep structures such as human nature and the unconscious that are
alleged to have universal application amidst surface or superficial cultural differences
(Payne, 2000). White (1997) suggests that metaphors for experience of `surface and
depth’ might be replaced by Gilbert Ryle’s notions of `thin and thick’ or `thin and
rich’ that are discussed by Geertz (1983). In evolving from a synthesis of these diverse
influences, narrative therapy can be considered to be a postmodern, poststructuralist
form of therapy positioned within the social constructionist domain of social
psychology (Gergen, 1991, 2001; Payne, 2000; White, 1995, 1997).
White and Epston (1989, 1990) explore `meaningful’ forms of therapy, arguing
that problems are produced or manufactured in social, cultural and political contexts
that serve as the basis for life stories that people construct and tell about
themselves.
132 A. C. (Tina) Besley

`. . . the text analogy provides a frame that enables a consideration of the

broader socio-political context of persons’ lives and relationships, and that
Foucault’s analysis of power/knowledge can provide us with some details of
that broader context’ (White & Epston, 1990, p. 27).

They argue that people inadvertently contribute to their problems by the way they
construct specific meaning of their experiences, that the meaning that people
attribute to events determines their behaviour, that meaning is not made for us, but
is produced through language and its context and the way that language is used to
convey thoughts, emotions and histories (White & Epston, 1989, 1990). The broad
concept of language underlying narrative therapy is indebted to Wittgenstein. For the
Wittgenstein of the Philosophical Investigations (1953), meaning is not just found in the
world; people make and give meaning to what they encounter. For him, language is
part of a culture; it is based on public criteria or rules (agreements in practice), and
these rules cannot be learnt explicitly, as they are the products of deep cultural
agreement that forms the background against which sentences make sense. In other
words, we become socialised into a language and cultural system and we cannot just
assign any meaning to language, as we see fit, as a radical constructionist viewpoint
might argue. The way that narrative therapy explores meaning and helps persons find
alternative stories positions it in opposition to many systems and biologically based
psychological theories that assume that some underlying structure or dysfunction
determines behaviour (White & Epston, 1989, 1990).
In developing narrative therapy, Epston’s (1989) application of `the story
analogy in novel ways to a wide range of presenting problems’ (White & Epston,
1990, pp. xv ± xvi) seemed to fit with White’s understandings of the form of text
analogy in Bateson’s (1972, 1980) `interpretive method’. Rather than psychoanalytic
interpretation, this form of interpretation was about objective reality. It argues that
`since we cannot know objective reality, all knowing requires an act of interpretation’
that is determined by how things are `fitted into the known pattern of events’ (White
& Epston, 1990, p. 2). That is, the interpretation of events depends on the context in
which they are received and events that cannot be located in a context cannot be
selected and so would not exist or we would not be note them as facts. The
understanding of text analogy is a combination of Gergen and Gergen’s (1984)
notions about storying or self-narrative and on Bruner’s (1986a,b) idea that the
interpretation of current events is as much future-shaped in terms of endings, as it is
past-determined in having a beginning. Narrative therapy uses this notion to help
people see a dominant story and an alternative story, helping them to `re-author’ their
stories and to clarify what choices they may have and wish to make (Winslade &
Monk, 1999). White and Epston (1989, 1990) argue that stories are constitutive in
shaping people’s lives and relationships and are open to interpretation and multiple
meanings. In stories there is room for ambiguity and a range of diverse perspectives
(Bruner, 1986). By externalising the dominant `problem-saturated’ description or
story of a person’s life, the influence that problems have in their lives can be explored
and mapped. Derrida’s (1982) notion of deconstruction is used to externalise the
problem, listening `for hidden meanings, spaces or gaps, and evidence of conflicting
 Foucault and the turn to narrative therapy 133

stories’ (Drewery & Winslade, 1997, p. 43; White, 1991). Once problem-saturated
descriptions are separated from the way the dominant story is habitually read people
are enabled to identify what Goffman (1961) called `unique outcomes’. They
`experience a sense of personal agency’ and `a capacity to intervene in their own lives
and relationships’ (White & Epston, 1990, p. 16) to construct alternatives that re-
author, re-construct or re-narrativise their lives.
White and Epston (1989, 1990) make it clear that narrative therapy is
considerably informed by Foucauldian notions. They argue that notions of power
have been `much overlooked in the therapy literature generally, and in the benign
view that we frequently take of our own practices’ (White & Epston, 1990, p. 18).
Analyses of power in therapy literature `have traditionally represented it in individual
terms, such as a biological phenomenon that affects the individual psyche or as
individual pathology that is the inevitable outcome of early traumatic personal
experiences, or in Marxist terms as a class phenomenon’ (White & Epston, 1990, pp.
18 ± 19). Feminist discourse alerted many therapists to issues of abuse, exploitation
and oppression in an analysis that generally sees power as operating repressively by a
patriarchal hegemony. But therapy has not considered the more general problematics
of power, both its repressive and constitutive aspects and the operation of power/
knowledge (Foucault, 1980).
In establishing narrative therapy White and Epston’s (1989) text used four texts
from what McNay (1992) would describe as Foucault’s middle years that focussed on
notions of genealogy: Discipline and Punish (1977); Power/Knowledge: Selected
Interviews and Other Writings (1980); The History of Sexuality, Vol. I (1978); and
`Space, knowledge and power’ (1984a). In their 1990 text, four more Foucauldian
references are provided: Madness and Civilization (1965); The Birth of the Clinic
(1973); `The subject and power’ (1982); and `Nietzsche, genealogy, history’ (1984b).
Insofar as the early version of narrative therapy was developed prior to the publication
of Foucault’s later works, White and Epston (1990) were not able to fully explore
Foucault’s later notions of power/knowledge and ethical self constitution (Foucault,
1985, 1997). Foucault’s `archaeological’ orientation Ð a form of critical history, `an
attempt to make visible what is invisible only because it’s too much on the surface of
things’ (see Foucault, 1989, p. 46)Ð fails to adequately explain `agency’ . His earlier
analysis of power was developed more fully later on with a return to the Kantian
subject and to notions of human freedom and the ways in which we ethically
constitute or regulate ourselves (Foucault, 1985, 1989, 1997). The 1989/90
formulation of narrative therapy outlines Foucault’s earlier notion of the effects of
`power/knowledge’ as a means of providing some of the broader socio-political
context of person’s lives and relationships. It uses Foucault’s understanding that
power is seen as not only repressive or negative, but also as `positive’ , not in the sense
of being good or benign or something to aspire to, but in the sense of being
constitutive as it shapes of peoples’ lives and ideas:

`According to Foucault, a primary effect of this power through ª truthº and

ª truthº through power is the specification of a form of individuality that is,
in turn, a ª vehicleº of power. Rather than proposing that this form of power
134 A. C. (Tina) Besley

represses, Foucault argues that it subjugates. It forges persons as ª docile

bodiesº and conscripts them into activities that support the proliferation of
ª globalº and ª unitaryº knowledges and, as well, the techniques of power’
(White & Epston, 1990, p. 20).

White and Epston (1989, 1990) point out that for Foucault `truth’ did not mean
objective or intrinsic facts about the nature of people, rather that in constructing
ideas that are ascribed the status of `truths’, they become `normalising’ (i.e. norms
are constructed ) ways around which people are encouraged to shape or constitute
their lives. They discuss Foucault’s notions of the inseparability of `power/knowledge’
and how the `truths’ of traditional notions of knowledge have positioned one form of
knowledge in ascendancy over another (see also Foucault, 1998). They also explore
his notions about disciplinary `technologies’ that recruit the individual into actively
participating in their own subjugation as `docile bodies’ and how we live in a society
where evaluative and normalising judgements form an omnipresent `gaze’ that is the
primary mechanism of social control, rather than the judicial forms and torture of the
past (see Foucault, 1977).
In doing so, White and Epston (1990) focus on four features: orientation in
therapy; separating from the `unitary knowledges’; challenging the techniques of
power; resurrecting the `subjugated knowledges’ that are explained in the following
paragraphs. `Orientation in therapy’ means an orientation that challenges the
scientism of the human sciences and how therapeutic practices have often been
situated within these. They suggest that:

`If we accept that power and knowledge are inseparable . . . and if we accept
we are simultaneously undergoing the effects of power and exercising power
over others, then we will be unable to take a benign view of own practices.
Nor will we be able to simply assume that our practices are primarily
determined by our motives, or that we can avoid all participation in the field
of power/knowledge through an examination of such personal motives’
(White & Epston, 1990, p. 29).

Therefore, therapists `are inevitably engaged in a political activity’ , in the sense that
they must continually challenge the `techniques that subjugate persons to a dominant
ideology’ (White & Epston, 1990, p. 29). Therapists must always assume that they are
participating in domains of power and knowledge and are often involved in questions
of social control. On this view, therapists must work to demystify and unmask the
hidden power relations implicated in their techniques and practices.
For Foucault (1980), `global’ and `unitary’ knowledges did not refer to
universally accepted knowledges, but to claims of `objective reality’ that were made by
the modern science disciplines. So, under the second feature, `separating from
unitary knowledges’, White and Epston (1990) emphasise that externalising the
problem is a way of decentring the dominant discourses and `truths’ of a spurious
`objective’ scientific knowledge (e.g. failure to achieve norms). Externalising the
problem helps the person to gain a reflexive perspective on their life and to challenge
the `truths’ that define, objectify or subjugate them as they explore new options.
 Foucault and the turn to narrative therapy 135

The third feature, `challenging the techniques of power’, follows the same line of
thinking and practice. It involves challenging the techniques of social control and the
subjugation and objectification of the individual that include:

`. . . techniques for the organization of persons in space, those for the

registration and classification of persons, those for the exclusion of groups of
persons and for the ascription of identity to these groups, and those
techniques for the isolation of persons and for the effective means of
surveillance and evaluation’ (White & Epston, 1990, p. 30).

Once the techniques and their power effects have been identified and recognised and
exceptions to the person’s habitual positioning have been found, then unique
outcomes of resistance to such techniques can be sought.
Foucault suggests that there are two classes of `subjugated knowledges’: one
constitutes previously established, erudite knowledges that have been buried, hidden,
disguised, masked, removed or written out by revisionist histories; another involves
local, popular or indigenous knowledges that are marginalised or denied space to
perform adequately. These knowledges are lowly ranked, being considered inade-
quate for the accepted standards of knowledge and science. In recovering these
knowledges, we can rediscover the history of struggle and conflict, and challenge the
`effects of the centralising powers which are linked to the institution and functioning
of an organised scientific discourse within a society such as ours’ (Foucault, 1980, p.
84). White and Epston (1990) neglect to mention, in this regard, Foucault’s notion
of `genealogy’ as the `history of an answer Ð the original, specific, and singular answer
of thoughtÐ to a certain situation’ (Foucault, 1985, p. 116). In other words,
Foucault’s `genealogy’ seeks to explain present-day cultural phenomena and
problems by looking to the past and analysing how it was derived and constituted
historically. It forms a critical ontology of our selves. A central focus of narrative
therapy harnesses the notion of resurrecting the subjugated knowledges to generate
`alternative stories that incorporate vital and previously neglected aspects of lived
experience’ (White & Epston, 1990, p. 31).
Narrative therapy is more than just a new set of skills or techniques. It involves
the interlocking nature of theory, ethics and skills because it is `partly a consistent
ethical stance, which in turn embodies a philosophical framework’ (Winslade &
Monk, 1999, p. 21). It is not just a therapy but a lifestyle and political project that
involves speaking and listening respectfully and that is concerned with different ways
of producing the `self’ that have a strongly Foucauldian basis and orientation.

Narrative therapy’s challenge to humanist assumptions in `therapy

culture’
On the basis of the foregoing notions taken from Foucault and other theorists,
White and Epston developed a counter-therapy which critiques existing therapeutic
practices and the way few therapies recognise that therapy is inherently a political
activity, an activity and set of practices inscribed by power relations. Narrative ideas
136 A. C. (Tina) Besley

present a postmodern and especially a poststructuralist critique of structuralism

and its influence on traditional Western psychology and of humanism and its
associated forms of counselling. It forms a self-reflexive, critical tone of a
profession or discipline that turns the `gaze’ back on itself (Monk et al., 1997; Parry
& Doan, 1994; Payne, 2000; Rose, 1989, 1998; White, 1991, 1995, 1997;
Winslade & Monk, 1999).
Humanism is a general worldview that positions mankind in terms of the
underlying philosophical assumptions about what constitutes human nature,
human inquiry, and the relationships of human beings to the natural world. Rather
than dependent on divine order on the one hand or simply part of the natural order
on the other, under humanism, mankind is seen to have unique capacities and
abilities that led to studies of the individual in all forms and under all conditions.
Humanism developed during the Renaissance and under Enlightenment thinkers
and continues to dominate as the West’s common-sense worldview. Values often
associated with humanism include: freedom, equality, tolerance, secularism, social
and political reform, progress, pragmatism, scientism, and the perfectibility of
human nature (see Audi, 1995). It is exactly these core assumptions about an
essential human nature Ð its uniqueness and individuality Ð that both structuralism
and poststructuralism challenges. In its poststructuralist critique of humanism,
narrative therapy does not attempt to uncover some pre-existing dormant knowl-
edge, in the mind or heart of the person, nor any `true’, `real’ , `authentic’ or
`essential’ self. It also challenges individualistic, expert-centred forms of pro-
fessional knowledge.
In using Foucauldian notions in his later writings, White (1997) describes a
`triumvirate’ of interrelated limiting humanist assumptions in therapy culture (see
also Payne, 2000). White’s triumvirate is: first, `the will to truth’ which questions who
we are as subjects: our being, essence or human nature; second, the `repressive
hypothesis’ that holds that repression conceals or obscures our true or essential
nature, inhibiting our growth or self-actualisation and so inducing illness because our
authentic needs and desires are frustrated; third, the `emancipation narrative’ that
seeks to liberate the self from repression (Foucault, 1965, 1978, 1980; Payne, 2000;
White, 1997). The next few paragraphs briefly explore what Foucault said about
these issues.
The `will to truth’ is a notion that Foucault derived from Nietzsche in The
Genealogy of Morals (Nietzsche, 1956/1887). It involves traditional philosophical
questions such as `What is the world? What is man? What is knowledge? How can we
know something?’ (Foucault, 1988, p. 145). The effect of these questions has been a
focus on knowing and speaking the `truth’ of what we are, of our essence or human
nature. Poststructuralism challenges this formulation and Foucault links the will to
truth `with the success of the professional disciplines in the production of the great
meta-narratives of human nature and human development’ (White, 1997, p. 222).
Foucault suggests that today this has changed to `the historical reflection on
ourselves’ and asks `What are we today?’ (Foucault, 1988, p. 145). This opens the
possibility of exploring how our lives are produced through cultural knowledges and
practices (White, 1997).
 Foucault and the turn to narrative therapy 137

Foucault (1978) raises three distinct doubts concerning the Freudian `repressive
hypothesis’ :

`First doubt: Is sexual repression truly an established historical fact? . . .

Second doubt: Do the workings of power, and in particular those
mechanisms that are brought into play in societies such as ours, really belong
primarily to the category of repression? . . . Third and final doubt: Did the
critical discourse that addresses itself to repression come to act as a
roadblock to a power mechanism that had operated unchallenged up to that
point, or is it not in fact part of the same historical network as the thing it
denounces (and doubtless misrepresents) by calling it repression?’ (Fou-
cault, 1978, p. 10).

Foucault addresses issues of repression and emancipation in his analysis of power

relations and its parallel in forms of resistance, in how power operates in a capillary
fashion not simply as a binary opposition between rulers and the ruled (Foucault,
1978, 1980, 2001/1982). In his later interview `The ethics of the concern for self as
a practice of freedom’ Foucault (1997) discusses notions of liberation:

`I have always been somewhat suspicious of the notion of liberation, because

if it is not treated with precaution as and within certain limits, one runs the
risk of falling back on the idea that there exists a human nature or base that,
as a consequence of certain historical, economic and social processes, has
been concealed, alienated, or imprisoned in and by mechanisms of
repression.

`According to this hypothesis, all that is required is to break these repressive

deadlocks and man will be reconciled with himself, rediscover his nature or
regain contact with his origin, and re-establish a full and positive
relationship with himself. I think this idea should not be accepted without
scrutiny’ (Foucault, 1997, p. 282).

White (1997) points out that he does not criticise all aspects of humanism and
acknowledges that humanism has supported people to challenge domination,
discrimination and oppression, but considers that the essentialist, structuralist
conceptions of the self and identity in humanism, as applied in therapeutic culture,
are limiting. Furthermore, the operation of deficit theory has strongly encouraged
people to think that they have to change, grow, develop or improve, inadvertently
reinforcing the power of experts and institutions that aim to help them achieve this.
White (1997) argues that therapies that aim to be emancipatory by enabling the
true self to emerge at some future point are in effect diminishing and entrapping,
preventing people from questioning the possibilities of how their lives are lived in
the present. Psychological concepts of personal development do not disturb,
challenge or confront the socio-cultural political forces that have influenced the
construction of the problem that the person has sought help with. He further
138 A. C. (Tina) Besley

argues that therapists who work on an individual needs-focussed manner, encour-

aging personal development, become `unwitting accomplices in the reproduction of
the dominant and culturally sanctioned versions of identity, of the popular and
revered forms of personhood, of the most familiar and mainstream subjectivities’
(White, 1997, p. 227).
Traditional humanist assumptions about the subject in psychology and
counselling usually position it as a stable, fixed, autonomous being often charac-
terised as fully transparent to itself and responsible for his or her actions. In contrast,
the notion of identity in narrative therapy tends to be replaced with the notion of
`subjectivity’ because narrative therapy adopts social constructionist viewpoints that
do not assume that people’s identities are primarily stable and singular, rather that
they change and are contradictory (Gergen, 1990, 1991, 2001; Lifton, 1993).
The narrative approach challenges the way Western psychology generally
emphasises the individual subject. It especially challenges the mental health areas
where experts often appear to know more about people’s lives than the people do
themselves, and where the professional focus upon personal deficits emphasises one’s
failures or weaknesses rather than one’s accomplishments and strengths. The `expert
knowledge’ and the scientific outlook of traditional Western psychology which is
based on the biomedical model of mental illness `objectifies’, `individualises’ and
`normalises’ the subject through diagnosis that has the effect of locating the problem
within the person. For the patient or client, the expert’s diagnostic label of their `self ’
tends to become seen as part of their essential nature and of their identity. Gergen
(1990, 1991) suggests that the language, power and use of diagnostic deficits can be
totalising so totally affect the past, present and future of a person’s life that the self
becomes saturated by the pathology. Although the intent is to help the client, the
treatment or intervention can end up inadvertently `totalising’ (totally describing),
pathologising and disempowering the client, as well as producing social hierarchies
that erode notions of interdependence and community.
Notions of power under humanism tend to emphasise an ideal of the
individual being in control of his or her life and exercising conscious `choices’
about it. By contrast, narrative therapy uses Foucault’s `analytics of power’ which
involves the notion that power can be positive and productive and not just
repressive and negative (Foucault, 1977). Foucault’s concept of power operates
discursively at the micro-level to position us and our identities (as discussed in
some detail in Foucault’s 1997 interview on `The ethics of the concern for self as
a practice of freedom’ ). Power is not regarded as being solely possessed or
exercised by individuals, but is part of what people negotiate in their everyday lives
and social relationships where power is about `positioning’ in relation to discourse.
Subject positioning involves power relations in that it operates discursively
determining whether a person can speak, what is sayable and by whom and
whether and whose accounts are listened to. Understanding power in this way helps
us to re-constitute the relationship between counsellor and client. Each of us stands
at multiple positions in relation to discourse, which we engage or participate in on
a daily basis. Thus discourse, in the narrative approach, is seen as the organising
and regulating force of social practices and ways of behaving. Discourses offer
 Foucault and the turn to narrative therapy 139

socially defined ways of positioning the subject (for example, `teacher’, `student’
and `counsellor’ ). Some discourses are prescriptive and constitute dominant
cultural stories, yet within these dominant narratives there are different subjective
possibilities for constructing our own distinctive narratives of identity. For example,
dominant cultural stories about the family may position us as `wife’ or `husband’ ,
but in different families and even within the same family at different times we may
construct very different subject positions. Each subject position shapes us in certain
ways and opens up positions in a possible conversation.
The traditional counselling relationship that has become a central and largely
unquestioned and unquestionable tenet of most therapies has come under scrutiny in
White’s more recent work (Payne, 2000; White, 1995, 1997). The notion of `therapist
decentring’ with its related, intertwined notions of `re-membering’ conversations,
`transparency’ and `taking-it-back’ practices form an ethical task for narrative
therapists and is elaborated in the following paragraphs. In many therapies, people
are not positioned as experts in their own lives; counsellors are. Payne (2000, p. 212)
argues that the Rogerian person-centred approach `puts the therapy room at the
centre of the process of therapy and makes the relationship with the therapist the
person’s primary relationship’, thereby excluding and marginalising the contribution
of a person’s relationships and life outside the therapy room to overcoming their
problems. Not only is the counsellor in a very strong position in terms of power
relations as a result of their power/knowledge, but also, the therapeutic relationship
develops a mystique whereby it is elevated above other relationships in the person’s
life (Payne, 2000). In contrast narrative therapy sees `that the professional’s role is
more productive and ethical as a facilitator of the therapeutic actuality and potential
of real-life relationships rather than as provider of a ª therapeuticº relationship with
the counsellor herself’ (Payne, 2000, p. 212).
White (1997, 2000) adopts Myerhoff’s (1982) terminology and notions in
applying `re-membering’ and `club-of-life’ metaphors and `definitional ceremonies’
in therapy to explore multi-voiced identities or subjectivities that reach to both the
past and the future. `Re-membering’ conversations area use recollection to invite the
person to look to the past to find or remember people who have been significant, but
who are no longer present, or available and to reminisce about their relationship.
Ways of joining or re-enlisting these people into the person’s `club of life’ are explored
and create a potentially therapeutic plot-line that links the past with the present as a
way of sharing experiences and joining for rituals in `definitional ceremonies’ or
celebrations (White, 1997, 2000). Of course it is the therapist who uses their
expertise to introduce this notion, but in the process and detail it points away from
the therapist towards harnessing relationships with others who populate the person’s
`real’ rather than `therapeutic’ life. White states that he has:

`. . . an ethical commitment to bring forth the extent to which therapy is a

two-way process, and to try to find ways of identifying, acknowledging, and
articulating the extent to which the therapeutic interactions are actually
shaping of the work itself, and also shaping of my life more generally in
positive ways’ (White, 1995, p. 168).
140 A. C. (Tina) Besley

White points out the impossibility of therapy being a culturally neutral position and
therefore challenges the traditional therapeutic imperative that considers it inap-
propriate and even unethical for the counsellor to share anything of his or her own life
with the person. He emphasises that an ethical priority for narrative therapists is
transparency and openness about power relations and the therapist’s `location in the
social worlds of gender, race, culture, class, sexual identity, and age’ that can
inadvertently and unthinkingly marginalise others (White, 1997, p. 205). Keeping
the focus on the person and their problems inadvertently results in therapy becoming
a one-way process that reinforces ideas about personal deficits, `thin’ identity notions
and marginalises the person’s identity because the person `is defined as the ª otherº
whose life is changed’ (White, 1997, p. 127). While the person’s life is expected to
change, the therapist’s is expected to remain the same. White (1997) argues that
therapy is inevitably a two-way process that can have valuable by-products. To
acknowledge this he suggests using `taking-it-back’ practices that take back to the
person the impact of the therapeutic sessions in the therapist’s work and in their life.
By doing this, the therapist acknowledges `our common humanity’ , but does not shift
the focus to the therapist’s problems. The aim of these decentring processes is to
avoid positioning the therapeutic milieu as a microcosm that is separate from people’s
everyday lives (Payne, 2000; White, 1997).
Narrative therapy not only challenges humanism by problematising the subject
or essential self and its constitution through power relations; it also made an early
attempt to dissociate itself from the concept of therapy itself. `Conversation’ is a term
that White and Epston (1989, 1990) considered, but did not take up, in deliberating
on what to name their therapy and what they saw as the inadequacy of the term
`therapy’. Definitions of therapy focus on the treatment of disease or disorder but
they consider that in their work, problems are not constructed in terms of disease and
what they did was not a `cure’. Yet their work continues to use both `conversation’ and
`therapy’ quite freely. Without discussing it, they in effect position narrative therapy
within the anti-psychiatry domain, reflecting some of Szasz’s (1979) criticisms about
psychotherapy in his book The Myth of Psychotherapy: Mental Healing as Religion,
Rhetoric and Repression. In its challenge to the `truths’ of humanism, of the traditional
`psy’ sciences, of deficit models, of objectively neutral expert stances, narrative
therapy as a counter-therapy could perhaps be considered to be `postpsychological’
(McLeod, 2000b, p. x).

Conclusion
Narrative therapy holds an obvious promise both theoretically and in practice. First,
it can accommodate the insights of Foucault concerning power/knowledge, power
relations and the constitution of the subject. Second, it provides a theoretical
approach that is to the forefront of developments in the social sciences, emphasising
the turn to narrative and the relationship between narrative, meaning and the social,
cultural and political context. Third, it is a set of skills, attitudes and understandings
that indicates a narrative ethics around the central question of `Who speaks?’ and
highlights the political problem of `speaking for others’. Fourth, it utilises a mode of
 Foucault and the turn to narrative therapy 141

knowledge that people of all ages find accessible, familiar and easy to assimilate to
their experience. Fifth, narrative, in both its written and oral forms, provides a mode
of knowledge that can accommodate different cultures. As a modality of counselling
that has only emerged in the last 10 years, further work now needs to be done to turn
the `gaze’ back on narrative therapy itself and its disciplinary technologies and power/
knowledge relations and on in its relation to Foucault’s later work on ethical self-
constitution.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Professor James Marshall, Professor Michael Peters and Dr Paul
Standish (from, respectively, the Universities of Auckland, Glasgow and Dundee) for
their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper that was first presented at
Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, New College, Oxford, 6 ± 8 April
2001.

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(Accepted 22 October 2001)