Reflective Essay On Narrative Therapy

In this essay, I reflect upon the concept of writing therapy and its purported correlations to mental and physical well-being. Firstly, I examine the writing experiment undertaken during the semester that is related to letter therapy and contrast it to the expressive writing paradigm which was discussed concurrently. Both therapies incorporate the tenets of post-structuralism which are conducive to narrative therapy. The errant role of memory in anecdotal accounts given by patients in narrative therapy is also brought into scrutiny. Lastly, this reflective essay addresses the lack of self-criticism in the therapeutic profession in general and the risks writing therapy faces if it is obeisant to postmodern influences and their proclivities

The vast majority of therapists are usually taught to support their patients, but rarely to question or raise doubts over the validity of the accounts given (Sagan, 1997). The fallibility of memory in cases where sexual abuse, hallucinations, and trauma is reported has significant ramifications for both parties’ involved ‒ therapist and client alike. In Art psychotherapy and narrative therapy: an account of practitioner research, Sheridan Linnell draws on several prominent poststructuralist theorists including Derrida, Foucault, Guitarri, and Deleuze and uses her personal experience in therapy to relate the ethical commitments of a post-structural framework in expressive therapies. However, the obscurantist methodologies of the aforementioned theorists should not become the standard for narrative therapy (Dawkins, 1998). Rather than focusing on qualitative research (Pennebaker et al.), narrative therapy should undertake quantitative research and empirical findings in a bid to be regarded among respected fields of study (Etchinson & Kleist,