Talk
That Sings
is the eagerly awaited
second book from Johnella Bird, internationally known
therapist and teacher. Throughout Talk That Sings,
Johnella speaks to the central questions:
• How do
counsellors/mental health practitioners resist the
entrapment of embalmed models of theory?
• What supports a
'living practice' - one in which counsellors venture
moment to moment into the uniqueness of each person's
(client's) experiences?
• How might the
face of counselling be different if the Western identity
chase and pursuit of individuality were replaced with
relational identity and consciousness?
Enriched and expanded
by 3 years of teaching The Heart's Narrative, Talk That
Sings answers the commonly asked questions of how to
create relational consciousness using her Relational
Linguistic Practice.
The following list of
Chapter headings are just some of the topics discussed in
Talk That Sings:
* Living The
Practice
* How Do I Make The
Relational
* Sustaining An
Attitude Of Discovery
* Working With The
Imaginative Resource
* Generating Metaphors
Of Movement
* Common
Traps
* The Power Relation
and Management
* Escaping
Binaries
* The Politics Of
Language-Making
* Meeting
Children/Young People in Their Worlds
* Story-Making With
Children.
* Relationship
Injuries/Couple Work
* Violence as a
Relationship Injury
Talk That Sings is
divided into accessible sections of theory, technical
skills for applied practice and 3 specific areas
representing Johnella's counselling practice
with:
Individuals.
Couples.
ˇChildren/Young People
and their Families.
Transcripts/interviews
and guided teaching exercises are included in each
section.
Talk That Sings speaks
to therapists, counsellors, social and health
practitioners who are:
Questioning the wisdom
and ethics of adhering to therapeutic models.
Drawn to learning a
new linguistic practice which privileges people's
(clients') experiences.
Intrigued by the
constructions of Self and relational identity.
Involved in Narrative
medicine and ways of developing empathic enquiry to
compliment scientific technology.
Teachers of Narrative
therapy.
Have a management role
and are interested in understanding why good intentions
are not enough to avoid office upset and
conflict!
Interested in
extending their practice to include working with
children.
Seeking fresh ideas
and tools for couple work.
Therapy and
Navigating Life's Contradictions
by Johnella
Bird
You've heard rumblings about it . . .
its been promised for years . . . some have even tried
demanding it and finally, it's arrived!!
Johnella Bird's - 'The Heart's
Narrative'' represents her thoughts on the past 20 years
of therapeutic work. The book particularly focuses on the
last 10 years where she has worked primarily with people
who have been emotionally, sexually and physically
abused.
By challenging Western individualism
and its associated constructs of self-responsibility for
both the problem and the quick-fix solutions, 'The
Heart's Narrative' invites and supports therapists (and
clients) to engage with the complexities and
contradictions of this work. This book critiques
therapeutic practices as well as offering constructive
alternative therapeutic practices. Johnella Bird
discusses Gender relations, ethics, power and the
therapeutic relationship and interweaves and anchors them
into accessible everyday therapeutic practice. She does
this through clinical illustrations, theoretical
discussion and training exercises.
Whether you have been a practitioner
for 20 years, still in training or a person (client)
interested in understanding the therapeutic process, The
Heart's Narrative is an essential companion to the day to
day work of therapy. This is not light bedtime reading,
yet nor is the journey we willingly begin and must equip
ourselves to travel if therapeutic work is our chosen
passion and commitment.
Edge Press Review
Committee
Price: USD $37.00 (plus postage &
packaging)
Austr.$60.00 (plus postage &
packaging)
NZ $65.00 (plus postage &
packaging)
Pages: 358
The official book launch is organised
for February 2000
TO ORDER: On the web: Click on book
above
Mail :Edge Press, P.O. Box
800-89, Auckland.
Book Review
This review has been
written by David Epston.
NZAC Newsletter, June
2000
'The Heart's
Narrative: Therapy and Navigating Life's Contradictions"
is a book so vast in its scope, so challenging and
instigating of the reader's own reflections and finally
creating within the very text itself what Johnella refers
to as "a climate of discovery". What kind or genre of
text is it, you might ask? Because it takes as one of its
central concerns the very politics and ethics of
representation, Johnella had to find for herself a unique
form of textual expression to both challenge and at
times, defy the very things texts 'do' - represent
'knowing' as the 'known'. I take Johnella's concern for
what she refers to as "emergent knowledge" as shaping of
this very text. In so many ways, The Heart's Narrative is
so unsettling but it adamantly refuses to settle matters;
if anything, it seems to aspire to take her and those in
conversation with her and us as readers to 'places',
where none of us may have ever travelled before. Such
terra incognita is neither for the faint hearted, nor for
those who take up the traders of counsellor, therapist,
psychologist, etc., seeking to invest themselves with
professional authority that legitimate them as 'experts'
on the lives of others. For Johnella is advocating a
"talk that sings" rather than those 'talks' that mandate
interpretation based on a conviction that anyone can
really 'know' beyond doubt the 'talk of those who seek
our assistance. Singing in one way she proposes - "When I
sing, I am at times surprised by an upsurge of emotion.
Occasionally I can identify a lyric or melody or response
to the day's events. At other times it appears that the
activity of singing allows me to touch emotions that have
been previously censored or dismissed. Singing can move
us past the time honoured and invisible mind constraints
that can shape the way we engage with our selves and our
environment" (pg.30).
She goes on to propose
what she refers to as "a relational externalising
process": "In a similar way, conversation that uses a
relational externalising process can become talk that
sings. This style of talking provides people (clients)
with the experience of engaging actively with identified
concerns and abilities, relationships, ideas, practices
and time. Engaging with is experientially different from
being acted upon by another (the knowledgeable
professional) or being submerged in problems that take on
the form of an additional limb or organ just as though
that problem existed within the person" (pg.31).
Johnella's chapter, "Just Talk", so modestly titled, is
the most profound - at times unnerving and at other times
thrilling - meditation on the work we do that I have ever
read. By the same token, her chapter - "The Therapeutic
Relationship" - goes so much further than Johnella lets
on. From my perspective, it is the most actively critical
consideration of the 'transference/counter-transference'
version of therapeutic relationships, once again, that I
know of. I know I have read my fair share of passive
critiques of such a historical version, which can be so
taken for granted as to seem incontestable. But consider
the times and circumstances of Freud and his hopes for a
professorship. Is it any surprise that he should have
constructed a version of the therapeutic relationship
which arrogated to one part the standing of a late 19th
century, central European patriarch and to the other that
of a child who, although they were incited to speak, were
told what they said meant. I have always abhorred such
presumption as I suspect Johnella has too. But here, her
critique seeks some redress in the form of a
counter-practice. I suspect it is one that so many
narrative and systemic family therapy colleagues who
turned their backs on the very idea of 'therapeutic
relationship' will comfortably embrace. Johnella's ten
year long history (1988-1998) of working with people's
experience of abuse - emotional, sexual and physical
obviously provided the grounds for such considerations as
the very demands of such work forbade her from ignoring
that she and the other were in an extraordinarily
significant relationship. Yet, her version is so at odds
with the conventional. Here, negotiations around such a
relationship allow for both parties to speak to its very
terms and renegotiate them to meet any exigencies. No
longer can discussions occur behind the backs of people
(clients) and then be dictated to them.
Johnella has a
reputation in New Zealand for the proven mastery of her
craft and providing the most intellectually challenging
supervision, consultation and training. On those
occasions of conference addresses and plenaries, she has
embodied all of the above. So often, such address were
followed by thunderous ovations and long, meditative
silences. I have known few who could move me more by her
spoken words that Johnella. In a culture of print (and
now electronic) text, so few of us have the memories oral
discourse requires. Too often, those who were "taken by
what she said" (private correspondence) were unable to
consider fully what she was saying. Why? Johnella has
always implicated her own lines of enquiry into what she
had to say and consequently, they often remain open,
unfinalized and impossible to summarize. She has always
drawn upon her own "re-searched" work. Johnella uses that
term to distinguish her practice from those conventions
surrounding 'scientific research'. That has always been
the very crucible of her genius. It is such a resource to
now have a text to study and review.
In so many ways, she
(and The Heart's Narrative) is a rara avis, an
independent scholar with no institutional associations,
no particular fidelity to theories that cannot past her
ruthless test of application and accountability to those
we purportedly serve and the very courage of her
convictions. How many are there who would dare to bracket
professional knowledges so she could go it alone? Anyone
who knows Johnella would not be surprised by what many
would consider audacity. From the first conversation I
had with Johnella, she spoke to the politics of this
work, much the same I realize now as she always has in
those family discussions she acknowledges.
"I mention my
childhood because the resources and values that have
enabled my pursuit of therapeutic ideas and practices
developed within my extended family living in a unique
environment (=Greymouth): a place of laugher,m
appreciation of language, conversations on justice and
compassion, demonstrations of the importance of love and
connection, and a steady relationship with the
possibility of injury and death" (= in the coal mines of
the 'coast') (viii). Throughout her career, Johnella has
never remained silent but acts on her convictions. In the
1980s working in the public psychiatric services and then
for Presbyterian Support Services, finally as Director of
The Leslie Centre, she suffered greatly for this,
although due legal process and nemesis always vindicated
her. It did not surprise me that she went about preparing
and publishing this book in ways that ensured she could
not be compromised. She took her own counsel and in doing
so became author, designer, publisher and now marketing
manager of Edge Press. The only advice I ever gave her
was to ensure she spared no expense on the cover.
Why?
Knowing Johnella as I
have over the years as colleague, partner in The Family
Therapy Centre (1998 to the present) and as a good
friend, I surmised that her book would be very demanding
of its readership. These are the self same demands she
puts on her self. At long last when I got my copy a week
or two before the official launch, I found myself doing
something I rarely do - continually setting The Heart's
Narrative down while I went over in my mind what I had
just read. For this is a book that cannot be read easily
or even grasped in one reading. I knew that Johnella
would never produce a manual or 'ten steps to . . .'
book. I felt sure that would offend against her
commitment to and passion for her life's work and what
she refers to as here 'engagement with ethics'. It was no
surprise when I learned recently that discussion groups
were forming in Auckland to go through the book in
company. Even though this book is what honorary
doctorates are awarded for, Johnella's passion and
commitment are infused into everything about this book.
In some ways, I doubt if there ever has been a more
personal book that this.
A review such as this
seems inadequate to the magnitude of The Heart's
Narrative and cannot but do it an injustice. How would
you like to write a review of Tolstoy's War and Peace?
The Heart's Narrative will be read over and over again
for years to come and I predict it will achieve 'classic'
status in time. I can only hope that Johnella can take
some relief after the two years she took off to prepare
and publish this book. I know this cost her dearly. I and
all her friends who might otherwise have thought she had
fallen off the planet welcome her back and wish her book
every success it deserves.
Review by Heather
McDowell
"The title of this
book represents an exploration that I have been engaged
in for 20 years". This, the first sentence in the
introduction captures the essence of this book. Johnella
Bird is well-known in the family therapy field and in
this book she pulls together her experience as a
therapist, supervisor, presenter and teacher. This is a
book about the art of therapy and reading it, like
therapy, is not always easy or comfortable. Through
questions, discourse and examples, Johnella addresses and
questions the process of therapy, the therapist's
beliefs, assumptions and language and provides a way of
working that is firmly based in ethics and a
"compassionate connection" with people/clients in the
therapeutic relationship.
While Johnella
acknowledges the influence and colleagueship of several
family therapy models, she does not ally herself with any
particular one. The core of her practice is described as,
"relational externalising enquiry". This is presented as,
"a challenge to conventional language use (and) a vehicle
to consider the self in relationship". Johnella
consistently challenges the language that categorizes and
diagnoses clients/people and their experiences as
right/wrong, normal/not normal and the practice of
"psychological detachment". Relational externalising
conversation is a process of enquiry that explores the
intricacies and complexities of the client's experience
in a way that engages the therapist as a joint explorer
rather than a detached observer/expert and, "expose(s)
the power relations inherent in the support of one
meaning paradigm over another".
As may already be
apparent from this review, it is not a book that can be
condensed into a two sentence description. This is not a
light read. A book about a therapy that questions the use
and common meaning of language by necessity develops new
terms and redefines existing ones. A familiarity with the
family therapy literature and practice,
post-structuralism and feminist theory helps to some
extent but it still does not make this detached, skim
reading material. The book is written to engage the
reader, to challenge, to inform, to encourage engagement
with the material through thought, discussion and
re-search (Johnella's term to distinguish it from, "the
'scientific' meaning attached to 'research'"). Nor is it
a light read in terms of the issues that Johnella
addresses. Safety, abuse and neglect, ethics, feeling
stuck, trust and fear, ethics, working with
contradictions, time, gender, building the therapeutic
relationship and ending therapy, hope and hopelessness -
all are addressed in the context of the client/therapist
relationship and the therapist is challenged on all of
these. This is not a comfortable book to read, neither
its content nor its style leave you feeling at the end of
reading it, that you have finished. And that, for me in
reading it, was one of the strongest impacts. It is very
comforting to read a book or attend a workshop and finish
thinking, "I know/knew that", feeling reassured about our
practice. However, the reality of our work as therapists
is that our learning, self-monitoring of our work,
supervision/consultation, questioning of our own beliefs,
values, positions, etc., is ongoing. The ideas and
information in this book provide a valuable process for
reflecting on our work.
As a psychologist, I
had some difficulty in the earlier part of the book
where, in describing her practice, Johnella contrasted it
with "grand psychological theories" and practices such as
"psychologically detachment". I was in full-hearted
agreement with her on moving away from dichotomies and
creating options, spaces, alternative ways and yet this
contrast with things psychological seemed to present
dichotomy, describing relational externalising as other
than such practice/s. Perhaps in part it held echoes of
some of my earlier training in family therapy where
psychology (and psychologists) were presented as the
antithesis of family therapy (though in all my years of
knowing Johnella, I have never felt this from her). Most
of the psychologists I know are familiar with family
therapy ideas and practices and draw on a range of
skills, models and experiences. It helped me in reading
the rest of the book to not read 'psychologist' (or
'myself') into every phrase or term that referred to
psychology/psychological. Thinking of myself as a
therapist, and engaging in the book as such, was a far
more useful approach.
In congruence with her
way of working, Johnella includes a number of exercises
and questions and each chapter concludes with a 'Working
with the Text section for clients and for therapists.
This provides a break in the material and serves as a
focus that could be very useful in training/supervision
situations as well as peer consultation/discussion
groups.
For me, this book was
alike a good therapy session, it stayed with me long
after I had put the book down and continued to develop
and engage my feelings as well as my thoughts. If you are
involved in therapy, this is a book worth engaging
in.
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