Click cap for back	Narrative Therapy Dissertation
Complete	The Getting & Giving of WISDOMS
Date 17 Feb.2004	A Dissertation by Kate Ingram, B.A. Dip. App.Sc.(Psychiatric Nursing); Graduate Diploma in Family Therapy.

Submission: Master of Family Therapy (Minor Thesis) Faculty: Health Sciences. School: Public Health, The Bouverie Centre. University: La Trobe University Bundoora, Victoria 3086 Australia Date: March, 2002 Except where reference is made in the text of the thesis, this thesis contains no material published elsewhere or extracted in whole or in part from a thesis submitted for the award of any other degree or diploma. No other person's work has been used without due acknowledgement in the main text of the thesis. This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other tertiary institution.   THE GETTING AND GIVING OF ABSTRACT Therapists at the family therapy agency that was the setting for this project, had an intuitive feeling that their clients might be aided in their recovery through hearing the experiences of others who have overcome similar problems. Clients were asked to write their stories so we could gather an archive to use for the project. The writing of their stories had a significant impact on our clients. Thus, the aim of this study became to explore the effects on clients and their therapists of both the gathering and the circulation of client Wisdoms - written stories of facing and overcoming mental health, trauma and relationship problems. Using a Participatory Action Research methodology, a group of seven therapists, representing the different specialist teams at the agency, came together to direct the research as a shared group enterprise. The project brought forth important findings that are worthy of further research. We were able to discover that through the process of writing their story, some clients experienced empowerment and self-compassion, and were able to reconnect with family members. The process apparently set in motion a virtuous cycle of healing which promoted self-recognition and possibilities for change. In addition, as a result of hearing another's 'success' story, our clients were able, through connecting with others' experiential knowledge, to speak about and reflect on their own situation in a more useful and liberating way. The action research process acted as a means to incite us (the research group) to join together to share and listen to our respective findings. If some of us struggled with how to generate and/or share Wisdoms with our clients, we nonetheless, as a group, have been inspired to continue 'researching' the use of Wisdoms in family therapy. The journey of this project unfolds as a narrative. It is an invitation to you, the reader, to stay engaged with the lived experience of this researcher, as well as an encouragement to develop your own conclusions about the discoveries made in the context of the inquiry. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank the research group: Pam, Colin, Greg, Jenny, Amaryll and Nicky who, because they gave their commitment, interest and precious time, made this project possible. I thank them, too, for acting as my reflecting team. I owe a particular debt to Nicky Maheras for standing by me with enthusiasm, dedication and inspiration, particularly in the early, lonely days of the project. Kathy Lacey deserves a commendation for hearing me out when I most needed a sounding board, for reading drafts and contributing supportive feedback, and for providing a soft and considerate cushion to fall back on when the going got tough. I wish to thank Dr. Amaryll Perlesz, my 'supervisor extraordinaire', for the pencilled scrawls of tough love that spurred me on to do nothing less than my best, and whose faith and trust in me I have attempted to honour in these pages. The Meridian Team, Helen Landau, Rosemary Paterson, Cyra Fernandez and Kathy Lacey, were my 'ya ya' sisterhood, nurturing me with clients, stories, love and merriment throughout the project's unfolding. Finally, and most importantly, I have to thank my partner Tony who, while acting as a slave to my 'master's', read drafts and provided humour, patience, support, creative input in the layout & production, a dining room table, and tireless and generous love. My greatest debt, however, has to be to Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, the sound of life that sustains and replenishes me through every endeavour. CONTENTS Abstract…i Acknowledgements…ii STORYTELLING Preamble…3 SEEDING A Project is proposed…7 PREPARING THE GROUND Literature Review…14 Methodology…21 Writing Up…32 SORTING Deconstructing Beliefs…36 GERMINATION The Getting of Wisdoms…42 The Giving of Wisdoms…58 REAPING Discussion…74 APPENDICES Appendix A- The Original Research Proposal Appendix B- Wisdoms Newsletters.. Appendix C- Questions to help write the moving on Testimony... Appendix D- Consent Form REFERENCES THE GETTING AND GIVING OF STORY TELLING "Please come back, and finish your story!" Alice called after it; and the others all joined in chorus, "Yes, please do!"… (Carroll, 1866: 38) THE PARABLE OF THE JEWEL IN THE ROBE We are like a poor and impoverished man Who went to the house of a close friend. The house was a very prosperous one And he was served many trays of delicacies. The friend took a priceless jewel, Sewed it in the lining of the poor man's robe, Gave it without a word and then went away, And the man, being asleep, knew nothing of it. After the man had gotten up, He journeyed here and there to other countries, Seeking food and clothing to keep him alive, Finding it very difficult to provide for his livelihood. He made do with what little he could get And never hoped for anything finer, Unaware that in the lining of his robe He had a priceless jewel. Later the close friend who had given him the jewel Happened to meet the poor man And after sharply rebuking him, Showed him the jewel sewed in the robe. When the poor man saw the jewel* His heart was filled with great joy, For he was rich, possessed of great wealth and goods Sufficient to satisfy the five desires. We are like that man. Because we are unaware, without wisdom We remain unknowing. [The Lotus Sutra, chapter 8 (translation by Burton Watson),:52)] *In Buddhist teachings the "jewel" represents Buddhahood, the wisdom of the Buddha. The man in a drunken stupor symbolises our ignorance about the true nature of our lives. His finding the jewel stands for our awakening to the unlimited potential and wonder of our life. 22 PREAMBLE "Parables are wisdom and compassion distilled to their most fragrant essence." (Ikeda, 1996: 112) "…this miraculous ability of man to be disturbed by another being's misfortunes, to feel joy about another being's happiness, to experience another's fate as one's own." (Chukodovsky, 1963: 138) MY ORIGINS It was suffering that lead me to Buddhism and it was after revolutionising or healing my life through Buddhist practice, that I was inspired to develop myself as a therapist of suffering others. I had grown up, the daughter of a diplomat and his wife, travelling from country to country - a rootless existence compounded by a legacy on my French mother's side of jewish persecution and on my Australian father's of ostracism for being different. The sense of not belonging geographically and nationally was no doubt the reason I took so easily to the actor's lifestyle I adopted in my early adult life. Without my own identity I could so easily put on the identities of fictitious others. It was liberating. It was exhilarating, too, to be able to express a concert of emotions, and to sing these out loud in the voice of the character I was playing. Having never had a voice, I found so many voices within me that I could bring to life. It was a powerful experience for me to tell another's story. It was healing, too, but not enough. I had to find my own story. I had to tell my own story. In deep conversation with my Buddhahood, I was to realise that my happiness would be found in laying down roots, taking on responsibility and belonging to a community. I stopped acting, settled in one place and turned towards a new career. 33 FINDING FAMILY THERAPY The journey took a winding course. It included a relatively brief encounter with the medical model as a qualified psychiatric nurse. But it was with the philosophy and practice of family therapy that I found my 'fit'. I saw this approach as seeing people's lives being shaped by familial, social and cultural interactions. It was anti-individualistic. It resonated with my own need for interconnections. My love of language and story, coming as I had from the theatre, made the Narrative therapy field particularly appealing and consequently probably not surprising that the subject of my master's minor thesis would involve narratives and storytelling. Also, because Buddhism is such an important part of my life, I relate to those aspects of therapeutic models that reflect its philosophy. Just as with the parable of "The Jewel in the Robe", the teachings of Buddhism all amount to celebrating human life as a great, majestic, and splendid jewel studded tower, that has infinite potential. I now believe that we need not be stuck with our lives, as they are, immersed in suffering. If we could only see the possibilities for our lives, we might write and rewrite the story of our lives in a myriad of differing ways. If we allow ourselves to get off the treadmill of karmic (habitual) responses, and become the authors of our lives, then new possibilities do emerge. If we could see how our lives are deeply and fundamentally, intertwined with the lives of all others we would not feel so isolated, alone or stuck. I see parallels in the Narrative way of working with people. HUMAN REVOLUTION AND STORYTELLING It has been part of the tradition of Nichiren Daishonin's Buddhism, the one I have practised for the last 15 years, that we will periodically relate an experience of how, through Buddhist practice, we have revolutionised our lives. We call this process "human revolution", a process of mind change that leads to beneficial improvements in our lives and the lives of those around us. The experiences of our "human revolution", become modern day parables. The telling is a demonstration of our taking charge of our lives. It is also a way of giving 4 back- an expression of gratitude for having benefited from hearing others' stories. Hearing these experiences, encourages us to think for ourselves bringing about dramatic changes in attitude. We are thus heartened to respond with a new chapter to our life's story. It is a recursive and never ending engagement of living, telling, retelling and reliving. The joy of realisation and consequent changes made, fill us with an irrepressible desire to share this evolution with others. These narratives further encourage and enlighten the listeners to reauthor their lives and so it goes on. A RESEARCH PROPOSAL Thus when the invitation came for me to participate in a research project to examine the effects of having previous clients' narratives of change available to those families currently in therapy, I was very interested. If my life experience was anything to go by, the individual and familial experiences of triumphing over problems might in some way lend courage and hope to other troubled families seeking re-solution in therapy. The gift of giving to others might also be a way of recuperating a sense of worthiness after having previously felt despairing. THIS JOURNEY- A NARRATIVE ITSELF The pages that follow are, in keeping with the theme of the project, the narrative or story of my journey of researching the therapeutic possibilities of narratives within a publicly funded family therapy agency. It is written in the third person, in parallel with a discovery made during the research, that a person telling or listening to their story as if they were someone else, invites a distancing that brings with it clarity and understanding. I felt the need to do this, myself- to thus write the thesis as a story or experience. It is also an acknowledgement that the writing necessarily is from my own point of view, as the protagonist Catherine, and so, even though this is a collaborative research project, I am, in the write-up, a not impartial teller who has a distinctive background of assumptions and biases. 55 SEEDING "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to walk from here?" "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to, said the Cat. "I don't much care where…" said Alice. "Then it doesn't matter which way you walk," said the Cat. "…so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation. "Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough." (Carroll, 1866: 90) THE GETTING AND GIVING OF A PROJECT IS PROPOSED Catherine was beginning to get rather nervous. She was about to embark on a Master's Family Therapy Course, what an adventure, and she needed a project from which to hang a minor thesis. She was ruffling through her mind at the possibilities, wondering how on earth she would come up with something when at her interview to enter the Master of Family Therapy program, the senior lecturer wondered out loud if she would be interested in participating in a newly funded research project, " it would be at the publicly funded family therapy clinic where the university is teaching family therapy". You could have knocked Catherine over with a feather. "This could be part of your master's", said the senior lecturer. "The project will take place in two parts, collection of testimonies in the first half of the year. The second half, would be comparing therapeutic outcomes of people hearing testimonies in therapy with those of a control group that would not read or hear a testimony and would be receiving treatment as usual." It was sounding complicated, but, being game, Catherine listened on. "You might play a role as project coordinator in developing a semistructured interview for the gathering, do some gathering yourself, transcribe interviews and assist staff in integrating these in their practice." SERENDIPITY How interesting, she thought. Fifteen years of belonging to a Buddhist community that used experiences to encourage its members, meant that she appreciated the potential hope giving effects of hearing others' success stories. Catherine had also been inspired by David Epston's work in exploring the idea and practice of using 'communities of concern' in the therapeutic process. The anti-anorexia and anti-bulimia leagues were two such communities and the archives produced by these leagues, at David Epston's suggestion, had been invaluable to her a couple of years before, when she was working with a group of adolescents in in-patient psychiatry. She had observed the group members draw strength and hope from the anti-anorexia league members' narratives. It was striking. In exposing anorexia's tricks 7 and plans, in the form of experiential narratives, the league members had encouraged the participants in her group by, she observed, bringing hope and life back to their hearts, imaginations and lives. It was as if these stories enabled the participants to dare to confront anorexia in a different way and thus pen their own stories. The effect of empowerment and pride was tangible. Catherine believed that each person has a wealth of possibilities to draw from in times of suffering, and she saw therapy as a means of harnessing these. David Epston's co-research (see literature review section), as she understood it, was about this~ about empowering people through assisting them to document the ways they have found to reduce, transform or eliminate the oppressive effects of a problem. These documents then have the possibility of providing a point of entry, even inspiration, for the reader to tackle their own related problem for themselves. PART A- COLLECTION But there was a niggle of a doubt tickling at the back of Catherine's mind. A half year to collect enough testimonies to enable the second half of the research to work? They would need a good many ~ maybe 200? "We'll ask therapists at the agency to make the contributions, you won't be doing this on your own. Would you like a partner to work with you?" asked the senior lecturer. You bet, she thought. Catherine did not know most of the 15 or so therapists working at this agency and to have someone who was a staff member working along side her, would be invaluable. PART B- EVALUATION The second half of the project, "evaluating the efficacy of making these 'wellness testimonies' available to other clients in the course of their counselling treatment" (see research proposal - Appendix A), was also worrying Catherine. It appeared to her to be very difficult to measure this with any real validity. She tried to put on the empirical researcher's cap and imagine a group of identically cloned 8 therapists mechanistically using the same testimonies in the same manner in the same sequence to a group of identical clients who manifested exactly the same problem. Ludicrous! Wouldn't there be just too many variables to control? For example, the testimony itself (e.g. "fit" with client), the number of testimonies used, the timing of introduction of testimonies, the idiosyncratic styles of therapists, and indeed the uniqueness of each family and degree of severity of the problem. A systematic application and evaluation would definitely be needed as the original project suggested but, she wondered, how? A BROAD BASED RANGE OF PROBLEMS The subtext (acknowledging client expertise) underlying the aim of "increasing therapeutic cost-effectiveness", however, thoroughly grabbed Catherine and her new work partner, Nicky. Both had, in different ways, experienced the importance of privileging client knowledge and ability to overcome problems. Catherine certainly saw therapy as a means of empowering people to see themselves as agents of change and consultants in their own right, and preferred this to identifying the therapist's actions as critical to the emergence of solutions. What was also very new and interesting about this project, for Catherine, was the use of narratives with families presenting with a wide range of problems. The therapists at the agency worked with families experiencing sexual abuse, eating disorders, family conflict and violence, mental illness, loss and grief, child and adolescent behavioural difficulties, and head injury. Indeed, teams were set up to specialise in these different areas. FINDING THE NAME Initially, the name "wellness testimony" had been mooted for these documents. For Catherine and Nicky, the word "testimony" had important legal connotations, something spoken under oath, or of profound social justice significance (as in holocaust survivors). It was sounding too definitive, even too 'earth shattering'. And "wellness" connoted a physical more than a psychological state. Catherine and Nicky hoped that these documents might 99 also include simple discoveries, where change is seen as a process rather than a state. They did not all have to be dramatic life stories of change. They could be experiences relating to a small aspect of life. A different, more simple, name might make the collection appear less dramatic, more user friendly. Catherine had been moved and inspired by Judith Kelleher's (2000) Master's thesis which told the stories of resilience and strength, or 'Wisdom Journeys' of mothers whose sons had met traumatic brain injury. And then, a book of "Tribal Wisdom" fortuitously crossed Catherine's path: "A person should rely on her own resources; the one who so trains himself is ready for any emergency" (Omaha, oral tradition). Catherine and Nicky pondered for a moment after reading this, and in concert arrived at "Wisdoms", agreeing on the notion of wisdom as "understanding coming from experience". The name of the project would be WISDOMS. GROWING PAINS As project co-ordinator it was Catherine's role, together with Nicky's assistance, to motivate staff to begin generating client Wisdoms. Little did they know how difficult this would prove to be! Feeling lost and bewildered amongst this unknown tribe of people, a lot like "Alice in Wonderland", Catherine wondered where they should start. They decided to produce "exciting' newsletters (see Appendix B). When there appeared to be no response after the initial distribution they thought to include, in a subsequent edition, a short description of the process and the outcome of a smallish 'Wisdom' that one of them had generated. They hoped thus to muster interest and give a sense that a Wisdom need not be a life story or biography. When there was still no response, Catherine and Nicky decided to send out invitations to staff from other agencies to collect narratives from their own clients. They hoped, thereby, to speed up the collecting as well as share the project and future archive with other agencies. In addition, regular morning meetings were offered, but coffee and muffins just did not inspire. 10 SIX MONTHS LATER What was happening? It was half way through the year and they had twelve to fourteen hours of audio-tape recordings, none of which had been transcribed or edited into a workable document. All of these had been the result of their single handed interviewing and indeed follow-up interviewing of the clients other therapists had sent to them. It had already taken much time. The therapists seemed reluctant to actually get down to generating Wisdoms themselves. Catherine and Nicky, wondered if their recruits (the therapists) were finding it all a bit too difficult. Perhaps generating narratives would need to take the sort of time that an already busy schedule scarcely permitted, especially as they were finding that few of their clients felt confident enough to write their own Wisdom, even when supplied with a series of questions to assist them (see Appendix C). How to encourage staff members to contribute to a project of which they had a distant grasp and for which their own frantic pace would not permit experimentation, was a question Catherine and Nicky now found themselves asking. UNFORESEEN PROBLEMS Already ethical issues that hadn't at first been anticipated were arising. Interviewing the clients of other therapists was proving to be both therapeutic and disturbing. One woman reported reeling after an interview with Catherine. Hers had been a horrendous story of abuse and without her own therapist to 'hold' her as it were, during and after the interview, the telling of her story was potentially re-traumatising. Nicky and Catherine began to wonder if the interviewing process needed to come with a warning. It was becoming a big responsibility for both of them. There needed to be safety nets in place. In addition there were concerns about the impact a story might have on significant others who were not involved in its creation. Other family members might find the version defamatory. Would there be legal implications? Whose version, in a family, was most valid? 11 How do you incorporate all versions? If the wisdom held identifying information how could it remain anonymous? There could not be video or audio recordings if confidentiality was to be assured. Questions were raised, too, with regards to the lengthy transcripts. How useful would these be to future clients and their therapists? Who would be responsible for the editing? A CHANGE OF PERCEPTION Even after David Epston was invited to run a workshop on "co-research', in order to stimulate staff interest and introduce a way of generating Wisdoms that might overcome these ethical problems, there was still no obvious improvement in Wisdom generation. It became patently clear that a rethink was needed. All in all, the project team needed to consider a way of generating Wisdoms that was ethical, as well as efficient, that is, producible and readable within the time, space and safety of the therapeutic relationship. The therapists had to believe that it was a valuable therapeutic intervention, as well. Catherine and Nicky concluded that if archiving and using client Wisdoms was to be an ongoing, practical and therapeutic venture, something they themselves had already begun to experience, the therapists, too, would have to have this understanding. How could Catherine and Nicky best enable a group of therapists from this agency to experiment with the process? It was becoming clear that unless the therapists themselves 'owned' the project there was only a small chance of success. 122 PREPARING THE GROUND "Who are you?" said the Caterpillar… Alice replied rather shyly, …"I-I hardly know, sir, just at present-at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then." (Carroll, 1866: 60) "But if I am not the same, the next question is, who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle." (19) THE GETTING AND GIVING OF A LITERATURE REVIEW It was time to search the literature and discover what had been before. Because Catherine and Nicky had already inadvertently found that the impact of being interviewed for their story in writing, had a significant impact on some of the clients they spoke with, Catherine saw that it would be important to look at any related findings in the literature. Not only that, because the project was looking at circulating narratives of hope with clients at the agency, she would need to look at what the literature said in relation to these. She decided to explore these areas and as she read more she realised there was one area she had not thought to look at and this was the effect on the author, of having a story to give another. Thus the areas in the literature have been divided into four sections: TELLING, NARRATIVES OF AGENCY, GIVING BACK and HEARING STORIES OF SUCCESS. THE TELLING The psychotherapy literature overwhelmingly indicates the positive healing effect of having one's story of trauma spoken and/or written. Pennebaker (1989, 1993) is prominent in having conducted a number of cross sectional and longitudinal field and laboratory studies looking at the effects, on the physical health of adults, of recounting their experiences of past trauma. Pennebaker's studies have included research on over 300 students of psychology, 200 employees of a large corporation and 33 Holocaust survivors. Using standardised physiological tests as well as qualitative data, the studies ascertained the degree to which disclosing or inhibiting the communication of past traumas affects a person's physical health (their T-cell count). Attention was paid by the experimenters to create an atmosphere that allowed for honest expression of 'deepest secrets', without inhibition, including negative feelings, such as anxiety and sadness. Anonymity was assured. Pennebaker concludes from his studies that, "requiring people to write or talk about trauma is associated with both 14 immediate and long term health benefits" (1989:212), and health is endangered if the telling is inhibited. That said, he also found that the impact of disclosing is not immediately beneficial because the subjects often reported feeling significantly more sad, depressed, frustrated and guilty, in the time following the telling. However, over time, significant positive physical and psychological changes do occur, as a result of uninhibited disclosure of facts, thoughts and feelings. He found that it is not the degree of past traumatic experience that affects health but the degree to which a person holds back or suppresses fundamental thoughts and feelings about the trauma. The implications for therapists is that writing itself is a powerful therapeutic technique, and that movement towards the development of a narrative or the construction of a story might be an important goal of therapy with trauma survivors. A Research group in Language and Writing at The Ackerman Institute in New York (Penn, 2001) has been inspired by Pennebaker's findings, in their work with families "that suffer in silence with a chronic illness" (34). They discovered that encouraging families to write about their relationships with each other and the effects of the illness, and then having them read these aloud in each other's presence, can be a "lifeline" that reconnects the family with each other and relieves the effects of the relational traumas of not being able to talk about the illness. Peggy Penn says, "the most important thing to say about using writing to address the silences of chronic illness is that to write gives us agency; we are not acted on by a situation, we are acting" (49). Other therapists have also found that putting traumatic experience into language (not necessarily writing) aids in assimilation, understanding, agency and consequent healing. Therapists working with people who have been victims of the holocaust, childhood sexual abuse, grief and loss, as well as other significant traumas, suggest that if the trauma remains unstoried i.e. without language, and without an audience to the narrative, then the trauma continues to be relived in current relationships and daily circumstances. Since failure to integrate the distressing experience into an autobiographical memory is the core problem in PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), an important aspect of the treatment consists of translating the nonverbal perceptual and affective states into a narrative memory with 155 words, meaning and form (van der Kolk, McFarlane & Van der Hart, 1997). "Reexternalising", i.e. literally transmitting the story of trauma to another outside oneself, thus constructing a narrative of meaning about the past that can be reflected upon and related to, helps to be able to live in the present, free of the trauma (Felman & Laub, 1992; Bird, 2000). The telling of the experience in a meaningful and coherent narrative (e.g. defined, talked and/or written about) helps to gain a sense of control and mastery (Parry, 1997; Sedney, Baker & Gross, 1994; Shantall, 1999; Penn & Frankfurt, 1994) and also helps to make sense of the event in the context of a person's current emotional and psychological situation (Crawford, Kippax, Onyx, Gault & Benson, 1992). Indeed, Parry (1997) states: "It is only when a person's succession of scenarios are linked together in a sense of a life narrative that she is able to assume agency" (122). Certainly these studies do not suggest that it is necessary to articulate the story in writing to find therapeutic relief, however, the effects of writing one's experiences, as an adjunct to or instead of the oral articulation has not, in these examples, been delineated. There is potential for this project to consider this. NARRATIVES OF AGENCY OR SELF DETERMINATION [To be an authority of one's own life, and thus find the solution to one's own problems]. Benson (1997), working in the area of physical well-being, attests to the great importance for healing, when the patient and his or her treatment team believe that the patient has the strength and ability to recover themselves. Related to this, but moving into the area of trauma and abuse, is the work of van der Kolk (1999), a neurobiological psychiatrist. He has convincingly demonstrated that if the limbic system of severely abused people is reprogrammed to 'remember' a sense of agency and resourcefulness, then the pre-existing limbic memories of fear, guilt, and self-loathing can be dissolved. In this way, again, as with the findings of Felman & Laub and Bird, above, the individual is able to live in the present unencumbered by the feeling memories of past trauma. Peggy Penn (1998) has found that intractable rape flashbacks can be dissolved when a 166 protective figure or voice is introduced by the victim herself into the written flashback story. The victim is thus empowered to take charge of her life and the rape no longer recurs in her mind to interfere with personal agency and direction. Parry (1991) suggests that the construction of one's story reflects what one believes about oneself. If one believes that one is a loser then one chooses events that support that belief. Thus it might be possible to re-write one's story as one of success and in so doing change the direction of one's life. The work of David Epston and Michael White, leading exponents of Narrative Therapy and the practice of "re-authoring", demonstrates this. Based on the post-structural (linguistic/narrative) understanding that persons both shape and are shaped by experience and that experience structures and is structured by expression, they demonstrate the process of taking over one's story consciously and making it one's own (Epston, White & Murray, 1992). Rose's story has become a seminal case study to illustrate the process. Rose gives testimony to the dramatic changes in her life that ensue as a result of the re-authoring. She says: "Possibly having my own [as opposed to others' versions of my] story helped me find out my own attitude and thoughts...I started feeling I had validity...basically feeling so much better about myself allowed me to consider a very different kind of future for myself" (107). The authors conclude that freedom comes about from allowing each individual (oppressed by a problem) to understand themselves as active agents in their lives and able to construct his or her own life story as they would have it. Believing that one has a sense of agency in one's life appears to be a pivotal part of the process of healing. GIVING BACK In a bid to credit and honour client achievement and to privilege self-determination and personal agency, Epston and White (1990, 1995) will often conclude therapy with an interview that records and documents the problem-solving and preferred "knowledges" about self and relationships that have been "resurrected and/or generated" (1995: 13) during 1 7 therapy. These are knowledges that have enabled the clients to free themselves of the problem. They suggest that having these knowledges available for self and others means these become more viable and enduring for the author. Lobovits, Maisel, and Freeman (1995) also contend that having client stories of hope circulated to others gives therapeutic outcomes an added dimension: "whereas previously they may have felt degraded by the problem, the opportunity to contribute to others allows people to claim a preferred status e.g. from patient to consultant" (225). For example, "when Maria and her parents were told that reading her entry was useful to another child, it made them all proud and confirmed her status as a temper tamer"(227). These authors have also developed handbooks of children's success stories and advice as offerings to readers potentially facing similar problems. These documents, they say, serve multiple purposes: empowering and respecting the children who have overcome problems, validating their struggle and success, giving their story purpose by enabling them to reach out to others, and to keep accounts that can serve as encouragement in times of their own setback. This is reminiscent of Frankl's theory (1984) that human beings need to find meaning in life to be able to endure difficulties. One way to find meaning, he tells us, is by helping others, thereby transforming personal suffering into personal victory (Shantall, 1999; Boss, 1987). HEARING STORIES OF SUCCESS - BEARING WITNESS David Epston has created "archives", defined by him as "a place where public records are kept" (1999: 146). These contain collections of people's written and oral experiences describing the effects of debilitating and life threatening conditions (anorexia, bulimia, obsessive compulsive disorder, dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa) and the problem solving tactics that have helped them liberate their lives (Epston, White & Murray, 1992; Madigan & Epston, 1995; Grieves, 1997; Epston, 1999). We are told that hearing and reading these experiences brings hope to fellow sufferers (Epston, 1995) and even inspires recovery (Epston & White, 1989). In order to begin collecting for his archive, David Epston (1999, 2000b) developed the 18 practice of "co-research". He defines this as "two persons[client and therapist] seeking knowledge and understanding in a common conversational endeavour, one as participant researcher and the other as practitioner researcher" (2000b). These documents reveal and record the "knowledge in the making" of the insider or sufferer. They do not promise to have all the answers. Thus the archives become a 'well-spring' for fellow sufferers to gain hope and inspiration, rather than prescriptions or right answers. David Epston uses these "insider knowledges" when he consults with clients struggling with related problems. This process is illustrated in the case example of 'Ben' hospitalised with an "Obsessive Compulsive Disorder", externalised as "Mr. O." (Epston, White & Ben, 1995). Ben is quoted as saying that what contributed significantly to his recovery was finding in David someone who, "really knew what I was going through, almost as if you were feeling the same pain I was feeling and could reach out and show me" (292). With Ben, David had "crossreferenced" knowledges he had of OCD from other boys and thus "thickens" [from Geertz (1973), a "thick description" of a cultural event is distinguished from the thin and multiple points of view available], in Ben's mind, understandings of and possibilities for combating OCD. It appears that cross-referencing in some way contributed to Ben feeling so completely understood by David. Ben also cites two league members, whose stories he read, as also being helpful in his liberation: "[they] were my teachers and they had been through it and they knew what to do and what not to do and they passed that knowledge on to me...[I] feel like they are on my side and up in the front lines with me" (299). What is clear from this article is that the reading of the experiences of these league members, as well as the therapist's cross-referencing, were a fundamental aspect of winning over "Mr. O". There was only one related study to be found outside the area of Narrative Therapy. This was an ethnographic study that field tested with a group of 10 Mexican American families, the use of 13 families' parental stories of managing their concerns when a first born child enters the community school system. The researchers used the transcripts of the ways parents had managed their concerns and then categorised these thematically into 12 different categories of parental concern. Stories that corresponded thematically to the transcripted stories were read aloud to the 'inexperienced' parents. Each parent was then 1 99 asked a series of closed questions. The parents who heard the stories, related to them to the extent that they were able to acquire new ways of managing specific concerns as well as finding their overall concerns were lessened. The researchers found that their study had implications for clinical work with families and were interested in conducting a further analysis to identify which stories were preferred for useful information or for emotional relief, or which encouraged behavioural change. RATIONALE AND SIGNIFICANCE So it was that Catherine found that there was nothing in the family therapy literature, other than in the area of Narrative Therapy, and one article from the nursing literature, that described effects, on client progress, of listening to others' experiences. That the effects of writing was mostly explored within the areas of trauma and chronic illness and again not in family therapy, surprised her. That said, in the areas where there was research on the impact of writing the evidence of it being therapeutic was overwhelming. If some people found it difficult to talk in therapy, then writing could prove to be a useful alternative. The added dimension of encouraging the client to write their experience as a 'success' story in order to help another, would be worthy of further considersation, In addition there was no literature on the impact on family therapists' practice of collecting and circulating narratives of experience, whilst working with families experiencing a wide range of mental health and relationship problems and this might prove to be the key for the direction this project could take. The next step was then to reconsider the aims of the project including the methodology by which these might be achieved. 220 BACKGROUND TO CHOOSING THE RESEARCH METHOD Reading the literature was both a surprise and a confirmation of Catherine's own experience of the potential effectiveness of narratives of 'triumph' to inspire and give hope. She knew the latter from the work of David Epston and her own experience in a Buddhist community and in therapy. What was new and surprising to learn were the important therapeutic effects on people of having their experience documented.The original reason for the project was to establish whether listening to others' stories would affect therapy outcomes and now she was finding that the writing itself has potential therapeutic benefits. The research, thus, had to be about the effects of both the giving or writing of a Wisdom and the sharing of a Wisdom in Family Therapy. "Is writing a persuasive story of triumph different from just writing one's story per se, and is it important for the listener to feel the person writing has moved on? Does this matter?", she wondered. She, herself, wanted to learn more about the would-be effects (positive and negative) of having and hearing narratives on the families she was working with. However she also had to consider the agency's needs: the establishment of an archive and the involvement of the therapists working at the agency, in order to make the funded research project happen. If therapists were to be involved, Catherine thought, they would have to believe, themselves, that gathering Wisdoms can be therapeutically useful and valid and not going to be an added burden on them to have to produce. She recalled how the therapists who had come to a meeting during the early setting up of the project had posed a number of questions and dilemmas, "How does a therapist generate a wisdom with their client?" "Is it about an outsider interviewing the client and therapist together?" "Is it about allowing the client to express what they would like others to know, what others would find useful, or is it about 'let's go on a journey of discovery and let us find out what has happened that has helped you through', or is just about telling the story warts and all?" 221 "Is the 'what has happened narrative' useful to have in an archive? " "At what stage of therapy does a therapist introduce the idea of writing their story?" "What if the therapy has made no difference?" "Does the therapist's attitude to the interview affect whether a client sees it as a genuine coresearch inquiry (about change and what has made change happen) or a request to say nice things to make the therapist happy?" "Are we bothered about the multiplicity of testimonies and the way of gathering? Are some more effective than others?" "How do we ensure that the testimony of one person remains true to that person without it becoming slanderous to others in that person's life, e.g. non present family members?" "What is the therapist's experience of hearing their own client's story?" "What is the client's experience of having their therapist hear their story as a narrative?" "What would be the impact on someone of giving their testimony if they do not receive any feedback from people reading or hearing these?" These complexities had demonstrated to Catherine why just asking for therapists to contribute narratives from their clients had been anything but simple. She also realised that the literature, apart from David Epston and Michael White's work, did not speak about the experience on the therapist's practice of generating and using narratives in their family therapy practice. It was also not evident if and how therapists coming from a systemic viewpoint might develop this practice. For all these reasons Catherine needed to find a research methodology that might fit all these requirements, as well as her own philosophical and therapeutic position. PHILOSOPHICAL STANCE Social Constructionism It had not been difficult for Catherine to embrace social constructionism and the idea that understanding is always interpretive, that there is no privileged standpoint for understanding (Wachterhauser, 1986; Bruner, 1987). Buddhist theory very much espoused 2222 the relativity of all human beings' viewpoints based on the theory of karma and a person's life condition. It also espoused the theory of "dependent origination" or the intersubjective nature of human identity: "All phenomena in the universe, including the self, come into and go out of being as a consequence of mutual dependence" (Galtung & Ikeda, 1995: 31). Buddhism recognised, too, the powerful influence of language, not only to colonise the 'weak' or less informed, but also its ability to transform, through dialogue, the human tendency to dominate and subjugate others. She connected with the 'second order' cybernetic position, that the act of observation changes the nature of the thing observed. The observer and the observed, far from being separate, are coupled in the most intimate of ways. There is no such thing as objectivity. It had been demonstrated philosophically (von Glaserfeld, 1984), logically (Keeney, 1983, von Foerster, 1984) biologically (Maturana & Varela, 1987) and theoretically (Gergen, 1985) that the so called objective stance for identifying phenomena is impossible, for these are actually the product of culture, history and social context. Bruner (1986) had put forward the distinction, as he saw it, between the 'paradigmatic posture' and the 'narrative posture'. In the paradigmatic position the interpreter focuses on generalities and attempts to discover empirical truths. He described 'narrative' as a process that takes account of context and intentions through stories told, to make sense of human experience. It was the narrative posture that would best serve this project, she felt. In short, as she understood it, the social constructionist stance could be summarised as a recognition of: the subjective nature of experience and thus the changing nature of meaning over time (Gergen & Kaye, 1992); the contribution of context and relationship to meaning and the collaboration of culture, society, and familial history in the construction of personal identity (Hoffman, 1992); the changing, evolving and dialogical basis of the story of self (Anderson & Goolishian, 1992; Bruner, 1990); the generation of beliefs in the day to day language and communication processes of people (Anderson & Goolishian, 1988); the acknowledgement of multiverses- as many versions of a situation as there are persons to understand it, each understanding influencing the other and changing it in some way (Maturana & Varela, 1987); and the belief that meaning is always political and the fixing of 2233 identity and meaning as a way of serving the interests of the powerful in any society (Weedon, 1967). THERAPEUTIC STANCE Hermeneutics and Narrative Hermeneutics, as a science or art of interpretation, emphasises the idea that people live, direct and understand their lives through socially constructed narrative realities that give meaning and organisation to their experience (Anderson & Goolishian, 1988; 1992). The implications of these ideas for Family Therapy was that the therapist's role is seen here, not as an expert of a client's problem, but rather as a facilitator participating in collaboration with the client to co-develop new meanings, realities or narratives. This therapy is a linguistically mediated activity. In this way, through conversations with the therapist and others, the client is empowered to move beyond the current problematic situation or selfdescription. In the therapeutic encounter the idea that selves are realised as by-products of relatedness, means that multiple descriptions of problems and solutions can be considered. "The therapist and client form a relationship to which both bring resources in terms of which the contours of the future may be carved" (Gergen & Kaye, 1992: 174). NOT KNOWING POSITION In addition Anderson and Goolishian (1988, 1992) had in various ways emphasised the need for the therapist to be continually reflecting on their own biases and how these impact on the therapeutic relationship. This meant the therapist has to avail her/himself to 'not know', that is to acknowledge her/his own accumulated experience and understanding and its impact on the generation of meaning, in any therapeutic encounter. Secondly, it required through various reflective practices, including transparency, supervision and peer reflections, a willingness to stand aside from her/his 'view' while still acknowledging this. Johnella Bird (2000) calls this therapist position as being between 'knowing' and 'not knowing'. 224 ABOUT THE CONTEXT Catherine felt that an understanding of the organisation's and thus the therapist's fundamentals would be an important prerequisite, too, to choosing the methodology. The practitioners here espoused and had developed a way of working with families they called Family Sensitive Practice (Farhall, 1999). These reflected, for Catherine, their underlying values of participation and collaboration, empowerment, open mindedness, flexibility and compassion. In addition this was a learning organisation that emphasised experiential learning or 'learning by doing'. They practised live supervision where the student is given opportunities to learn 'in vivo' following which, coach (supervisor) and students engage in learning through dialogue and reciprocal reflection. The academic staff, it appeared to Catherine, respected both intuition and theoretically based knowledge. There was another important consideration. Traditionally, as Catherine understood it, the therapists in this organisation rarely had the opportunity to share with each other what they had learned from their respective clients, as time and schedules did not permit. Catherine had heard Professor Robert Putman (2000), American sociologist, say, when delivering a speech on the decline of community in the western world, that the loss of connectedness in daily living is creating serious problems. He said that in "immeasurable ways" communities work better and people's lives are more satisfying when they connect with each other. He added that without connection we are less productive, but "where people are connected to one another, what tends to evolve is a norm of reciprocity". Wouldn't it be advantageous, thought Catherine in the light of this if, in addition to the other aims, the project enabled exciting and reciprocal interaction between the therapists involved, which might include sharing with each other the knowledges they had gained from their clients and so enhance job satisfaction! All of these ideas had important consequences on how the research might be conducted. 2255 CO-OPERATIVE OR PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH She listened in lectures, searched around. She found Collaborative, Participatory Action Research - just the fit. Collaborative Research, she discovered, involves a group of people who investigate a topic and the initiating researcher does not dictate the process of the research. People come together to study (reflect, discuss, theorise) a process that occurs outside the group (Reason & Heron, 1995). Description is valued over precision, and meaning over statistical manipulation. This was a methodology that was appealing because it had its roots in social action and group enlightenment. It had emerged, too in resistance to "conventional research practices that were perceived by particular kinds of participants as acts of colonisation- that is, as a means of normalising or domesticating people to research and policy agendas imposed on a local group or community from central agencies far removed from local concerns and interests" (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2000: 572). This could be it, she thought. It was about LEARNING BY DOING and actively involved all participants in creating and determining meanings for themselves. It was about each group member participating critically and self reflexively. This, Catherine believed, might be a way the therapists at this agency could feel ownership of the research project. Action Research also had social constructionism and hermeneutics embedded in its method (Reason & Hawkins, 1988), which meant that the "researcher's attention is not focused solely around theories and observed problems but rather is allowed to float more widely... researchers can use their personalities and values as instruments, they allow both feelings and reason to govern their actions, and they partially and sometimes wholly create what they study: for example the meaning of a process..." (Cherry, 1999: 69). This certainly appealed. A PROPOSAL "What if we involved a discreet group comprised of individual therapists from the different specialist teams to direct the research as a shared group enterprise", she asked her supervisor. "Great idea!", was the response. Because there were six specialist teams, 2266 Catherine thought it would be most interesting to have the working group comprising of herself (youth and family therapist) and a representative from each of the teams: sexual abuse, acquired brain injury, families where one member suffers from a psychiatric illness, and general child and adolescent and family issues. In this way the group might develop unique and diverse ways of recording and using client Wisdoms with a wide range of identified client problems. The members of the working group might find themselves eliciting practices of using client Wisdom narratives in therapy that may be unique and relevant to the client group they work with but different to therapists and their clients from other teams. There might also be a chance to identify common patterns across the different client groups. In addition, having a representative from each team meant that the findings from this project have the potential to be broadened to each team. She could not assume this, however, because Action Research is context sensitive and not necessarily generalisable across a whole organisation or an entire discipline (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2000). The participants would of course need to be willing to commit to this in a spirit of mutual purpose, intention, and responsibility and be desirous of active participation and learning. She would be responsible for collecting and documenting the findings. She spread the word, communicating these ideas and inviting representatives from each of the teams to participate. The response was positive and a complete group was formed with volunteers from each of the teams as well as herself. It was just as she had hoped. This would be a cooperative inquiry that aimed to develop therapist practice. The personal, particular and local understanding of the people involved in the project would be valued over findings that purport to be objective and generalisable (Reason & Hawkins, 1988). She explained to the group that the key features of Participatory Action Research, as some called it, were the recursive strands of "Planning a change; Acting and observing the process and consequences of the change; Reflecting on these processes and consequences, and then Replanning, Acting and observing, Reflecting, and so on..." (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2000: 595). These processes are systematically reviewed and evaluated. In Collaborative Inquiry, the individual is asked to access direct, personal experience in "real life' which contrasts with reading about others' experiences and ideas and simply thinking about ideas in a training situation (Kolbs, 1984). 227 The group would be working for verisimilitude or credibility and persuasiveness rather than validity (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). This meant that the central meanings, emergent themes and proposed theory must be recognisable, acceptable and owned by the working group (Caulley, 1994). Participants would be willing to discuss, until there is agreement that the analysis is an accurate reflection of their perceptions. Congruence as to meanings, comments, and findings would be sought. What was exciting Catherine about the cooperative inquiry method of Action Research was the way it could at once maximise the individuality of the participants and their work, whilst capitalising on the collective reciprocal effect of working together (Heron, 1988). She hoped this would provide a good balance between uniqueness and group universality. The skills involved in Action Research, the group learned, too, are not unfamiliar to practising Family Therapists. These include an open and curious stance that suspends judgment and interpretation when inquiring into others' views. It also requires that the therapists regularly inquire into the assumptions from which they make their own meanings and inferences. It requires the ability to test and explore, to reflect and question. It requires cooperation and collaboration. It requires critical reflection (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2000; Cherry, 1999; Reason & Heron, 1995). The primary aim of this inquiry was becoming evident. She felt it would be about the generation of understandings and meanings about the gathering and circulation of client Wisdoms for this group of therapists working in this particular organisation, and how these would impact on their practice. RAISING THE QUESTIONS The group came together in the earlier sessions to wrestle with anxieties, hypotheses, dilemmas (see Deconstructing Beliefs) and of course the questions they would be addressing. In a collaborative process they agreed that the research would attempt to answer the following, 228 What is each therapist's (and her/his clients') experience of gathering and documenting 'client Wisdom narratives'? What is each therapist's (and her/his client's) experience of sharing 'client Wisdom narratives' in therapy? They could see that these two aspects were in a measure dependent on each other and so would be worked on concurrently by each therapist, but be considered separately by the working group. PROCEDURE Catherine gave the group members an outline of the way they might conduct the research, 1. What is each therapist's (and his/her clients') experience of gathering and documenting 'client Wisdom' narratives? * Each therapist from the working group will be asked to work with their clients to develop a document that will serve to mark their experience and learning and that might be shared with others. * Each therapist will bring their document to the working group and read the document and share their experience of co-creating the document. The sharing of the process as well as the reflection by the group will be recorded and transcribed. Discussion about ways the document might be developed or condensed might also occur. * Each therapist will take understandings, learnings and ideas developed in the working group discussions back to the therapy context and work further with the client on the current document or use ideas from the group to develop a new document with another client. * Again each therapist comes back to the group to discuss, compare and contrast experiences. The subjective perceptions of the observers will be synthesised. 2. What is each therapist's (and her/his clients') experience of the sharing of "client Wisdom' narratives in therapy? * Each participant in the working group goes out and experiments with introducing a client 2299 wisdom narrative in a therapy session with one or two clients. They note or record their experience in as much detail as possible but without interpretation and explanation e.g. the who, when, where, how, what, and thoughts and feelings of the experience. Included in this will be an account from the client about how the experience was for them (as recounted to the therapist) i.e. how hearing/reading a client wisdom narrative has in any way influenced their lives and behaviour. * These experiences are brought to the group. Each member expresses opinions about each account in turn. The group will observe for similarities and differences to their own experience plus consider contradictions, conflicts and generalisations. The group will then reflect on associations that are conjured up from the process e.g. past experiences around client wisdom narratives that the group discussion evokes. * The group will then attempt to make sense of their reflections, discussing the impact of these on their own practice. From these they will revise the processes they had previously tried. * The conclusions reached at each meeting by the group will be used to direct future action. Discussions will be transcribed and themes and common sense understandings will be examined as the study progresses. These ideas were presented to the group and, with some adaptations related to the circumstances of each participant (see 'Writing Up'), were agreed upon. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS The acts of data collection were the individual therapists' reflections on their internal thinking and feeling and external behaviour, as well as the feedback from their clients (raw data). The data analysis was the group's reflections and conclusions (from the transcribed group discussions) as well as Catherine's ongoing thematic analysis of group discussions. Each member of the group was asked at each group meeting to reflect on what he or she considered to be relevant data: what they noticed, what they attended to- thus highlighting the subjectivity and relativity of each participant's data collection. 330 ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS Ethics approval was sought from La Trobe University Research and Ethics Committee and the project was also approved by The Centre's Executive. Ethical considerations included ensuring confidentiality at all stages of the research process as well as ensuring that each client involved in the project be given a consent form with all relevant information about the project included (see Appendix D). No client information was considered until the form had been signed. Video and audio tape recordings were transcribed so that client identification was minimised. All material used by therapists with subsequent clients had to have permission from the authors, through the signed consent. The authors were told that these could be withdrawn at any time. The author of the narrative was also told they could change the details of their "story' at any time throughout the project. 331 THE WRITING UP The group of seven that finally came together met nine times between November 2000 and August 2001. The group consisted of three people from the executive of the organisation (C., P., and A.)* who, between them, would have over half a century of experience in a wide range of family therapy models and family presentations. J. too, has extensive experience as a family therapist and specialises in the area of sexual abuse. The others were less experienced but came from a variety of backgrounds. N., who had assisted me in the first part of the research is, and had been working for the last three years, with families where a member has an acquired brain injury. G., who is a relative newcomer to family therapy, having completed his Diploma two years prior, has a background in mediation. All would regard themselves principally as systemic family therapists. I have chosen to de-centre myself and put myself in the third person, as Catherine, so as to make apparent that I am one voice in a group of many and varied voices. It has been my intention in the introductory sections to expose some of my assumptions through outlining my socio-economic, educational, political and religious background, so that the reader can ascertain for her/himself the validity of my learnings. RESEARCH CYCLING The action research cycle for this project consisted of separate individual participant cycles of experience and reflection with and about a clinical case (family/couple/individual). This was followed by collective reflection in which each person's findings were shared for feedback and discussion. In this manner the research group in effect conducted micro case studies of the impact of giving and receiving Wisdoms. Following group reflections, each 3322 * Initials are used in order to identify and distinguish group participants, who, though core to the research findings, are in the background. The purpose of the research was in no way intended to make the group participants "subjects" to be analysed by the researcher. Rather each was to be a collaborative partner to the others in sharing discoveries and reflecting on these with the group. Consequently any additional information the reader might want about any of the participants can only come through the data (transcriptions of group reflections). It has to be noted that, of course, the meanings each gives to the experience is embedded in each person's cultural, political, socio-economic and familial context but it is not within the scope of this research to examine these. This of course limits the research findings. participant would, individually and in their own way, plan the next action cycle as well as reflect on their learnings and how they might experiment further. In other words each participant was responsible for drawing and managing their conclusions as well as performing the introduction and gathering of Wisdoms. In the writing up of the research I have selected a discrete number of case experiences that were brought to the group from the 'Getting' and the 'Giving' categories of the research, . I have highlighted for each the salient points of the different stages of the cycle, to inform the reader of the processes and to illustrate how I have drawn my own learnings. The cases selected are the ones that, for me, following group discussions, led to further actions and/or learning from at least one group member. After each of my own experiences I tried to pay close attention to it by recording in writing as much detail as possible my observations, thoughts and feelings, as well as what the client(s) said. This included asking myself why this particular 'event' had meaning for me. The other group members principally relied on the memories of their sessions with their clients and this too can be a valid way of collecting data (Moon & Trepper, 1996). A WORD ABOUT THE SUBSECTIONS OF THE FINDINGS ACTION Describes what the person who is describing their case did and what they then observed, experienced and heard back from their clients. REFLECTION Includes the group conversation about the individual therapist's case presentation. The reflecting process involved our asking each other to describe, 'research' and wonder about the experiences and meanings we were making. The movement from holding the experience within me to talking about it with the group provided me with an opportunity to re-view and re-interpret my meanings in the light of others' different perspectives. Having a linguistic space offered me a way of expanding on my 3333 own reflections. I found this a two way reflective process: my own reflections, as with each participant's reflections, are drawn out and put side by side with the "knowing" of others. My individual meanings were thus enriched, challenged, enhanced and extended by interaction with others. LEARNING I will take from Lansbury (1992) a definition of learning that fits with my view: "the process by which behaviour is modified as a result of education and experience" (16). In this section I highlight what I myself have drawn from both listening to the group and my own reflections of the experience, if the case is the one I am describing. This learning environment, which was for me the research process, included the uncertainty and discomfort that accompanies a new and unknown intervention. However it was only by allowing myself to dare to plunge, despite at times a certain discomfort and anxiety, and 'give it a go', that I was able to get the most benefit from the process. Through wrestling with real life uncertainties I was able to learn. I also found that while - for reasons which will be explicated in the findings - many of the participants held back from taking action, when Nicky and myself (who had the advantage for having begun the project much earlier) showcased our experiences, the others were challenged and stimulated. I saw the participants thus consider their own clients in the light of our findings and ponder on how they might consider taking action themselves. All of our thinking was thus invigorated. THE FINDINGS In the description of the action research in the pages that follow, I hope to be presenting the findings so that the reader is informed about how explanations were constructed. There are no 'tangible outcomes' as such and this, though never discussed, may have created an important tension for the group. We would want evidence that we had used the funding to good effect but at the same time we wanted to allow ourselves the flexibility, openness and adaptability that action research methodology requires for it to be most fruitful. 334 SORTING "Will you won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance? Will you won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance? (Carroll, 1866: 151) THE GETTING AND GIVING OF DECONSTRUCTING BELIEFS ABOUT THE PROJECT When the group met initially to plan how they would go about collecting the narratives Catherine found there were some preconceptions that had to be ironed out in order that the 'action' might start. For example one group member, J., asked, "I am a systemic therapist, to what extent is this about a narrative approach to my practice?" C. then asked, "Are we going with an externalising narrative genre?" Catherine wondered if bringing David Epston to the Centre in order to introduce the ideas of co-research to the agency, and her own leanings towards Narrative Therapy, might have inadvertently implied that the research would require the therapists who were gathering the Wisdoms to adopt the Narrative Therapy model. It was certainly appearing this way as each group member spoke his or her concern, J: "The ingredient of the therapist has to be considered. The way it is conveyed is significant. It is different to tell a story than to look at externalising the problem and to look at the story of the problem. Narrative therapy is not my style. I am not going to be able to talk to them in that way"; and C: "David Epston's co-research work is about clients' relationship to problems, with a belief and expectation that the person can win over the problem. The problem is the problem. People are agents not victims, his work is not about the contexts of age, background and culture"; and G: "It raises for me the tension I am having with narratives, whether they be pure or whether we are doing a White/Epston co-research". SYSTEMIC VS NARRATIVE? These were times of transition, in the family therapy field. In Australia particularly, the 3366 debate had run hot between the growing numbers of narrative therapists and the systemic band, a generation of seasoned therapists who were faithful to a relatively much longer tradition and historical development in their field. The therapists at this agency saw themselves as systemic family therapists. As Catherine understood it the majority of the group members had played with a number of family therapy models and ideas, which reflected the changes in the field since its inception. Initially family therapists had joined together in a movement away from a psychodynamic, individualistic orientation of therapy, towards looking at people in families as influenced by and influencing each other in patterns of relationship. Indeed, they hypothesised that family systems generate and maintain symptoms. Thus, at first, they took on a cybernetic perspective and looked at families as they would a mechanical system, regulated by feedback loops. Then the strategic work of the Milan school, exerted considerable influence. This school, as Cecchin (1992) puts it, were in those days, "seduced by the idea of games" (87) and power plays or battles between family members and between family members and their therapist, and the idea of problems serving as a function in maintaining the system. The therapists from the Milan school worked strategically by asking questions that would obtain information so that the therapists, who saw themselves as needing to control the interventions, might develop hypotheses and plan effective strategies for the family. However, when the ideas of social constructionism were brought to the fore, an important shift developed in the Milan school and others in the family therapy field. Beliefs changed so that what became important was the idea that the way a person perceives and conceives things is what influences their behaviour. How knowledge is generated, what is privileged, and what is suppressed influences people and their relationships. A 'second order' cybernetic perspective of therapist involvement was adopted. The family was no longer the object of treatment, independently observed by the therapist, it became a meaning generating system. Within this wave these Melbourne therapists coincidentally, when Tom Andersen (1987) was experimenting with reflecting teams in Norway, were also experimenting with reflecting teams. In addition the notion of curiosity and the idea of therapy being a process of circular (Palazzoli, Boscolo, Cecchin & Prata, 1980) and reflexive questioning (Tomm, 1987), was 337 also taken up. They also pushed family therapy to pay heed to the feminist critique of power, and to look at the bigger social and cultural issues affecting family members and their interactions. This included the role of women, discrimination and oppression, social and economic disadvantage, as well as the impact on families of trauma and mental illness. And then in the 1990's Narrative Therapy became a recognised model of therapy in its own right. However, it appeared that the way this approach entered the field left these family therapists unimpressed. Catherine learned that twenty or so years before, psychodynamic therapists criticised systemic therapists much in the same way as systemic therapists were now criticising the narrativists. As Hugh and Maureen Crago (2000), the editors of ANZJFT put it, "Narrative therapy today, like systemic therapy then, can be pilloried for its insistence that it alone has 'the answers', for its apparently arrogant attitude of 'Why bother with other approaches when I can learn more about narrative?" for its disdain of history, and its sureness that it owes little or nothing to other therapeutic traditions" (iv). If this was the position certain narrative therapists had adopted then Catherine was not surprised that any implication that this project should have a Narrative Therapy basis might disturb group members. In this way, some group members were moved to say, "The Narrative Therapy model is only one model for therapeutic change" and… "If this requires us to take the Narrative [Therapy] approach to the narrative then I am not comfortable with it"; and… "The struggle is finding a way that suits your style, your way of working. I must say the narrative stuff is a huge struggle for me." Cecchin (1992) had said "I believe a social constructionist therapist may, at different moments, follow many different leaders, but never obeys one particular model or theory. He or she is always slightly subversive towards any reified 'Truth'" (93). Catherine believed this group saw themselves, similarly, as 'social constructionist' therapists. 338 ALLEGIANCES She took a slightly different view towards Narrative Therapy, but she thought this probably related to when she entered the field of family therapy- the 1990's. She felt the need to get to know a model that philosophically appealed thoroughly, so that later, she could adapt the model to her own unique personality. Catherine suspected that some of the research group members had originally been 'apprenticed' to Family Therapy with predominantly one model, the 'strategic' model of therapy (Tom Paterson, personal communication) and now each practised their own unique style that incorporated many different influences. She had chosen the Narrative Therapy model as a guide to her family therapy work because she found the revolutionary idea of locating the problem, not in the person or in the family relationships, but in the problem, inspirational and compassionate. 'Externalising' as it was coined, she could see, freed the therapist and client alike from the need to apportion blame and offered an invitation to learn something different and so change patterns of behaviour. The idea, also advocated, of positioning herself, the therapist, not as expert knower of a family's life but as a co-explorer with the family of their lived experience, was important (Bird, 2000). Focusing on lived experience and how people make sense of their lives and how this influences interpersonal interactions and the direction of people's lives, rather than the interactions between family members per se, was why narrative therapists did not see themselves as systemic therapists. To her mind the recognition, too, of the potential for dominant discourses to limit and control people's lives, and to influence people's perceptions of reality, to rob them of their ability to find solutions were, in the form of re-authoring therapy, powerful intervening tools for a therapist. In addition, she valued that narrative therapists, strongly influenced by the feminist movement, recognised and made a concerted and ongoing attempt to make transparent the powerful position of the therapist in a client's life, and challenged her to locate herself (politically and socially) in front of her clients. But principally, it was that Narrative Therapy was unique in the field in adopting the idea of 'audience to change', that clinched it for her. Its innovators stated that "if one looks at agency as a resource that is 3399 distributed by others- being granted the right to speak- then what others think of oneself must be taken into account; it is not sufficient simply to change one's picture of oneself privately; one must in addition have a convincing picture to show others" (Epston, White, Murray, 1992: 111). And they found demonstrable ways to implement this in the therapy itself. For Catherine, this idea of inviting audiences to change, through creating an archive, would be an important aspect of the project. Both /And That said, Catherine was thinking that in the end the most important aspect of the therapeutic models were their ability to free people of painful and distressing problems. Her interest in Narrative Therapy, and indeed in this research project, was far more about a desire to improve her practice and understanding, to better help her clients, than it was to enter into a debate about the relative merits of differing models. After dialogue and reflection about how the aims of the project might be incorporated into each of the group members' unique style, they concluded that what would be most interesting would be to remain open minded about the ways they might approach the gathering and circulating of the wisdoms. As C. put it, "We are saying we are not being prescriptive. The Narrative way is one way, it is an alternative, one way to do it. My belief is that we are always asking questions from a particular framework, whatever that framework is. If it is a Narrative one it will lead to 'Narrative' kinds of narratives and if it is another it will be a curious- tell me more kind of narrative, reflecting the framework of the therapist involved". 40 GERMINATION "This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of thought, and it sat for a long time with one finger pressed upon its forehead…while the rest waited in silence. At last the Dodo said… Why…the best way to explain it is to do it. (And as you might like to try the thing yourself, some winter day, I will tell you how the Dodo managed it.)" (Carrol 1866: 33-4) THE GETTING AND GIVING OF GETTING OF WISDOMS "Do you know what this means, when no one cares? When no one knows who you are? When there is no longer any warmth? There were times when I was overcome by a panic, by the thought that here, in this wilderness, I would perish; and my tales would perish with me. I would be buried in an unmarked grave. No one would ever know what I had gone through." (Zable, 2001:84) Some of the experiences Catherine and Nicky had had early on, in the initial stages of the research, brought a realisation that the writing down of the story could have important and sometimes dramatic effects. Catherine, for example, remembered interviewing a woman who had had years of therapy after enduring a childhood of severe sexual, physical and emotional abuse. Despite the years of therapy, Catherine was struck by how difficult it was for this woman to tell her story. Yet, even though full of apprehension, she insisted that this was a good thing for her to do. Catherine had listened to her story for an hour and a half. The next day when she rang the woman to follow up on the impact of the telling, the woman told Catherine that when she walked outside after the interview she had been so overcome with intense emotion she had reeled and had to cling on to a tree for support. However, she told Catherine, "I am really glad I am doing this". When Catherine related this experience Nicky reflected that, "As a therapist you are left with a huge sense of responsibility, we are asking this of this person...it is quite scary." The woman then took the tapes away and eventually sat down and wrote a version of her story based on what she spoke about in the interview. At the end of it all she wrote to Catherine saying, "This is such a powerful learning and healing experience for me. Thanks for the opportunity, space and safety." So they were eager to learn more. Did therapists need to be doing this with their own clients so that their clients would be protected? What are the possible impacts on the person of having th