Stories for therapy: The right story to the right person at the right time

In the postmodern information era with its increasing complexity and demands on my time, I find storytelling increasingly attractive. The right story told to the right person(s) at the right time in the right way can powerfully define and shape both individuals and the systems into which they organize themselves. As interventions go, I find stories to be relatively high impact, low-risk, parsimonious, and user-friendly. This paper contains some of my favorite teaching stories and describes why and how I use them as both a family therapist and teacher of family therapy.     

The self-narrative and acute psychosis

The aim of this study was to apply the narrative approach in analyzing family therapy meetings in cases of acute psychosis. The self-narrative is essential in acute psychosis since it is either collapsed or not coherent enough. The results indicate that it is important to create concrete practices that produce stories concerning the patient in relation to others. The self-narrative must be re-authored by the patient even though it is socially constructed. This is achieved by creating multiple perspectives of self-narratives in so-called therapy meetings with the patient, family members, and staff members representing different professionals.     

“Not with me you don't”: A story of narrative practice and dissociative disorder

This paper discusses issues relating to therapeutic practice based upon the narrative metaphor. A case of someone suffering the effects of Dissociative Identity disorder is used to illustrate the difficulties that clients can experience with the “expert” knowledge conception of therapy. The value of the “respectful” and “non-expert” emphasis of Narrative Practice emerges even when the therapist believes that he or she lacks expertise in the client's apparent “condition.” Three themes emanating from the case form the basis for the discussion: the client's experience of being recruited into accepting the diagnostic label of Dissociative Identity Disorder; the effects of being forced to accept a contract to eliminate self-abusive behaviour; and the therapist's dealing with a gun in the therapy room.     

The recovering female alcoholic: A family affair

Supported by a review of relevant literature and a case study, the author argues that family therapy intervention enhances the likelihood of a female alcoholic's positive prognosis. With a basis in systems theory, family therapy views the family as a system and, hence, perceives the alcoholism as a symptom of that family. A profile of the female alcoholic, how her drinking affects her family, and the role that family therapy plays in the recovery process are examined.     

Toward culturally sensitive intervention with arab families in Israel

Over the past three decades, Arab society in Israel has been undergoing processes of transition. These processes are manifested by changes in the economy, education, the status of women, family structure, and by socio-cultural changes and transformations in patterns of coping with social problems. There is a serious lack of empirical research on the implications of this process for the value systems of Arab society and families in Israel and a dearth of relevant intervention-oriented literature. This article outlines the basic cultural values in the Arab society in Israel in an attempt to illuminate the relevance of these values for family structure and for direct interventions with Arab families in Israel.     

Art in existential psychotherapy with couples and families

The authors describe and outline how art can be used in existential psychotherapy to help a couple or family uncover, discover, and make use of the meanings and meaning potentials to be found in marital and family life. In existential psychotherapy with couples and families, art can be used to help the members of the relationship notice meaning potentials in the future, honor meaning potentials that have been actualized and deposited in the past, and discover new ways to actualize meaning potentials in the here and now.     

Judging others in the shadow of suspicion

Previous research has found that when perceivers have reason to be suspicious of the motives underlying an actor's behavior, they are likely to draw inferences about the actor's true disposition that reflect a relatively sophisticated style of attributional processing. The present research was designed to examine some of the negative consequences that suspicion can have on perceivers' judgments. In each of the three studies reported, some subjects were made suspicious about the motives of an actor on the basis of contextual information surrounding the actor's behavior, rather than the behavior itself. Results of these studies suggest that, particularly when perceivers believe that the actions or motives of the actor could affect them, suspicion may cause perceivers to see the actor in a more negative light, even if the perceivers are not convinced that the actor's behavior was indeed affected by ulterior motives.The authors thank Patrick Carver and Gilbert Fein for their assistance with the stimulus materials for Study 1, and Jessica Cross, Thomas Tomlinson, and Amy Elmore for their assistance with Studies 2 and 3.     

Propositional attitudes and formal ontology

This paper develops — within an axiomatic theory of properties, relations, and propositions which accords them well-defined existence and identity conditions — a sententialist-functionalist account of belief as a symbolically mediated relation to a special kind of propositional entity, theproxy-encoding abstract proposition. It is then shown how, in terms of this account, the truth conditions of English belief reports may be captured in a formally precise and empirically adequate way that accords genuinely semantic status to familiar opacity data.I am deeply indebted to Edward Zalta for many helpful comments and suggestions.     

The role of theory in treating adolescent substance abuse

The adolescent substance abuser, like adult addicts, is most commonly considered from the perspective of the disease model. The usefulness of the disease model in conceptualizing adolescent substance abuse is questioned, and an alternative view of the topic is set forth. Substance abuse, is regarded as an adaptive aspect of the ongoing interactive processes within the family. The developmental process of the adolescent substance abuser is seen as a functional dynamic in the family's preservation. Three characteristic elements of parental interaction common to the development of adolescent substance abuse are highlighted.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Texas Association for Marriage and Family Therapy annual conference on January 28, 1993 in Houston Texas.a research associate and director of the Don D. Jackson Archive at the Mental Research Institute, Palo Alto, CA. Authors are listed alphabetically.