Love this framing of psychoanalysis as world building and done by gifted writers. I laughed at “come on… these are novellas.” Yes!! Well said. That is novel to me and helps me have another way to look at it.
Agree about the problematic power dynamic of who holds the interpretation in therapy. I’m traditionally trained psychodynamic but loving things like IFS that explicitly de-center the therapist as the knower and into the role of curious co-pilot instead. I feel relieved and engaged from this vantage point where I get to be constantly surprised by what’s around the next corner. Clients land on awareness and insight I could have never dreamed up and that is exactly what they need.
I appreciate how this piece (a) engages the both/and of psychoanalytic + narrative paradigms while (b) moving away from binary either/or epistemological positions, and also (c) questions ideas and invites deeper thinking about therapeutic modalities without asserting new Truth claims. I wish there were a more direct way to put this; articulating these ideas with simple prose seems to be one of the challenges baked into postmodern philosophy. See: Lacan, as you point out.
I’ve at times noticed conversations among narrative therapists that (inadvertently?) frame psychodynamic thought as the wrong way, and narrative approaches as the right way. When this happens, I struggle with how this approach (accidentally?) reproduces the logic of Truth claims, which is the sort of thing that Foucault et al. question.
Love this! Beautifully written. You’ve created a lovely seam of kindredness between these two ways of being with people. And oh yes, we all need to hold our pens more loosely, or periodically just put them down for a spell. No need to be the Knower. Thanks Chris.
You make a sharp case, but I don’t think “who holds the pen” is the only question we should be asking. The pen, as you said, is narrative. It’s cognitive. It’s the mind. I think therapeutic spaces need to evolve past narrative alone, and start paying attention to other signals — inviting the body and the nervous system to the table, and attending to what they’re already expressing.
So the question isn’t only “whose story gets constructed.” It’s also about the practitioner facilitating close observation of somatic experience .. without interpreting it, without intervening on it. Here, we follow the client naturally, trusting the body’s own intelligence and where it will lead.
I think this is the depth people are looking for, but they don’t know how to ask for it because we’ve taught them to suppress the signals of their body and their nervous system for decades. As an industry and as practitioners, this is territory that’s not charted sufficiently enough in my belief.
I get a lot out of your articles. Maybe I am more of a narrative therapist than I ever gave the modality credit for because I find myself consistently nodding along with your words.
Chris I wonder if you are comparing with psychoanalysis of yesteryear from your description of it. I have come to know that contemporary psychoanalysts are just as decentered as narrative therapists and just as curious but given the tradition of Long term therapy there is a bit more space to dwell and let a client have time to be agentic.
I was able to compare as I was in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy whilst doing my master's in narrative therapy and now I have a supervisor who is an analyst. I find the two are not at odds with each other but complements beautifully. What those who read my essays during my degree and watched my video recording of me and a client did not know was how much I modelled the therapy I was actually in myself in what I showed.
What makes me sad is when I participate in narrative therapy gatherings is that some narrative therapists are poo pooing psychoanalytic thinking as 'power over' and blank slate is used as a descriptor. I suspect I might find some of that in some other places too where I could be sitting with the other crowd... Though I don't get that from my supervisor either who always reminds me if I have said things to a client where it closed the conversation instead of opening it up.
Hi Frederikke- I wasn’t comparing differences of practice like blank slate or centered therapists. I hope it read as me pointing out the similarities of narrative theory. We are just upfront about it. Like I said and pointed out, I still read psychoanalytic writers and theorists. But rather from a narrative/philosophical perspective. I am sure there are great psychoanalytic practitioners.
Chris it was this paragraph that made me wonder and think of yesteryear.
"The problem with psychoanalytic world-building isn’t that it’s world-building. It’s who holds the pen. In classical psychoanalytic practice, the analyst knows what your dream means. In contemporary psychodynamic practice they have access to your interiority that you don’t have. The interpretive authority belongs to the expert, and the client is essentially a character in someone else’s story about them. That’s a significant power arrangement performed as analytical insight."
I think there is a use of language that is hypothetical and tentative, not prescriptive. But I also think there are no absolutisms here as there will be differences in how each individual therapist use language and how decentered they are in context be they narrative or Psychoanalytic. It also depends how each therapist has scaffolded the relationship in terms of the client being able to say 'nope, that question didn't land. It's more like this...' questions can be loaded too with what a therapist may infer.
Yes I think I understood as much but I was in doubt hence I used 'wonder' and ''yesteryear' as I do believe there was some of a power over stance way back, which might have had to do with the culture and context of the time of Freud for example.
Love this framing of psychoanalysis as world building and done by gifted writers. I laughed at “come on… these are novellas.” Yes!! Well said. That is novel to me and helps me have another way to look at it.
Agree about the problematic power dynamic of who holds the interpretation in therapy. I’m traditionally trained psychodynamic but loving things like IFS that explicitly de-center the therapist as the knower and into the role of curious co-pilot instead. I feel relieved and engaged from this vantage point where I get to be constantly surprised by what’s around the next corner. Clients land on awareness and insight I could have never dreamed up and that is exactly what they need.
Thank you for this!
I appreciate how this piece (a) engages the both/and of psychoanalytic + narrative paradigms while (b) moving away from binary either/or epistemological positions, and also (c) questions ideas and invites deeper thinking about therapeutic modalities without asserting new Truth claims. I wish there were a more direct way to put this; articulating these ideas with simple prose seems to be one of the challenges baked into postmodern philosophy. See: Lacan, as you point out.
I’ve at times noticed conversations among narrative therapists that (inadvertently?) frame psychodynamic thought as the wrong way, and narrative approaches as the right way. When this happens, I struggle with how this approach (accidentally?) reproduces the logic of Truth claims, which is the sort of thing that Foucault et al. question.
So, again: Thanks! I enjoyed reading this.
Love this! Beautifully written. You’ve created a lovely seam of kindredness between these two ways of being with people. And oh yes, we all need to hold our pens more loosely, or periodically just put them down for a spell. No need to be the Knower. Thanks Chris.
You make a sharp case, but I don’t think “who holds the pen” is the only question we should be asking. The pen, as you said, is narrative. It’s cognitive. It’s the mind. I think therapeutic spaces need to evolve past narrative alone, and start paying attention to other signals — inviting the body and the nervous system to the table, and attending to what they’re already expressing.
So the question isn’t only “whose story gets constructed.” It’s also about the practitioner facilitating close observation of somatic experience .. without interpreting it, without intervening on it. Here, we follow the client naturally, trusting the body’s own intelligence and where it will lead.
I think this is the depth people are looking for, but they don’t know how to ask for it because we’ve taught them to suppress the signals of their body and their nervous system for decades. As an industry and as practitioners, this is territory that’s not charted sufficiently enough in my belief.
I get a lot out of your articles. Maybe I am more of a narrative therapist than I ever gave the modality credit for because I find myself consistently nodding along with your words.
Chris I wonder if you are comparing with psychoanalysis of yesteryear from your description of it. I have come to know that contemporary psychoanalysts are just as decentered as narrative therapists and just as curious but given the tradition of Long term therapy there is a bit more space to dwell and let a client have time to be agentic.
I was able to compare as I was in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy whilst doing my master's in narrative therapy and now I have a supervisor who is an analyst. I find the two are not at odds with each other but complements beautifully. What those who read my essays during my degree and watched my video recording of me and a client did not know was how much I modelled the therapy I was actually in myself in what I showed.
What makes me sad is when I participate in narrative therapy gatherings is that some narrative therapists are poo pooing psychoanalytic thinking as 'power over' and blank slate is used as a descriptor. I suspect I might find some of that in some other places too where I could be sitting with the other crowd... Though I don't get that from my supervisor either who always reminds me if I have said things to a client where it closed the conversation instead of opening it up.
Hi Frederikke- I wasn’t comparing differences of practice like blank slate or centered therapists. I hope it read as me pointing out the similarities of narrative theory. We are just upfront about it. Like I said and pointed out, I still read psychoanalytic writers and theorists. But rather from a narrative/philosophical perspective. I am sure there are great psychoanalytic practitioners.
Chris it was this paragraph that made me wonder and think of yesteryear.
"The problem with psychoanalytic world-building isn’t that it’s world-building. It’s who holds the pen. In classical psychoanalytic practice, the analyst knows what your dream means. In contemporary psychodynamic practice they have access to your interiority that you don’t have. The interpretive authority belongs to the expert, and the client is essentially a character in someone else’s story about them. That’s a significant power arrangement performed as analytical insight."
So no more interpretation or prescription in contemporary psychoanalysis?
I think there is a use of language that is hypothetical and tentative, not prescriptive. But I also think there are no absolutisms here as there will be differences in how each individual therapist use language and how decentered they are in context be they narrative or Psychoanalytic. It also depends how each therapist has scaffolded the relationship in terms of the client being able to say 'nope, that question didn't land. It's more like this...' questions can be loaded too with what a therapist may infer.
Yes I think I understood as much but I was in doubt hence I used 'wonder' and ''yesteryear' as I do believe there was some of a power over stance way back, which might have had to do with the culture and context of the time of Freud for example.
"A curious, decentered witness." That stayed with me😌
The idea that the role is to open space rather than interpret or prescribe — something I want to carry into my own interview work too.