Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends

White and Epston base their therapy on the assumption thatpeople experience problems when the stories of their lives,as they or others have invented them, do not sufficientlyrepresent their lived experience. Therapy then becomes aprocess of storying or restorying the lives and experiences ofthese people. In this way narrative comes to play a centralrole in therapy. Both authors share delightful examples of astoried therapy that privileges a person’s lived experience,inviting a reflexive posture and encouraging a sense of authorshipand reauthorship of one’s experiences and relationshipsin the telling and retelling of one’s story.