Narrative Psychology

Narrative psychology is growing in popularity. While it originated back in the 1960s, it started to gain in popularity in psychology after Theodore Sarbin and Jerome Bruner published books on the subject in the 1980s.

For my purposes, narrative psychology provides a benefit theoretically, methodologically and practically. We are all storytellers. It is one of the things that makes us human. Whether they are the formal stories of books or the informal stories about what we did on our holidays, we like to tell people about our lives. We are also listeners. We like to listen to stories, to be an audience. Finally, we like to co-construct stories, to have a conversation where we work out the details of a story.

Psychologists are using this perfectly normal form of human behaviour and building theories about the purposes of stories, the structure of stories, the role of the audience, etc. They are also using narrative as a method, using interviews to obtain information from people about their experiences, and using this interview data psychologically. Finally, and perhaps most pertinently to my work, psychologists are using narrative as therapy. Telling stories about experience can help make sense of that experience. Narrative therapy provides a way for people to make sense of what happened to them.

In the field of trauma, there is growing evidence that narrative approaches help reduce trauma-related symptoms (eg post-traumatic stress, anxiety, depression). We have conducted research with a range of groups using narrative methods that show these methods work. The focus has been on Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET), and we have look at groups as diverse as Chinese earthquake survivors, Saudi firemen, and Iraqi civilians. All benefited to a greater or lesser extent through NET.

More recently, we have started to develop a new type of narrative interview, the Narrative Life Interview (NLI). This is based on the principles of NET, and on McAdams’ Life Story Interview. The key focus of NLI is to explore transitions in life, and it can be adapted for many different purposes.

Further information about narratives will be available on the blog.