Why does one story trump another? 
9 August 2012
4.30pm
Venue: Room H205, Gate 3, 74 Epsom Ave, Epsom, Auckland (View map).
Contact info: RSVP to Esther Fitzpatrick
The Narrative and Metaphor Special Interest Network invites you to a presentation workshop with David Epston:
Why does one story trump another?
Abstract
Narrative Therapy practice has always identified but not clearly specified some sort of relationship between the ‘dominant, problem-saturated story’ and an ‘alternative story’ that lies in its shadows. In accord with the feminist narrative ethicist, Hilde Lindeman Nelson (see Damaged Identities: Narrative Repair (2001)), I have adopted her notion of “'counterstory’” to indicate a more rivalrous or a kind of duel between two competing versions. This workshop will take up the question she proposes but fails to answer: “why does one story trump another’? I propose to show you two relatively short dvds and their transcripts in which two competing stories are brought into a fierce competition as the lives of both an 11 year old boy and an 15 year old depend on the outcome. I willingly admit this presentation marks the early stages of such an investigation and I look forward to appealing to you for ‘leads’ as I suspect literary/narrative theory are the most likely sites. For interested parties, some preliminary reading will be made available on the Narrative and Metaphor website.
Biographical note
David Epston is a Lecturer in Social Practice, UNITEC and Distinguished Scholar at LaTrobe University in the MA in the Clinical Practice of Narrative Therapy programme. He has taught at many universities around the world. He, along with Michael White, were the originators of narrative therapy and community work. He has published widely on this topic including White and Epston (1990), Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends which has been translated in to 12 languages, Epston and White (1992), Experience, Contradiction, Narrative and Imagination; Freeman, Epston and Lobovits (1997), Playful Approaches to Serious Problems: Narrative Therapy with Children and their Families, Maisel, Epston and Borden (2004), Biting the Hand that Starves You: Inspiring Resistance to Anorexia/Bulimia. He and his co-authors are currently preparing a manuscript for WWNorton (New York) entitled: On the other side of the looking glass: Narrative Therapy in Wonderland.
