Pre-Con with David Newman: Using Narrative Therapy: finding our stories through the stories of others and making contributions to others
A Pre-conference workshop running on Wednesday 27th November from 8:30-12:30pm
David will be sharing examples of how using the written word can richly and powerfully invigorate stories of well-being. The workshop will include the sharing of therapeutic work with young people in a psychiatric unit, discussion of some theoretical considerations and the exploring of the these ideas with exercises. Four themes that David will be exploring include:
- How people can ‘find’ their own stories through the stories of others.
- How people can ‘find’ their stories when making contributions to others’ lives.
- Ways we use local language, not imposed or professional language as an ethical position.
- Enacting the principle that people already have knowledge of what brings well-being to their lives and we can utilise stories to make such knowledge more visible to them.
This workshop will provide some reasonably simple ways to document stories of well-being that can in the process, see that well-being is strengthened. Included in this is how to structure therapeutic work with people so that they can make contributions to others as well as find their own stories via others’ stories.
About David Newman:
David is a member of the Dulwich Centre faculty, one of the ‘homes’ of ‘Narrative Therapy’, and an Honorary Clinical Fellow at Melbourne University’s School of Social Work. Recent teaching assignments have included Rwanda, Brazil, Nepal, Greece, Turkey, Hong Kong and Palestine and he is a teacher on the Masters of Narrative Therapy and Community Work. He works in Sydney in independent practice at Sydney Narrative Therapy as well as in ‘Uspace’, a psychiatric unit for young people. David is the author of many papers about Narrative Therapy including ‘Rescuing the Said from the Saying of it: Living Documentation in Narrative Therapy’ and is working on a book with a draft title ‘Narrative Practice with young people and their families in a psychiatric setting’.
To find out more about some of David’s work it is possible to watch the following online talk and access a resource he has written together with Marnie Sather; Assisting young people to find their language through the language of others and Holding our heads up Sharing Stories not Stigma after losing a loved one to suicide
Leave a Reply