Dharma Bum

The AFTA Conference Update

Last night I returned home from the American Family Therapy Conference which was held in San Francisco this year. I was hoping to daily blog this conference as well but this being my 2nd conference in two weeks, I just didn't have the energy at the end of the day. Sorry! Anyway, I wanted to provide a summary of the conference and point out some of the peak moments for me.

Once again AFTA really did a nice job of putting on a conference focused on cutting edge practices in family therapy while maintaining a focus on social justice. This was a special conference for me because I had the opportunity to present with Anne Arnold and in the process show video of my work with families. It was a wonderful experience. After it was done Anne and I had a chance to peak at the evaluations and they were amazing. Success! Other highlights from the conference included having an opportunity to meet and spend time in conversation with a couple of stalwarts of the San Diego narrative community Jan Ewing and Gerald Monk from SDSU. Another highlight was being asked about my interest in teaching a class in a very important MFT program here locally. Keep your fingers crossed please, hopefully I'll have more to talk about at a later date. I also caught many great brief presentations and great keynotes. The one keynote that particularly stood out was Positive Deviance, Social Complexity, and Generative Relationships by presenter Arvind Singhal. I look forward to doing it all again in Chicago next year and continuing the relationships that started in San Francisco. Here's some photos from the presentation we did. Enjoy:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Narrative Re-membering Practices with Lorraine Hedtke

Hello Friends! Here's a great opportunity to train in Narrative Re-membering Practices with Lorraine Hedtke in September. More info will be coming and I will share as I get it.

The Narrative Project OC (Anne & Chris) in San Francisco

This week Anne Arnold and myself representing the Narrative Project of OC will be presenting at the American Family Therapy Academy conference beng held in San Francisco. If you happen to be attending, or in the area, please come join us. We are looking forward to having a collaborative and fun interest group. Details about our presentation follow:

There exists some critique of Narrative Therapy that in its emphasis on larger societal discourses it has missed out on considering the more immediate family or the human networks that people live within. This Interest Group will respond to this critique and show how narrative practice in family therapy does attend to both the larger societal discourses as well as family intricacies at the most local level, and rather than blame families for the problems of family members, the narrative family therapy approach brings the family or networks together to counter the problem as they see it.  Through collaborative dialog the participants will be invited to develop lines of inquiry that draw on families collective wisdom, and a co-research video demonstration will show from the families point of view, what works best in family therapy.

Therapeutic Conversations X - Day #3

Therapists come and go, but family and friends more often stick around for a lifetime. - Pru (a veteran consumer of human services)

Hello again! Day 3 of the Therapeutic Conversations conference in Vancouver and it once again it did not disappoint. This morning I had the opportunity to catch the exceptional workshop facilitated by Peggy Sax (pictured Bryna Andressen, Charley Lang, Peggy Sax) titled Neighborly Ways of Being: Building Communities, Linking Lives. Peggy Sax, through the use of video interviews and co-research, showed how the narrative practitioner can work to identify practices that strengthen naturally occurring communities of support using the rhizome metaphor as a guide for curiosity and surprise. Sax's workshop challenged common assumptions about working in individualized ways and how intentional therapeutic communal practices can strengthen social connectedness in ways that do not center the therapist. Sax showed how these communal practices can provide a wide range of non-prescriptive options for connectedness. It was a powerful workshop that gave me much to think about as I blew off the rest of the day to walk around Vancouver and see some art. Tonight is my last night in Vancouver. It has once again been a wonderful respite and opportunity to see what my narrative family has been working on. Goodbye Vancouver, I leave you with a song in my heart..

Therapeutic Conversations X - Day #2

Hello again! It was another wonderful day of learning Vancouver. The weather here was beautiful today so it was hard staying indoors, but fortunately for me all the workshops I attended made the lack of sunshine OK. The day started with a First Nation Welcome ceremony that included a song by the appropriately named band "The Externalizer's." Following that Stephen Madigan welcomed everybody to the conference and then gave the morning keynote. Madigan's keynote set the tone for the conference by declaring narrative therapy as a counter to longstanding therapeutic traditions of the privatized problemed self, doing this via an anti-individualist, relational stance. Madigan's keynote was an argument against de-politicized therapy. He also pointed out how quite realistically that anybody with little graduate studies can make claims of knowing on other bodies, and also name others pathologies. Powerful stuff. Madigan in a bit of humor went on to advance the idea that we should actually call ourselves Licensed Declassification Professionals.

Following the morning keynote I attended the workshop titled Insider, Outsider and the Generative Space in Between facilitated by Allison Rice and Dennis Dion (pictured with me in the middle). This was by far my favorite workshop. Allison and Dennis collaborated together for several years at the Peak House where they worked with youth and families struggling with the problem of substance misuse. Allison and Dennis did a wonderful job bringing forth their deep interrogation of the problem of addiction and its tactics and how an understanding of other theoretical frameworks (harm reduction, 12 step, etc.) help bring about a fluidity that resists binary ways of seeing problems or solutions. I understood both Allison and Dennis to have a poststructuralist and realistic understanding of substance misuse. I found them quite creative in the use of queer theory in their idea that it would be un-queer to attach a tag to someone that they don't prefer, but also that it would be un-queer to remove a tag that the person would prefer. I also found them to be quite pragmatic when they asserted that deconstructing modernist approaches to the problem in early abstinence could be quite dangerous. A bold position in this crowd for sure, but in my experience as an insider, their understanding resonated with me quite powerfully. Allison and Dennis' workshop really was an opportunity to see how a social constructionist/narrative lens really contributes meaningfully to those seeking our help.

In the afternoon I had the opportunity to catch the workshop where John Winslade did another outstanding job of making the work of Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze more user friendly. There was much helpful discussion added by the presence of Tom Strong, Joel Shapiro, and Jonny Morris who were all equally adept at making some dense material more understandable. Kudos!

The day ended with the afternoon keynote by Sheila McNamee who is the Vice President of the Taos Institute. McNamee's keynote was titled Pushing the Relational Edge: Constructing Narrative Practice and her project seemed to be one of promoting a promiscuous stance (mixing it up) as opposed to one of practice purity. I'm not sure how this talk went over with the narrative faithful, but it did have me thinking about the morning workshop where both Rice and Dion showed a real practice that was less worried about "getting it right" and more concerned about points of connection, effectiveness, and protecting the people who sought their help from getting caught in the middle of theoretical battles. Lots to think about today. So while I'm considering all that happened today, enjoy another Vancouver sunset:

Therapeutic Conversations X - Day #1

Hello from beautiful Vancouver. I just wrapped up the daylong workshop with Bill Madsen titled Collaborative Helping: A Simple Map to Transform Relational Positioning. I first became a fan of Bill Madsen's work when I was introduced to his outstanding book Collaborative Therapy With Multi-Stressed Families in grad school. It was one of the few books from grad school that I re-visit again and again.

In today's workshop Madsen attempted to introduce us all to what he called disciplined improvisation through the use of a collaborative helping map he developed in an effort to operationalize family-centered values and principles to the often messy work of family therapy. His MAP or line of inquiry consisted of four parts (simplified considerably for this blog post):

            Organizing Vision: Where do you want to be headed in your life?

Obstacles: What gets in the way?  Supports: What supports you?

Plan: What needs to happen?

Madsen believes that through this MAP our relational stance, or how we are with people, will be transformed to a more collaborative approach. Our conceptual maps, or how we think of people and problems will shift, and our helping practices or what we do with people will be more ethical.

Anybody familiar with appreciative inquiry would find much to appreciate in Madsen's approach. Borrowing from the four D's of AI Madsen in his MAP rearranges the AI Dream phase to Vision and the AI Design phase to Plan. However, unlike appreciative inquiry's strength based focus, Madsen holds on to his poststructuralist cred by shifting the language of strengths and needs to one of supports and obstacles. All in an effort to move from the internal view of strengths as characteristics, to a more intentional view of strengths as skills of living, intentions, purposes, values, and hopes and dreams. It is in this shift that Madsen believes more interesting conversations can happen.

I was quite happy that I had the opportunity to spend the day learning from Bill Madsen. His presentation gave me much to think about. It was interesting to see how someone is integrating the principles of appreciative inquiry into narrative practice and how that may look. The conference is off to a great start for me, and I'm really looking forward to the rest of the week. More later, but until then enjoy this Vancouver sunset I caught last night.

Therapeutic Conversations X

Hello! I've found myself back in Vancouver for the 10th running of the Therapeutic Conversations Conference hosted by Stephen Madigan and the Vancouver School of Narrative Therapy. This years line-up looks to be pretty awesome and it is my intention to actually blog the conference. I will do my best to give daily updates of what the day held for me, and throw up a pic or two of the activities, and maybe even an interview or two of some of the narratively inclined folk in attendence. So please come back and enjoy the sights and sounds of beautiful Vancouver, BC.

TC X

Three Weeks left to get discounted rates for TC X. Who's coming to Vancouver with me? Register HERE!

Scaffolding a Community of Competent Narrative Practitioners

Continuing the great free articles and Youtube videos from the Family Process Journal theme, I would now like to direct your attention to the article Scaffolding a Community of Competent Practitioners: Positioning and Agency in a Training Program for Narrative Counseling co-authored by Helen Gremillion, Aileen Cheshire, and Dorothea Lewis. This article explores the scaffolding of learning experiences in a postgraduate program in New Zealand that offers training in narrative counseling. In the article the authors examine relationships of power in classrooms, and explore ways to align poststructuralist counseling practices and the teaching of these practices. Please watch the video of Helen Gremillion describing her article then go spend some time with the article:

In college, I used to underline sentences that struck me, that made me look up from the page. They were not necessarily the same sentences the professors pointed out, which would turn up for further explication on an exam. I noted them for their clarity, their rhythm, their beauty and their enchantment. For surely it is a magical thing for a handful of words, artfully arranged, to stop time. To conjure a place, a person, a situation, in all its specificity and dimensions. To affect us and alter us, as profoundly as real people and things do. - Jhumpa Lahiri, My Life’s Sentences

The Narrative Project's Spring Consultation Group

Well the Project kicked off another narrative therapy consultation group facilitated by Anne Arnold. It was great to be back in community learning, sharing, and having fun as we moved through narrative theory and practice. If you're interested in participating in a future group just shoot me a message. Some pics from today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Johnella Bird - Reflections In Therapeutic Conversations

Attached is a nice video of Johnella Bird describing her use of reflections in therapeutic conversations with people, couples and families she is working with. Like Johnella I've found taking time for reflections quite helpful in finding out if those I'm working with believe we are moving in a useful direction. In this video Johnella proposes that most clinicians are trained with the idea that we are to do information gathering in an effort to "know" and then act on that idea. Johnella uses relational expressions to create reflections that counter this idea of having to know, and rather as a tool of discovery with people who consult with her. She describes using reflections more regularly as having several positive effects on therapeutic conversations including:

1. Slowing the process down, and allowing considerations for how the contextual environment may be effecting couples or families.

2. Making sense of the work. Are we moving in a useful direction?

3. Provides the opportunity to "experience" the reflections, and allows people access to alternative descriptions.

4. And finally, reflections allows the counselor and those she's working with an opportunity to establish a new narrative platform.

All of this in an effort not just to discover new resources, but actually make new resources in the present moment. Movement. This video has inspired me to use reflections more often in my sessions for all the reasons above. Enjoy the video:

Narrative & Pizza: Michael White & Trauma

The next event in the Narrative and Pizza series hosted by John Winslade & Lorraine Hedtke at CSU San Bernardino will feature Michael White speaking on video about narrative practice at the International Trauma Studies Program in 2007. The group will be watching the video and will stop it repeatedly to discuss the ideas presented by Michael White. See the attached flyer for more details.

This event will take place in CE120 in the College of Education at CSUSB on Friday March 16, from 6pm to 8pm. All are welcome!  Students, faculty, staff, alumni, practitioners, visitors, friends.

Therapeutic Conversations X

Hello all. Just a reminder that registration is open for Therapeutic Conversations X happening in Vancouver May 8-12. This year looks to be an epic conference, and just a sampling of the great presenters lined up include: Karl Tomm, Jill Freedman, Cheryl White, Kiwi Tamasese, Colin Sanders, Stephen Madigan, David Denborough, Sheila MacNamee, Aaron Munroe, Charles Waldegrave,  Vicki Dickerson, Ottar Ness, Jeff Zimmerman, Bill Madsen, Lorraine Grieves, John Winslade, Peggy Sax, and Lorraine Hedtke.

I will be there and would enjoy some company in one of the finest cities in the world. All the info can be found HERE. Let's go!

Foucault, Bertolt Brecht & Truth To Power

I like that title.

So hopefully I will be doing a little more posting around here now that I finished my first draft of a review I wrote of Foucault Beyond Foucault by Jeffrey Nealon for possible inclusion in a narrative therapy related journal. It was not a typical review, at least in my opinion. I included a piece on implications for practice where I hope to raise some considerations around taken for granted notions of justice-doing, and the continuing insistence of the scarcity of resistance. Now I wait to hear back from the editor, which I am finding is the hard part. This is the time when the insecurity around writing is the most intense. I hope it doesn't suck... Fun!

Continuing the power theme, yesterday Michele and I visited UCI's Experimental Media Performance Lab to catch the wonderful production of Galileo In America by Robert Allen & Antoinetter LaFarge. Galileo In America is part examination of the mythologizing of history for political ends, part German cabaret, but mostly addresses; under what conditions does anyone speak truth to power, or who gets to speak at all?

As I sat in this performance struggling with insecurity around  my recent writing project, and my insistence that resistance is everywhere. It was the character of Virginia, Galileo's daughter (but also representing Brecht's little known female collaborators who co-wrote many of his plays) that said it best at the end of the performance while calling out Brecht, when she insisted "even the furniture has a story." I couldn't have said it better myself. The show runs for another weekend. Go.

Narrative Therapy Consultation Group w/Anne Arnold - Starting March 16th!

Hello Everybody! The Narrative Project of Orange County is pleased to announce that the new consultation group facilitated by Anne Arnold is set. It will take place on Friday afternoons at 1pm and the dates are March 16th, April 13th, May 4th, and June 8th. If you would like to participate please contact me at narrativechris {at} gmail.com. Hope to see you soon!

AAMFT Student Conf. & AFTA in San Francisco - Presenting

Don't I look like I know what I'm talking about? Hello All. Anne Arnold and I will be presenting on Narrative Approaches to Family Therapy at both the AAMFT-CA Student Conference at SDSU on Feb 24th, and the American Family Therapy Academy Conference in San Francisco May 16-19th. I've been to both conferences and both are worth the effort if you can make it. Plus you can come say Hi to us! Currently they're offering discounted registration for the AAMFT Student conference HERE. I hope to see you in San Diego or San Francisco.

Narrative Therapy Consultation Groups

Hello DB Readers! Narrative therapy consultation groups facilitated by Anne Arnold are forming and will be starting at the end of the month. If you're interested in learning about narrative therapy or want to discuss narrative therapy literature, participate in skills training, and get some consultation with the work you may be doing than these groups are for you! The Narrative Project of OC consultation groups offer an excellent opportunity for staying connected to narrative therapy work, expanding skills, as well as networking with people who share an interest in narrative therapy. Contact me (Chris Hoff) if interested. Thanks!

Therapeutic Conversations 10

The registration and the full schedule for Therapeutic Conversations 10 is up and running. TC10 is the premier North American narrative therapy conference and not to be missed. It's running from May 8-10th in beautiful Vancouver, CA. I can't wait. Hope to see you there. Info HERE.

Michael White on Alcoholics Anonymous

Alcoholics Anonymous: A structured rite of passage

 In the above discussion I have invoked the rite of passage metaphor and provided some ideas about how this can be taken up in assisting persons to revise their relationship with substances. Upon reviewing what I have written here, I found myself reflecting on what has become a particularly well established approach to addressing addictions and/or the excessive consumption of substances that is structured as a rite of passage - Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Although the ideas that I have discussed in this paper are not directly informed by AA, and although many of the ideas and practices of narrative work directly contradict many of the ideas and practices of AA, I never-the-less have a strong respect for AA, one that now stretches back over two and a half decades. I will here share some of these reflections, doing so in the context of an acknowledgment that I cannot claim an insiders knowledge of this system.

 I believe that the originators of Alcoholics Anonymous had great vision, and a profound understanding of the significance of rites of passage. At the centre of A A is a ritual event that provides for a formalisation of the stages of separation and reincorporation, and for a marking of the turning points of person's lives. This is accompanied by the convening of forums that provide the opportunity for persons to give testimony to the decisions that they have made to break from excessive alcohol consumption, to the desires and purposes that motivate these decisions, and to tell and retell the stories of their lives before a group of witnesses, many of whom are veterans of such journeys. In this context, the responses of the witness group are powerfully acknowledging and authenticating of these decisions, desires, purposes and stories. As these decisions and stories, and these accounts of desire and purpose, become more richly described, they become more influential - they are more significantly shaping of persons' lives.

 There is also so much about AA that provides a great deal of sustenance to those who are navigating the liminal phase of this journey. There is a buddy system that provides the traveller with intimate support, and a concerned community of fellow travellers who share the maps, the knowledges, and the skills that are specific to journeys of this kind. The structure of AA builds in frequent opportunities for travellers to give voice to the trials and tribulations of these journeys, and for them to experience continuing acknowledgment of the different struggles that they find themselves engaged in.

 AA's responses to persons who turn back to the bottle are generally compassionate rather than judging. This is an antidote to the demoralising sense of personal failure that is so often occasioned by such U-turns, and keeps the door open on options for persons to try again, and yet again. In response to these U-turns, the AA community just goes on reaching out. This is a reaching out by persons who have 'been there', and who have a strong appreciation of the desperation that is experienced in this struggle.

 In terms of explanation for why it is that persons break from substance abuse, AA privileges notions of conscious purpose,  commitment, and calling. In privileging these notions, and in not joining with the contemporary habit of psychologising motives for action, AA assists persons to resist turning their lives over to the knowledges of  the professional disciplines - the understanding of what it is necessary to understand does not require a submission to the 'expert' knowledges. In evoking notions of conscious purpose, commitment and calling, AA emphasises ways of life that are guided by personal ethics, formulated and re-formulated time and time again through tellings and re-tellings in a concerned community.

 Alcoholics Anonymous, in the journey that it structures, in the understandings that it emphasises, and in its actual practices, has clearly had a positive impact on the lives of so many persons. - Via