A305 Transforming Inner Life: A Narrative Approach

Discover the power of drawing on clients’ private language, internal images, and personal stories to help them revive a deep sense of identity and self-worth.

Michael White, B.A.S.W.

CE Credits: 4
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Ad 4 CE Credit Hours: $39

Many clients come to us when their sense of self has become depleted, when they are feeling empty and desolate. The task of helping people reinvigorate their sense of self is greatly assisted by understanding the metaphorical inner landscape of consciousness, particularly the private language and internal images that underlie our experience of identity. This course will offer a narrative approach to the crafting of therapeutic responses that will redevelop this language of inner life, and that will provide a foundation for people to proceed with their lives. You will learn a variety of methods for facilitating this process, including approaches to re-authoring conversations, outsider-witness retellings, and practices of the written word. This will be linked to the work of William James and Lev Vygotsky to provide a clinically invaluable perspective on the often overlooked developmental processes of identity formation.

Meet The Instructor

Michael White, B.A.S.W., is co-director of the Dulwich Centre in Adelaide, South Australia, and co-author of Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends.

Course Contents

Session 1: Overview • The role of re-authoring conversations in the development of the narrative of self

Session 2: Outside-witness practices--the vital contribution of the "audience" to the re-development of the language of inner life

Session 3: "Scaffolding" therapeutic conversations • Traversing the space between the "known and familiar" and what is possible to know about one's life and identity

Session 4: Practices of the written word • The documentation of narratives of self and the socio-historical context of these narratives

Learning Objectives

1.Describe the origins of the language of inner life
2. Discuss relevance of origin of the language of inner life to the development of a sense of self
3. Formulate therapeutic questions that will contribute to the redevelopment of the language of inner life.
4. Explain the concepts of William James and Lev Vygotsky related to the formation of self

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