Maria Angela Teixeira, Brazil
After Michael White’s workshops in Bahia and Rio Grande do Sul, a large number of people in Brazil became interested in narrative therapy. As acceptance has increased, I believe additions will only be natural as each therapist will use the basic concepts in different ways in their different cultures. Michael White and David Epston planted the seed and the tree will keep developing, as long as the basic characteristics of the tree are kept.
Blending concepts from different approaches is a very common practice among Brazilians. Narrative therapy is being done in association with other elements. I believe the greatest innovations will be made in the ways of using the concepts of narrative therapy and in this sense I have seen some quite creative new configurations. Some training students have obtained good results when using the philosophy of externalisation creatively when telling stories by using drawings or by dramatising them, when visualising maps in accessible ways with water and colourful paint in bottles, etc. They’ve used their creativity through the procedure and have obtained good results.
My hope is that all of us who study and are enthusiastic about the practice of narrative therapy keep ourselves informed and create new ways of using it, without allowing its basic concepts to become unrecognisable. I hope that each one of us learns the concepts in depth and starts creating on top of them, like a writer that, for instance, creates something new by using the same words available to all of us. This will be our way of showing gratitude and honouring the ideas’ initiators.
