David Newman
Posted by Dulwich on Nov 17, 2016 in | 0 comments
Showing all 8 results
-
Holding our heads up: We have lost loved ones to suicide and want to share stories not stigma A resource for families who have lost loved ones to suicide Compiled— Marnie Sather and David Newman
$9.90Within these pages are stories and wisdoms from many people who have had to deal with a suicide of a loved one. They have been generously shared from diverse places: Australia, Denmark, Israel, Nigeria, South Africa, United States, Canada, Brazil, Hong Kong, Russia, and the United Kingdom.
Amongst honouring the heartache and loss of the suicide of a loved one, these stories also shine a light on the often small acts that people use to get through such an experience.
-
Illuminating Experiences, Skills and Knowledges around Suicide: An Invitation to Practitioners: From Marnie Sather, David Newman and Dulwich Centre
$0.00This project aims to assist individual’s families and clinicians in navigating the loss of a loved one through suicide. I (Marnie) lost my husband from suicide in March 2004. The process of swimming through the waters of shame and guilt has been rocky and sometimes I’ve been swept out by the strong currents. Now, with this project, we hope to collectively come up with ideas and actions that will make a difference to others who have lost loved ones to suicide. We hope this project will assist people to hold their heads up in difficult times.
-
Using Narrative Practices with Anxiety and Depression: Elevating Context, Joining People, and Collecting Insider-knowledges— David Newman
$9.90This paper, first delivered as a keynote address at the Reconnexion Annual National Anxiety and Depression Conference in Melbourne, May 2010, explores various narrative practices in responding to anxiety and depression: elevating context and externalising problems, linking people in the work, uncovering local and insider-knowledges, and documenting and archiving these knowledges, including using ‘living documents’ as collective therapeutic documents.
-
‘Rescuing the Said from the Saying of It’: Living Documentation in Narrative Therapy— David Newman
$9.90This article explores some creative ideas about using therapeutic documents in narrative practice. After a discussion of the theoretical background, important principles, and ethical issues in employing documents, the author gives examples of emails used to recruit a ‘care team’, and keeping care teams informed of developments in people’s lives. The main part of the paper explores the idea of ‘living documents’: therapeutic documents that are added to by various clients over time. This new departure in therapeutic documents is different from the existing practices of ‘archives’ held by various leagues – which tend to simply be collections of different individual’s documents; and of collective documents, which are usually produced by a group in a collective voice.
-
A first person principle: Philosophical reflections on narrative practice within a mainstream psychiatric service for young people—Philippa Byers and David Newman
$9.90This paper is a collaboration between David Newman, an experienced narrative therapy practitioner and teacher, and Philippa Byers, a narrative therapy student with an academic background in philosophy. The paper charts ideas developed during Philippa’s student placement with David, as they discussed narrative practice, other mental health practices and philosophy. The paper draws on philosophy of language and the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, applying this to Michael White’s injunction to look (and listen) for the experience-near in the words and phrases that are offered to narrative therapists. It offers philosophical reflections on an ethical principle of narrative practice which Philippa and David call a first person principle. The first person principle is elaborated in a discussion of David’s narrative practice with young people. This offers philosophical and practical insights to some of the issues and questions that may arise for narrative therapists who, like David, practice within mainstream services, encountering ‘neuro’ and other professionalised discourses and accompanying expectations.
-
Explorations with the written word in an inpatient mental health unit for young people— David Newman
$9.90In this paper David discusses the concept of the spoken word being ‘relatively unavailable’ to the people he works with at a Sydney based psychiatric unit for young people. He discusses some of his use of the written word in responding to this relative unavailability. This includes some fine tuning of the use of the written word by considering; language use that minimises the risk of people rejecting themselves, utilising the concept of people ‘getting their language through the language of others’, ways to use Michael White and David Epston’s concept of ‘failure proofing’ questions and crafting questions that come out of the dilemmas of therapeutic work. Finally, the ethics of documenting and living documentation more particularly is discussed.
-
How we deal with ‘way out thoughts’: A living document … Ways of talking with young people about suicidal thoughts— David Newman
$9.90In this paper, I describe some of the ways that I use the written word, in the form of ‘living documents’, to enable the sharing of stories and know-how about the ways young people deal with suicidal thoughts, or what are also termed ‘way out thoughts’ or ‘die thoughts’. These explorations take place in my work with young people in a psychiatric unit. I share here an example of a one-to-one conversation and also describe how I collect and use stories in a group work or collective context. The young people I speak with have let me know that such conversations and shared documents are important to them.
-
Audience as Accountability?: Dilemmas in the Use of Outsider-witness Practices in Supporting Men’s Anti-violence Projects— David Newman
$9.90This article explores the author’s concerns about accountability when inviting women as outsider witnesses to conversations with men. A practice-based example of working with a man on issues of anger and violence provides a springboard for thoughtful questions about gender accountability, men’s privilege, safety, and ‘non-burdening invitations’.
I’m Clayre Sessoms from Vancouver, BC, Canada, traditionally known as Coast Salish Territories. I acknowledge that my work takes place on the ancestral, unceded, and occupied territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Nations of the Coast Salish People whose relationship with the land is ancient, primary, and enduring. I’m an uninvited settler in what is colonially known as Vancouver. Because my place of work is on stolen land I commit to support a reconciliation, which includes reparations and the return of land. Here I study counselling psychology and art therapy, and I get to incorporate narrative therapy at my practicum placement, a site that provides free counselling services for LGBTQ2S individuals.
These materials help me to begin to wrap my head around the complexities of narrative therapy. I especially enjoyed learning about how others have used narrative therapy in practical counselling settings.
I’m moved by how we often tend to hear, accept, or retell the thinnest stories of our lives and the lives of others. I imagine that not valuing the richness of an individual’s diverse range of stories, perhaps, it has been much easier to cling to tired old preconceived notions about others, which can cause undue harm.
I’m left thinking about the TEDTalk by Chimamanda Adichie about the dangers of accepting a singular story of someone else, rather than leaning in and committing to understand the wholeness of that person’s narrative.
I look forward to continuing to learn. Thank you to The Dulwich Centre for providing this accessible forum. <3
in what ways have you entered into collaborations before? What made these collaborations possible?
As a peer worker most of my work was entering into collaborations with young people. I would use curiosity to further inquire into their experience, and looking back wow these narrative practices would have been amazing to use in our youth group discussions! We would use art mostly in telling stories. Many of the young people heard voices and saw characters only they could see. They would enjoy painting these voices, externalising the character, giving it a name and talking about the story and nature of the relationship between the voice and the character. I also enjoyed illiciting these stories, as I could tell they would begin to separate themselves from the voices, allowing for guilt and shame to reduce.
What might make it hard to enter into these practices?
The one difficult way of entering into these practices was the note writing. The managerial culture of my last workplace meant it was not considered good practice to have clients sit with us to write notes. In fact most clients probably were unaware that workers did regularly make notes each time they had contact with the centre. We were a strengths based centre that thrived on person centred practice. I think there is a bit of a stereotype that note writing is quite clinical and removed from person centred practice, hence a certain avoidance of bringing up notes in front of clients.
If these ways of working fit for you, what next steps could you take to build partnerships/collaborations in your work?
I definitely believe I could continue to use art to help young people tell their alternative stories. In mental health many workers draw thin conclusions of clients – bipolar, poor attachment, violent, with even their strengths really talked about in third person. It would be great to start drawing peoples strengths out with the use of story telling, so that clients can start to own their strengths, rather than have clinicans cherry pick these out.
Thank you to Tileah for a wonderful presentation. I love hearing the word “yarn” used in this powerful way (Americans also have that term). The practice of “translating”, of shifting concepts into language that can be more usefully heard, is very powerful. As coaches we can make good use of this to help clients uncover their hidden or forgotten resources.
These stories are amazing examples of what we can discover when we hold onto our “beginner’s mind” and remember that the other person (client, patient) has the information and understanding, not us. We talk a lot in leadership development about “co-creating” and I think this is a beautiful example of two very complementary roles: the person who has the story and the person who helps to explore and shape it.
I like the idea of narrative – there is something about giving people the power to create a narrative, rather than simply appearing in a story told by someone else. Within the narrative metaphor, I especially enjoy the fabric metaphor – the idea of strands. These may touch each other, or not, may go well together in tone or color, or not. But again, there is some power in creating and weaving the narrative.
In my own work with coaching and leadership development, I find that the emphasis on narrative(s) helps make things more tangible, and therefore brings them to their true scale, instead of letting them take on imaginary and unclearly described proportions.
I love this. Telling our stories in ways that make us stronger. Such a powerful sentiment. Sometimes through trauma, it is hard to access the words that really encapsulate that experience – though using the written word does help us access those hard to utter parts of our memories … in those cases though perhaps the story we tell ourselves is not one that makes us feel strong in the first instance – so finding a way to tell that story in a way that focuses on the strength of surviving to tell that story is just amazing!