Book Description

The Narrative Journey: An Illustrated Guide to Narrative Therapy Principles uses a journey metaphor to take the reader through the experience of narrative therapy. This guidebook was conceived when John Stilllman was invited to train social workers who were practicing within a community working and living on a garbage dump in Kien Giang, Vietnam. It makes narrative principles accessible to people through illustration and story. Each of the principles is woven into the metaphor of a journey and is beautifully illustrated with an image that gives the reader an experiential relationship with narrative principles. Since training in Vietnam, Mr. Stillman has used this guidebook in narrative training sessions in the United States, Korea, Greece, Turkey, and France with wonderful results and feedback. Narrative principles respect that people can determine what they want in life and keep their positions at the center of interactions. Narrative therapy also allows individuals and communities to explore what is important in their daily lives and relationships. The narrative principles laid out in this guidebook offer entry points to multiple conversations, helping people make decisions that fit with their values, hopes, and dreams.This guidebook is intended for therapists with varying levels of experience with narrative principles and can be used when working with individuals, couples, families, and communities. Because the journey metaphor and the illustrations are universal, the guidebook will also be helpful in settings outside of therapy including pastoral care, medicine, human resources, and organizational development. Narrative principles can be used in these settings to develop rich conversations about people's values. These discussions focus on actions that help people address problems and support what is important to them.In addition, this guidebook, with the principles' focus on identifying values, hopes, and dreams can be read to children or by adults as a way of creating new possibilities when interacting with the world. It can also be used as a primer for Mr. Stillman's book, Narrative Therapy Trauma Manual: A Principle-Based Approach (2010) which describes the principles of narrative therapy in detail, or as a precursor to reading Mr. Stillman's upcoming book, Narrative Therapy Handbook: Moving Narrative Principles into Practice (in press).