It is no coincidence that religious texts are foundational in many people's lives, for narrative is an age-old human way of making meaning. As Baldwin (2005) notes, humans are essentially narrative beings - we relate to one another in and through narratives. Narrative, according to Taylor (1996), is the primary form by which human experience is made meaningful. In this section I explore narrative as an expression of imagination and ways that religion can serve as a warehouse for stories.
Storytelling, of course, evolved from the human capacity for speech. Speech is considered humans' special form of communication. Anthropologists debate whether speech or song came first. Speech in its primitive beginnings may have been entirely practical, focused on labeling, but for Shepard (1978) it is just as likely to have been entirely composed of metaphors with multiple meanings. Language, he indicates, is a coding device for recall; what is recalled is attached to an image. For educated chimpanzees it is quite possible that sounds - even words - produce mental images, but what chimps cannot do is speak - i.e., transmit images by words, or construct more elaborate scenarios of visual play by speech. Other primates or carnivorous mammals may be able to summon images to mind's eye and perhaps hold them there, but they likely cannot link abstract qualities with visual figures or yoke them to arbitrary verbal signals. What makes the human experience different is the shaping of the envisioning mind by the auditory brain.
Speech and memory are connected. Poetry and music connect past, present, and future, symbolizing continuity and persistence through time (Shepard 1978). Tulving (1983) writes:
Remembering past events is a universally familiar experience. It is also a uniquely human one. As far as we know, members of no other species possess quite the same ability to experience again now, in a different situation and perhaps in a different form, happenings from the past, and know that the experience refers to an event that occurred in another time and in another place. Other members of the animal kingdom. ... cannot travel back into the past in their own minds, (p. 1)
The basic ways of structuring, representing, and interpreting reality are consistent from early human childhood into adulthood (Nelson, 1993). Children gradually learn the forms of how to talk about memories with others and thus how to formulate their own memories as narratives. As Nelson (1993) explains, the initial functional significance of autobiographical memory is to share memory with other people, a function that language makes possible. The social function of memory underlies all storytelling, history-making narrative activities, and ultimately all accumulated knowledge systems.
Psychopathology can be seen as the consequence of living in the context of a story that is maladaptive and life-denying (Roberts, 1999). As Baldwin (2005) explains, the onset of severe mental illness compromises the narrative enterprise,
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particularly being able to construct one's self and one's relationships in meaningful and coherent ways. Mental illness poses three distinct challenges to the narrative enterprise: the challenge to the ability and opportunity to author one's own narrative - due to cognitive difficulties or loss of language - the challenge posed by the response of others to narratives that do not fit the expected narrative, and the challenge in the mobilization of metanarratives on the part of others as a means to understand, contain, or manage difficulties posed by the narratively dispossessed. I have observed that the challenge to author one's own narrative can occur with dementia and other cognitive difficulties; it can also happen with medication and treatments such as electroconvulsive shock therapy (ЕСТ). Moreover, narratives that do not meet accepted standards of normalcy can be subject to "correction" by mental health workers. One client, for example, believes powerful satanic forces are responsible for anything unusual or difficult in her life. The client's family forbids talk about this subject, because they associate it with a psychotic break and past hospitalizations. As a result, she has few people with whom she can share her story. While metanarratives are needed to help clients see a bigger picture, attention to small stories also is important, particularly for those whose lives have been marked by repeated trauma and/or illness. Small stories can provide day-today meaning.
Clearly, stories hold healing potential. Meade (1995), for example, proposes thirteen specific ways: including identification, helping externalize a conflict, ability to activate long-term memory, providing metaphors for interpersonal and internal dynamics, internalizing wise helpful or comforting figures, modeling alternative attitudes and stances, helping people come to terms with duality, ambivalence, and strife, capacity to accommodate manifold interpretations, morals, and meanings, and conveyance of ancient wisdom. In cases of psychopathology, the client is invited to rework his/her storyline to one that is more adaptive. Running through the theory and practice of narrative-informed therapy is the metaphor of person as "author" of life stories and the therapy as "re-authoring." McLeod (1997) explains that change or transformation in narrative schemas occurs through two main processes: differentiation and integration. First, rival narratives are generated. Second, one of the competing narratives comes to be seen as more compelling. The task of the therapist is to focus on new narratives that fulfill criteria of coherence, accuracy, and applicability without departing too dramatically from the narrative schemas employed by the client (Russell and van de Brock, 1992, cited in McLeod).
Narrative-informed theorists have in common the notion of the client maintaining his/her own basic storyline albeit shifting it in some way, ideally in a direction that is more life-giving. In a presentation I heard on borderline personality, the speaker indicated that recovery often is marked by how the person tells the story of his/her past. Those who have made greater strides focus on the positive aspects of the parenting they received; those still stuck continue to blame parents, etc., for suffering and abuse. Roberts (1999), in turn, explains that therapy
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hinges on enabling the client to acknowledge that he/she is caught in a story of his/her own authorship (Ritson and Forrest, 1970, cited in Roberts).
Baldwin discusses four means of supporting the narrativity of persons with severe mental illness: 1) maintaining narrative continuity, 2) maintaining narrative agency, 3) countering master narratives, and 4) attention to small stories. To maintain narrative continuity, he suggests maintaining the historical continuity of backdrop, story, and protagonist. For narrative agency, he recommends loosening our hold on the need for narrative to have a chronological basis - i.e., the thread holding together the tapestry could be meaning rather than time. To contribute to the narratives of others, Baldwin entertains what he terms a "monastic approach," i.e., asking, What does the narrative of another contribute to my life? To counter master narratives, he advises constructing and realizing counter stories that are both enabling and meaningful. Through paying attention to small stories, the client is encouraged to work on identity issues in the present versus getting stuck in a morass of past suffering.
Before proceeding, I want to return to the themes of hope, spirituality, and imagination. We have that observed that hope is concerned with the future. From Melges, we saw that hope is linked to both left-brain and right-brain activity. Moreover, a therapeutic goal in cases of depression is to imaginatively bring the future into the present. Continuing in this vein, religious texts draw upon one's imaginative capacities, as does a spiritual approach that projects a view of an unseen sacred realm. William Miller, in his text Integrating Spirituality into Treatment: Resources for Practitioners (1999), includes a chapter coauthored with С Yahne and R. Miller on "Evoking Hope" that helps us further the link between hope and spirituality. He discusses hope as will, hope as way, hope as wish, hope as horizon, and hope as action. Hope as will includes a spiritual element, the will to survive, to recover, to learn. As spirit, it can be compared to wind or fire - without substance yet of intensity. Hope as way is hope's grounded aspect. Moreover, hope as way is attached to something or someone - oneself, other people, or the transcendent - and concerns where one puts one's trust and confidence. Hope as wish is a specific desire accompanied by an expectation of fulfillment. "I hope I can move to Florida" is an example. Hope as horizon is the ability to see beyond the present circumstances, to envision beyond daily tasks. Hope as horizon may perceive a way even if there is no immediate action. It may include the perspective that the present will pass. Hope as action - acting in spite of present circumstances - is perhaps the deepest expression of hope. This hope can be especially powerful in communal form, such as when a group acts out of commitment to a cause.
These types of hope - will, way, wish, horizon, and action - may not all be actualized, depending on circumstances. They all involve some imaginative capacity, however - i.e., some means of seeing beyond the present. Hope as will involves another type of hope as well, since having the will to live leads to action or at least horizon. As discussed earlier, hope in the transcendent involves being able to conceive of a transcendent, imagining an entity that cannot be quantified. Hope as wish draws upon the mind's capacity to imagine the possibility of a better
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future - e.g., life in Florida, recovery from an illness. Thus, will and way are aspects of hope as wish. Hope as horizon is the most obviously future-oriented. Melges' notion of self-futuring, using guided imagery, is an example of hope as horizon. Hope as action also entails vision, since it involves living towards a different, new reality.
What does narrative therapy have to contribute to our work on hope? I believe it draws upon the types of hope outlined above, using story and metaphor to provide images in the task of self-futuring. Stories, I believe, can assist individuals in the work of revisioning a more hopeful narrative about their own lives. Two examples provide case material for discussion.
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