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Paul Grobstein's picture

Therapist as story teller

"anyone inclined to believe in multiple realities and questions her/his own ... helped by being exposed to perspectives, or interpretations, or ways of looking, one cannot (or has not) readily access(ed) on one's own"

That appeals to me as a good definition of a mental health worker. In which case, recognizing the constructedness of human experience is an essential element.

"individual world views can be disabling ... they [can] discourage personal agency and cast doubt on the possibility of change. Perhaps the problem in such cases is that the individual takes his/her own story too seriously"

And so could be helped by a "multiplicity of possible world views" perspective? My guess is that this holds not only for "individual" world views but for community/national/cultural world views as well. On the flip side, perhaps in some cases (people/communities/nations/cultures), difficulty in creating a coherent world view might also be disabling?

Maybe the general need is to help keep things moving/evolving, sometimes by emphasizing the availability of multiple stories, other times by emphasizing the usefulness of having a particular working story at any given time?

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