The remarkable power of connecting with children’s voices and imagination in narrative therapy. Therapists may marvel at children’s imaginative triumphs, but how often do they recognize such talents as vital to the therapy hour? Should therapists reserve a space for make-believe only when nothing is at stake, or might it be precisely those moments when something truly matters that imagination is most urgently needed? This book offers an alternative to therapeutic perspectives that treat children as vulnerable and helpless. It invites readers to consider how the imaginative gifts and knowledge of children, when supported by the therapist and family, can bring about dramatic change. The book begins with an account of the foundations of narrative theory. It explains how such elements as language, characterization, and suspense contribute to the coherence of a story and bring young people into focus. Each subsequent chapter provides specific suggestions for the practice of narrative therapy. Examples of the difficulties children face are offered, along with narrative interventions and tips for overcoming common barriers that can arise along the way. Readers will learn a variety of ready-to-implement strategies, including how to personify problems, compose letters to affirm children’s identities, summon fairies to lend a helping hand, and many more. Sample dialogues between the authors, children, and their parents bring the application of each practice to life, illuminating how even the most stubborn problem can be outwitted, sometimes by mischievous means. With robust professional insight, Narrative Therapy in Wonderland will aid any practitioner in calling on children’s imaginative know-how. How often can a young person be spotted diving headlong into a world of fantasy? This book explores the extraordinary fact that these young people may, upon arrival in Wonderland, be far better equipped to take on even dire challenges than when they remain “up above.”

The authors describe their success with narrative therapy, a lighter, playful approach to the serious problems encountered in child and family therapy. They provide case vignettes in the first two sections which show how children who might have been labeled belligerent, hyperactive, anxious, or out of touch with reality are found to be capable of taming their tempers, controlling frustration, and using their imaginations to the fullest. They address the helpful role of family members, as well. The third section of the text offers five extended case stories. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Key phrases: blended learning, insider knowledge, online pedagogy, narrative therapy, postmodern pedagogy, practitioners and consumers, practitioner-training, public practices, reflective practitioner, students’ voices, teaching congruently, teacher-practitioner, therapeutic letters, teaching therapeutic practice.

Therapists often despair when considering using Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT), so successful with adults, with children. Insoo Kim Berg and Therese Steiner show this despair to be unwarranted. These two master therapists lead readers through a series of conceptual and practical steps that elucidate just how the nonverbal, playful, and creative habits of children can support successful therapy based on the SFBT model. Children's Solution Work is necessary reading for anyone who associates with children and takes a concern for their development'linicians, social workers, teachers, daycare workers, and parents. By focusing on and expanding the bases for engagement and communication between adult and child, Berg and Steiner provide adaptable tools for diagnosis, therapy, and negotiating differences at home. Full of examples and case studies, the Children's Solution Work demonstrates creative techniques and strategies for working with children without relying exclusively on language or conceptual thinking. The application of these techniques is discussed in various contexts and situations, including adapting them to suit cases of children with uncommon needs. Berg and Steiner also address questions typically raised by clinicians about the use of SFBT with children and consider the usefulness of this form of SFBT when working with adolescents.

Unravelling Trauma and Weaving Resilience with Systemic and Narrative Therapy is an innovative book that details how clinicians can engage children, families and their networks in creative and collaborative relationships to elicit change within the context of trauma and violence. Combining systemic, narrative and dialogical theoretical frameworks with clinical examples, this volume focuses on therapeutic conversations that can help children, and those involved with them, deconstruct their experienced difficulties, and create more hopeful stories and alternative ways of relating to one another through a sense of play. Vermeire advocates for serious playfulness as a way of directly addressing trauma and its effects, as well as along ‘trauma-sensitive’ side paths. Puppetry, artwork, interviews and theatre play are used to weave networks of resilience in ever-widening circles and this approach is informed by the awareness that individual problems are always to be seen as relational, social and political. This book is an important read for therapists and social workers who work with traumatised children and their multi-stressed families.

Narrative Psychiatry and Family Collaborations is about helping families with complex psychiatric problems by seeing and meeting the families and the family members, as the best versions of themselves, before we see and address the diagnoses. This book draws on ten years of clinical research and contains stories about helping people, who are heavily burdened with psychiatric illnesses, to find ways to live a life as close as possible to their dreams. The chapters are organized according to ideas, values, and techniques. The book describes family-oriented practices, narrative collaborative practices, narrative psychiatric practices, and narrative agency practices. It also talks about wonderfulness interviewing, mattering practices, public note taking on paper charts, therapeutic letter writing, diagnoses as externalized problems, narrative medicine, and family community meetings. Each chapter includes case studies that illustrate the theory, ethics, and practice, told by Nina Jørring in collaboration with the families and colleagues. The book will be of interest to child and adolescent psychiatrists and all other mental health professionals working with children and families.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER Soon to be a major motion picture "Jon Swift + Witches of Eastwick + Kelly 'Get In Trouble' Link + Mean Girls + Creative Writing Degree Hell! No punches pulled, no hilarities dodged, no meme unmangled! O Bunny you are sooo genius!" —Margaret Atwood, via Twitter "A wild, audacious and ultimately unforgettable novel." —Michael Schaub, Los Angeles Times "Awad is a stone-cold genius." —Ann Bauer, The Washington Post The Vegetarian meets Heathers in this darkly funny, seductively strange novel from the acclaimed author of 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl and Rouge "We were just these innocent girls in the night trying to make something beautiful. We nearly died. We very nearly did, didn't we?" Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other "Bunny," and seem to move and speak as one. But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled "Smut Salon," and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies' sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus "Workshop" where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision. The spellbinding new novel from one of our most fearless chroniclers of the female experience, Bunny is a down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, friendship and desire, and the fantastic and terrible power of the imagination. Named a Best Book of 2019 by TIME, Vogue, Electric Literature, and The New York Public Library

Brief Narrative Practice in Single-Session Therapy emphasizes collaboration, meaning making, and relational ethics in single-session conversations. Chapters provide a thorough orientation to the therapy and address the diverse circumstances clinicians face in these conversations. Separating from many long-held traditions in therapy, this book explores a guiding framework and the accompanying micro-skills that therapeutic conversations demand. In these pages, readers will learn how to recalibrate their listening habits and talk differently about problems in ways that help them quickly hear and generate possibilities. All those who provide psychotherapy, counselling, and coaching in time-constrained contexts will find this book useful and engaging, including those working in crisis and call-in settings, walk-in clinics, medical centres, and live-in contexts where change conversations are brief.

This accessible textbook provides therapy students and practitioners with an understanding of postmodern theories, founders, and practical applications to family therapy. It introduces complex concepts in bite-sized pieces so readers can cultivate and master competent real-world applications of postmodern philosophy in therapy. Relying predominantly on primary sources, Kelsey Railsback shows how postmodernist ideas influenced the development and implementation of postmodern family therapy models, focusing on collaborative-dialogic practice, narrative therapy, and solution focused brief therapy. It describes why certain therapeutic techniques developed and explains the context and history of their development. Each section begins with an introduction to the model before moving to the philosopher and ending with the founders’ application of philosophical ideas to therapy techniques. These chapters summarize prominent ideas from esteemed professionals in their fields, covering the philosophical pioneers Wittgenstein, Foucault, and Gergen and the therapy pioneers Anderson, White, Epston, de Shazer, Berg, and more. Critically, this book demonstrates how postmodern theory can be applied in mental health practice. By the end of the book, students will be able to interweave the philosophers, founders, and applications of postmodern family therapy into a comprehensive picture. To better understand their epistemology and why they are more inclined toward certain practices over others, students can utilize the included self-quizzes to deepen their understanding. Filled with etymological explanations, reflective questions, keywords, and summaries throughout, this book is designed for students and practitioners in systemic and relational therapy or related fields such as psychology, social work, and mental health counseling.

Reimagining Narrative Therapy Through Practice Stories and Autoethnography takes a new pedagogical approach to teaching and learning in contemporary narrative therapy, based in autoethnography and storytelling. The individual client stories aim to paint each therapeutic meeting in such detail that the reader will come to feel as though they actually know the two or more people in the room. This approach moves beyond the standard narrative practice of teaching by transcripts and steps into teaching narrative therapy through autoethnography. The intention of these 'teaching tales' is to offer the reader an opportunity to enter into the very 'heart and soul' of narrative therapy practice, much like reading a novel has you enter into the lives of the characters that inhabit it. This work has been used by the authors in MA and PhD level classrooms, workshops, week-long intensive courses, and conferences around the world, where it has received commendations from both newcomer and veteran narrative therapists. The aim of this book is to introduce narrative therapy and the value of integrating autoethnographic methods to students and new clinicians. It can also serve as a useful tool for advanced teachers of narrative practices. In addition, it will appeal to established clinicians who are curious about narrative therapy (who may be looking to add it to their practice), as well as students and scholars of autoethnography and qualitative inquiry and methods.