Product Description
W. Norton. Offers a fundamental understanding of the narrative approach to therapy and illustrates some of the potential applications of the technique. Based upon both narrative and social construction metaphors and the concepts of David Epston and Michael White. For therapists.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.5 based on 12 reviews)

Sadly, great truthiness

Reviewer Micheal Kaan states that, "Despite its claims to miraculous and rapid cures, it turns out from research that NT is--surprise--as effective as any other kind of therapy."

Let's review for a moment the effectiveness of other kinds of therapy. In 1951, for one example, Powers and Witmer studied 650 high-risk boys. Half were counseled and sent to YMCA, etc. After 5 years, all of the therapists felt most boys had "benefited substantially." Moreover, the boys agreed and said the counseling had given them insight and kept them out of trouble. Yet, a 30-year follow up study in 1981 found the "helped" boys committed more serious crimes and were more affected by alcoholism, mental illness such as depression, and lower job satisfaction than those left alone. For another example, research published in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 1967 followed 301 people who had been arrested for "public drunkenness" in San Diego and were randomly assigned to three groups: no treatment, referral to professional counseling, or Alcoholics Anonymous and the group with the greatest continued drinking (in fact, more than before treatment) and the most re-arrests were the individuals sentenced to AA while the most successful at staying out of jail were those in the control group receiving no treatment at all. Finally, Elliot (1998) reviewed 500 violence prevention programs and all but three failed to address any known risk factors and usually only made things worse.

For at least four centuries, what is today called Murphy's Law was know as Sod's Law. Sod's Law stated that if anything can be done wrong that some sod (or in these cases, therapist) will do it wrong. Alas, Sod's Law (or Murphy's) has become it's own worst victim in a post-modern age where we get to simply blame bad luck rather than poor efforts (which actually came out of a religion created by a Larry Niven science fiction story - a useful comparison to the popular religion of this field). This text is supposed to be introducing us to techniques to address this very problem (which it starts out doing). Unfortunately, the very social contructionism that should be utilized to uncover the ways in which individuals participate in creating their perceived but inaccurate social reality is here only watered down into a sappy, vague, and unsupported composition making the potential solution only another victim to itself that is further tainted by personal bias and arragance that (like all of the other mistaken but popular therapies) can be easily mistaken as professionally academic. In the same way, one can easily explain the positive reviews of this book by simply looking under Colberianism for the concept of truthiness.
March 13, 2008

Extremely helpful...

As a counseling psychology student, I found this book to be incredibly useful in understanding the foundations of Narrative Therapy. This book offers a lot in the ways of theoretical orientation and basic narrative counseling skills. A must read for counselors who wish to expand their techniques.
February 16, 2008

Great Resource for Beginning Counselors!

This is a really great resource for learning about the theoretical assumptions behind narrative therapy and how to start practicing narrative techniques. Freedman and Combs do an excellent job of bringing the material to the reader in a collaborative, non-pedantic way - perfect for the post-modern, narrative viewpoint that they are conveying. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning ways of connecting in a more personal and real way with their clients' life stories and personalities. Great book!
February 17, 2007

Author Review - EXCELLENT!

Narrative Therapy by Jill Freedman & Gene Combs is perhaps one of the best theraputic books I have read. As an author and human services worker, I am always looking for titles that will help me assist client's with their needs. That said, this book is a must read for anyone who wants to work through problems such as depression, anger and societal connections. I highly recommend this book - the authors did a great job!

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John D. Moore, MS, CADC
Author of Confusing Love with Obsession
January 25, 2003

I Like it

Please ignore the non-review of July 11, and dig deep enough to see David Epston's thoughts about the book.
July 27, 2002

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What Is Narrative Therapy? (Gecko 2000)
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Conversation, Language, And Possibilities: A Postmodern Approach To Therapy
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