Re-membering Conversation and Outsider Witness Retelling

These are two tools of narrative therapy and community work. Following the lead of David Epston and Michael White (who died in 2008 -- obituary) narrative approaches help a person or a group acknowledge multiple past allies, aspirations for their lives, significant discoveries, problem-solving practices, etc. so as to write and realize alternative scripts (or narratives) to the ones that are limiting their lives.

In the script below,

Person F is at the focus, having asked for help in finding a path through/beyond the constraints they objectively and subjectively experience.
Person A is the assistant, who asks the questions.
The "Outsider witnesses" have been recruited as people who are involved in the situation F is experiencing OR people who have been helped by narrative approaches to move forward when they experienced an analogous constraining situation themselves.
Person R is someone, perhaps no longer alive, that person F chooses to remember (or remember with) in the Remembering Conversation below.

A: The three parts of the script are intended to help F see a positive way forward, but should also have a positive influence on the Outsider Witnesses. Remembering conversations evoke "life" as a club with many members. They promote a sense of identity that emphasizes the contributions that others make to our lives and to our understandings of self. The outsider witnesses will then asked questions based on what they hear F say. Finally, F will be asked similar questions based on what s/he hears them say.

1. Re-membering Conversation
Could you think of someone who's been in your life that wouldn't be surprised that you would be [fill in F's situation]?
a. Can you tell me something that R contributed to your life? What did they invite you to share in, to be part of?
b. Could you say something about what R appreciated about you that had them contributing these things to your life?
c. Thinking back, what did you do to take in their appreciation?
d. What do you think it contributed to R's life that you were available for them to take an interest in and appreciate? How do you think R's life was different for knowing you in the way that they did?
e. What has it been like to talk, as we have been, about you and R?

2. Now we shift to Outsider Witness Retelling, in which you sit back and listen while I ask a series of questions of the listeners.
a. What particular words or phrases struck you as F was speaking?
b. What images came to mind about what was important to F?
c. What is it about your life that meant these images came to mind?
d. What has been confirmed for you by making this connection with what F said?
e. What difference will remembering this make in your own life?

3. Finally, I'm going to ask F a similar set of questions about what s/he's heard.
a. What particular words or phrases stood out for you?
b. How are they connected to values that are significant for you?
c. Does anything seem more possible for hearing these things?
d. Can you describe what the first steps to take might be?
e. What's it been like to talk as we have been?
f. Is there anything more you want to say?

Learn more by visiting http://www.dulwichcentre.com.au and downloading Michael White's workshop notes from http://www.dulwichcentre.com.au/Michael%20White%20Workshop%20Notes.pdf