#interpretive turn

Poststructuralism includes the assumption that since we are all part of culture we can all be caught up by discourses, and therapists can undoubtedly reproduce these discourses in the therapy room without even recognizing it. For poststructuralists, no one is in a position to be an objective expert on someone else’s experience. Furthermore, as members of a culture we recognize that power influences the political context of people’s lives both in and out of the therapy room. This leads narrative therapists to work to expose discourses and power differentials that support problems and to work from a position of collaboration, recognizing clients as the privileged authors of their own stories. We believe that this dedication to exposing taken-for-granted power relationships supports narrative therapists in pursuing social justice.

Recognizing clients as the privileged authors of their own stories reflects a movement in the social sciences known as “the interpretive turn.” The interpretive turn is a shift in who is doing the interpreting. Specifically, it refers to a shift away from experts making interpretations about other people’s lives and toward people making interpretations and meaning of their own lives. This shift favors local, personal, contextualized knowledge rather than universal, generalized expert knowledge. Although recognizing people as the privileged authors of their own stories does not completely change the power relations in the therapy room, it does encourage us to find ways of collaborating rather than imposing our interpretations.