Narrative Approach in Psychological Practice: Language Reconstruction of a Problem

The relevance of the topic under study is explained by the increasingly intensive growth of the influence of the narrative approach in psychological counseling as a result of a general narrative turn in the social and human sciences, which began in the second half of the 20th century. Unlike other schools, the narrative approach views speech as a key metaphor for counseling, serving as a source of positive change and improving the quality of individual life. The purpose of the article is to describe the linguistic patterns of psychotherapeutic narrative in the dyad "client - psychologist" as a special type of discursive practice. The idea is substantiated that the linguistic reconstruction of the problem contributes to the formation of the resource aspects of the narrative self of the personality. The article reveals the features of the conversation in a narrative approach, including the problem of externalization and its reconstruction. It is shown that due to the special attention to the language on the part of the psychologist and the client himself, the narrative approach considers a much wider range of social, psychological and philosophical discourses that form a holistic narrative self, capable of self-reconstruction, self-initiation. In this regard, the narrative approach acquires special significance, since it was proposed to investigate the semantic structure of the personality's identity changing over time, in contrast to the prevailing one in the 20th century positivistic view of personality as a set of relatively stable mental attributes. To comprehend his life experience, a person turns to diverse plots that exist in culture, and the rules for constructing narratives, with their help he builds his life history and identity. The realization of a person's potential in narrative practice is determined by its readiness for constructive activity, manifestation of initiative, overcoming oneself and the requirements of the external environment through not passive adaptation to it, but authentic non-adaptive self-determination during the continuous formation of subjectivity. The latter is understood as the self-initiation of personality, the actual subjective characteristic, distinguishing personality, capable of actively transforming reality through the continuation of its "narrative I" in it, flexible and mobile behavior, internal involvement in internal and interpersonal events that occur with a person.

Keywords

Authors

References