Madigan Workshops 2008
To find out more about contracting Stephen for these workshops please contact yft@telus.net
1) 6, 3 or 2 DAY NARRATIVE THERAPY INTENSIVE WORKSHOPS
(please see references!).
Stephen travels to various cities to teach 2, 3 and 6 day practice based narrative therapy intensive workshop to groups of 30-300 therapists.
He uses live session interviewing (in addition to an up close microanalysis of his therapy sessions captured on DVD) to teach participant therapists how to practice narrative therapy with a wide range of therapeutic issues.
Stephen teaches participants the practice of NT through post-structural theory, relational externalizing interviewing, relative influence and counter-viewing questioning, therapeutic letter writing, conceptualizing anti-individual identity making, ethnographic understandings of insider knowledges, and ways to create insider Leagues in the building up of communities of concern.
The 6 days intensive workshops are divided into two 3-day weekends. Therapists are asked to bring in their own clients and watch and reflect on Stephen's work with them. Please contact Stephen for the course schedule and references from city agencies/university groups etc. who have sponsored the 6 day training.
Please note: an abbreviated 2-day and 3-day version of this training is also offered upon request.
2) ADVANCED NARRATIVE THERAPY WORKSHOP:
Narrative therapy questions are discussed regarding their purpose, structure, scaffolding, direction, social location, temporality, the theoretical views they support and how to better craft and shape them.
Stephen teaches therapists 1) relational externalizing interviewing questions and how these relate to post-structural accounts of identity, 2) the importance of asking relative influence questions 3) the politic and structure of counter-viewing questioning.
Stephen uses ‘live session’ teaching interviews (alongside an archive of taped work) to help therapists: 1) identify the problem’s relationship with the person 2) reveal the person’s response to the problem 3) assist in externalizing internalized problem discourse 4) bring forth histories of loss in relationship to problems 5) promote subordinate/alternative stories and re-remembering conversations, 6) account for the absent but implicit and, 7) create communities of concern through therapeutic letter writing.
3) CHITTER-CHATTER - The 8 Habits of Highly Effective Problems: Relationally Externalizing Internalized Cultural Dialogues.
The workshop reviews the 'secret' cultural language of internalized problem communications, the killiing stories that are told, and the systems of cultural and institutional support that shape this talk. Stephen offers participants a deconstructive questioning method he calls narrative therapy 'counter-viewing' as a response to the suffering created by internalized problem conversations.
Stephen demonstrates his therapeutic work through relationally externalizing our internalized cultural language habits of self-surveillance, fear, shame, anger, guilt, negative imagination/negative comparison and hopelessness. The workshop is taught through narrative therapy and post-structural theory - with specific reference to the ideas of Michel Foucault, live therapy practice demonstrations and a step-by-step videotape review of Stephen's work.
4) Narrative Ideas and Therapeutic Practice - putting theory into practice
Since narrative therapy is not informed by psychological theory, the workshop sets out to carefully explain the poststructural/theoretical ideas located within the six key concepts involved in the practice of narrative therapy.
Discussed is the foundational practice work of Michael White and David Epston and the theoretical ideas of philosopher-historians Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, linguist Mikhail Bakhtin, the cultural work of the Just Therapy Team and bell hooks, Judith Butler, folk psychologist Jerome Bruner, feminist Nancy Fraser and anthropologists Barbara Myerhoff, Clifford Geertz, VictorTurner - and - many others.
The workshop then outlines how Epston and White used post-structural theory to explain the six key concepts that form the practice map ofnarrative therapy. Stephen shows participants how the theory shows up within narrative therapy's understanding of, 1) the landscapes of action and identity, 2) relational externalizing conversations, 3) unique outcomes and relative influence questions 4) re-membering conversations, 5) therapeutic letter writing, and 6) outsider witness teams.
Throughout the workshop participants are guided through a step-by-step practice map of narrative therapy and shown how each piece of the practice and theory fits together. This is done through a microanalysis of Stephen's live interviews and numerous DVD examples.
4) NARRATIVE THERAPY PRACTICES OF THE WRITTEN WORD.
Therapeutic Letters, Therapeutic Letter Writing Campaigns and the Development of Insider Leagues.
The workshop discusses the history, method, structure and utility of therapeutic letter writing in narrative therapy. Stephen also highlights his expansion on the idea of letter writing by way of therapeutic letter writing campaigns, ‘summits of re-membering’ and the creation of communities of concern. He outlines a narrative therapy practice of reconstituting identity by bringing community letter writers together with the client to read, re-read, re-tell and reflect. The therapeutic session produces an 'anti-file' of alternative constructions of identity, story, prefered memory and enriched future possibility/prediction.
Stephen will also highlight the creation of client and family based insider leagues, his presenting workshops to professionals alongside insider league members, and the development of insider league teaching DVD’s. The insider DVD's outline their local knowledges about the experience of problem lifestyles, the limits of professional systems, and problem resolution.
The workshop is taught through narrative therapy and post-structural theory, a range of insider and other video consultations and live therapy practice demonstrations.
5) SLIM CHANCE - Undermining Anorexia and Bulimia with Narrative Therapy
Eating disorders are complex issues that can at times defeat therapists and entire therapy teams. The workshop teaches participants unique and specific ways to understand the multifarious languages ,history, practice and rituals of anorexic and bulimic lifestyles.
Stephen demonstrates his novel therapeutic work with people struggling with a/b (as well as binge eating and obesity) through close attention to narrative therapy questions, letter writing practices, the formation of Anti-anorexia leagues and working with multiple-family groups. He will demonstrate a collaborative working style when working alongside psychiatric, family, hospital, school, and social work systems.
The workshop highlights a series of beautiful ‘insider client' interviews/consultations and a microanalysis of videotaped sessions. Stephen explains his theory and practice positions on a/b through the widereaching influences of culture, education, sexuality, family, gender training, media, and religion.
6) NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN NARRATIVE THERAPY INTERVIEWING
Questions, possibility and resolution
Participants learn the art of narrative therapy interviewing through a thoughtful STEP-BY-STEP narrative interviewing structure. The workshop explores the history and utility of narrative questions, and the importance of asking imaginative and rigorous therapeutic questions through fields of felt compassion. The participant's therapeutic skills progress rapidly by learning simple ways to craft and understand complex questions (pertinent to working with different presenting problems concerning individuals, couples, families and groups). The rich development of therapeutic questions and their influence over problems are analyzed through the use of videotapes, live therapy demostrations, transcripts, and therapeutic letters.
7) THE BURDEN OF INDIVIDUALISM AND THE PSYCHO-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
Undoing pscho-normativity, hegemonic masculinity and other forms of fairly useless ideas on identity and mental health.
The workshop analyses the ethical burdens we place on clients, therapists and communities through the individualist ideas we ask clients, therapists and their relational communities to commit to.
The workshop raises questions regarding structures that support notions of ‘psycho-normativity' (DSM IV), the psycho-industrial complex (Big pharma, HMO's, evidenced based unsustainable continuos economic growth), and the subsequent limitations these individualist ideas place on the people who participate on both sides of the therapeutic dialogic interaction. The workshop discusses how much larger problems can result when individualizing ideas are forced into the forefront of therapy, community work, supervision and policy-making. The workshop is experience based and discussed through a range of therapeutic DVD's, live practice interviews and participant interaction.