Narrative Therapy

Narrative therapy is a psychotherapeutic approach that helps clients explore, challenge, and reshape the life stories that fuel their struggles, working collaboratively with a therapist.

It treats individuals as the ultimate authority on their own lives, separating problems from personal identity.

Through this process, clients build a deeper understanding of their values and skills, helping them face present and future challenges.

This article is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Always seek the advice of your physician, therapist, or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical or mental health condition. Never disregard professional advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this site.

When was narrative therapy developed?

Narrative therapy was developed through the 1980s by therapists Michael White and David Epston. White worked from the Dulwich Centre, a family therapy centre established in Adelaide, Australia, in 1983, while Epston practiced in Auckland, New Zealand.

Their approach grew out of family therapy rather than individual clinical psychology. It inherited that field’s focus on patterns, relationships, and context. It remains empowering, non-blaming, and non-pathologizing.

It also developed largely outside universities. Ideas spread through workshops, practice journals, and a publishing house tied to the Dulwich Centre, not through randomized trials. That history helps explain why the approach is rich in practice description but thin in outcome research.

Its founding statement is White and Epston’s 1990 book Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends, which set out the narrative metaphor and the practices that followed from it.

Intellectual Roots of Narrative Therapy

Bruner and Two Modes of Thought

Psychologist Jerome Bruner (1986) described two irreducible modes of thought:

Mode of thought	What it seeks or deals in
Paradigmatic (logico-scientific)	General causes, formal proof, and empirical truth
Narrative	Intention, particularity, sequence, and what it is like to be a person acting in time

Bruner argued that the narrative mode is not a poor relation of the scientific one. It is a distinct and equally serious form of knowing, and the main way people organize experience.

Bruner (1991) added that stories do not simply mirror events. They select and structure them, so reality is narratively constructed. Narrative therapy takes this literally. If identity is built from stories, working on the story works on the self.

Social Constructionism and Foucault

The deeper grounding is social constructionism: meaning is built socially, through language, rather than discovered ready-made.

If a culture’s descriptions help make the identities people can occupy, therapy cannot be neutral. It is political as well as technical.

Michel Foucault (1980) argued that modern power works less by prohibition than through knowledge: the classifications and norms that lead people to police themselves. Diagnostic categories and standards of the “healthy” personality, on this view, are not neutral. They can teach people to judge themselves as deficient.

This is why narrative therapists treat gender, class, race, culture, and sexual identity as live topics rather than background variables. The borrowing has limits. Besley (2002) notes the strain in building a therapy on a philosopher deeply skeptical of therapeutic confession.

What is a narrative?

A narrative is a story. As humans, we have many stories about ourselves, others, our abilities, our self-esteem, and our work, among many others.

The development of these stories is determined by how we have linked certain events together in a sequence and by the meaning attributed to them. As more and more events are selected and gathered into the dominant plot, the story gains richness and thickness.

Identity follows the story.

The idea is that an individual’s life narrative forms identity, and several narratives are at work at once. This shapes thinking, feelings, and behavior.

Many narratives are useful and healthy, whereas others can result in mental distress. Mental health symptoms can come about when there is an unhealthy or negative narrative, or if there is a misunderstanding or misinterpretation of a narrative.

A problem-saturated story has recruited so many events into its plot that contradicting events become invisible.

It is not that nothing good happens. Nothing good gets storied. The story works like a filter. It admits confirming evidence and discards the rest. Then it hardens into a conclusion such as “I am a failure” or “I am the anxious one.”

Distress, in this view, is less a malfunction than a narrative monopoly.

Context matters too. Someone described as “loud” and “causes trouble” in one setting may be “funny” and “thoughtful” in another, and their experience of themselves shifts with the words available. Identity is evoked by context, not carried unchanged from one setting to the next.

What is the aim of narrative therapy?

Narrative therapy seeks to change a problematic narrative into a more productive or healthier one.  This is often done by assigning the person the role of narrator in their own story.

Narrative therapy aims to:

• Empower individuals to see themselves as separate from their problems.
  By challenging negative labels and self-definitions, the therapy supports people in reclaiming agency over their stories and responses.
• Create a respectful and supportive space for self-exploration.
  It honors the client’s courage to reflect on personal challenges and encourages compassionate dialogue rather than critique.
• Encourage non-blaming, non-judgmental conversations.
  Clients are guided to shift away from self-blame or blaming others, and instead focus on how unhelpful narratives can be understood and reshaped.
• Position the client as the expert of their own life.
  Rather than offering directives, therapists work collaboratively, trusting that clients have the knowledge and insight to guide their own growth.
• Acknowledge the influence of social, cultural, and political contexts.
  The therapy invites clients to explore how external systems shape their personal narratives, helping them reframe problems within a broader perspective.

Psychologist Michael Hoyt explains the narrative therapy premise: problematic stories can trap people in patterns of distress, and reshaping them opens up new possibilities:

“As people live their lives, they may be doing fine, but when they get stuck, it’s often because they’re telling themselves a story that isn’t fulfilling—it’s frustrating. People come to therapy, in essence, for a new story.”

What is the role of the therapist?

The role of the narrative therapist is to search for an alternative way of understanding a client’s narrative or an alternative way to describe it.

The belief is that telling a story is a form of action toward change. The therapist helps clients objectify their problems and frame them within a larger sociocultural context. This makes room for other, more helpful stories.

During therapy, the therapist acts as a non-directive collaborator. They treat the client as the expert on their own problems and do not impose judgments.

Instead, the therapist is purely curious and investigative. They are not particularly interested in the cause of a problem but are open to a client’s perception of the cause.

White (2007) gave this stance a name: the therapist is decentered but influential.

As White explains in Maps of Narrative Practice, “decentered” means the client’s knowledge, values, and preferred descriptions sit at the center of the conversation, not the therapist’s theory.

“Influential” means the therapist is still doing skilled, structured work. The therapist asks questions in a deliberate order that moves the client from the known toward the not-yet-known.

The pairing guards against a common misreading. Narrative therapy is not just sympathetic listening. It describes how the therapist should work, and whether that beats a more directive style has not been established.

Narrative Therapy Techniques

Narrative therapists draw on a set of conversations rather than a fixed script. They are not rigid steps, but each tends to build on the one before:

• Assembling the narrative: The therapist listens to the client’s stories and identifies the problem-saturated ones causing most distress.
• Externalizing: The problem is named and separated from the person.
• Mapping influence: The therapist traces the problem’s effects on the person’s life, and the person’s influence on the problem.
• Deconstruction: Stories are broken into smaller parts and examined for where their standards came from.
• Unique outcomes: Moments that contradict the dominant story are given history and meaning.
• Re-authoring: An alternative story grows from those moments until it is solid enough to live by.
• Re-membering and witnesses: Significant people and outsider witnesses give the new story an audience.

Putting together the narrative

This involves the therapist listening as the client explains their stories. The client explores events in their life and the meaning they place on them. The client leads the telling.

“Problem-saturated” narratives may crop up, which the therapist will identify as causing the most distress to their client.

The therapist uses the same language and terms the client uses throughout this stage. This reflects the principle that the client is the expert in their own narrative.

Externalizing the problem

Externalizing means the therapist encourages the client to create distance between themselves and the problem, becoming an observer of it rather than someone defined by it.

The problem becomes external. It stops being a fixed part of who they are.

The therapist may ask the client to name the problem, so it is seen as separate, and the client uses that name whenever they talk about it.

Naming it helps. It is easier to change a behavior than to change a core personality characteristic.

They are not the problem. The problem is the problem.

In practice, “I am depressed” becomes “the Grey Fog turns up on Sunday nights.” Once the problem is outside the person, new questions open up:

• What does the problem want?
• What does it recruit as allies?
• What does it cost?
• When is it weaker?

Naming is the way in, not the technique itself.

The therapist then maps the problem’s reach into the person’s work, relationships, body, hopes, and view of themselves. Just as important, the therapist maps the person’s influence on the problem: the times they resisted it, contained it, or refused its instructions.

This two-way map keeps externalizing from becoming a way of disowning responsibility.

Deconstruction

The narrative therapist works with the client to deconstruct their stories, breaking them into smaller, more manageable parts. This clarifies the problem and reduces overgeneralizing, overwhelm, and confusion.

Deconstruction, taking a story apart to see how it was built, can also apply to identity itself. Gender, class, race, culture, and sexual identity all shape the meanings people give to events. Examining this raises awareness of the wider social and political forces acting on the client.

Take a client who concludes she is “a bad mother.” The therapist asks for the evidence. But the therapist also asks where that standard came from, whose interests it serves, and how it came to feel like a fact about her.

Unique outcomes

When someone’s problematic stories are well established, people can become stuck in them, unable to view alternative versions of the story. A narrative therapist helps people challenge their stories and consider alternatives.

Unique outcomes are the exceptions to the dominant story: the moments that don’t fit the problem-saturated plot. They are also called “sparkling moments.” The dominant story has no place for them, so they are easily dismissed or forgotten.

Examples include the time the anger did not win, the morning someone got up anyway, or the moment they spoke up when the story says they never do.

The therapeutic move is not simply to point these out. The therapist asks questions that give each one history and meaning:

• What made it possible?
• Who would have predicted it?
• What does it say about what the person values?

There are hundreds of possible stories. Everyone interprets their experience differently and finds their own meaning in it.

Unique outcomes contrast with the problem, reflect something the person recognizes as their own, and supply the material from which a new story can be built. Building upon stories from another perspective can help to overcome problems and build the confidence the person needs to heal from them.

Re-authoring Conversations

Re-authoring (also called re-storying) is the ongoing work of growing an alternative story from unique outcomes until it feels solid enough to live by.

The therapist asks questions that move between two “landscapes.”

• Landscape of action: what happened, when, and with whom.
• Landscape of identity: what those events say about the person’s values, intentions, and hopes.

Moving between the two keeps the new story balanced. A story built only from events stays a list of incidents, while a story built only from values floats free of evidence.

White’s later work added a further image: scaffolding.

Following Vygotsky (1978), he described therapeutic conversation as a graded series of questions. Each question moves a person by manageable steps from the known toward more abstract statements about their own life.

This is an analogy borrowed from the zone of proximal development, not a finding from therapy research.

Re-membering, Witnesses, and Letters

Re-membering treats identity as a club of significant people, living or dead, whose membership can be revised. A client might upgrade the standing of a grandmother who saw something in them that the problem denies.

Or they downgrade a voice that only issues verdicts. The idea comes from anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff’s (1978) work with an elderly Jewish community in Los Angeles.

A re-authored story that lives only in the therapy room is fragile. In a definitional ceremony, outsider witnesses such as family, friends, or former clients listen to the person’s telling and respond in a set format. They describe:

• What expression caught their attention
• What image it evoked
• What in their own lives made it resonate
• How hearing it moved them

Witnesses may not praise, advise, evaluate, or interpret. The person then responds. The aim is an audience for the new story, which stories need in order to survive.

Epston also developed therapeutic letters and certificates. A letter written after a session restates the conversation in the client’s own words, so the client can reread it.

How effective is narrative therapy?

Research on narrative therapy is still emerging, but several small studies suggest that it may support emotional and relational well-being in a variety of settings.

Below are examples of areas where narrative therapy has shown potential benefits. These findings are preliminary and should not be interpreted as medical advice.

“It’s only been a few sessions, but I’m finding it really helpful in terms of having a complete story in my head as opposed to a bunch of random parts… Being able to piece together a cohesive narrative has really already started helping me … identify the specific things that I’m struggling with within the narrative itself.”

Major Depressive Disorder

This is the strongest single study of narrative therapy for depression to date, but it has limits:

• Strengths: It used a treatment manual, an adequate sample for this field, and clinical-significance analysis, and it honestly reported that the interpersonal gains were lost.
• No control group: The improvement can’t be separated from natural remission, regression to the mean, or benefits common to any therapy. Benchmarking helps but doesn’t solve this.
• Other limits: Outcomes were self-reported, the researchers were committed to the model, and no one has independently replicated the study.

That makes narrative therapy plausible, not proven, for depression. The randomized trial the study points to has still not been run.

Intimacy and Relationships

Khodabakhsh et al. (2015) studied twenty Iranian couples. All were experiencing marital difficulty. Couples who received narrative therapy showed significant gains across all three intimacy dimensions measured: emotional, communicative, and general.

Ghavibazou et al. (2020) extended this to communication itself, randomly assigning thirty women with low marital satisfaction to eight individual sessions or a waiting list.

Satisfaction improved.

Demand-withdraw communication patterns fell, with the gains still holding eight weeks later.

A follow-on study by the same team found no significant improvement in attachment style or emotional expressivity. That null result is a reminder: these positive findings come from small, unblinded samples with waiting-list rather than active comparators.

Depression and Anxiety

Shakeri et al. (2020) ran a randomized trial with 26 patients treated for amphetamine addiction in Kermanshah, Iran, allocated to ten sessions of group narrative therapy or routine psychiatric care.

Depression and anxiety scores fell significantly in the narrative therapy group but not in the control group. Quality of life did not improve significantly, so the trial points to a symptom-level effect rather than a broader gain in wellbeing.

Emotional Skills in Children

Beaudoin et al. (2016) analyzed 813 problem-solving stories generated by children aged 8–10 in a school-based narrative programme. The study found gains in self-awareness, self-management, empathy, and responsible decision-making.

The story corpus is large. But the unit of analysis is stories, not randomly assigned children, so the design can’t support strong causal claims about individual outcomes.

Group and community work sits in between. Eames and colleagues (2016) adapted narrative practices into a “Team of Life” metaphor for UK schoolchildren.

Their evaluation shows the approach is feasible and acceptable in real schools. It was not a controlled test of efficacy.

The pattern across the childhood research is plain. The studies with the most participants have the weakest designs, and the studies with the strongest designs have the fewest participants. No study yet combines adequate power, randomization, an active control, and blinded outcome assessment.

Narrative Therapy with Autistic Young People

The salivary stress biomarker is the study’s real strength, because it is not open to the expectancy effects that can shape parent ratings. Everything else limits what we can conclude.

The sample was tiny. It was ten young people recruited by convenience, with no control group and no blinding. The study also tested several measures and subscales, so some significant results may be chance findings.

The authors were appropriately modest. This is a feasibility signal, not proof of effectiveness.

The study does not address whether an approach built on metaphor and implicit meaning suits every autistic young person equally.

Behavior and Attention in Children with ADHD

Randomization and teacher raters, who took no part in the therapy, place this study above the single-group designs that dominate the field.

The limits are still severe. The sample is very small, and a wait-list comparison controls for time but not for attention, group contact, or expectancy.

The teachers were not reported as blind to allocation, and thirty days says nothing about durability. Findings also cannot be generalized beyond girls aged 9-11 in a single national context.

Trauma

One client explained how narrative therapy works for them. It “helps us focus on the way we responded to trauma… remembering [our values] can help us move towards a more positive and balanced sense of ourselves.”

This illustrates a broader pattern in how narrative therapy approaches trauma. The emphasis falls on how a person responded to what happened, and on the values that response reveals, rather than on the traumatic material alone.

Critical Evaluation

Most studies on narrative therapy involve small samples or a limited scope. Beyond that evidence gap, four further criticisms recur.

• Unstable construct: Researchers have documented eight distinguishable accounts of what narrative therapy actually is (Wallis et al., 2011), and pooled trials mix it with narrative medicine and narrative nursing.
• Measurement tension: As Etchison and Kleist (2000) noted, an approach built on scepticism about objective measurement sits awkwardly with the culture of testing by which treatments earn empirical status.
• Overreaching theory: As philosophers Daniel Hutto and Shaun Gallagher explain, the claim that narrative constitutes the self is stronger than the philosophy of mind can support (Hutto & Gallagher, 2017).
• Practical limits: The intensive exploration involved can be emotionally demanding, and it may not suit clients who find introspection difficult or want symptom-focused, time-limited help.

As Hutto and Gallagher (2017) explain, narrative practices remain genuine tools for self-understanding. Their objection is to the theory’s self-description.

The claim that the self is constituted by narrative is stronger than the philosophy of mind supports. A better account treats narratives as tools for making sense of a self that is not simply a story.

This separates two things practitioners often merge. The usefulness of narrative methods stands on its own. The metaphysical thesis about narrative selfhood is a philosophical position the methods do not need. It is a viewpoint, not outcome evidence.

Larger, more rigorous research is needed to understand how well narrative therapy works across different populations.

Despite these limits, narrative therapy has real strengths, and most of them are not empirical:

• Respectful stance: Many clients experience its empowering, non-pathologizing approach as a relief from being diagnosed.
• Culture and power: It takes culture, power, and language seriously, which matters where distress is bound up with marginalization.
• Teachable practice: Its named maps of enquiry can be learned, supervised, and critiqued.
• Adaptability: It has proved adaptable across ages, formats, and settings.
• Wider influence: It has shaped how therapists think about diagnostic language, client expertise, and case recording.

Contemporary Research

Large Meta-Analyses, Low Certainty

Hu and colleagues (2024) pooled 54 randomized controlled trials (4,879 participants) testing narrative therapy for depressive symptoms in adults with somatic disorders. The pooled effect was very large: SMD = −1.64 (95% CI −1.95 to −1.32).

The researchers rated the certainty of this evidence as very low. That downgrade reflects a striking pattern. Fifty-two of the 54 trials came from China, none used blinding, and statistical tests pointed to publication bias.

An effect this large would outperform every well-established treatment for depression. That is a warning sign, not reassurance.

A second synthesis, by Çetiner and colleagues (2026), reached a similar conclusion pooling 11 randomized trials of narrative interventions with cancer patients. Effect sizes were again implausibly large: Hedges’ g = 2.18 for quality of life and 1.60 for self-efficacy.

Certainty was moderate for those two outcomes. It was low for most other outcomes, and very low for fear of recurrence, the one null result. Eight of the eleven trials came from China.

The two syntheses differ in scope but share the same weaknesses:

Feature	Hu et al. (2024)	Çetiner et al. (2026)
Population	Adults with somatic disorders	Patients with cancer
Studies pooled	54 randomized trials, 4,879 participants	11 randomized trials, published 2011–2025
Headline effect	Depressive symptoms: SMD = −1.64	Quality of life: Hedges’ g = 2.18; self-efficacy: g = 1.60
Other effects	Very high heterogeneity (I² = 95.4%)	Anxiety −2.40, depression −1.47, resilience 1.43, sleep quality 1.29
Certainty of evidence	Very low: study limitations, heterogeneity, publication bias, limited generalizability	Moderate for quality of life and self-efficacy; low for most others; very low for fear of recurrence
Trials from China	52 of 54	8 of 11
Authors’ caution	Pooled estimate held when single studies were removed, but certainty stayed very low	Interpret clinically with caution; high-quality trials needed

What Exactly Is Being Tested?

The trials pooled by Hu and colleagues (2024) were labeled narrative therapy, narrative medicine, and narrative nursing.

The last two are storytelling-based health care practices. They overlap with, but differ from, the approach White and Epston developed. Çetiner and colleagues (2026) likewise pooled “narrative interventions” rather than narrative therapy specifically.

If brief storytelling delivered by nurses on medical wards dominates a pooled estimate, it says little about externalizing, re-authoring, or definitional ceremonies.

The problem is visible from the inside, too. Wallis and colleagues (2011) ran a Delphi survey and Q-sort study of UK narrative therapy practitioners and found eight distinguishable accounts of what the approach actually is.

They differed over whether narrative therapy is mainly a political stance and whether it can be combined with other approaches.

Together, this means the outcome literature is not yet able to say whether narrative therapy works, for whom, or better than what.

The trial base has four recurring weaknesses:

• Small samples: Controlled trials enroll tens of participants, not hundreds, and no large pre-registered, independently replicated trial exists in the White and Epston tradition.
• Weak comparators: Waiting lists and usual care cannot separate narrative technique from the effects of attention, structure, and hope.
• Little blinding: Blinding is absent or unreported almost everywhere, which matters when outcomes are self-reported.
• Short follow-up: Follow-up runs to weeks or, at best, a few months. It is almost never a year.

None of this shows that narrative therapy does not work. Its rationale is coherent, and its ethical care about power and description is a real contribution.

But its evidence base is far smaller than that of cognitive behavioral therapy, which has large multi-site trials with active comparators and long follow-ups. The contrast is about the volume and quality of evidence, not the merit of the models.

A decisive test is possible. It would need adequately powered, pre-registered randomized trials of the practice as White and Epston described it, run independently. Comparators would be active, outcome assessment blinded, and follow-up measured in years.

How to get started

Finding the right narrative therapist can mean searching online directories or asking a doctor for a referral to someone with the right training.

Choose someone you feel comfortable discussing personal information with, and don’t be afraid to try a different therapist if the fit isn’t right. Think about your deal breakers and the qualities that matter most to you.

Do you need mental health help?

USA

Contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline for support and assistance from a trained counselor. If you or a loved one are in immediate danger: https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

1-800-273-8255

UK

Contact the Samaritans for support and assistance from a trained counselor: https://www.samaritans.org/; email jo@samaritans.org .

Available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year (this number is FREE to call):

116-123

Rethink Mental Illness: rethink.org

0300 5000 927

Further Information

Wallis, J., Burns, J., & Capdevila, R. (2011). What is narrative therapy and what is it not? The usefulness of Q methodology to explore accounts of White and Epston’s (1990) approach to narrative therapy. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 18(6), 486-497.

Hutto, D. D., & Gallagher, S. (2017). Re-authoring narrative therapy: Improving our self-management tools. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 24(2), 157-167.

Morgan, A. (2000). What is narrative therapy? (p. 116). Adelaide: Dulwich Centre Publications.

References

Beaudoin, M.-N., Moersch, M., & Evare, B. S. (2016). The effectiveness of narrative therapy with children’s social and emotional skill development: An empirical study of 813 problem-solving stories. Journal of Systemic Therapies, 35(3), 42–59. https://doi.org/10.1521/jsyt.2016.35.3.42

Besley, A. C. (2002). Foucault and the turn to narrative therapy. British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 30(2), 125–143. https://doi.org/10.1080/03069880220128010

Bruner, J. S. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Harvard University Press.

Bruner, J. (1991). The narrative construction of reality. Critical Inquiry, 18(1), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1086/448619

Cashin, A., Browne, G., Bradbury, J., & Mulder, A. (2013). The effectiveness of narrative therapy with young people with autism. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing, 26(1), 32–41. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcap.12020

Çetiner, E., Turan Kavradim, S., & Özer, Z. (2026). Effect of narrative interventions on psychological outcomes, sleep quality and quality of life in patients with cancer: Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. European Journal of Oncology Nursing, 83, 103259. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejon.2026.103259

Eames, V., Shippen, C., & Sharp, H. (2016). The Team of Life: A narrative approach to building resilience in UK school children. Educational and Child Psychology, 33(2), 57–68. https://doi.org/10.53841/bpsecp.2016.33.2.57

Etchison, M., & Kleist, D. M. (2000). Review of narrative therapy: Research and utility. The Family Journal, 8(1), 61–66. https://doi.org/10.1177/1066480700081009

Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972–1977 (C. Gordon, Ed.). Pantheon Books.

Ghavibazou, E., Hosseinian, S., & Abdollahi, A. (2020). Effectiveness of narrative therapy on communication patterns for women experiencing low marital satisfaction. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy, 41(2), 195–207. https://doi.org/10.1002/anzf.1405

Ghavibazou, E., Hosseinian, S., Abdollahi, A., & Ghamari Kivi, H. (2022). Effectiveness of narrative therapy on adult attachment styles and expressivity in women experiencing low marital satisfaction. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 22(4), 853–860. https://doi.org/10.1002/capr.12493

Hu, G., Han, B., Gains, H., & Jia, Y. (2024). Effectiveness of narrative therapy for depressive symptoms in adults with somatic disorders: A systematic review and meta-analysis. International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology, 24(4), 100520. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijchp.2024.100520

Hutto, D. D., & Gallagher, S. (2017). Re-authoring narrative therapy: Improving our self-management tools. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 24(2), 157–167. https://doi.org/10.1353/ppp.2017.0020

Khodabakhsh, M. R., Kiani, F., Noori Tirtashi, E., & Khastwo Hashjin, H. (2015). The effectiveness of narrative therapy on increasing couples intimacy and its dimensions: Implication for treatment. Family Counseling and Psychotherapy, 4(4), 607-632.

Looyeh, M. Y., Kamali, K., & Shafieian, R. (2012). An exploratory study of the effectiveness of group narrative therapy on the school behavior of girls with attention-deficit/hyperactivity symptoms. Archives of Psychiatric Nursing, 26(5), 404–410. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apnu.2012.01.001

Myerhoff, B. (1978). Number our days. E. P. Dutton.

Shakeri, J., Ahmadi, S. M., Maleki, F., Hesami, M. R., Parsa Moghadam, A., Ahmadzade, A., Shirzadi, M., & Elahi, A. (2020). Effectiveness of group narrative therapy on depression, quality of life, and anxiety in people with amphetamine addiction: A randomized clinical trial. Iranian Journal of Medical Sciences, 45(2), 91–99. https://doi.org/10.30476/IJMS.2019.45829

Vromans, L. P., & Schweitzer, R. D. (2011). Narrative therapy for adults with major depressive disorder: Improved symptom and interpersonal outcomes. Psychotherapy Research, 21(1), 4–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/10503301003591792

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press.

Wallis, J., Burns, J., & Capdevila, R. (2011). What is narrative therapy and what is it not? The usefulness of Q methodology to explore accounts of White and Epston’s (1990) approach to narrative therapy. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 18(6), 486–497. https://doi.org/10.1002/cpp.723

White, M. (2007). Maps of narrative practice. W. W. Norton.

White, M., & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative means to therapeutic ends. W. W. Norton.