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origin stories

Adelaide Narrative Therapy Collective

Narrative Therapy began in Adelaide with Michael White and David Epston during the 1980s and 90s, to include counselling and family therapy teams in Australia and New Zealand. With Michael and David travelling with fellow therapists, the work quickly spread through the International Family and Collaborative Therapy community, and now into mainstream psychology, social work and other helping activities.

 

Less known, but also developing in Adelaide at the same time, were unique responses to perpetrators and survivors of domestic and sexual violence and abuse. Alan Jenkins, Rob Hall, Maxine Joy and others were thinking about what they have come to call Invitational and Ethical Practices with people who use violence and abuse. Practitioners began exploring how to invite men to cease their violence toward partners and children. This was developed to help shift the focus of responsibility from women victim-survivors to the male perpetrators, since the1980s and 90s. Along with restorative justice approaches for families where abuse had occurred, practices worked into broader responses in regions where political and violent conflict created contexts for further abuses of power.

 

All practices serve to uncover the operations of power and abuse, and expose their effect on survivors. Abuses of power can be shown-up as trapped in narratives, discourses, particular language, actions, and ways of being. If the problem is in the narratives that power constructs, then the remedies are found here also (Foucault).

 

Today Narrative and Invitational practices have been taken up in wonderful parts of the world where therapy and therapeutic activism is much needed, such as in India, Chile, Mexico, Spain, South Africa and more.

 

Here in Adelaide we continue these practices with close fidelity and new thinking in narrative and invitational ideas.

 

Please join us in active and reflective learning as we explore further.  We would love your skilled therapeutic company in our explorations. 

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Warm regards,

 

Sonja Baram, Tony Fletcher, Pshko Marden, Mark Byrne

Supervision

Adelaide Narrative Therapy offers support to individual practitioners, teams and agencies, wanting to pursue ongoing reflection on their work through an accountability and narrative lens. Our specialist interests include supporting practitioners in responding to violence and abuse counselling, family law counselling, collaborative and family therapies, narrative therapy and philosophy. When interest permits, we also offer small group supervision. New practitioners and students in counselling, social work, mental health programmes welcome.

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Supervision can be provided in-person at our Hindmarsh office or via video link to anywhere in the world. Supervision with Sonja Baram as a PACFA accredited supervisor, contributes to your PACFA and ACA counselling accreditation. 

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If you would like to discuss supervision before making a booking, please contact us.

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Current offerings:

Supervision - Individual In-Person

Supervision - Individual Online

 

Group Supervision min 2 max 6 people

In-Person First Tuesday of Month - Book Here

Group Supervision - Online - Please Email Us

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Re-membering

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Michael White (d. 2008) from Adelaide together with David Epston from New Zealand developed and extended Narrative ideas and practices over several decades. Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends was published in 1990 and Maps of Narrative Practice in 2007, with much writing, practice, teaching and publishing in between and beyond.  Adelaide Narrative Therapy continues Michael's work and intention in developing this small practice and teaching collective and in our fidelity to narrative practices.

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Terry Callahan (d.2023) Narrative practitioner and social worker. Friend and colleague. Co-founder of Adelaide Narrative Therapy and very much missed by clients and colleagues alike. Terry was encouraging and supportive always, with the warm wit and dry humour of a poet-therapist, who cared deeply about others.

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