Narrative Practice Key Learnings: Landscape of Identity and Landscape of Action

As part of my semester’s goal to improve practice competency unfolds, it is my intention to use this space to write about my key learnings as I read Michael White’s literature on Narrative Practice.  Coming from a critical social work lens, I want to further explore counselling theories that deconstruct the norms projected on individuals, and to help them develop their own meaning systems.  Narrative therapy’s inquisitive and client-centered approach makes it a naturally congruent counselling theory with a critical lens by working with the client’s frame of reference, and helping the client develop their own new meanings of life events that are not determined by dominant discourses.

The new concepts that arose for me are the landscape of action and the landscape of identity.  My understanding of the landscape of action from Maps of Narrative Practice is that these are questions or plot development explorations that seek to draw out events that exemplify one’s identity.  The second landscape White (2007) discusses is the landscape of identity.  The second landscape looks for exceptions to the current identity by going into the client’s past and uncovering alternative plotlines.  The goal of the landscape of identity is thus to find expressions that contradict the client’s current dominant plotline, give a name to the actions that take place in this plotline, uncover what the actions say about the individual, establish the values that guide the actions, and then dig deeper into the past to further root the significance of these emerging narratives throughout the individual’s life history.

The landscape of action mechanism works alongside the landscape of identity as the conversation shifts back-and-forth between the two concepts.  When the conversation is focused on the landscape of action, the practitioner wants to develop a discrepancy between the new and old landscape’s of action.  Once the client is able to describe how the two landscapes are different, the practitioner then wants to begin explore what the new landscape says about the individual.   The new developing landscape provides an opportunity for the practitioner to explore what the developing plot says about the client from their own perspective and see if it resonates. This seems reminiscent of Motivational Interviewing’s (MI) developing discrepancy, and may provide an opportunity to use MI techniques such as scaling questions to explore the goodness-of-fit of the new landscape of action, and see what could make the developing narrative become a better fit (cite here).

If the client does embrace the storyline, the values that allow the landscapes of action and identity to exist can then be explored.  These emerging values can be further explored by seeing if they fit with a newly-emerging perception of self.  The practitioner can then explore what is new and what insights are coming to light.  The client can then give a name to the new action(s) that are paving the way to the emerging identity.  Once the actions are named, the practitioner wants o move to the landscape of identity, and dig deeper into the past to find further times the emerging identity came through and was an exception to the presenting identity.  The practitioner would then want to review the identity conclusions of the session and provide a landscape of action question for how the client can move forward.  The proposed action of the client would then be built around the context of the new narrative, and be given a meaning as to what it means of the person if they carry out the proposed action.  Reflection of the new narrative can then proceed.

Michael White provides some suggestions on what leads to a good landscape of Identity question.  Considerations include:

• Letting the client(s) witness life events
• An encouragement on the subjectivity of events
• Explore the feelings of events (reflections of attitude)
• Explore what was learned (reflections of knowledge)
• Encouragement of exploring what they showed/demonstrated about their lives (reflections of appearance)
• Encourage reflections of their future (reflections of supposition)

Thus, building intentional understandings of the self that relate to valued aspects of life from the client’s perspective  are the focus.  The valued components of the individual’s life include goals, plans, hopes, dreams, etc. – which fits quite well with the idea of the best possible self.  White makes mention of intentional state understandings as the purposes, beliefs, aspirations, hopes, goals, and so on that shape our aspirations of how we live.  Therefore, linking the landscape of identity with these components provides an opportunity to positively assess the directions the client wants to take as they move forward.  If the practitioner wanted to craft a good landscape of identity question, the questions often use:

• “If…”
• “Perhaps…”
• “Maybe…”
• “Might be…”
• “Possibly…”

White delves further into describing internal state understandings.  These are self-understandings of actions as a surface manifestation of the self – which is at the center of an identity.  Interestingly, if the human condition is a series of common elements  or phenomenon, internal state understandings are understood as varying degrees of common elements in each individual.  Healthy elements of mental wellbeing are an expression of the elements, where unhealthy elements are a distortion of the element(s).

White briefly brings up Foucault’s “Normalizing Judgement” and “Moral Judgement.”  I suspect that discussions around social norms and how schemas become entrenched in our meaning systems are a worthwhile exploration.  I discuss White’s take on “Normalizing Judgement” and “Moral Judgement” here.

Another concept that White discusses is Intentional State Understandings.  Developing a client’s intentional state understandings has the benefits of:

• Providing personal agency
• Seeing individuals as the originators of the preferred developments in their own lives
• A perspective that individuals living out their lives intentionally embrace living out their values in an effort to actualize their goals
• Putting people in a mindset when trying to understand their own lives and sense of actions with others leaves them in a position to take the perspectives of others.

White seems to contrast this with the concept of Internal State Understandings.  White’s concern of a client’s internal state understandings is that they can:

• Diminish a sense of agency (where the client does not explore their influences of intention and values)
• Be isolating (leaving us disconnected from others)
• Discourage diversity (as we contextualize ourselves within societal norms)

White outlines reauthoring as a movement away from internal state understandings to intentional state understandings (albeit a gentle transition).  While internal state conclusions do not necessarily need to be a negative concept of self, the intentional state understandings provide more room for empowerment and construction of a preferred identity.

 

So from all of the information above, a general way of looking at applying the knowledge is starting with a landscape of identity question in the present, following up with a landscape of action question.  The practitioner would then move to a more recent historical event and explore the landscape of identity and landscape of question and follow-up on how this fits with the individual.  The practitioner would then go to a more distant historical event, once again applying the knowledge from the recent history and landscape of identity, with a follow-up of a landscape of action exploration.  If the client has a more distant event or history they are open to exploring, we would then more into the remote history and repeat the exploration of the landscape of identity and landscape of action.  Once the pattern of this new narrative has been demonstrated as being long-standing and relevant to the individual’s sense of self, we can move to the near future and look at how this emerging identity can be applied moving forward.

References

White, M. (2007). Maps of narrative practice. W. W. Norton & Company; New York, NY