Workshops
Upcoming workshops
Please note, applications for our events close two working days before they are due to start.
Two-day video workshop with Michael White
This two day London workshop (but you can just attend one day if you wish) is going to be a narrative bonanza focused on Michael White videos. It’ll feature videos of practice, videos of him telling stories of practice, an intriguing interview by Jill Freedman and his seminal lecture on “Power in Therapy”.
If you’re looking for ideas to advance your thinking or practice and want to learn from the best – this is your chance! We’ll look at working with couples, working with sexual abuse and trauma, using externalising in difficult situations, challenges to the decentred position and so much more.
None of the videos are generally available to view but each of them will help round any uncertain edges or rough corners of your practice – so be there or be oblong!
Cost
£120 or £70 for one day.
Dates
21-22 June, 2023.
Venue
Seven Dials Community Centre, Covent Garden, London
Narrative Ethics: Becoming useful “second authors” as people enact the stories of their
values and intentions
Jill Freedman and Gene Combs
A two-day workshop
- London – September 25/26 2023
- Manchester – September 28/29 2023
Cost: £230, 20% discount if you are funding yourself
Click here for an application form
About the workshop
Some people believe narrative therapy’s poststructuralist worldview implies that “anything
goes.” We disagree. Instead, we believe that since our ethics are not based in monolithic
truth claims we need to examine our practices, our relationships, and their effects with
considerable care and attention. Narrative practice includes several important shifts in
perspective and action: making room for marginalized voices and cultures, inviting people to
make their own choices about what fits for them, making clear where we stand on
controversial issues so that people know how to take our ideas, and considering both the
local moment-by-moment effects of our practices and the ripples that our actions send into
the larger world. We believe we should position ourselves as “second authors” as we
interact to bring forth the next chapters in peoples’ lives.
In this workshop, we will tell stories and share examples from our work to ground the above
ideas in practice, to illustrate the difference between rule-based and relational ethics, and
to consider the role of civil disobedience in therapeutic practice. We will provide structured,
small-group exercises in which (for example) we explore therapy relationships we would
want to model our practice on, and recognize some of the practices we use in those
relationships. We will practice thinking about guiding our ethics by examining the effects of
our choices. We will examine some of the assumptions that influence our practice, and
question whether they reflect those of the people we are working with. We will think
together about how to maintain a de-centered but influential position. And we hope to
collectively build a list of practices that support ethical narrative relationships.
Jill Freedman and Gene Combs, who live in the Chicago area, are co-directors of Evanston Family Therapy Center. They teach locally and internationally, and have co-authored three books including Narrative therapy: The social construction of preferred realities, and more than 30 papers and book chapters. They have been practicing narrative therapy and supervision, as well as consulting to schools and social service agencies, for 35 years. Jill and Gene are Honorary Associates of the Taos Institute, and they were awarded the Innovative Contribution to Family Therapy Award of the American Family Therapy Academy.