Posted on 3rd August 2019

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Processing Client Stories in Counselling and Psychotherapy:

How to think about and analyze client narratives

Dr Jim Byrne, Doctor of Counselling

Published by: The Institute for E-CENT Publications – 2019

Copyright © Jim Byrne, 2019. All rights reserved.

Introduction

It has been argued, by Bargh and Chartrand (1999)^[i] that about 95% of everything that we humans do is done automatically, as a set of non-conscious habits.  And Professor Jonathan Haidt (2001)^[ii] argues that our thinking is underpinned by, and dominated by, our emotions. This view is supported by much modern neuroscience. (See Daniel Siegel (2015)^[iii].

Bearing those two arguments in mind, it is pertinent to ask: What goes on in counselling and psychotherapy between the therapist and their client?  Do they speak the same language? Do they hear the same story? Can either of them make an original move, which is not a pure habit from the past, dominated by their innate and socially shaped emotions?

Clearly, it is very important for every counsellor and psychotherapist to know what is happening in their communication with their clients.  But this is not covered as a standard part of most counselling and therapy training courses. This book is intended to fill that training gap.

It begins, in Chapter 1, by exploring, in a thought experiment, how counsellors perceive their clients; and then moves on to look at stories and scripts.  We then consider that the client is not just a story-teller, but also a body, which needs to be properly fed and watered in order for the emotional/behavioural component to function properly.

We then look at whether it would work to think of the client’s story – and the therapist’s story about the client – as ‘useful fictions’, rather than facts.

We then explore the role of interpretation in creating memories of human experiences.

Chapter 2 reviews some of my own learning about the limits of human capacity to produce objective stories.

In Chapter 3, I delve more deeply into the status of autobiographical narratives as stories of felt recollections.

Then, in Chapter 4, I present my own Story of Origins, as a case study of the ability of an individual to reconstruct their own childhood story. And this ends with some conclusions about the value of the story I constructed.

Chapter 5 is my definitive attempt to show how autobiographical stories can be analyzed, and the pitfalls that arise in constructing them.  And a list of guidelines for analysing client stories is constructed and presented.

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Jim Byrne, Hebden Bridge, August 2019

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Chapter 1: Humans as story-telling bodies

Life is complex, but we are under pressure to keep finding quick ways to simplify our understanding of life experiences; and simplified ways of communicating about them.

For example, a counsellor presses a buzzer to let reception know that they are ready for their next client.  One minute later, there’s a knock on the door; the door opens; and a new client steps into the counselling room.  But what does the counsellor see?

The counsellor sees whatever their entire personal history – including their training in counselling and/or psychotherapy – has taught them to see.  (We do not see with our eyes, but with our brains, and their stored experience in neuronal networks).

Every system of counselling and psychotherapy contains a story about what a person is; how they become disturbed or distressed; and how to help them to overcome their emotional and behavioural problems.

Sigmund Freud created a story about human beings: what we are and how we develop.  In the process he paid too little attention to the ways in which we are born as a ‘thing/it’ which internalizes experiences of being related to by mother and others, out of which relational encountering ‘we’ develop our ‘ego’ or personal shape – (personality, character and temperament; and sense of identity).  And when I say ‘we’ develop it, I mean, of course, that it develops itself!

Eric Berne took Freud’s theory, and worked on the ‘ego’ component, arguing that we have three major components of our ego – or three states of the ego: the Parent; the Adult; and the Child.  Berne also developed the theory of ‘life scripts’, which claims that we each construct a script for the drama of our life, and that this script is about ‘the kind of person I am’, and ‘what happens to a person like me’.

We can see that idea of a life script as a particular strand of the idea that we are story-tellers in a sea of stories.  We learn our parents’ stories about our family of origin; our peers’ stories about who they are for themselves, and who we are for them. And we learn larger stories of class and national identity, and a personal identity which is honed in school and in our community.

Of all the systems of counselling and therapy, the main ones that pay attention to the body of the client include Gestalt Therapy, and my own system of Emotive-Cognitive Embodied Narrative Therapy (or E-CENT for short).

Very many counsellors, presented with the vignette which opened this Introduction – seeing a new client entering their counselling room – would see some version of ‘a story on legs’ – ‘a person with mental difficulties’.

In E-CENT counselling, we see a body-brain-mind-environment-whole enter our room.  We agree that this person will begin by telling us a story about their current difficulties; but we recognize that this story is affected, for better or worse, by the quality and duration of their recent sleep patterns; their diet (including caffeine, alcohol, sugary foods, and trans-fats in junk food); and whether or not they do regular physical exercise; and other bodily factors.

But in this book, we will mainly focus upon the client’s story or narrative; and perhaps remind ourselves occasionally that this story is being told by a physical body-brain-mind which is dependent for optimal functioning upon such factors as diet, exercise, sleep, and so on.

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In their book titled The Good Story: Exchanges on truth, fiction and psychotherapy, Arabella Kurtz and J.M. Coetzee acknowledge that the therapist or counsellor participates in a process of helping the client to tell their story. This might be the story of a recent incident; or a recurring problem; or a mini-version of the story of their life.

The question addressed by Kurtz and Coetzee (2015) is about the nature of the ‘truth’ of the stories created in counselling and therapy contexts.  Are the objectively true; subjectively valid; or fictions of some kind?

…End of extract.

[i] Bargh, J.A. and Chartrand, T.L. (1999) The unbearable automaticity of being.  American Psychologist, 54(7): 462-479.

[ii] Haidt, J. (2001) The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgement.  Psychological Review, 108(4): 814-834.

[iii] Siegel, D.J. (2015) The Developing Mind: How relationships and the brain interact to shape who we are.  London: The Guilford Press.

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And here’s the contents page:

Contents

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Introduction

Chapter 1: Humans as story-telling bodies

Chapter 2: Understanding autobiographical narratives

Introduction

How to analyze autobiographical narratives in E-CENT

Responding to email clients

Chapter Conclusion

Chapter 3: The status of autobiographical narratives and stories

The Extent of Human Non-Consciousness

What do people know for sure?

Can I really work with autobiographical memory?

Settling for Subjective Experiences – or the experiences of individuals and groups “in the real world”

A Refinement of the Concept of ‘Thinking without Thinking’

Stories of felt recollections

Chapter Conclusion

Chapter 4: My original story of my personal origins

Foreword

Introduction

From Humble Origins

Freedom from School

Back in the Soup

A Dawning Peace

The Worm Turns

A New Life in Bangladesh

Arriving in Hebden Bridge

Provisional Chapter Conclusion

POSTSCRIPT

Chapter 5: How to Analyze Autobiographical Stories

Introduction

Part 1: Was I really such a saint?

What is the “individual ego”?

Clashing cultures

Is this a curative insight?

More self-criticism

Further reflections

Postscript, July 2019

Part 2: Analysing client emails

So how have I analyzed those emails?

Part 3: Responding to verbal stories in therapy sessions

Chapter Conclusion

Chapter 6: Conclusion

Appendix A: The Eight Windows Model of E-CENT Counselling

Endnotes

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