Abstract

Narrative therapists promote themselves as embracing both unique treatment techniques and a postmodern worldview based on a narrative metaphor and their own understanding of social constructionism. Many of the assumptions of this worldview are incompatible with traditional evangelical understandings of the Christian faith. This situation creates problems for Christian therapists who wish to incorporate recent advances within family therapy into their work. This dissertation explores the apparent impasse between narrative therapy and Christianity. The conclusion is that Christian therapists can profit from recent work in narrative therapy but only if they start by understanding how narrative therapy's own presentation of its theory and perspective is internally inconsistent. Appeal can then be made to the Christian tradition, which not only refutes the charges of inherent oppression leveled at it by narrative therapy, but also offers clients narrative resources that facilitate healthy personhood. It is argued that narrative therapy authors misconstrue their philosophical sources and unfairly expel all authoritative metanarratives from a role in psychotherapeutic treatment. The philosophical weaknesses of narrative therapy's postmodern worldview are exposed without undercutting the narrative metaphor altogether. Additionally, the influences of an unacknowledged psychotherapeutic metanarrative and an implicit "avoidant strategy" that operate within narrative therapy are identified. Resources available in the Christian master story, as articulated by the discipline of narrative theology, are espoused to promote a more meaningful depiction of 'narrative' than that offered by narrative therapy authors. This richer conception of narrative is claimed to be potentially beneficial to clients in ways that exceed the interventions of narrative therapy. This is especially so in relation to ethics and the sense of fragmented human experience that appears inevitable and natural in the postmodern world. It is shown that the broader literature base of philosophy and narrative theology provides resources for Christian therapists to use as they interface with the current wave of narrative therapy literature