Narrative Clinical Review. This page provides the verified citation, abstract, and full-text PDF for the journal article.
Clinical boundary: Narrative methods are not interchangeable and can intensify rumination, distress, imposed meaning, or unsafe disclosure. They require permission, non-leading inquiry, monitoring, attention to culture and power, and separation of therapeutic meaning from factual or forensic verification.
Publication Details
- Author: Christian Jonathan Haverkampf
- Journal: The Journal of Psychiatry Psychotherapy and Communication
- Publication date: 2024-03-31
- Volume, issue, pages: 13(1), 12–21
- Article type: Narrative Clinical Review
Recommended citation: Haverkampf, C. J. (2024). Working with Stories in Psychotherapy: Narrative Identity, Meaning-Making, and Therapeutic Change. The Journal of Psychiatry Psychotherapy and Communication, 13(1), 12–21.
Abstract
Stories matter in psychotherapy because they organize experience, identity, relationships, and anticipated action, but narrative methods are neither interchangeable nor inherently beneficial. This narrative clinical review distinguishes personal narrative identity, narrative therapy and re-authoring, life review and dignity therapy, expressive writing, and manualized trauma-focused narrative protocols. Evidence available through 29 February 2024 suggests that agency, autobiographical specificity, responsive listening, and elaborated exceptions can accompany improvement, while outcome evidence differs substantially across intervention families. Narrative therapy research includes promising but limited depression trials and process studies; reminiscence and life-review interventions show modest average benefits; dignity therapy addresses end-of-life meaning and legacy; expressive-writing findings are heterogeneous; and narrative exposure and written exposure are structured PTSD treatments rather than generic storytelling. The review organizes clinical work around four levers: selection, organization, positioning, and audience. A revised account matters clinically when it supports a safer boundary, clearer request, relational repair, behavioral experiment, or valued action, not merely when it sounds coherent or positive. Meaning-making effort can also become rumination, flooding, imposed redemption, or unsafe disclosure. Accordingly, narrative work requires permission, non-leading inquiry, attention to culture and power, monitoring of distress and function, and explicit separation of therapeutic meaning from factual or forensic verification. The listener is part of the intervention, but the patient remains the author and owner of what is told, withheld, recorded, or shared.
Keywords
narrative identity; narrative therapy; life review; expressive writing; narrative exposure therapy; therapeutic communication
Full Text
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