Healing plots

de Amia Lieblich, Dan P. McAdams, Ruthellen Josselson

Therapy is the process of developing a narrative that helps bring integration and coherence to a chaotic life. In Healing Plots: The Narrative Basis of Psychotherapy, the third volume in the series The Narrative Study of Lives, editors Amia Lieblich, Dan P. McAdams, and Ruthellen Josselson bring together a diverse group of psychotherapist-scholars to explore the relationship between storytelling and therapy. Drawing directly from practice experiences with a wide variety of clients, the chapter authors present illuminating case studies of lives being examined in therapy. The authors ground their contributions in the shared theory that effective therapeutic interventions often involve the co-construction of healing narratives in the face of personal, moral, and social adversity. Using a variety of perspectives, contexts, and cultural settings, the authors examine how therapists and clients negotiate narrative conflict and complexity, present types of stories that significantly animate the psychotherapeutic process, and discuss how life stories can change through, and as a result of, therapy. By recounting and deconstructing therapeutic experiences with clients, contributors collectively demonstrate how narratives shape and humanize therapists' work, and how the process of therapy enriches our understanding of narratives and their place in contemporary studies of human identity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2005 APA, all rights reserved).