Foundations Course Outline

Stephen is the VSNT Director of Training and best selling author who guides participants through what he frames as "the ecology of the receiving context a narrative therapist receives Client Stories into". He demonstrates numerous practical skills involving five therapeutic practices at the heart of Narrative Therapy interviewing: 1) Relational Externalizing, 2) Contextualizing Client Experiences, 3) Asking Relative Influence Questions, 4) Realizing Unique Outcome Moments, and 5) Art of Double Listening.

Stephen teaches through Q&A discussion and demonstrates numerous clinical examples of his original video taped sessions with clients. Participants learn the purpose, politic, intention, direction, difference, and theory supporting these life changing narrative therapy relational interview practices.

Michael White strongly believed that "without an intimate understanding of philosopher Michel Foucault's post-structural ideas a therapists understanding of narrative therapy practice would be severely limited." (VSNT.live) 

Resident VSNT philosopher Todd May who is the author of seventeen books on philosophy (and counting) unravels the conceptual complexities of Michel Foucault's ideas on non-individualism, essentialism, expert knowledge, the concept of power, and the intersection of practices, values, norms, normalization, and normativity.

The ongoing project for Todd is to help participants continually link together these vital theoretical ideas to our daily narrative therapy practices inside the therapy room.

Christine has had a longtime committed therapeutic relationship to people struggling with disordered eating and wrote her doctoral dissertation on the ground breaking work connecting: Narrative therapy, disordered eating, and substance misuse.

Christine guides participants through a narrative therapy informed, non-individualist, cultural and contextual therapeutic practice discussion through slides, stories, and original 'diagrams' to help demonstrate the complexities and creativity involved in her Anti-anorexia/bulimia practice. 

​Stephen and Christine then bring participants even closer through a live transcript supervision on the ecology of ideas she receives her disordered eating client stories into and then - he asks questions about each question she has ask in the unaltered session transcript demonstrated. Whew!

Inside the international narrative therapy community David 'Rock' Nylund is know as one of it's few world class therapeutic letter writers. His training workshop introduces participants to the historical roots, writing frameworks, and unique practices/categories within the craft of therapeutic letter writing.

He follows up the slide show discussion with a superbly textured Live counter-story interview demonstration. Course participants are then invited into the Live practice interview experience and taught how to craft narrative therapy questions and write a therapeutic letter ~ in response to the interview they have just witnessed.

The workshop demonstrates David's elegant therapeutic craft and direct practice with children in the context of family therapy. Participants receive a first hand experience of his 30 years of day in and day out therapeutic relationship working with children, youth, and families. Key narrative therapy skills are demonstrated ~ with an emphasis placed on narrative interviewing structures, his co-creation of 'wonderfulness interviewing', and another original idea he calls a dramatization of persons and problems. Lecture, discussion, slides, and exercises will support participant learning along with David's Live practice interview - highlight the many variations and aspects of this beautiful work.

Participants are introduced to one of the worlds most skilled narrative therapists who guides them into her ground breaking narrative therapy work with parents and families/communities who have experienced the death of a child.

Helene’s workshop teaches participants numerous practical skills and new relational narrative therapy understandings about working with grief, death, loss, communities of concern, and re-membering conversations.

Helene will then send out a session transcript that Stephen will supervise live in front of participants. Supervision consists of asking Helene questions about the purpose, direction, politic and general understanding of her therapeutic questions thereby ~ linking theoretical concepts to her practice.

Through Rosa's work as the Clinical Director and Supervisor of a large multi-disciplinary all woman team team with a nonprofit anti-violence women’s organization, participants receive a close up intimate experience of her narrative therapy informed social justice/feminist inspired therapeutic practice. Participants learn how to interview and support girls and women of all ages and diverse backgrounds who are experiencing complex trauma and gender violence. Rosa guides participants well beyond current ideas on trauma informed therapy and facilitates her teaching by taking the learner inside the complexities of gender violence through storytelling, session videos, and her unaltered transcripts.

​Sometimes what’s happened to people is unspeakable and deemed not safe enough to say aloud in a group. With diagnoses of PTSD on the rise, viewing trauma through a structuralist/medicalized/individual lens can create problem-saturated identities, which keep people silent and disconnected. Julia response to these relational challenges by building safe communities of concern and care through the use of therapeutic letters and co-created narrative documents in place of traditional group therapy. 

Foundation participants are now beginning to have a solid working knowledge and understanding of the theoretical frameworks and therapeutic practices at the heart of narrative therapy interviewing. Rock and Stephen move Sunday afternoon's discussion forward towards new understandings and skills related to the next set of important narrative practice understandings through thier session videos demonstrating: 5) Re-membering conversations, 6) Re-authoring conversations, and, 7) A unique counter-file method for taking in-session therapy notes. 

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They end the 5-day certificate training with participant reflections and questions.

Rock & Stephen engage participants in a free-flowing interactive learning discussion regarding the therapeutic ideas and practices they encountered over the five-day Foundations certificate training. This is a time for participants to share what they learned, the specific ideas and practices that stood out, the post Foundations training experience with their with clients, and to raise any and all questions regarding the beauty, creativity, integrity and politic of narrative therapy practices.