Vancouver School for
Narrative Therapy: OUR STORY
A note from training director ~ Dr. Stephen Madigan
VSNT in a nutshell
Let us begin with Irish play write Samuel Beckett's call to persistence:
"No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better".
The creative practice imagination of the Vancouver School for Narrative Therapy is well noted.
It's roots are deeply embedded within, and interconnected to ~ some of the best therapists of our generation.
The ones who came before us.
Who taught, supervised, and supported us.
Those brave enough to show us how to fail. How they failed.
And well we all did fail. Over and over again.
Fairy dusting ourselves off the next day and performing a practice of therapy never seen before.
They taught us to bare down and put the time in.
To view this therapy we do with the live's of others, as our life's work.
Patience, discipline, justice, stubbornness, kindness and . . . love.
Perhaps the most important thing of it of all?
Therapy is (and cannot not be) a political act.
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The 2026 Vancouver School teaching faculty were all trained up this same way.
Taught to stay out of the shallow end of the therapeutic pool.
Taught to be explorers - not tourists.
To resist popular souvenir therapy shops.
To push practice forward to places our teachers had not quite ventured before.
Keep going, keep going, keep going.
Quick intro guide to explain this VSNT thing:
​I was considered too young to be doing a doctorate degree (maybe I was?) Michael White didn't seem to think so. During my PhD he twice invited me down to his Dulwich Centre clinic in Adelaide Australia. Paid my flights. I lived in his home, and began a rigorous journey in narrative therapy. Both study visits were the same. I sat inside Michael's therapy room for weeks on end. 5-6 clients a day. Wrote down all his questions. Annotated these questions. And - endlessly pestered him with questions about the narrative questions he asked.
Let me back up a bit . . . During my very early twenties (in Toronto) I interviewed for a new family and youth facility in Calgary hiring 70 young child care workers from across Canada. Lucky me (somehow) got the group therapist job and joined the family therapy team. I was supervised 3 times a week. And it just so happens Dr. Karl Tomm was running the leading edge family therapy clinic in the world - a few miles away. Three of us got together to read, study, puzzle and tried practicing everything Karl and his invited workshop guests were teaching. Two years later I went west to UBC for an MSW where I studied under Murray Bowen's heir apparent - Dr. David Freeman. A brash and brilliant Brooklyn native, he taught, inspired, and supervised my session tapes for two more years. Then, by pure coincidence, I witnessed Michael's live narrative practice. Not knowing why or how or what he was doing – I pushed to find a way to one day do what he was doing ~ inside the therapy room. Simple as that.
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Sometime after experiencing Michael's work, I got the itch to study the theory Michael was reading. More specifically, to study the influence French philosopher Michel Foucault and the continental post-structuralists had on shaping narrative practice. For the most part I studied the theory on my own. It proved to be a monster. The language was strange and stretched my intellectual limits. I stuck around for the politics and rigorous beauty. Wondering if this could be a new frontier to re-think 100+ years of psychotherapy?
Deciding to scratch the theoretical itch a little more, I moved 5,000 klms to South Florida and into the arms of a forward thinking MFT doctoral program. My choice to engage NOVA Southeastern University was all about the director Dr. Bradford Keeney. I'd loved his book the Aesthetics of Change where he took on the mystery of Gregory Bateson's ideas. Good old Brad left 5 months after I arrived (haha). This sucked but, the creative juice of Dr. Ron Chenail took over alongside a brilliant and supportive faculty. I give maximum credit to them for teaching me how to write, grapple with complex ideas and, allowing me off the academic leash to explore narrative practice and the high ground of French post-structuralism. The result was writing the first doctoral dissertation on narrative therapy.
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The Pocket Sized Tale:
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VSNT opened as the first Narrative Therapy Training School in the Northern Hemisphere.​
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VSNT designed and hosted the first (and now the longest running) International Narrative Therapy conference – Therapeutic Conversations.
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​​Creation of VSNT.live, the world wide online teaching phenomenon offering CE courses through hundreds of one of a kind videos and interactive discussions on present day relational narrative practice and theoretical developments through Live therapy demonstrations and numerous ongoing discussion series.​
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VSNT is home to the most experienced, most published, and most highly trained Narrative Therapy Teaching Faculty in the world. today.​
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2026 Primary Teaching Faculty include: Rosa Arteaga, Christine Dennstedt, Helene Grau, Stephen Madigan, David Marsten, Todd May, David 'Rock' Nylund
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​​2026 Associate Teaching Faculty include: Todd Disney, Erling Fidjesttol, Julia Gerlitz, Ottar Ness
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The 3rd Edition of Stephen's book Narrative Therapy, published by the American Psychological Association, arrived in October 2025. Order through APA, Amazon and sold in all major book stores.
The Vancouver School Takes Shape:
Written on the back of an Italian restaurant's paper place mat during the end of my 2nd visit, Michael and Cheryl White sketched out the frame of what the first narrative training school in the northern hemisphere in Vancouver might look like. He also came up with a bold idea - once the PhD was completed, I shouldn’t plan to work with, or for anyone for - a minimum of 5 years. I was about to become totally post-PhD broke, turn down a rash of academic interview offers, with no other prospects in site. But gave it a try.
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Returning to Vancouver, my ever loving Irish immigrant mom and dad loaned me $5K. I immediately signed a 3-yr lease (luckily the first 3 months rent were free) in a cool brick and timber office space in a recently renovated warehouse block. Needing to save money (I had no practice of any kind), I moved a cot and little fridge into the office and used the shower room on the 5th floor. Three weeks later and completely out of the blue, I ran into the Film Union president of IATSE 891, who I knew, at an old diner a block away from the new office. One thing led to another and IATSE offered me a 2year contract to provide a full-time therapy service for the film unions (at the time) 1,800 members. Soon after, actors, directors, and writers also began showing up for therapy.
With IATSE 891 paying the financial nut (VSNT happily engaged our Hollywood North clients for 13 years), the Vancouver School for Narrative Therapy + Yaletown Family Therapy was opened and the rest, as they say, is history.
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Narrative Community beginnings:
​After the first year of operation, YFT/VSNT decided to host an alternative-to-the-mainstream-psychotherapy conference. The first ever International Narrative Therapy conference Therapeutic Conversations was an intimate and engaging affair. ​It felt like all the amazing concerts I went to growing up, rolled into one. Remember this was the first time narrative therapists from around the world were getting a chance to meet one another. Lifelong connections were forged. We hired a band. The party was epic.
Looking back, TC conference plenary speakers and presenters were absolutely terrified. Shaking. Put to the test. But they took on the risk, stepped up to the task, demonstrated their work, and guided audiences into under known non-individualist political practice territories. Through the years, they made their narrative reputations. Word on the street was - if you could make it through a TC conference - you could make it anywhere. The legacy continues to this day.
Participant attendance grew and grew. They came in groups from all over the world. They engaged, cheered, challenged, and were at times bruised by this re-thinking of therapeutic practice accountabilities regarding: expert knowledge, cultural norms, relational contexts, contingent histories, power relations, and narrative therapy considerations of race, class, gender, sexualities. The overriding question seemed to be - who had the story telling rites to the story being told.
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Small sample of keynote presenters who graced the TC conference main stage:
Rachel Hare-Mustin, Karl Tomm, Ken Hardy, Imelda McCarthy/Nollaig Byrne, Arthur Frank, Sheila McNamee, Alan Wade,
America Braco, Bill Madsen, Makungu Akinyela, Johnella Byrd, Alan Jenkins, Charles Waldegrave/Kiwi Tamesese,
David Epston, Jill Freedman, John Winslade, Todd May, Michael White, Esther Perel ~ and so many (many) more.
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VSNT.live is the latest new training adventure.
The Vancouver School 'membership only' video catalogue (400 + and counting) requires mental health professionals to sign a confidentiality agreement before entrance so all live client interviews are kept safe . The Vancouver School's collection includes the hits and highlights of past and present one-of-a-kind narrative therapy conference and certificate training workshops, narrative therapy CE courses, all the primary readings, slides, along with LIVE practice sessions with children, families, groups, and couples. Plus ongoing present-day faculty and international guests long play discussions/series on new relational practices and theory.
Todays VSNT Teaching Faculty
Our 2026 VSNT faculty have grown up together in narrative therapy.
As a teaching group we have hundreds of thousands of narrative practice hours - inside the room.
We are 100% committed to guiding and growing participant’s practice knowledge ~ further.​
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VSNT invites you to join us at the next TC conference in Supernatural Vancouver, Canada - February 4-6, 2027.
And, do check out what participants have to say about our faculty and ongoing narrative therapy trainings.
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Thanks so much to everyone for co-creating our narrative therapy journey
Michael White & Stephen Madigan...early days of VSNT
Kiwi Tamasese, David Epston & Karl Tomm
Stephen, Imelda McCarthy & Nollaig Byrne
Michael White & Stephen Madigan...early days of VSNT