The Narrative and Cognitive methods are like cousins in practice

They both have a central focus on behavior/practice, present and future, and desired ways of living. They are solution-focused, and oriented towards people's thoughts or inner dialogs in the narrative. Since the 1990s, cognitive psychologists have been very good at examining their ideas scientifically, and were among the first to invoke evidence for their psychological approach. "It works!" they said with certainty in their voice, which unfortunately was followed by a tendency to disparage other well-established psychological methods. Since then, the concept of evidence has been thoroughly discussed professionally, e.g. by Scot Miller, who advocates continuously examining the client's assessment of the therapy in his Feedback Informed Therapy (FIT). Other methods have since adopted the cognitive idea of justifying their methods with evidence. More on that another time. You can read more about the cognitive techniques in thefollowing and over in my Method section here on the website.

As a psychologist and student, I have been trained since 2001 in the narrative method by Michael White, who belongs to the social constructionistic School. It's a scientific theoretical concept that was defined in psychology by American Professor and Psychologist Kenneth Gergen back in 1985 in the book "The social construction of the person". We are our social relationships and personality changes depending on who we are with. We have multiple/several self. There is a focus on language and the meaning of words for the individual. The individual is recognized as embedded in social relationships. We are always in relation to any.

Here I like the cognitive-behavioral therapeutic method, which I met in 2007 at the Psychiatric Center Sct. Hans by my teachers, especially psychologists Irene Oestrich and Lennart Holm. It recognizes that we as humans are also in relation to Something; especially our own thoughts. In terms of scientific theory, I will place the cognitive method within social constructivisme, which to a greater extent recognizes the individual independently of social relationships. When I trained the narrative method at DISPUK with psychologist Allan Holmgren and Michael White, I missed a focus on what was going on inside the individual. More body and emotions. It was the language and people's everyday lives, their practice; we paid attention to. The Wittgensteinian language gamesPeople lived with and in: How they used language. How people did/lived a topic. Practice and Meaning were the central categories. They were discoursesthat affected them; the themes or headlines you could derive for their lives.

When I encountered cognitive, I liked the very concrete, practice-oriented focus that I knew well from narrative. At the same time, it was also a bit simpler. I liked the inclusion of the body and emotions as an integral part of the psychological examination. The conversations had to translate into action. People had to train and learn something new to solve their problems. See, for example, Judith S. Beck (daughter of the author of the method mentioned below) and Christine Padesky. The method is quite simple. You speak into people's very basicperceptions; what you call Schematics. It's people's attitudes towards: Self, Others and Life in general. People talk about American psychiatrist and founder of the method Aaron Beck's basic cognitive triangle. These fundamental beliefs or assumptions affect the way people understand and act in their lives. They affect everything about people's lives and are rarely immediately conscious or present to people. They can be deduced with a good psychologist. The next easier to find cognitive level that people can often say out loud is Delivery rules. It's about how people think they need to be to be good enough. It typically shows up in phrases like: "If For example, you have to be a decent person, then should you do...". Should, could, ought to statements.

Here, cognitive shows an exciting focus on language, which I like a lot from narrative and social constructionism. People often have self-suppressing rules. There is a lot of information hidden in the individual words people use. Information about their attitudes towards themselves, others and the world. You work Language. I like to call them cousin methods. They have many common focuses or foci. The Narrative and Cognitive methods may come from different theoretical standpoints, but in practice, I have benefited from having a parallel focus on both in my work. Sometimes focusing on the discourse in people's stories, sometimes focusing more on how people's thoughts, feelings, bodily experiences and behavior are connected.

Since my thesis in 2003, where I investigated how to increase the agency of psychotic people by combining narrative and cognitive methods, I have been inspired by both methods. Exemplified by Jaakko Seikkula's exciting social constructionist approach; Open Dialogue, developed in the 1990s in Finland. My thesis is available here on my website under Publications if you want to see it.

Thank you for reading. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.