Workshop: Narrative Therapy and Cultural Affordances

Friday 25th November 2016
Northfield’s Campus, University of Wollongong
14:00-18:00, Room 19.G015, Building 19
http://www.uow.edu.au/about/campusmap/

Narrative therapy is based on the premise that people are the experts of their own lives, and that they have skills, beliefs, and values that will assist them to reduce the influence of problems. As its name suggests, this approach emphasizes the therapeutic potential of the stories that people narrate about their lives. In particular, its efficacy is assumed to reside in the differences that can be made through particular tellings and retellings, which involves finding ways of understanding the stories, and ways of re-authoring them in collaboration with the therapist.

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Workshop, February 2015

A successful workshop was help in March 2015 “Narrative Therapy, Folk Psychology and Philosophy of Psychiatry” at UOW. It consolidated relationships with Dr. Denborough, co-director of the Dulwich Centre Foundation, who presented a paper at the event. Other key presenters included the developmental psychologist, Robyn Fivush (Associate Vice-Provost for Academic Innovation Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta GA, USA); the cultural psychiatrist Laurence Kirmayer, M.D., FRCPC, (James McGill Professor and Director, Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, CA); and the philosopher, Dominic Murphy (Associate Professor, History and Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney).

Kirmayer1_200x260David D Picfaculty-fivush-730Murphy

Researchers with quite diverse backgrounds attended the 2015 workshop. Amongst them were delegates from the schools of: Civil, Mining and Environmental Engineering; Education; Health and Society; Information Systems and Technology; Mathematics and Statistics; Psychology; and Social Work. The event attracted the interest of those within UOW and beyond who supply crucial practical and therapeutic support services: Manager of Student Residences; Deputy Director of Clinical Training; Clinical Supervision Coordinator, Northfields Clinic; Occupational Therapists from Queensland; and Counsellors from the Post-Adoption Resource Centre, NSW.