Dulwich Centre

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1st -2nd December:
A Narrative Approach to Working with Relationships
A Workshop with Jill Freedman and Gene Combs

In this workshop we will illustrate practices of working with relationships that flow from narrative ideas. We will lead the group in exercises that will give direct experience of these practices and we will reflect together on the effects of these narrative ways of working. These ways of working will be relevant to couples therapy as well as working with other kinds of relationships. This will be a skill building workshop.

We will focus on practices such as those that:

• Create a context in which anger and other strong emotions do not take over the therapy,

• Make palpable the discourses and norms by which people are measuring their relationship,

• Encourage members of a relationship to collaborate in projects that support new and satisfying experiences,

• Help partners contribute to and sustain each other's preferred identities, and

• Allow each member of a relationship to witness and reflect on the other's story of the intentions, values, and meaning that they live out in their relationship.

Jill Freedman and Gene Combs are well-loved presenters and writers based in Evanston, USA. Their books 'Narrative Therapy: the social construction of preferred realities' and 'Narrative Therapy with couples. . . and a whole lot more!' are both influential texts.

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