TPC-Journal-V1-Issue3

204 The Professional Counselor \ Volume 1, Issue 1 White and Epston (1990) describe the therapeutic methodology of narrative therapy with attention to how many of the techniques accomplish this deconstructive and reconstructive work around issues of power and knowledge. They describe mapping the influence of the problem as a way to expose unitary knowledge through an exploration of beliefs a client holds about him or herself, others and their relationships. Through the process of externalization, the client gains a new perspective of the problem and his or her own life and, accordingly, new options become available to challenge the “truths” that have previously impinged upon the narrative constructs. Exploring the effects of the problem allows the client to identify what might be necessary in order to survive the “problem story.” Finally, unique outcomes that are located by attending to times when the client was not subjected to the techniques of the problem narrative provide a further point of reflection upon the meaning of these times and how that meaning might emerge from subjugation to the dominant problem narrative. While narrative therapy has well-articulated ways of addressing the dynamics and relations of power and knowledge in the client’s narrative, there remains the reality that the client and counselor are themselves caught up in relations of power. While narrative counselors attempt to deconstruct the power relations between counselor and client by conceiving of the client as expert, this leads to what Brown (2007) sees as the dangerous treatment of “experience” as uncontestable truth. Brown (2007) further explains that postmodern feminists caution against such a privileging of individual experience resulting in experience being separated from social construction. They further argue that clients’ stories should always be considered both social and political. The difficulty arises in determining how the counselor can serve in challenging the discursive realities within clients’ narratives without claiming expert knowledge for him or herself. Many counselors, including Anderson (1997), adopt a “not-knowing position” (p. 4) that consists of a distancing from strategies of power found in many traditional therapeutic theories. Brown (2007) is critical of this stance, however, stating that with a not-knowing position of the counselor, clients’ stories “escape the social processes that make knowledge and power inseparable. Seen somehow to be outside of the influence of power, these stories can be taken up as is, as self- legitimizing” (2007, p. 9). This not-knowing position can result in a focus on the individual and his or her story to the exclusion of the social context. If the social construction of clients’ narratives is left unexplored, Brown (2007) warns, “therapy participates in its reification of dominant and often unhelpful stories” (p. 9–10). While an all-knowing stance is certainly to be repudiated, the “‘not-knowing’ stance is not effective for challenging oppressive social discourses or, subsequently, for deconstructing negative identity conclusions or rewriting alternative identities” (Brown, 2007, p. 4). Brown (2007) resolves this difficulty by holding to modern ideas regarding the possibility of an emancipatory social vision, as well as the postmodern idea that knowledge is always partial, located and never neutral. Together, Brown (2007) sees this blend as helpful in taking a position regarding clients’ narratives without suggesting the position to be one of objectivity—at once being positioned while recognizing one’s partiality. Power and Knowledge in the Therapeutic Alliance While Brown’s (2007) position in relation to dynamics of power and knowledge in the client’s narrative is helpful, there are further questions that deserve exploration with regard to the relations of power and knowledge within the therapeutic alliance—the relationship between client and counselor. Simon (1994) notes that modernist ideas of rationality and objectivity allowed scientists to feign a transcendent, supracultural view of truth and reality. Consequently, a hierarchy was created in which the scientist—and counselor—was placed above those in society and in the consultation room as rational objective observer. The scientific viewpoint was privileged and as a result the scientist and counselor fell prey to the political, economic and social views of both the scientist and dominant discursive narratives. However, narrative counselors working from a postmodern viewpoint identify the problematic nature of scientific objectivity and recognize, as Mahoney (1995) states: “There is not, never was, and never can be a truly ‘nondirective’ or value-free form of human dialogue. All human perception, learning, knowing, and interaction is necessarily motivated by and permeated with biases, preferences, and valuations (which are usually implicit)” (p. 392). Even while narrative counselors attempt to divest themselves of positions of power over the client seen in modernist psychotherapies, the issue of power and knowledge in the therapeutic alliance is still very present. Holzman, Newman, and Strong (2004) note that, if for no other reason, there is a dynamic of power and knowledge present in the fact that the client looks to the counselor for advice, solutions, interpretations, explanations or, in postmodern approaches, a collaborative process that may generate new understanding. This is no doubt still an appeal to the authority of the counselor and is an appeal that narrative counselors must creatively approach in order to attend to the implicit relations of