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Around the world, growing populations of older adults need social care. Aging is typically associated with steady physical and cognitive decline; the practice of narrative therapy, by contrast, focuses on the resilience of the older adults by encouraging the construction of meaningful life stories. Practitioners engage participants to revisit their personal journeys to uncover their life lessons, finding core beliefs and values to help cope with new challenges. Ultimately, narrative therapy helps older adults recover meaning in life by inviting them to recollect and commemorate their life experiences.
This book is an in-depth guide to narrative therapy for students and practitioners in health care, social work, gerontology, and counseling, showing readers how to develop a culturally sensitive practice framework with older adults. It presents a step-by-step manual on the therapeutic use of narrative, describing the theories, methods, skills, and techniques of transformative narrative practice with older people in individual, family, group, and collective settings. Drawing on extensive clinical practice with older adults in Hong Kong and New York City, the authors explore narrative methods in divergent cultural contexts to advance a globally minded approach. Bringing narrative therapy to gerontological practice in culturally sensitive ways, this book foregrounds alternative models of aging that celebrate a life worth living.
Esther Oi-Wah Chow is a professor in the Department of Social Work at Hong Kong Shue Yan University. She is an active narrative practitioner in gerontological social work and a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America.
Lauren Taylor is a senior lecturer at Columbia University School of Social Work and a psychiatric social worker with extensive experience at the Service Program for Older People. She is also an oral historian and has produced educational films on aging and sexuality and women’s issues across the lifespan.
Ada C. Mui is professor of social work at Columbia University and a faculty associate at the Center for Social Development, Washington University in St. Louis. She is a coauthor of Asian American Elders in the Twenty-first Century: Key Indicators of Well-Being (Columbia, 2008).
Preface
Introduction
1. Engaging Older Adults Through Narrative Practice in Gerontological Social Work
2. Validating the Power of Narrative Practice: Exploring Efficacy and Knowledge Development
3. Nurturing Roots: The Theoretical Foundations of Narrative Practice
4. Empowering Change Through Narrative Practice: Essential Tools
Narrative Practice with Older Adults in Western Cultures
5. Crafting Healing Narratives: Integrating Narrative Work in Clinical Practice
6. Harmonizing Voices: Embracing Narrative Intersubjectivity
7. Interweaving Paths: Exploring Convergences and Divergences Between Psychotherapy and Oral History
8. Recognizing Resilience: Compassionate Listening to Trauma Narratives
9. Discovering Narratives Beyond Words: Exploring Diverse Modalities for Deeper Connections
10. Charting Unexplored Routes: Narrative Road Maps to Rediscover Our Beginnings
Narrative Practice with Older Adults in Eastern Cultures
11. Embracing Life’s Seasons: Rediscovering Wisdom Through the Tree-of-Life Metaphor
12. Healing Journeys: The Recipe-of-Life Metaphor for Chronic Pain Recovery
13. Riding the Rails of Recovery: The Train-of-Life Metaphor for Stroke Rehabilitation
14. Unifying Narratives: Building Inclusive Community Through Collective Practice
15. Unleashing the Power of Collective Narratives: Narrative Therapy in Group and Community Practice
Conclusion
16. Evoking Narratives in Teletherapy’s Digital Realm
17. Weaving Life Wisdom from Eastern and Western Narrative Practices
Afterword
Bibliography
Index
About the Authors