Politics of Care in Narrative Therapy

B.A. Sociology (Research) thesis

Beginning by tracing the evolution of psychotherapy from Freud’s psychoanalysis to behaviorism and contemporary therapeutic forms, I critique how psychiatry and psychotherapy have historically exercised the “medical gaze” (Foucault) as this gaze objectifies bodies through diagnosis and surveillance. I compare this to Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) as a medicalized adaptation of Narrative Therapy, showing how it transforms trauma into coherent autobiographical stories to restore agency and temporality for patients, especially refugees.

The method and theory of Narrative Therapy is created by Michael White and David Epston, designed to have a non-pathologizing, co-creative, and agency driven process due to its interdisciplinary background. The introduction details the seven core steps in Narrative Therapy that allow taking care from control to collaboration.

This chapter connects care to power structures and biopolitics. Lisa Stevenson’s study of the Inuit under Canadian governance is uses to provide ethnographic and theoretical analysis to contrast bureaucratic care with more human, responsive forms of care that affirm lived experience. I argue that care is inherently political, because it operates within networks of authority, visibility and exclusion. Examples of Laurence Ralph’s “Becoming Aggrieved” and Biehl & Locke’s work shows how communities create their own frameworks of care in resistance to state or institutional neglect.

Bruce Wampold’s “The Great Psychotherapy Debate” and Katherine Borland’s critique of interpretive authority deepens this argument, showing scientific validation of care often excludes non-standard, relational or collective practices. By contrast, Narrative Therapy demonstrates that documentation, co-research and shared authorship can democratize knowledge and make care reflexive, ethical and socially transformative.

The theoretical foundation of Narrative Therapy is based in sociology, anthropology, and literary theory. Drawing on Foucault, Geertz, Derrida, and Jackson, I illustrate how identity is relational, distributed, performed and fluid. Through a process known as “externalizing conversations”, the person is separated from the problem, allowing de-socialization from dominant discourses that use ‘disorders’ as a label. The therapy process uses “thick description”, double listening, and unique outcomes to uncover alternate identities.

This chapter also frames storytelling as a political and social act, where narrating one’s life becomes a form of agency that resists the authority of medical institutions. The inclusion of outsider witness groups demonstrated the re-socialization of the client and creates solidarity, effectively connecting care to social justice and collective identity.

Narrative Therapy transforms the politics of care by making it participatory, interdisciplinary, and justice-oriented. It challenges the medical gaze by affirming multiple identities and encouraging that care is responsive and relational. By combining sociology and psychotherapy, it models how disciplines can decolonize their gaze and include marginalized voices in their structures of knowledge.

By reiterating that narrative can be employed as a tool of care that is rooted in storytelling and community participation, this form of care can extend beyond therapy into other forms of governance design.