The Small and the Ordinary: The Daily Practice of a Postmodern Narrative Therapy

ABSTRACT

In this article, I contrast assumptions of a modernist worldview and a postmodern worldview as they relate to clinical practice. Two exercises are described that help therapists develop insight into and practice with the kind of thinking that is consistent with a postmodern narrative clinical practice. Particular attention is paid to the ways that even the small and the ordinary — single words, single gestures, minor asides, trivial actions — can provide opportunities for generating new meanings. Five concepts that I routinely use in my professional and personal life and that are consistent with a postmodern narrative practice — discourse, externalizing the internalized discourse, exceptions, power as the means to produce a consensus, and characteristics of narrative — are illustrated.