Narrative Explanation in Psychotherapy

Abstract

This article examines the field of psychotherapy as an interesting and illustrative example of human science inquiry. Three approaches to understanding human intentionality and action that have appeared in theories of psychotherapy over the years are distinguished. Naturalist approaches assume explanation involves describing underlying causes operating beneath the surface phenomena of thought and action. In recent years, difficulties this view encounters in doing justice to human agency have given rise to constructionist conceptions of psychotherapy. In this view, action is structured by narratives or stories understood as free creations that swing free of any facts and do not involve discovering any truth about a person's life or history. The author suggests that this approach involves a number of excesses and shortcomings and argues for a more moderate, narrativist viewpoint that draws on the ideas of ontological hermeneutics.

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