Re-authoring narrative therapy: improving our self-management tools

Narrative practices have the potential to play a robust part in strategies for self-managing psychosocial well-being. Narrative therapy in particular seeks to empower groups and individuals, providing them with the resources and skills needed for positively improving their own well-being and coping with a wide range of life challenges. However, narrative therapy is in need of a philosophical update and some theoretical finetuning. Re-authoring some key elements of narrative therapy's official narrative will not only improve our understanding of it but increase the chances of a wider uptake of self-management strategies. Some features of narrative therapy's self-understanding invite and require clarification or adjustment in order to benefit from new thinking in philosophy and the cognitive sciences.