In Search of the Lost Narration

Abstract

Abstract This article describes the importance of creating an attentive narrative relationship in psychotherapy. We live in a distracted world where information exchange and storytelling are replacing narratives. The loss of narration and of the time needed to listen, which makes narrating possible, entails risks from both an individual and a social point of view. The psychotherapy room appears to be a privileged space where it is possible to rediscover the authentic meaning of narratives as an opportunity to create meaning and give significance to one’s existence in a cocreative relationship. Since psychotherapeutic theories and practices are also narratives, the author presents two specific narratives that influence psychotherapists’ approach to human suffering and, consequently, the vision of well-being they communicate to patients. In this way, the article highlights a way in which psychotherapists, from a psychosocial point of view, can take responsibility in the “narrative relationship.”