Narrative counselling method encourages life planning according to the models that have
proved functional or predisposing for a person and not according to the vocational choice
pattern. Previous narrations are an argument for rewriting the coordinates of a new
personal story, adapted to social and personal needs and putting to use higher significance
of vocational stories and encounters. Amundson (2003) mentions communication skills in
counselling among which we consider the following to be indispensable to the counsellor
and used if and when narration is to be stimulated: paraphrase, clarification, empathy,
summarizing, moderation, correlation, blocking, limiting, support, obtaining accord,
provoking strengths, confrontation, self-revelation, observing coincidences.
Versions of narration: prose (journal, letter, report, dramatization), poetry, metaphor,
(auto)biography. There are aspects difficult to seize in the client’s narrative and that
belong to meta-communication; a professional counsellor must discern from the tone,
posture, look or pauses what are the potential intrigues (conflicts), premonitions, traps,
flights of fancy, personal myths, human models to be put to use in the client’s current
condition. In a counselling session where they are required to talk about themselves and
their life experiences, clients with an autonomous personality feel the satisfaction of
being in control by deducing, correlating, selecting and interpreting the elements of the
story; for a socially and emotionally immature client, narration may bring about the
discomfort of evoking, wandering away from the reference system, mistrust in the virtues
of the method. Language is important for a certain career development theory and equally
the significance given to the story. Counsellors must identify the articulation mechanisms
of the essential sequences, take over the key words in the client’s communication and
interpret them as action possibilities to help improve the situation.
Counsellors listen to clients’ stories, but their duty is to explore other sources as well,
such as stories of significant people or the mass-media. The newly created context of the
story is meant to bring about arguments for events inexplicable in the past or under
controversy, diminish or modify the impact at the time, and place the behaviour model in
a new perspective.
Stories must be examined closely in order to lead to the identification of a pattern for
vocational predisposition, as well as the creation of a constructive climate. Thus clients
get the feeling that almost everything they have been saying matters and their experience
has intrinsic worth for themselves and even for others. A discrete and efficient analysis
procedure is using secondary questions (Amundson, 2003) by the following
methodological stages:
- confirmation / denial – to understand how a certain situation has come about;
- sequences – to understand duration, evolution and perspective;