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AcconorNc To AUSTRALTAN THERAprsrMrcHAEr.wr{rrE a disconcerting effect of his new celebrify on the international therapy conference circuit is the recurrent experience of getting offa plane, being met by a w'orkshop sponsor and told something like, "Ve sure havc a real hurndinger of a family for your live consultation. ()h. and by the way, about 500 people have signed up to w'atch." Whereupon White, the most visible representative of what is loosely called the "narrative method" of therapy, is plunked down in front of an impossible situation, rvhile the audience waits breathlesslyfor a therapeutic nriracle. ril/hite,who finds the hoopla attached to his ne*'status puzzling, denies that there is anything magical about what he does. He says he is just very "thorough." !'ery

Meticalous is the beart of Micbael Wbite's appoach to

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painstaking, and that "it's silly that people expccr ro get a good idea of this kind of work by setting me up in one meeting with the most complex situations rhcv'can find." Then he adds, "Certainly, the idea thar I'r'c qor

BY MARY SYKES WYLIE

40
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all the answers doesn't fit the spirit of Inonesession,forexample,theparents rarelyeventalkedroanytrody,hasbegun, the work." of a deeply shy and isolate d prehowever hesitantly and timidly, ro s:ly our Nonetheless, over the past decade, adolescent girl, are trying to coax her loud what sDe wanrs for her life. White has developed a worldwide followaway from her perch in front of the This kind of work may look to some ing of both senior therapists and neotelevision and go walking with her father. practitioners like cutting grass blade by phytes on several continents who insist Butthegirl'sreluctanceissuchthateven blade,butitisprobablymorelikepanning he has something vitally imponant to say wten she does consent, she dawdles so for gold in an overworked stream long that the field needs to hear. But it can that her father says he must then take a since abandoned by other prospecrors. hardly be his therapeutic style that scond walk in order to get any exercise Slowly, meticulously, steadfastty, White explains his eleration to the ranks of the for himself. He is disheartened and sifts through the sandy deposit, patiently illuminati. Watching him in session is a wonders if the effort is worth it. In ttris extracting alrnosr invisible flakes-until, by far cry from seeing one of the recognized segment, White tries to get a statement imperceptible increments, he has lions of clinical performance sweep of feelingfrom the girl herself. It is uphill amassed .dn asronishing mound of pregrandly into the middle of a dysfi.rnctional work White asks, "Do you have different cious metal. Clearly, White,s reputation family circle and in one session transform paces of walking? A snail's pace? A torrests less on rherapeutic brrvgra than on it into a little kingdom of love and tois's pace?. . . Are you &ster or slower the extraordinary,iransfiguring moments halmony, while being wildly enrenaining when you go walking with your dad?" thar occur in his practic.--.piptr*i.t in the process. Far from it. FIis pace is After a long pause, she murmurs, "Probthat take place with people most thermeasured, even monotonous-some find ably slower." "Probably slower," vo[eys apists would write offas hopeless. it maddeningly slow-the therapeutic White. "That means you da have more Mary, a young woman horribly abused persona respectfrrl, solicitous, inquisitive, than one gear. [Do you walk more slowly] as a child, appears in White's office slightly donnish, almost defercntial, the because you don't want to go Edking anorexicandbulimictothepointofnear circuitous language an eccentric mix of v/ith him?" "I don't wanr to do it," she death, suicidal, actively hillucinating, the folksy and the politicallv correct. It says finally. unable ro leave her house or talk with is hard to imagine the follow'ing questions Ignoring this response, he asksher how anytndy excepr her husband. Discharged appearing in anypsychotherapv textbook: she could help her dacl work out what from her last prychiatric hospital with the "Do you know how you got recruited into to do-abandon their walks together or medical prognosis of death by salration these habits of thought that have been persist. She yawns hugely. Building on a within a few.weeks, she is brought in to so capturing of your Life ?" ''What skills microscopically tiny adrance in the girl's therapy by Harry, her despairing husband, have you developed as a couple that life emerging earlier in the session (vtren and spends the iession .,tit.a.r! in a fetal allowed you to hold on to your relationhe had etcited from her a barely spoken position, rocking ro and fro on th. floo. sfup in the face of adversiry. and in spite acknowledgement that she might like to inthe comerofrJ/hite'soffice.',Shewould of thepolitics of heterosexist dominance be "taking more initiative in life, rather nor answer any questions, and I did not and ageism that marginalize your ways of than being a passenger") White asks, ger ro see her face for the first three 'rVhat being?" "what's it like for Anorexia would you like to do with your sessions," says white. Nervosa, which has been pulling the wool dad that would fit qrith this new dtection When Mary does nor respond to his over your eyes, to witness these recent, ofyours?"-a"newdirection"thatwould gentle, persistent probing, he asks her more positive developments in vour life?" have been invisible to anyone but White. husband to pose thi questions to her, and During sessions,white hunches down She mumbles "Go walking." "Going when she still remains silent, White in his chair over his notes-he seems walking-would that fit this new direcwonders aloud if Harry would like to almost to recede from view. He almost tion?" he pushes. "Fits," she barely "speculate" on what her answers might asserts anlthing, rarely utters a muf,murs. "It does fit," White continues be. At the end of the ttrird session, after \a/?r declarative sntence, iust patiently asks enthusiastically, "So would you like him one of White's r'?ical questions-what questions, hundreds of questions, often tokeepontryingtogosdking,orwould did Harry think her answer might be if repeating back the answers and writing you like him to stop?" "Hmmm, hmmm, he asked her how she had been recruited them down. Like an archaeologist, White hmmm," she replies. 'You have to say into zuch setf-hatred-she moves a little sifts through the undi-fferentiated debris wtrat you'd like," says Vhite -the closesr and whispers somerhing into her husof experience for minuscule traces of he comes to making a demand. "Keep on band's ear. "For that one instant, hatefulmeaning-the tiny, precious shards of walking," she finally answers. It is an ness did not speak to Mary the truths of struggle, defeat and victory that reveal a achievement, sa's white, because she has her identiry," says White, ,,-and from then life-all the while doggedly taking notes, determined that the decision to keq> on on, she began to speaft more and more even occasionally requesting the speaker walking "fits more with self-care than selfin a different voice for herself.,' to slow down so he can take it all in. neglect." By the end of a later session, With time, rhis almost unbearably At the same time, there is a startling while she doesn't exacrly sem as "bright, fragile woman has acquired a smali puppy tenacityabout the process, a kind of polite opn, ch@X communicarive, chatqf' as anJ tafts abour how sweerly the Oog fiCts but unshakable insistencc on participaWhite suggests to her, she is clearly much her chin in the morning-ar fust, she had tion, a refusal to let peoPle_off the- hook, thought she was so hatiful the dog would lnore engaged. She looks at him out of even after hours and days of nonitre comer of her eye and smiles shyly, perii in her care. Once rerrified into response-long silenccs, e mbarrassed and even produces some whole, unequiv- parallsis by the possibility of personal reshrugs, parrot-like reiterations of "l don't ocal answers (short ones) to his ques- jection, somc months later she has organknow'" vhite wil.l not allow the people tions, obviously delighring her parents. ized an outing for herself, her husban<J who consult him to slip away into the Their daughter, who had rirely bien able and her in-laws. Shc has reestablished a sad night of their misery. Hc simply will to identi$ any of her own likes, dislikes, relationship with her mother and, mirnot give up' desires, interests, purposes, who had abite dictu, shc ha^sgone, by herself on

Nrrwonxnn

r NOvIMaER/DECEMBER 1994

"T,,,isalwaysa
protest-always," history ofstruggle and White. says
the train to a shopping mall, r.ralked into an almost unimaginably bleak and brutal described by an Eriksonian therapist as a coffee shop, ordered a cappuccino and childhood, he finds the saving rernnant breaking the "trance" imposed on people drunk the whole thing. When White asks of another, untold story. "In her darkest by the powerful forces of history and wtnt this event tells her about her life and hours," he says,"at a time wtren she was culture, making visible the invisible her identity, this woman, who has belierrcd being sexually abused by several people, pattern of ordinary humiliations and she was worthy only of death, says in a she used to run away into the woods to terTors, routine ryrannies and acts of small, frail, but unwavering voice, "I would the sametree whose trunk she could just violence that compris much of "civillike to do something for my own self." stretch her arms around-she said she ized" life. In Mar/s life, these ordinary events are could hear the tree speak to her. Shehad John, for example, a therapist in miracles, ofwhich nobodywtro views the found a living thing ttnr didn't abuseher, training, came to see White because, says tape can have the least doubt. Still a simply frntastic achievement." Such White, "he was a man who never cried"mysterious, howeirer, is stat tJflhite has heartbreaking moments of spiritual ralor he had never been able to express his done that has made the di-fference. By are hints, in White's credo, of Maqy's emotions-and he felt isolated and cut now, the theories and methods that have subtle, half-forgotten, almost uffecogoff from his osn family. As a child, John White and David Epston, fus New nized dissent from the dominant story of had been taught, both at home and at his _gven Zealand colleague, an inrernational abuse and self-hatred, official psychiatricAustralian grammar school, that any show following are well-known, and they labeling and social ostracism. Whe of gentleness or "softness" was unmanly clearly figure in Mary's case. Through people like Mary remember and spe and would be met with harsh punishment "extemdizing conversations," for examabout these tiny saving fragments o and brutal public humiliarion. Whire asks ple, White has helped Mary think about formerly lost experience, saysWhite, th John a series of questions that are at once her anorexia nervosa and the attendant dso relive and perform them as well politicd and personal, eliciting informa"self-hate" as hostile, outside forces in her transforming meaningless autobiographi tion about the man's "private" psychologlife, not at all intrinsic to her narure and cal aberrations into the palpable materi ical suffering and linking it to the "public" personality-"Vhen you were drinking ofnew stories, new lives. cultural practices, rigidly sexist and the cappuccino," he asks her, "did you aggressively macho, that dominated his or Anorexia and Self-hate have rhe upper EVERY KNOWN CULTURE, PEOPLE youth. "How were you recruited into rN hand?" "I had the upper hand," she I give meaning to their individual stories these thoughts and habits [of feeling answers softly, but with something that (what happened to me as a child that inadequate, not su-frcienrly masculine, sounds very like pride. When anorexia and a.ffects me now, how I met my husband, etc.l? What was the training ground for self-hate are no longer inherent to her why I got sick and why I got well) by these feelings? Do you ttrink the riruals very being, she can fight them withour organizing them according ro a time-line of humiliation [public caning by school nghting herself; she does not have to die with a beginning, middle and (perhaps authorities, ridicule by teachers and in the act ofresistance. hlpothesized) end. In this way, we create students for not being good at sporrs or White and Epston also look for eviour personal history. White's therapeutic sufrciently hard and toughJ alienated you dence of what they call the "unique method may depend more on exploring from you own life? Were they disqualitcomes" in people's lives and the people's history than any other current fications of you? Did these pracrices help approach, barring psychoanalysis-but or hinder you in recognizing a di-fferent _ ounterplots" associated with themseemingly ephemeral, often forgotten with a profound diference. rJ7hereaspracwayof being a male?" experiences that contradict the dominant titioners of the latter delve into personal Having clarified the social context of story of abnormaliry, deficiency and history like surgeons looking for hidden John's alienation fiom himself in the failure. "There is always a hisrory of rumors. a lump of pathology in the far_ "dominant men's culrure," White helps struggle and protest-always," saysWhite. distant past, White seeks out the healthy I him acknowledge and appreciate his He finds the tiny, hidden spark of tissue, the protective antibodies, wfrich I ability to resist it and "reclaim" rhe orher resistance within the heart of a person he always finds. For White, people's I stories of his life, the other selves and trapped in a socially sanctioned psychipresent lives cannot be reduced to their I ways of being-gentle, kind, loving-that atric diagnosis-"anorexia nervosa," diagnoses, which are much too tight, too I he had managed to keep alive, rhough "schizophrenia," "manic-depression," c o n f i n i n g t o c o n t a i n t h e c a p a c i o u s I hidden, in spite of his tormentors. Whire "conduct disorder"-that tends to conpossibilities revealed in their histories. J askswhat it would have been like forJohn, zume all other claims to idenriry. Whire And, unlike other therapists who may as a young boy, to have himself as a father. liberates little pockets of noncoope ration, take history into account, but only as That little boy would have loved ir, John moments of personal courage and autoindividual case histories, White both replies. It p,ould have meanr having a nomy, self-respect and emotional virality brings history with a capital 'H' into the father who talked with him. who showed beneath the iron grid of livcd miscry and lives of the people he sees and, in turn, him love, gentlencss, kindness; it would assigned pathology. brings tfem into the broad current of have meant bcing accepted for himself; Even in Mary's history, frrr in.stancc,in historical time ancl place. He might be it would havc mclnt having more fun. "I
'T.IWORI(ER r NOItMBER/I)ECEMtlt,tt

19,)i

they go with much grumbLing, in ill try to do that with my kids, now," he says. and "extemal" social messages,but the grace-and it is hard not to envision a Then one of those White epiphanies difficulty most people have seeing the swarm of evil, wrathful little trolls occurs. While John is still in a kind of connection. "Although it seems relatively retreating before a determined woman reverie about the little boy he had been easyfor us to enteftain the idea that much wielding a particularty effective magic and the father he had needed, thinking of what we think and believe, and much talisman. Together, Jane and White have aloud about his own sons and the father of what we do, is informed by culture," transformed a hopeless story with a he tries to be-affectionate, emotionally he said in a recent interview, "for some foreordained ending into a dramatic epic, open, warrn, playful-White asks him reason it seems rather more difficult for what is happening to him right then, in in which Jane is not a victim, a defeated us to entertain the idea that psychotic phenomena are similarly informed; that the session. A look of wonder comes over mental patient, a crazy lady, but a hero regardless of etiology, the content, form engaged in a valiant struggle against a John's face, and he says, "It's okay . . . It's okay to be that way. It's alright," and for and expression of psychotic phenomena, formidable enemy. the first time in his adult life, he begins such as auditory hallucinations, are White has been roundly criticized by to cry. 'Yeah. Wow. Whew," he says over the psychiatric profession for reinforcing shaped by culrure." and over, blowing his nose. 'Yeah, thanks. In his own terms, White "deconhallucinationsand failing to help people That's really strong, that's really powerfi.rl. "own" and "integrate" the voices-to structs" the dominant authoriry by taking Yeah, I did resist it somehow. This is rare. people's voices very seriously-acceptrecognizethat they arepart of themselves, Yeah." And it is rare, to see fwo traiecing their validiry as hostile forces "out and take responsibility for having, in tories meet-the with the person abstract knowledge there"-collaborating effect, invented them. White reiects such about the power of cultural conditioning, to unmask them as the lying scoundrels criticism because he rejects the foundaand the gut realization of what that tion on wNch it is based-that they are and develop strategies that v/ill every conditioning has meant in one's own life. human being comes outfitted with a undermine their power. "What is it that Even more striking is White's ability to the voices are trving to convince you of2" single, unitary, core-personality, the cut through the maze of social opinion, he asks. "What are they trying to talk center and source of all human meaning. psychiatric ideology and individual indocyou into? Are these voices for you having Those wfio admit to hearing ryrannical trination that reinforces the very symp- your own opinion, knowing what you voices coming from "somewhere else" toms of people labeled "cfuonic" mental want, or are they against you having your break all the rules of self-containment, self patients. Often, these people, paniculady own opinion? Does the confusion caused possession, self-definition, self-control, diagnosed schizophrenics, have what by the voices contribute to their goals self-determination that are the earmarks sociologist Erving Goftnan referred to as for your life, or yours?" of "healthy personality development" in "spoiled identitv," and, says White, our cuhure. This view, White contends, Jane, for example, steadily regressing "perceive themselves to have failed rather is far less an obiective description of at home with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, spectacularly in their attempts to be heavily medicated, unable to leave her human nature than a culturally deterpersons," that is, in their attempts to fOrce parents' house for years, has recently mined prescription for the way people themselves to behave, feel and think along moved into her own home, after working sbould be, not to mention an irnplicit stereor)?ed lines considered "normal" with White. She says that the slx hostile damnation of people who don't measure and "healthy'' in the dominant culture. voices that used to harass her constantly up. "This work is not about people The cost is often excruciatingly high for have been reduced to one, which seems discovering their'true' nature, their'real' people already particularly vulnerable, for voice," says White, "but about opening to be on the defensive. "They used to biological and/ or psychological reasons, dominate my life totally," she remembers, up possibilities for people to become to emotional stfess. "told me I had to stay in bed all the time, otber than who they are." According to White, the hallucinatory that I was queer, that nobody liked me, For rJ7trite, the personal is, and must voices heard by people diagnosed as that I didn't deserve to have any combe, deeplyembedded in thepoliticd. The schizopfuenic, telling them they are sich pany." As he does ordinarily with people stories of the people he sees-John, Mary, helpless, crazy, deranged outcasts, bear who have experienced psychotic epi- Jane-are of personal struggle and transan uncanny resemblance to common sodes and su.ffer hallucinations, White cendence, no doubt, but in White's eyes negative cultural stereofypes. Men's equipped Jane with transcripts of their they are also unmistakably tales of power voices, for example, tell them they are sessions together, along with various politics, the "politics of local relationwimps and weaklings, while women's o t h e r " d o c u m e n t s o f i d e n t i t y " ( i . e . ship," as well as the larger social politics voices attack their sexualiry-calling written "charters" celebrating the perofgender, class, professional and instituthem sluts and whores. In both casesthey son's strengths, capacities and current tional dominance. Maqt's anorexia is both harp relentlessly on the hearer's stupidity, progress and intended to be shared with the result and the expression of the woftruessness, social unacceptability and family and friends), which protect her damage done to her by the misuse of failure to me:Lsureup to social norms and from her hostile auditory ensemble. power-by her fumily, by a society that rules. All-knowing and opinionated, the Whenever one of the voices tfueatens to countenances male domination ofwomen disembodieci, magisterial voices speak in have a "tantrum" or otherwise attack her, and children, and also by the mental tones of grear authorirv-the voices of she reads a transcript and "l get a picture health establishment that defines her life. c o r r e c t o p i n i o n a n d u n i m p e a c h a b l e 6f what I realty am tike . . . a much better reducing hcr to a kind of psychiatric object-a "case" of anorexia. iudgment ( onc imaginesa malevolent Dan picture than the voices [give me ] . . . and Rather or Peter Jcnnings)-that the I'm not so scared. [l can seel that I'm Whitc's thinking is legions away from hearer wotrld havc hcard repeatedly in a nice person, attractive,good personality, the clinical zeitgebt suggested by the the "rcal" world. independent . . . Iltl showsthrough."'[he standard family therapy metaphors of rVhat pcrplexcs Whitc isn't the odd action of reading thc transcript makes the cybernctics or srystems theory suggests oarallelism berwecn thc "intcrnal" voices voices iust "go away," says Jane, though Gene (lombs, codirector of the Evanston
r No!,EMBER,/DECEMBER I99.I

NE-I.VORIGR

Micbael Wltite's effect on tbe people be works witb transcmds any tber@ tbeory. "Wben be lktens, be fouses bis entire being on you," describes one student. "He tnkes you feel as if 1,ou and your story are of tbe utntost itt{)ortance to bim, tbat be's keepittg track of you and cares about t'ou maybe eL,ertmorc tban you care " abOut';'1t1115211

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'l'herapy (-cnter Family in Evanston. lllinois. 'You have to think morc in anthropological, sociological metaphors; you need to have pictures and idea-sin your mind about how social and moral v'alues,political and intellecfual practices are transmitted in a culture, and how they influence the way people are. When Michael talks about stories, he's not iust talking about individual anecdotes, but the story of Westem civilization and how it has already 'storied' our lives for us before we were born."

FamilyJournal lastJanuary. "In so many rvays, words are the wodd." Yes, but so are the people who urrer them. And it is hard to avoid the sense that the White percorut is a verypowerful element in the therapeutic equation. He dislikes the terms "client" and "intervention," wfuch sufest to him the sort of expert domination of people in rherapy rhat reproduccs the social control and disqualifi, cation they already experience outside. And yet, in spite of a distinctly unshow)' clinical manner in sessions, he is clearly the director of the ongoing drama. Sometimes, the stream of formulaic questions intended to elicit externalization and re-storying can sem relentless, almost conveying the impression of a lrencvolent salesman hammering away al a hesitating customef: "Come on, you kno*'1,ou are better than you think you are, more than this paltry story you've becn given, so w*ren a-reyou going to get rvith the program, take the deal, sign the papers, buy the product?" It's as if he is trying to convince them not only to buy themselves but to consider the sale as good a deal as he does. He clearly believes in the people who consult him more than nrost others do-more, probabty, than nrany of the therapiss observing-and certainly more than theybeliore in themselves. In one live interyiew with the family of an l8-year-old boy involuntarily hospitalized by the legal s:ystem for setting fircs, he spends a maior part of the session firllowing a line of quesrions apparently ainred at building a gre ter sense of pcrsonal agenc.y in both rhe boy and his I 2,year-oldsister (hersclf hospitalized for suicidc attempts), while helping thc rwo of tlrcrn get along better. It is not an easy job cvcn getting the siblings, both firllow,ing their own ccccntric and antagonistic orbits, to respond to a line of cluestrons abOut their accOmplishments, nruch lcs.s focus on what they might have in corrmon. Nonetheless, tJ(/hite pries

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from each (buttrcssed by appeals to the new meanings. If thcrapv w.ith White is parents) admissions of srnall, but legita proc'ess of coauthoring new stories, imate "new developments" related to many of the people he sees could be said their increasing maturity: Mike now takes to suffer from paralyzing writer's blocka shower "at fus own suggestion," and they sometimes need to be nudged out hclps his mother with kitchen chores; of their immobility, persuaded ro fit those Debbie keeps her room neater and can first awkward words to experience, handle more school classes. embarking on the reflective reverie that In a segment that looks like the begins with "Once upon a rime . . ." equiwalent of pulling seriously impacted The therapist wtro wishes to be cowisdom teeth, White manages to get from author, or creative agent and impresario, brother and sister, q'llable by syllable, cannot hide behind passive silence or grudging concessions that each notices pretend neutrality. "There is no way of the changes in the other, and approves asking neutral question.s," says White, of them, sort of. As usual, White is only "and you can't just drop a question when asking questions-not, presumably, they don't answer right away' and go on "imposing expert knowledge" on the to something else. I'm verl'much the copeople he is interviewing. But, he is author at first, but graduallv. the person becomes far more activc abour aniculatSenerating the lion's share oftalk, energy and conviction, and it is hard not to see ing what these new developnrcnts mean at least the shadow of an unflagging in their lives. Thel' becomc tascinated preacher comering the town sinner and with neglected elements of thcir own extracting from him an admission that, stories, and as they step intc; that fasciyes, he probably does feel an attack of nation, my role diminishcs. i :r^skfewer salr"ation coming on. questions, while they conrc up w'ith ideas, In the question-and-answer period that notions, solutions I ncvcr qould have tbllowed this live interview, one observer imagined, unravel mlsteries in a way I said he had found rr)9hite"directive" and never could do." As the "altemative plot" ''suggestive" in his questions and noticed gets rooted in people's own nrt'mory and that he had "blocked" Mike fiom saying imagination, says White, the srory "runs things and "interrupted" him on several away ftom me, it takes <xcr. ir has no occasions. Was this an important pan of end . . . and I can't knos in ldrance the narative method as White practiced whether the story will bc bcncficial or ir? white answered that what looked like not. Only the people q'ith *.hom I am direction, suggestion and internrption working can determine ttris. antl I keep svas, in fact, a form of differential encouraging them to do so." attention. He was not "blocking" some Although White claims that westem nraterial as much as he was "attending ideals of individualism, sclf-dcterminato" other material-the "sparkling facts" tion, personal authenticitl' have become and "unique outcomes" that had been tpannical measures of human worth in totally ignored or quashed in the family's our society, he seems panicularly good dominant story of sickness and failure. As at producing these old-fashioned, perpowerfi.rl coauthors and coconstructors fectly unexceptional therapeutic outof the realities that people forge in the comes. In ftct, the people he sees seem process of therapy, White suggested, to believe that his practice of nurturing clinicians have a rigorous responsibility a freer, more robust feeling of personal for what they choose to select from the agency and individual identin is what multitudinous possibilities given them in distinguishes his therapy from the mulscrsion, and for whether the stories they titude of other treatments thel' have had. hclp create are newer, more helpful, more Diane, for example, hospitalized scveral healing or just regurgitated chapters from times for anorexia nervosa, c()mpares the an old chronicle of despair: "Old domrepressive, distrustful hospital cnvironinant, problem-saturated stories are not ment with her expericncc of being good for you-there's not ()ne old story treated by White. In the forntcr, wtrere that's good for you, despair i.s not good food intake was rigidly watchcd, toilets firr .vou." were locked so that food coLrldn't be []ut old stories sometimcs dic hudflushed away, rooms werc scarchcd if ptople havc been imprisoned in thcm too inmates clidn'tgain weight anrl rhcrapists long. Coming into the light of a new srory tried to extract from her arlnrissionsthat carr bc blinding at first. It isn't likely, she must have been sexuallr' :rbuscd as suggests White, that peoplc will al*,ay; a child, she felt degradcil brain'w:r-shed bc able to leap immediatcly to a new and rebellious-"Thc way thcv trcated possibility, to instantly invest old, half- you made you feel as if thcv hecl all the f<trgotte n, devalued cxpe ricnct:s with ansqr'ersand you werc n()tl)ing " White,

46

NETvoRKER

r N()vr:yrJI:R./DUCEMIIER 199.1

you voices are trying toconvince White asks. 0f?"

on the other hand, "helps me along the ward with White's case notes based on some interesting new techniques. His way, but I'm the one wfio chooses what his sessions with her. "lVhen she read the work, perhaps like that of any gifted I want to eat; I'm the one who's got hospital chart, she said she felt like a therapist, any inspirational spiritual control. In the hospital I was forced to chronic, medicated schizophrenic, like leader, any talented artist, depends upon eat, and [wtren I gained weight] I wanted someone stuck, with no hope, not something like what l8th-cenrury English it off as quickly as possible, *fiereas with worthwhile in the eyes of other people," errangelist John lVesley called "the heart him, I did it m'se[ when l was ready, says Combs. "When she read what strangely warmed." In White's case, there and it will stay on." If this isn't selfMichael had documented, she saw clear is no question that he is literally'\rarrned" determination, wtnt is? White words it movdment in her life. She felt like a by the people he sees, that there is a di-fferently, arguing that such responses valuable person who lived a meaningful degree of devotion and loydty to the "are the outcome of people stepping into tife that she was making even better. She people who consult him, a vital faith in wals of being and thinking that bring new said she felt respected." What really them and their possibilities, and he insists options and possibilities for action." Still, impressed Combs, however, was the upon their knowing it. When Mary tells rose by any other nalne . . . difference on her face, in her voice and him how she accomplished the triumph - Even people considered to be chronin her bearing when she talked about of her solo trip to the coffee shop-she ically psychiatrically ill and particularly at the hospital chart on the one hand, and "took Michael and the team with her" in the mercy of the Western cult of indiWhite's notes. on the other. "When she her mind, she says,when she boarded the vidual selftood, according to Whire, seem talked about the former. she looked like train for the mall-fus own emotional to emerge from his therapy with a much a chronic mental patient; when she response is as vivid as her narrative. "\X/hat expanded sense of . . . individual self- talked about Michael's story, she looked do you think this does to my life, ro know hood! They also have a gre ter sense of like a person." you have invited me and the team into community, White points out, because This trarufiguration seems at botrom a your life this way, and to hear about you they have begun to eogage family mystery, which challenges notions of rhe going to the coffee shop-how do you members, friends and others in the "unitary self'-cenainly, if that self is think I'm feeling right now?" "Happy?" " r e n e g o t i a t i o n " o f t h e i r l i f e - s t o r i e s predetermined by culture and politics, Maryasks taintly, after a pause. "More than making them witnesses, so to speak, to and if it is a static, hard-wired entiry of happy," says White. 'JoltuI." their changed realities. Still, \rXrhiteseems predictable operations and predilections. Probabll' all rherapists wonh the title to have an inside grasp of the profound Is this newly transfigured "self' more feel privileged to be doing the work they demoralization felt bypeople who are not "real," more "true" than the old one? Will are doing; many als<l feel gratitude, only denied agency for rheir own lives, this new self be more successful than the occasionally even awe , at the willingness but told constantlythat theyare uns'onhy old? "l don't know what these stories are of vulnerable and dcfcnsive people to of having it-so they become nonpersons going to bring with them," says White. trust their lives and sorrows to virtual to themselves. "I used to try to be "I can't know whether they will be strangers. Few, however, can have such everyone's [else's] person," says James, beneficial or not-all I can do is keep a radical sense of solidariry with the wtro holds a handful of diagnoses, includon asking the person wtrat the effects of people who seek their help, can consider ; schizophrenia, schizo-a.ffective disthe story are, asking him or her to judge the therapeutic relationship with them u-rer and manic-depression, and has it. I can't assume anything-there are so profoundly sustaining and transformasu.ffered, as he pus it, from the judgmenalways lots of surprises." tive of their own lives as does White. with tal. unrelenting "expectations" of others In "The Power and Culture of Therapy." every person he sees, regardless ofhow (including his own tyrannical voices) to White quotes social philosopher Michel apparently unreachable and disturbed, get a job, to exercise, to give up smoking, Foucault's words, which probably come how ground down by years in the to act "nofinal," to behave, to be the close to White's own views on the issue psychiatric mill. "lnevitably, we change person others "expected" him to be . With of selftrood: "'The main interest in life each other's lives, often in ways that are White's help, he sa1s, he could learn to and work is to become someone else that hard to speak of," White said in a recent say "no . . . Michael hands it over to me you were not in the beginning. tf you interview. "These interactions are life to decide what I want. He empowers me, knew when you began a book wtrat you changing for me . . . In saying this, I am he doesn't take over the reins for the would say at the end, do you think that not talking of anything ingratiating, . . . management of my case. He's somehow you would have the courage to write ir? And I am definitely not proposing very clever in allowing me the freedom What is true for writing and for a lore something that has some strategic aim, to be the person I need to be, while also relationship is true also for [ife."' like a one-down position for therapists, managing myself so I don't go overboard." which I believe to be ingenuine, patronGene Combs describes a tape in which izing and disquali$ing. " 'Ihis a worran diagnosed as schizophrenic attitude tends ro raise skepticism, compares thc hospiral chart thar had as the prduct of an interesting thcoretpartly because it su14;ests an almost accompanicd hcr for years on a mcntal ical worldview that makes its way into supcrhuman single rnindednessand

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integriry. Doesn't hc cvcr fake it? No. professional biographical tales. according to colleagucs rvho have worked In a sense, White has remained a gardener in the work he does now; doing closely with him. Ilis rision of the people he helps, of the work hc does, is appar- therapy, like planting and tending a garden, ently uncorrupted b,v thc normal doubts, is a matter of methodical attention, small exaspration, we;rriness, disappointment steps and hard labor-digging, spading, and ordinary ill-tempcr about clients pruning, watering, muJching. tJood gardenvented by even the most dedicated ers are both practical and visionary. They therapists from time t() time. It is, for don't expect to nlfn the desen into a example, a point of deepest honor and Garden of Eden, at least not ovemight, but professional integriry qrth him not to they are optimistic enough to believe that speak differently in private, entre nous with time and effort, and the blessings of with other therapists, about the people rain and zun and decent soil, they can he sees than he will in front of them. This collahrate with nanrre to transform even is part of the famous Wtrite "congruence" quite desolate ryots into little oases. that his colleagues describe, which is not Good gardeners are forced to be only a matter of political correctnessmodest. They can provokc and prompt undermining professional hierarchies, and support nature in certain directions, e q u a l i z i n g t h e r e l a t i o n s h i p b et w e e n but they can't control it-they can't make therapist and client-but a matter of anything happen. An acceptance of their utmost imponance to the nroralin' of the own limitations is perhaps pan of the en(ire therapeutic enterprisc ethic of gardeners, along *ith a renun"There is nothing about hinr that rurns ciation of grandiosiry and a respect for on and then rurns off," .sa-y-s David Moltz, the self-created, self-sustaining rhythms of medical director at Shorelinc Ciorlmuniry living things. In a sense. \Mrite's ethic of Mental Health Senices in Bmnswick, therapy is not dissinrilar. It is an ethic that Maine. Moltz recently attended a th-ree- eschews the grand therapeutic gesture day workshop fearuring Wtrite. rvho did implicit in the myths of thc one-session a live consultation Fith a familv in which cure, the personalir,v makeover, the the father, thought Moltz. rras "comeradication of mental "disease" through pletely impossible." But therc \\'as never biochemical wizardry. [.ike a gardener a moment, Moltz said, \\ten Vhite indiwho knows that even the most elaborate cated any remote difference bctq'een his tandscape must be tended step-by-step, apparent feelings about thc familv-hoq' plarrt-by-plant, square foot-by-square foot, ' he appeared to them-and his "real feel- White carefully nurnrres the small triings; there was no mome nt aftenvard, says umphs in the [ves of the people he sees, Moltz, q'hen he let dosn his gu:rrd and honors the transient moments of competsaid something like, "Oh, mv God-n'ere ency, initiative, resoluteness. they something else!" Sals Moltz. "Ile has These marginal stories are usually no guard to let down; there are no hidden neglected in the grand schemes ofpsychocomers or agendas . . . no second order pathology as accidental, insignificant of business, no waiting for rhe family to epiphenomena that are too small to count, leane before you say your real feelings." but they are the seeds and the soil of Vhat you see is what you get. human transformation. "People neglect A particulady revealing ston' about the landscapes of thek own lives-they White and his work is one he te lls himseif think they are uninteresting and dull," says As a young man, before formalh, taking White, "but I'm very curious about tlem, up the profession of social *'orker, he and I always find it interesting to hear worked as a gardener for u'hat *'a^sthen people talk about themselves in qrays politically incorrectly called an 'old folks they've never done before. I often find home." Paling no attenti()n to official myself up against the limitations of my instructions from the insrirr.rtion's knowledge and vision, when I don't feel admin, istrator, he collaborated w'ith thc elderlv equal to the task but the questions I'm inhabitants to create thc g:udcns they' faced with become the impetus for wanted in front of thcir units. "fhev further explorations that exte nd the limits would come out and tell mc whe re the1, of what I know. I don't har.e any grand wanted to plant shrubs. and ho'"r' thcv gccount of the work I do-l don't think " It w,a-s it is so fantastic, it's not hcroic-it just wanted things pruned," hc re call.s. great bacause I didn't knor.. much lbour addres.ses a few things. We d()n't need gardening and they were tcaching me." to teach people anlthing ncw, just help Eventually, White wa^s firccl firr w her rnight them reach stu-ffthat's alrcady there." I be called "client-centeredgardcning,"but he remembers the expericncc :rs at lcast Mary Sykes Wylie, Pb,D., Ls setior editor of -l}te Ls important as other morc pcrsonal or Family Therapy Ne tworkcr.

NO THINKER FIAS BEEN DERFL{PS I more imporranr to shaping Michael White's worldyiew than the late Michel Foucault, self-proclaimed "historian of rystems of thought." A kind of deconstructionist hero to a generation of left-leaning intellectuals in America and Europe, Foucault's brilliant, unorthodox and controversial books Madncss and Ciuilization; Tbe Birtb of tue Ainic; Discipline and htnisb: Tbe Birtb of tbe Prison; Tbe Hktory of Sexuality, among otherstrace the relationship between power and expert knowledge (science, medicine, psychology, penology, education, law) in the modem era- How, Foucault asks, in effect, did the scientific and rational categories of "normality'' and "abnormaliqy''come to dominate the measurement of human worth? One of Foucault's examples, which shows up repeatedly in White's own worlg is the extraordinarily diverse tests of "normaliqt'' to which modern men and women are subjected by phalan-xes of officially designated judges. 'lVe are in the society of the teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the'social worker'iudge," writes Foucault, in DkcipHne and. htnisb. "It is on them that the universal reign of the normative is based; and each individual, wherever he may find himself, subjects to it [the nonnative] his body, his gestures, his behavior, his aptitudes, his achievements." But even more striking is the degree to which people internelize the demands and specifications ofthese varying norrns,

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