Part two interview with legendary narrative therapist Jeff Zimmerman on why he believed it was important for narrative therapy to write his new book: Neuro-Narrative Therapy – New Possibilities for Emotion-Filled Conversations.Jeff Zimmerman
Jeff Zimmerman is considered at the top of the list of veteran narrative therapist/teachers in North America. He lives in the Mission district of San Francisco, California where can see upwards of 150 live music shows each year. Jeff began his apprenticeship with Michael White in 1988 and became Michael’s closest friend in North America. Jeff…
Hi,
I find this whole issue utterly fascinating. One thing that does surprise me though, is that even without reference to neuro-science and etc, it seems really quite odd that Narrative therapy hasn’t paid more attention to the body,the affective dimension and maybe the ‘subconscious’ (i.e.not sure if the latter is the appropriate term, I’m trying to avoid saying ‘unconscious’ in favour of the part of us that holds the various norms, values, ‘rules’ and prejudices that we often fail to see, precisely because they serve as ‘the means by which we see’ or perceive). I find it odd ‘precisely because’ the whole notion of power, discourse, norms, ‘values’ are all affective content, they are all things we come to ’embody’, we practice them, they are taken on and expressed more in terms of a ‘knowhow, i.e. a ‘skilled knowing’, muscle memory, ‘second nature’ (i.e. something that is learnt but is then expressed quite spontaneously with a certain ‘immediacy’) or as wittgenstein calls it’ knowledge of the hands’. Foucault talks about docile bodies norms taken on more in terms of a bodily posture), bourdieu talks about about ‘habitus’ butler about ‘performance’ – and there are heaps of feminist articles (the classic ‘throwing like a girl) that talk about ‘the body as text’ etc. the very notion of internalisation seems to me more about taking on something into one’s very ‘posture’ and sense of being (head, heart and gut). In short, i’ts seems weird how ’embodiment’, habit, posture, feeling and especially ‘mood’ (Heidegger is very big on ‘mood’ inter terms of how different ‘worlds’ etc e.g. the ‘modern world’, or ‘the world of sport’s’, or the art world etc are framed by various ‘moods’) aren’t central to narrative therapy precisely because ‘all this’ is so central to post-structural, feminist, (or anything related to so called ‘theory’) ways of thinking, i.e. when talking about how we come to learn, express, ‘practice’ or resist power, norms, discourses, ‘worlds’, ‘forms of life’ – or whatever you want to call them. anyways….?