From the introduction:
While a narrative frame is relatively new in the fi elds of psychotherapy and
coaching, stories have been an essential constituent of cultures and communities since the dawn of time and are fundamental to the way we make sense and meaning. We use stories to structure our experience as ‘events’ in space and seek to join them together in a sensible causal timeline in keeping with the fact that our brains use space and time as primary coordinates (see
Schank, 1990 ). In many ways, our identity becomes a refl ection of the
embodied schemas we adopt over time and the stories we keep individually
and collectively telling ourselves that reinforce them. As such, they are at
the core of what it means to be human – as refl ected in our biology, ontology,
epistemology and cosmology – and a natural medium for use in coaching.
Narrative coaches are, therefore, keenly interested in what Foucault (1965 )
called people’s ‘theory of events’, particularly as they wrestle with existential
issues and choices in their life and work.