| Intervention Partnering In Diversity and The Practice of Mental Health Service Provision
Narrative Therapy and Social Change
An inequitable social system is inevitably accompanied by social polarization. The pressures of associated economic and social disparities profoundly affect cultural diversity, as cultures define themselves by either privilege or deprivation. Conditions affecting the mental health of society’s members follow these respective confining definitions.
Privilege is associated with power; deprivation is associated with powerlessness. Obviously, the relation between the community, family, or individual and the dynamic of power is a determinant conditioning factor in mental-health. An assumption of power based on status easily translates to “power over” and not “power to”. Powerlessness is often associated with victimization. Unreflective acceptance of socially or politically biased stories perpetuates the assumptions on which they are based.
The stories we tell about ourselves about ourselves can be restraining or liberating. 1 How can an alternate story challenge communities to stretch beyond the limits of what they unquestioningly accept, so as to let emerge a new and liberating consciousness?
Stories had communal efficacy in tribal societies. Tribal cultures were unified by (and found identity in) the telling of and listening to stories. (Perhaps the limits of individualization are becoming more and more embarrassingly obvious to some, who may start to think of a return to a revised sort of tribalism as a viable social option for today.)
Communal story telling has potential to intimately affect families, thereby conditioning their mental health. In our modern society, there are two main forums for the kind of communal story telling in which families find meaning: school and church. (The Internet is addressing the need for community for many: it remains to be seen whether it can have efficacy beyond association and information sharing.) Of the two, the stronger potential of reaching families in a liberating way resides with the church, where there is greater opportunity for countercultural expression. Some pastors, however, would find partnership difficult and most would be uncomfortable not only in the role of storyteller but also in exploring unknown and (socially and politically) forbidden regions.
Albert Nolan, in his book “Jesus Before Christianity” makes mention of partnership in diversity between Jesus and the crowds who came to love him. The remarkable thing about Jesus was that, although he came from the middle class and had no appreciable disadvantages himself, he mixed socially with the lowest of the low and came to identify himself with them. He became an outcast by choice.2 Not only is there disparity of cultures between the “haves” and the “have-nots” but also there is diversity in the separate cultures of priest, therapist, and families, calling for partnership skills to address urgent current and future realities.
Nolan continues to describe the power of an alternative way of understanding in the healing of the mental illness. In Jesus’ time, the “mental illness” of the poor and outcast – which included a whole class of marginalized in Jewish society – is described as a response to their situation of exclusion and oppression.3. Jesus was able to affect healing not by any power he brought to the suffering person, but by an infectious faith that evoked faith and hope in the recipient and the community. In other words, he told an alternate story of a loving and compassionate God whose embrace especially extended to the poor and oppressed. A prophet and a man of God now accept a people who had previously accepted their fate as permanently outcast from respectable society and, in their understanding, thereby from God’s love.
Minus, of course, the messianic and godly associations, not only pastors but also therapists who truly serve uniquely are positioned to help individuals or families arrive at new stories of hope and uncover heretofore hidden strength, potential and resources.
1 Madsen, Williiam C., Collaborative Therapy with Multi-Stressed Families: From Old Problems to New Futures
2 Nolan, Albert, Jesus Before Christianity, Orbis Books, 1976, 1992, p34.
3 Ibid. 38 and 39
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