Re-membering practice

[Elyakeem Kinstlinger]

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Re-membering practice

Narrative therapy identifies that identities are social achievements and the practice of 

re-membering draws closer those who support a person's preferred story about themselves and dis-engages those that do not support the person

Michael White (1997) then introduced the term ‘re-membering’ into narrative therapy by developing the idea that people’s identities are shaped by what can be referred to as a ‘club of life’. This ‘club of life’ metaphor introduced the idea that for all of us, there are members to our club of life who have had particular parts to play in how we have come to experience ourselves. These members of our ‘club of life’ have often had different ranks or status within the ‘club’. For instance, we pay more attention or give more credibility to what one person thinks about us than another. The person or persons whose views matter most to us, who influence our identities the most significantly, can be seen to have highly regarded and respected membership status within our ‘club of life’. Those to whom we don’t give so much credibility can be seen to have low or less significant membership status.

Thinking about one’s life as a ‘club with members’ offers new possibilities for therapeutic conversations. Re-membering practices provide a context for people to revise or re-organize the ‘membership’ of their ‘club of life’. The hyphen is all-important in thinking about the distinctions between re-membering and remembering, as it draws our attention to this notion of membership rather than to a simple recalling of history. 

Our intention in narrative work is to contribute to the thickening of preferred stories of identity, with the understanding that when a person has a chance to stand in this preferred story or territory, they will more easily be able to see what action they wish to take in their lives. Re-membering has the person standing with significant others in this preferred territory of their identity, and these connections provide a great deal of support for the preferred actions they may wish to take. 

This is a view of life that sees our identities as being made up of ‘many voices’ (multi-voiced) and is quite different from other highly individualised accounts of identity that focus only on a single-voiced self. It is also distinct from contemporary structuralist understandings of identity that construct a ‘self’ at the centre of one’s being, comprised of various properties and essences of the person’s nature. The poststructuralist perspective that underpins re-membering conversations does not assume an individual ‘self’ but rather an interconnected web of relationships. As Gergen has described: Our relationships create our selves, rather than our selves create relationships

‘What is it that Aunty Mary contributed to your life?

 What did she do that made a difference to your life?’

 

 ‘How did these actions of Aunty Mary’s make a difference in how you understood yourself and your life? 

How did they make you feel and think about yourself?

‘Why do you think Aunty Mary showed this interest in you? 

What was it that you did that contributed to her life?’

‘What do you think your relationship with Aunty Mary meant to her? 

What difference do you think you may have made to how she thought about herself and her life?’ 

or as you create the preferred story of identity we can ask

‘Who in your past would be least surprised to hear you speaking in this way about what is important to you?’ 

 

‘What is it that they know about you, or that they may have witnessed you doing, that would have told them that this value/belief/commitment was important to you?’ 

• ‘What would it have meant to them to notice it?’ 

• ‘What might it have contributed to their life?’ 

In this way, re-membering questions are also about linking people’s lives together around particular themes. 

One of the great things about re-membering conversations is that although they usually identify particular figures of a person’s history, it is not necessary that these actually  

For example, people reading a book by a particular author might believe that this author would understand and appreciate them. That author may then become the focus of a very meaningful re-membering conversation. We are interested in tracing the life of the person’s commitments, values, and purposes through history, and what we find is that significant contributors to the lives and livelihoods of these commitments, values, and purposes may be mythical, imaginary, or fictional characters, figures from history, animals, even cuddly toys.

People’s abilities, commitments, values, and purposes are not created in a vacuum – they have been shaped by the person’s history and relationships with others and with the world. It is simply a matter of us finding ways to unearth these connections and histories.