Comparable Sources

I'm the queen of finding and doing things and not posting it. (Just in case anyone was wondering.) As I was finishing up my repurposing I thought I'd post some of the things that influenced it.

I was looking for material that would be comparable to what I'm doing, which is proposing a different (ish) approach to therapy for abuse victims. A few people suggested that I look at the BYU counseling center. I started just by looking through the faculty and their specialties. Luckily, fairly early on I came to Michael D Adams. I noticed in his list of specialties/interests/theoretical leanings the phrase "narrative therapy." Could it be this perfect?

Yes. It could indeed. So I started researching narrative therapy. First, of course, I got a general Wikipedia overview. A relevant section:

Narrative therapy holds that our identities are shaped by the accounts of our lives found in our stories or narratives. A narrative therapist is interested in helping others fully describe their rich stories and trajectories, modes of living, and possibilities associated with them. At the same time, this therapist is interested in co-investigating a problem's many influences, including on the person himself and on their chief relationships.

By focusing on problems' effects on people's lives rather than on problems as inside or part of people, distance is created. This externalization or objectification of a problem makes it easier to investigate and evaluate the problem's influences.

Then, I started looking at articles through the library. I found two interesting ones:

Narrative therapy for women who have lived with violence

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0883941798800186

Partner abuse group intervention - Lessons from education and narrative therapy approaches

http://jiv.sagepub.com/content/17/7/783.full.pdf+html

I especially liked the first one about women who have lived with violence. Here's the abstract.

Narrative therapy is proposed as a possible treatment approach for women who have had multiple experiences of sexual violence and abuse within the context of their intimate relationships. Narrative therapists elicit discussion of unique outcomes, which are moments of strength, autonomy, and emotional vitality hidden in life stories that are otherwise saturated with suffering and oppression, to open up possibilities for constructing new life narratives. Examples of such unique outcomes revealed to the author by individuals participating in a research project concerned with women's responses to sexual violence by male intimates are given.

So, it's about looking at complex situations in complex ways, and finding insight in stories. Ta-duh! So is my proposal. The difference is that I want to use Shakespeare instead of just people's own life stories. It fulfills the same objectives, and is especially useful in the process of externalization described above. I'm feeling pretty good about it. I'll just make a few modifications to my presentation based on some more information, and bam! Done.