Narratives in embodied therapeutic practice: Getting the story straight

This chapter proposes an approach to embodied and narrative practices consistent with enactivist approaches to cognition. They conceive of intersubjective encounters in terms of non-representational embodied interactions, enhanced and supported by highly contextualised socio-cultural, narrative practices. They build on and integrate the enactivist approach developed in interaction theory (Gallagher, 2008; Gallagher and Hutto, 2008) and the narrative practice hypothesis (Hutto, 2008). As a result, they offer an alternative to individualist and intellectualist mainstream approaches to cognition and social cognition, reconceiving the status and importance of these practices in our capacities to relate to and understand others. They consider how this approach can contribute to therapeutic practices, looking at some existing practices, and suggesting some new avenues for diagnosis and treatment in a variety of psychotherapeutic contexts