Th is has consequences for the overall understanding of the subject in their work, and specifi cally, of its alignment with modern versus post- structural and postmodern positions. Th e adoption of a poststructur- alist understanding of language and postmodern view on discourse by White and Epston has also signifi cantly reconfi gured their understanding of subject which, as my previous analysis shows, is diff erent from the essentialist, given, stable, fi xed and autonomous subject of the modernist paradigm. For them selfhood is both narratively constructed and active:
its actual presence is enacted through life actions and decisions. However, for White and Epston the agency and self-directionality of the subject represent not a given resource, but rather a challenge for narrative ther- apy. From this perspective narrative therapy can be thought of as one of the techniques of selfhood, and the self-descriptive narratives that emerge in this process—as practices of identity.
Th e DST developed by Hermans diff ers substantially from McAdams’s model of identity as a life story, engaging with postmodern critique on a number of levels. Th e model of dialogical self defi ned as polyvocal, embodied, socially distributed and open takes a substantial step towards a conception of the self as inherently social, multiplistic, decentred, con- tingent and evolving.
On a metatheoretical level, Hermans’s DST attempts to reconcile traditional, modern and postmodern understandings of self. Hermans argues that these perspectives can be placed alongside each other, each being an instrument both of exploring and of producing identity and subjectivity, providing a repertoire of identity strategies. His position cor- responds to that of Elliott, who suggests:
[W]e should not see contemporary identity strategies as simple alterna- tives: the postmodern as something that eclipses the modern. Modern and postmodern forms of self are better seen as simultaneous ways of liv- ing in contemporary culture. Constructing a self today is about managing some blending of these diff erent ways of living; a kind of constant inter- mixing and dislocation, of modern and postmodern states of mind.
(Elliott 2005 : 150)
At the opposite end of the spectrum, White and Epston’s narrative therapy embraces the postmodern ‘repudiation of traditional ontologi- cal assumptions (bearing on the nature of “reality”) and epistemological frameworks (bearing on the nature of knowledge)’ (Neimeyer and Raskin 2000 : 5). However, White and Epston’s approach to the subject is not nihilistic. While it is critical of modern assumptions about a bounded, unitary, given subject, it strives to address the issue of agency.
Such a position corresponds to what Holstein and Gubrium describe as an ‘affi rmative’ reaction to the postmodern critique of the subject.
Th ese authors delineate two ways in which postmodernists respond to the question of the continued existence of the self in the context of the ‘crisis of confi dence’ ushered in by postmodernism. While sceptical or radical postmodernists dismantle self as the central agent of experience, affi rma- tive postmodernists strive to transform the crisis of confi dence by ‘recon- ceptualising the self as a form of working subjectivity’ (Holstein and
Gubrium 2000 : 57). From this perspective the self becomes a ‘ practical project of everyday life’ that is situated and plural, ‘locally articulated, locally recognized and locally accountable’ (Holstein and Gubrium 2000 : 70). Within this context, the self ‘no longer references an experiential constant entity, a central perspective or presence, but rather stands as a practical discursive accomplishment’ (Holstein and Gubrium 2000 : 70).
White and Epston’s narrative therapy puts in practice precisely such an affi rmative approach to the subject, informed by postmodern critique.
Th e issue of narrative organization is however closely bound up with the issue of the subject’s stability, both from a narrative point of view and the point of view of the specifi cally psychological realm of experience.
In Chap. 4 I move on to consideration of the important issue of the continuity and change of the narrative subject.
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© Th e Editor(s) (if applicable) and Th e Author(s) 2016 87 J. Vassilieva, Narrative Psychology,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-49195-4_4