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lectures > lectures autumn 2002

The Straw that Heals the Camelšs Back

Speaker: Dr. Alida Gersie
2nd November 2002

The uses of storymaking and storytelling to facilitate complex change-processes.

The last two decades have seen a growing interest in the uses of stories to bring about change. To name but a few: the call for story or narrative is heard in psychotherapy, in nursing and psychiatry, in organisational development, and in environmental education. It often comes when other change-methods have failed to initiate or sustain a desired change.

In this talk, Alida Gersie explores the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities of this 'move to story', and its potential to facilitate difficult change-processes by strengthening a person's change-ability. She will draw on some intriguing raven-myths and self-authored fictional stories that mattered to people who wanted to cope better with the simultaneous demands of complex change-processes in different contexts.

Alida Gersie, PhD, SRAT (Drama) is a freelance researcher/consultant. She focuses on the purposive use of storymaking and storytelling in families, groups and organisations that help people to resolve problematic change processes. In the early 1980s she pioneered this approach in various change-contexts and countries.Currently the "storymaking-method" is widely used in conflict resolution, organisational development, special education, psychotherapy and psychiatry.

Until December 2000, Alida was Director of Studies of the Postgraduate Arts Therapies Programmes at the University of Hertfordshire in St Albans/Hatfield. Her books include Storymaking in Education and Therapy (with Nancy King), Storymaking in Bereavement and Reflections on Therapeutic Storymaking: The Use of Stories in Groups (all with Jessica Kingsley Publishers) as well as Earthtales (Merlin Press).