Narrative Therapy and Mindfulness: Intention, Attention, Ethics. Part 1

This is the first of a matched pair of articles that present concepts and practices for expanding the territory of narrative therapy to include working with attention and present moment awareness. While the narrative literature richly describes how persons are recruited by normative discourses into problem stories and offers a wide range of practices for developing counter narratives, less has been written about how dominant discourse also captures moment-by-moment attention. The authors share ideas about working with attention in much the same way as working with story. In this first article, the authors identify parallels and differences between narrative therapy and the attentional practices associated with mindfulness before providing a preliminary account of work that draws from both traditions. The practices are depicted in terms of the ethics of daily life, in the sense that enhanced moment-by-moment attention promotes intentional ethical choice.