Application of the Instrumentarium of a Visual-Narrative Approach in Psychological Assistance to Personality

• Main Authors: Vitaliia Shebanova, Nataliia Tavrovetska
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Pereiaslav-Khmelnytsky Hryhorii Skovoroda State Pedagogical University 2018-10-01
• Series: Психолінгвістика
• Subjects: visual-narrative approach, psychological help, self-help, crisis situations, traumatic situations, search of resources, self-and life-design
• Online Access: https://psycholing-journal.com/index.php/journal/article/view/295

The article focuses on the application of a visual-narrative approach in providing psychological assistance to personality. It is shown that the narrative approach is now widely used by specialists, in solving a wide range of psychological problems of personality, in normalization of a psychological state of personality in crisis and traumatic situations. The implementation of the narrative approach is done through the creation of oral and written texts while providing psychological assistance. The combination of a verbal creative product with metaphorical associative maps, photographs, leaflets, illustrations, mandalas, etc., allows us to distinguish the visual and narrative approach. «Texts» as a response to visual stimuli (associative maps, photographs, illustration, mandalas, etc.) can be of any character (biographical or imaginative) and any style (prose, rhymed and unrhymed verses, tales, personal stories, essays, etc.). In one version, the visual series may be primary, and the texts are secondary. In this case, «text» can be simply a detailed comment of the group member (client) or a creative author's text, which is made by the client. In another version, on the contrary, the texts can be primary, and then they receive visual stimuli, which are also further described and analyzed in their connection with the real life story of the client. The main points and principles of the narrative approach are presented. The stages of narrative psychotherapy are given: externalization of the problem (distancing the «problem» from a person); design (reconstruction) – a critical analysis of ideas that were uncritically learned that is, a kind of «unpacking» or «contextualization». It is shown that the narrative approach is considered as: – a means of the development of personality traits, the achievement of identity; – a form of awareness of personal experience; – a means of organizing a personal future and self-constitution; the method of intergenerational history analysis or correctional family psychotherapeutic method. The emphasis is placed on the special value of this approach as an effective means of psychological self-help.