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History of Narrative Therapy
Narrative therapy is considered a postmodern psychotherapy, and Michael White and David Epston's theories draw heavily from postmodern and poststructuralist thinking, especially Michel Foucault's ideas on modern power. Foucauldian theory holds that modern power is created, maintained, and exercised through discourse that benefits some people and narratives and hurts others. Narrative therapy is used to expose and examine these discourses. Questioning of dominant discourses allows the creation of alternative discourses that benefit marginalized individuals and groups. Narrative therapy also has roots in family therapy.

Outsider Witness
In narrative therapy, outsider witnesses are individuals external to the main therapist-client relationship who sometimes participate in certain, significant narrative therapy sessions. Outsider witnesses are an important part of some narrative therapy practices and help provide support for narrative therapy clients’ developing identities. Practices involving outsider witnesses are based on an understanding of identity as socially constructed and performed.

Qualifications and Preparation
There is no formal training requirement for outsider witnesses. Narrative therapists, however, thoroughly prepare outsider witnesses for their role in a therapy session. Outsider witnesses must understand the goals and process of the session in which they will participate.

Frequently, outsider witnesses are mental health professionals, but family and friends of a narrative therapy client can also become outsider witnesses. Occasionally, when a client’s problem is similar to that of a former client, a narrative therapist contacts the former client and asks him or her to participate in the new client’s therapy as an outsider witness.

Narrative therapists and narrative therapy clients choose outsider witnesses who can understand and respond sensitively to the client’s story. An ideal outsider witness can also share knowledge that helps the client solve his or her problem or see the problem in a new way. For example, family members share their perspectives on client strengths. Mental health professionals use their skills and experience to offer the client insights and empathy. Former clients use their experiences as narrative therapy participants to shape a meaningful response to client stories. Although outsider witness sessions do not typically involve advice, former narrative therapy clients sometimes offer current clients their experience-based knowledge about solutions to a shared problem. For narrative therapists, who do not value one type of knowledge over another, personal experience with a problem is as good a credential as formal education. A former client's knowledge of the problem is considered as valuable as the therapist's knowledge about the same problem.

Role in Narrative Therapy
Outsider witnesses are often recruited (with permission and help from the therapy client) to participate in “definitional ceremonies" . Definitional ceremonies are specialized, structured therapy sessions that allow clients to share their life stories with a carefully chosen audience of outsider witnesses .  During the definitional ceremony, outsider witnesses listen to the therapy client's story.  In the second phase of the ceremony, the outsider witnesses take on a storytelling role and share their responses to a client's story while the client listens.

Depending on therapist and client preference, the witnesses may structure their responses along four lines of inquiry: expression (what in the client's telling of the story caught the witnesses' attention), images (the images that presented themselves to the witnesses while the client talked), resonance (how the client's story relates to the life of the outsider witnesses), and transport (how the client's story changed witness thinking and perspectives). Through these lines of inquiry, witnesses retell the client's story with an emphasis on parts of the story that felt meaningful to the witnesses and gave them understanding and insight into the client's life. In this way, witnesses add additional layers of meaning to the client's story.

The client then uses the same four lines of inquiry to retell their story a second time. In this part of the therapy session, the client incorporates outsider witness perspectives into his or her story. Finally, the outsider witnesses, the client, and the therapist reflect together on the three tellings and retellings of the client's story. The needs and preferences of the client determine the exact structure of any narrative therapy session, including outsider witness sessions.

In some cases, sessions involving outsider witnesses are taped or voice-recorded so the client can re-experience these sessions whenever he or she likes. This practice of recording outsider witness sessions further reinforces the client’s identity and extends the beneficial effects of social support for that identity over time.

Outsider witnesses are also sometimes used in the narrative therapy of whole families. In sessions involving whole families, the family members are also given the opportunity to respond to each other's stories.

Theoretical Justification
Outsider witnesses are sometimes included in narrative therapy sessions because narrative therapists believe identity is socially constructed and socially performed. Outsider witness sessions allow narrative therapy clients to take a more active, empowered role in the creation of their identities. These sessions can be understood as a form of resistance to marginalizing stories that are told about clients in their wider environment. These sessions also allow clients to define their identities in the social environment where those identities will be performed through certain acts and behaviors. When significant others are outsider witnesses to the client's therapy, outsider witness sessions prepare those others to accept and adjust to the client's new, preferred role and identity.

History
Narrative therapy evolved out of family therapy. Family therapy holds that people define themselves and operate within their closest relationships. Outsider witnesses are used in narrative therapy because narrative therapists also recognize the power of close relationships.

Related Techniques
Narrative therapists sometimes use letters from friends and family members to promote rich client narratives and support for clients' developing identities. Like outsider witness sessions, letters can provide significant others' perspectives on a therapy client's strengths and identity. Letters and other therapeutic documents, such as certificates and memos, are sometimes used to formalize a role change in a significant relationship. For example, a mother recovering from drug addiction might write a letter to officially relieve her son of his caretaking duties.