When a therapist spots omissions in their stories, clients often recover forgotten strengths. A dominant theory or story created a view of adolescence up until recently that muted differences across the species and hid essential conflicts in viewing adolescents. To understand a particular adolescent well it may be necessary to let the story of how the person separates from the dominant or totalizing story that is constitutive of his or her life. Their own experience and their own possibilities contradict or go beyond their stories and go further than an objectified developmental view of adolescence. The experience of treatment is decisive and the struggle to be understood rather than disbelieved or disliked and rarely appreciated leads to an adolescent less interested in courting a favorable impression who can begin the healing process.
People are generally better convinced by reasons that they themselves have reached.
Interpretations that are self discovered are more lasting than those imposed. Self insight follows a question to be answered. Why one question becomes important to the exclusion of other questions depends on the client s unique experience of conflict. We therapists impose theories on the people who come to see us. There are always feelings and lived experience not included in the dominant story.