Abstract
The aim of this article is to characterize the developments in the field of the epistemological sources of narrative therapy in the family. The methodological tools comprise a theoretical analysis of sources and an interdisciplinary approach to the topic.
The findings: attitudes towards the family and its pathological phenomena are determined by the ways in which the ontological status of reality is approached. If reality is considered to be independent of the subject, system, organism or society, the family is relegated to an objectivist discourse and put through expert investigation.
In approaches that presuppose the creation of reality in relation to a radical or a social construction, the principle of autopoiesis of the living system is accepted, as well as circular causality and the socially and culturally conditioned constitution of meaning. One of the tools for creating meaning is narration: not a simple mirror of reality, but an interpretation and construction of reality in the lived context by means of language.
The narrative metaphor of working with the family therefore approaches work with the family-system as a re-authoring conversation, which does not identify the family with its pathological symptoms, but enables new stories with greater freedom to be created.