"Stories with children and children with stories": a narrative proposal with institutionalized children.

Abstract

The conception about the child as an active builder (constructor) of his identity has led in children psychotherapy to legitimate and to pay more attention to the lived experience and expressed by the own subject in his own terms. From this is derived the emphasis in the narrative processes of reconstruction of life’s stories and the consequent use of constructive and narrative techniques for their study. In this article we review different approaches with special interest in the use of stories in therapy with children, and we present a case study in which the stories of a girl in a foster institution help us to understand her experience better and to open an avenue to the change and to new relational horizons.