The Six-Part Story and the Potential for Conversational Artistry

Abstract

Barbara Bloomfield explores the landscape of creative counselling and asks whether using unfamiliar materials such as playdough, drawing and creative writing can generate unexpected and healing conversations. She explores whether such techniques call us to a poetic register rather than a problem-saturated register and whether they thereby can provide a healing reframe for some life problems. Processing data from a six-part story exercise with a colleague, given the pseudonym of Ray, Bloomfield discovers useful new material and gets unexpected answers as she reflects on her own abilities and limitations. This paper is an autoethnographic journey into a therapeutic experience that honours stories of pain or loss while challenging us to step out of our comfort zone to develop new ways of thinking.