Biographical work

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What this means…

Biographical work is a gentle and deeply penetrating approach to the work of the person. It runs through much of our work, if not explicitly then at an implicit level.

We use methods that have been designed specifically to help people make connections and integrate past experience with future aspirations.

The present may be dominated by past history.

How each of us finds our orientation or stance to the past and the future deeply affects our way of going about living in the present.

Many approaches to development concentrate on the present and the future (NLP) and deal with the past when it gets in the way.

Others concentrate upon ‘dealing with past’ until the person is relatively clear of it enabling them to work more effectively in the present.

However we understand the influence of the past and the potential of the future, the individual has to manage their self in the present.

Our biographical approach takes that as the starting point. ‘Where are you now?’ and ‘How did you get here?’ as well as ‘Where are you going?’