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Ratkes, 3/2006

The Woman from the White Garden – a Conversation with Maggey Carey

Tapio Malinen

Laughter, a steady stream of words, warm, flowing energy, and more laughter. Even though Maggey Carey has spent the whole day educating an international group of students, she still has energy to delve into a conversation about her work and her relationship with narrative therapy. And instead of pauses, the midwife for her words is the plentiful, bubbly laughter that both expresses and creates the atmosphere of our meeting.

It is February, and the Australian summer is vibrating in the heat of 35 degrees Celsius. However, it is comfortably cool inside Dulwich Centre in Adelaide, and Maggey's cheeks are flushed only because of the excitement evoked by our chatting.

This woman, who has been a member of the staff of a world-famous training center for over a decade, starts off by giving us a surprise.

”In 1973, my friends and I decided to visit Russia, and in those days, the trip had to be organized very carefully. As a bonus on this trip, we had a chance to get to know Helsinki. I remember that it was all very different from Adelaide. I especially remember the depth and seriousness of the Finnish people, and that they drink a lot.”

Whenever I meet foreigners, I always become embarrassed when they mention this dominating story of being Finnish, so I change the subject quickly. ”Could you tell us a bit about how you got to know the narrative approach?”

As a young person, Maggey was curious about life, and she was initially disappointed with academic psychology and decided to balance that view of life by traveling, moving out of the busy life of the city, going to art school, building a house, and having a child.

”Our house is still not ready, we are always adding new details. It took a lot of time to build it, and during that time, we had to make a living somehow. One of our friends told us that people wanted help with planning their gardens, and I have a passion for gardening. I spoke to some people about my ideas and started working on two small gardens. It turned out that one of them belonged to Michael and Cheryl White!”

”One day I was at the library, in the gardening section, and found a book called The White Garden. A white garden, a garden for the Whites... And I did make them a white garden, but I also started to get acquainted with the ideas of narrative therapy,” reminisces Maggey.

Cheryl White, who is responsible for adding a clearly feminist streak to the so-called narrative metaphor in the beginning of the 80's, was very interested in the politics of experience between men and women. The two women found a natural common interest, in addition to gardening.

”There was a group of men in Adelaide at the time that was publishing writings that also circulated in therapeutic circles. Some of the things in these texts were, in our opinion, not all that helpful. It was the time of Men's Movement, and men were looking for their masculine identities in weird ways: getting drunk and going to the woods as warriors, getting in touch with their masculinity.”

”Some of their writings were very anti-women and very women-blaming, and we were concerned about that. Cheryl and I often talked about making some sort of response to it, and a lot happened around that. We wanted to evoke discussion about the relationship between power and gender. It was a difficult time, but we also learned a lot, particularly about the issues of responsibility in power relations. We also found different groups of men that we could have a conversation with, groups that acknowledged and recognized our experiences,” Maggey tells us, getting more and more excited about the impact of her story.

The Politics of Experience

One day, Cheryl gives Maggey a copy of everything that Dulwich Centre had published at the time, and she now has a chance to get more closely acquainted with the ideas of Michael White. The road to the narrative world opens for her. This happens in the year 1991.

During the next year, the passionate gardener builds not only a stone wall in Michael and Cheryl's garden, but also actively acquires teaching within narrative practice. She has five intensive courses with Michael and one with David Denborough and gets a job in the city, in an office where the narrative approach is already being used. The road to the narrative world is widening rapidly.

There are plenty of narrative actors in the world of therapy, and they take care of their ”gardens” in a variety of ways. What is the most maggey-careyish thing about Maggey Carey? What does she consider to be the most important thing in her own work?

”I often ask myself this question, and my own approach is centred around the politics of experience. I am interested in giving a voice to people whose voice is not heard. Another issue I am interested in is the way in which power relations shape people's experiences. I often wonder how the narrative approach can be used in building a confidential and responsible working relationship with marginalized groups of people. I am very pragmatic and have worked hard to make narrative ideas easily approachable for everyone. It is a great challenge to mould them into a form that is easily approachable and applicable.”

How is the politics of experience visible in her own work and life at the moment?

Maggey tells me that she is leading a narrative course for people who work within the Adelaide Aboriginal health services. According to Maggey, it is important to learn to understand the mechanisms of power, as well as to build language in a way that allows for people to express their experiences and have epiphanies in this area.

”The Australian Aboriginal community is one of the most marginalized communities in the world,” says Maggey.

While pondering on her own identity as a narrative trainer, Maggey also likes to talk about fun and lightness. How heavy and serious things can be treated lightly, yet maintaining respect for the person. She feels that in the narrative method, the joy arising from connectedness is often the force that helps hold on to this lightness.

”Connectedness and the social constructing of identity are essential ideas in the narrative approach. When people experience a connection through stories that connect them, an inner resonance or vibration is born. When we can share the important values of life and the feeling of commitment, there is a certain lightness and joy that we have this opportunity together. It is important to not let heavy and problem-focused stories crush one's whole lived experience. We all contain a variety of stories. Lightness is also a rebellion against a one-sided way of relating to life,” says Maggey.

The Exotic of Everyday Life

At the moment, narrative therapists are developing interview maps, theoretically based on the ideas of learning developed by Russian Lev Vykotsky in the 1930's. The basic idea is that it is possible for us, in cooperation and by distancing ourselves from immediate experience, to move away from the known towards the new possibilities hidden in the unknown. However, this is not possible without proper scaffolding built with a therapist or educator, which allows for people to exceed the so-called zone of proximinal development (ZPD). ZPD contains the radical idea that there is an inner asynchronicity to development, that the learner is located in many developmental places simultaneously. In this framework, the questions of the therapist or teacher can be seen as consciousness-opening tasks, which can help create multi-layered stories that correspond with people's rich life experiences.

”I try to build my teaching in a way that allows for my students to move on their own zone of proximinal development towards places they haven't been yet. I work to create exercises that are based on a person's real experience. Sometimes these are small everyday things that create a basis for a new rich experience and a possibility to see oneself and one's relationship with the world in a new way. It could be about peeling tomatoes or icing a cake. The everyday life becomes very exotic in this way and local, seemingly small things and experiences get new meanings.”

For Maggey, building a house or garden are living metaphors with their own, personal history. They condense in practice what the greatness and meaningfulness of small things entails.

”The students say that the devil is in details. Another phrase is that God is in the details and small things. We must consider this when building a house. We must be sure that the foundation we are building on is solid, level and lasting, lest we need to tear some of the building down later. Sometimes I lack the patience to do this, because I like to work with the bigger picture. But I have learned, especially from Michael, that one must advance slowly in therapy and teaching and take baby steps. Important and lasting things are often shaped out of small everyday experiences and details, and when these roots are planted well, stability is born and everyday life gets a new dimension.”

Like many other Dulwich Centre members, Maggey likes to emphasize that the narrative approach is not a coherent entity, but rather a continuing process combining several different ideas, always developing and taking new forms. At the moment, our ”gardener”, who is teaching several different international groups, is also working on a book as companion on her students' journey. It delves into the details of the method and is aimed at slightly more advanced travellers.

In her life, which contains multiple stories, Maggey also (sometimes) does other things than her job.

”I still enjoy gardening and even build walls sometimes. Often I have no plan in doing it, I simply let the garden tell me where it wants a path, a wall, or something else. The garden is like a state of meditation, where I like to retreat. I also have a lovely family and friends and I spend a lot of time with them. My partner and I are also planning to do different kinds of project work all around the world, including physical work, when we get older. We would like to do something with the community and put our talents to use. But I believe I will still be busy exploring meanings and stories, when I'm 80 years old and sit in the sun reminiscing old times.

The other participants in the conversation with Maggey Carey at Dulwich Centre included school psychologists Yishai Shalif and Rachel Paran from Israel as well as family therapist Cindy Gowen from the United States. I thank them for our dialogical moment together. TM

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