Published in Human Systems 9, 1998, 167-185.

TRANSCENDENT STORYTELLING:

ABILITIES FOR SYSTEMIC PRACTITIONERS AND THEIR CLIENTS

W. Barnett Pearce and Kimberly A. Pearce

ABSTRACT

Systemic practice is often described as joining with clients to co-construct new stories.

While novelty might be the primary desired characteristic, systemic practitioners have

principled preferences for certain kinds of stories. However, these preferences are

usually expressed in terms of the content of the new stories. We propose exploring the

differences among forms of storytelling. Are some forms of storytelling systemically

preferable ways to hear, tell, and live stories? The LUUUTT Model is introduced as a

heuristic for joining the grammar of a client; one distinctive feature of this model is the

centrality it gives to storytelling. Two stories -- that of the development of CMM and of

the strange, evolving relationship between Kim Phuc and John Plummer -- illustrate four

forms of storytelling that we call literalist, symbolic, social constructionist, and

transcendent. Transcendent storytelling requires of and confers upon the storyteller a

distinctive set of abilities that are consonant with the systemic perspective. This paper

calls for an attention to storytelling as part of the work of systemic practitioners, offers

some analytical distinctions among these four types of storytelling, and identifies some

limits of "social constructionist" storytelling for systemic practice. Finally, we suggest

that helping our clients acquire the abilities for transcendent storytelling increases their

capacities to co-construct more complex, rich, and productive social worlds. We invite

correspondence with others who are working with forms of storytelling.

 1

TRANSCENDENT STORYTELLING:

ABILITIES FOR SYSTEMIC PRACTITIONERS AND THEIR CLIENTS

W. Barnett Pearce and Kimberly A. Pearce

About 40 years ago, Gregory Bateson introduced himself at one of the Macy

Conferences as “an angry man.” He was angry, he explained, because he had been

exploring patterns of family communication that limit, twist, or distort social worlds and

thus the personalities of the children who live in them. About 30 years ago, Abraham

Maslow began one of his books by juxtaposing two pictures with a question as a caption.

One picture featured a group of babies at play, healthy, unselfconsciously absorbed in

their activities and full of promise; the other was of a group of commuters in a subway,

with vacant expressions and tired faces, staring into space. The caption read: “What

happened?”

In a similar way, we observe patterns of communication in communities,

organizations, families, and in politics that are distorted and which distort those who

participate in them. We sense the gap between the potential for ways of being human

together and the realities we achieve, and see patterns of communication which are

institutionalized in families, organizations, and government as a constraining factor. Like

Bateson and Maslow, we bring a set of value judgments to this perception and, again like

Bateson and Maslow, we are not content to be outraged; we want to do something to

improve the social worlds in which we live. Our focus is on abilities for storytelling;

specifically, on the abilities required by and created in transcendent storytelling.

We think that the phrase “joining clients in the co-construction of new stories” is

one that most systemic practitioners would accept as a useful description of their work. In
 2

this paper, we claim that systemic practitioners usually want to create new stories having

certain characteristics, and that it is useful to attend to the form of storytelling as well as

the narrative features of the stories told.1

As systemic practitioners ourselves and as long-time observers of others, we have

noted directional preferences about some of the narrative features of the stories that our

clients tell. This preference is not inconsistent with neutrality (or irreverence, curiosity, or

the not-knowing position) toward the content of the clients’ stories. No definitive list of

these new characteristics should be expected, but some hints of these preferences are

readily available. New stories should move “from blame and labeling to positive

connotation and contextualization, from linearity to circularity” (Seligman, 1997, p. 14);

they should be future-oriented, dreaming, imagining, and appreciative (Lang and

McAdam, 1997); and they usually feature directional shifts in time, space, causality,

interactions, values and telling (Sluzki, 1992). We suspect that any regular reader of this

journal could extend this list. These preferences are expressed both during a consultation

(e.g., when the consultant reframes the clients’ story in this direction) and after a

consultation (e.g., if the clients’ new story has some of these characteristics, the

consultants feel more confident that the client will be able to function better.)

But there is another useful way to think about the stories by which we live. In

addition to the content (such as, Mrs. Green murdered Colonel Mustard in the Drawing

Room with a Candlestick), and narrative features (such as identified above), there are

forms of storytelling. Storytelling involves aspects that actors and public speakers call

“presence;” it includes rhythms, rhymes and prosody; it involves the energy and amount

of “connection” between storyteller and listeners; and perhaps most importantly, it is a

 3

part of the relation between the person telling the story and the story told. This last

characteristic is sometimes called "congruence" or described as "credibility." We have an

additional nuance in mind, which might be called "enmeshment," or the extent and the

manner in which the storyteller believes the story, and the story circumscribes the

storyteller's world.

The concept of storytelling is hard to describe, and we see ourselves as far from

finished thinking about it.2 However, we think that the abilities of storytelling are familiar

and important, even if we have not had a sufficiently developed vocabulary for describing

them. For example, systemic trainers have long made judgments about whether a student

needs more practice or is ready to see clients. This difference may be described as

whether the student is only able to ask circular questions "mechanically," as if from a

memorized list, or as a spontaneous way to join the client’s grammar. In our own

consulting work, we sometimes sense a gap between the content of the clients’ new story

and their ability to tell it in such a way as to lead them to act creatively into the future.

While the words of a new story might be there, we sometimes wonder if the client is

appropriately enmeshed. In both instances, the differences have something to do with

storytelling.

Some Reflections on the Manner of Storytelling in CMM

We have acted into the situation of distorted and distorting stories about what it

means to live a life and be in relation to others (that's our "review of the literature") by

constructing a rather long, complex story of our own. This story is a practical theory

called the “coordinated management of meaning” or CMM (Cronen, 1995, p. 231-232).

 4

In the following paragraphs, we call attention to the manner of storytelling -- as

distinguished from the "content" or narrative features -- of the story of CMM.

CMM has always been "told" playfully. To the extent that it is useful to

distinguish between “wisdom” and “knowledge,” CMM has always been motivated more

for a desire for wisdom than a quest for knowledge, animated by questions like, “what

does it mean to be a person?” “how can we live better lives?” and “what patterns of

communication are most conducive to living with dignity, honor, and joy?” Perhaps

wisdom is too important to treat with complete seriousness. Playfulness of manner is one

way of acknowledging the “mystery” that makes incomplete all of the answers to

questions such as those posed above.

In addition to a formalized deontic logic and quasi-mathematical rule models, the

first book-length description of CMM made “wonder” the subject of its first and last

chapters (Pearce and Cronen, 1980). Those who read this book closely surely noted the

playful incongruity between our seriousness of purpose and silliness in manner when we

offered three “theorems” of intentional, extentional, and reflexive wonder!

Pearce (1994a) proposed “Nine Commandments” for helping others. Why nine?

Did a failure of imagination forestall “completing” the list? Or is the “missing” tenth

commandment an invitation to the reader to take an authorial role? Or was the list of

(only) nine part of an intentional self-mockery of anyone who would write

“Commandments” for such purposes? (Note: anyone who thinks that there is a “right”

answer to these questions has not understood the point and should start again at the

beginning of this section.)

 5

Some of our critics in the academic world have found fulfillment and success by

pointing out that the major theoretical terms in CMM do not suffer from excessively

precise definitions. The ambiguity of the terms in the titles must mean something. Pearce

and Cronen's (1980) subtitle was “creating social realities;” another (Pearce, 1994a)

referred to “making social worlds;” and the most recent (Pearce and Littlejohn, 1997)

focused on those situations in which “social worlds collide.” If these were not vague

enough, Pearce (1989) unabashedly offered a title that set a standard for being either

generic or grandiose: Communication and the Human Condition. Using terms like these,

a storyteller begs to be understood as playing intellectual tiddlywinks with conceptual

manhole covers. (Whups, we did it again!) More prosaically, such storytelling

deliberately uses clumsy and general words as a way of signaling that the story is to be

read symbolically or metaphorically.

This way of telling the story of CMM -- playful, ironic, ambiguous -- stems

neither from artistic choice nor quirks of character, but is forced upon CMM-ers by the

nature of the story itself. CMM cannot be fully told, and the most serious (that is, literal)

attempt to do so involves naming irreducible tensions.

One set of tensions is between meanings and actions (or stories lived and stories

told); another is between coordination and coherence. CMM’s claim is that any resolution

of these tensions is paralyzing. But those of us who have told the story of CMM have also

been strongly influenced by the tensions between the realities of individuals and of social

groups, or what is indexed by the hyphens in Harre’s (1984, p. 58) felicitous phrase,

“persons-in-conversation.”
 6

In part because we have been in different professional conversations over the

years, we have shifted in the ways that we dealt with this tension. The first phase of the

CMM project (up to 1980) focused more on the work of individuals as they construct and

live in patterns of communication. Later work has started with the events and objects of

our social worlds as they are (re)co-constructed in temporally-extended, unfinished

patterns of communication. What we have tried to achieve, and it is difficult indeed, is to

tell our story in a way that respects both sides of this tension, each of which reveals

something important. For example, taking a more “social” approach usefully shows each

of us being born into patterns of communication which we did not choose, as being

shaped in our beliefs, attitudes and personality by these patterns, and as component parts

of complex social processes which are nonsummative, circular, reflexive, and co-

evolutionary. Many helpful things are “found” in this perspective, but it can obscure the

ability of individuals to choose whether and how much to be enmeshed in various

systems of which they are a part, their differential abilities to transcend the logics of

meaning and action in which they are enmeshed, and their abilities to act as purposeful

agents of change.3

Naming reflexive relations is another way in which we've tried to tell the CMM

story literally. The most radical claim in CMM is that the many different ways of being

human have a co-evolutionary, mutually causal relation to the many forms of

communication which occur. This claim results from combining the systemic move of

looking for the patterns which connect the stories we live and tell and the social

constructionist move of foregrounding the mundane events of life. One side of this

relationship is not particularly novel any more: many research traditions have
 7

documented the fact that we communicate differently because we are, individually and as

members of various social groups, different from each other. But CMM makes the

additional, somewhat more controversial claim that we are, individually and as members

of various social groups, different because we communicate differently. And yet the real

distinctiveness of CMM as a means of trying to improve our social worlds lies beyond a

simultaneous affirmation of both sides of this reciprocal relationship. To “do” CMM

work consists of entering into patterns of communication as a participant with a

commitment to improve them. Ultimately, even naming reflexive relationships fails as a

form of storytelling.

Storytelling in the LUUUTT Model

We have begun to give more explicit attention to the manner in which we and our

clients tell their stories. The LUUUTT Model is a heuristic for entering the grammar of

our clients. While parts of the model formalize what many systemic practitioners do, a

distinctive feature is the extent to which it calls attention to storytelling. LUUUTT is an

acronym for 1) stories Lived; 2) Unknown stories, 3) Untold Stories, 4) Unheard stories,

5) stories Told, and 6) storyTelling.

The concept of the tension between stories lived and stories told is familiar to

many systemic practitioners. Stories lived are the co-constructed patterns of joint-actions

that we and others perform; stories told are the explanatory narratives that people use to

make sense of stories lived. Although most people feel the need to align stories lived and

stories told, they cannot be identical, and the tension between them provides the dynamic

for much of our lives. We might say that people live in such a way as to call into being

those stories that they love, need, or want, and to prevent the realization of those stories
 8

that they hate or fear. It is also true to say that people tell stories in such a way as to make

the events of their lives coherent.

But the tension between stories lived and told is not sufficient to guide us to the

potential richness of any given communication pattern. In addition, there are unknown

stories which the participants are not (currently) capable of telling; untold stories which

the participants are perfectly capable of telling but have chosen not to (at least, not to

some of the others in the situation); and, unheard stories which, although they have been

told, have not been heard by some important participants in the situation. We suspect

that a spiraling evolutionary process works, so that unheard stories become untold stories,

and untold stories become, after a while, unknown stories, and vice versa.

The central feature of the model is storytelling. Unlike the others, it deals with

"how" the stories are told rather than their content, narrative features, or place in the

conversational interchanges.

Storytelling

We believe that stories are the basic technology by which members of the species

homo sapiens (as physical entities) become human beings. Although no longer new, this

is still a revolutionary idea. For almost two centuries (since the work of Immanuel Kant,

1724-1803), we have known that human perceptions are structured by the structure of the

human mind. But Kant thought in terms of static categories; the newer idea is that human

1
This paper grows out of our own practice and theory. A somewhat different paper that would be rich in
different ways would explore the connections between this line of work and various strands of narrative
theory, such as Anderson (1997), White (1995), and White and Epston (1990).
2
For example, CMM has long struggled with the concept of "variable enmeshment" in social systems
(Pearce and Cronen, 1980). In the present paper, we introduce the metaphor of the transcendent storyteller
as the curator of his/her stories. This is another attempt to express a perspective described as "social
eloquence" in Pearce, 1989; "gamemastery" in Pearce, 1994a, and "systemic eloquence" in Oliver, 1996.
We encourage further exploration of these ideas in connection with the abilities required in storytelling.
3
Although we are card-carrying social constructionists, we are concerned that we do not forget the
individual in our focus on the social. This point was the intention of Pearce, 1994b.
 9

beings’ experience occurs in stories. Narrative structures, plots, roles, and the like

comprise the templates in which we live our lives. That is, whatever worlds we know will

have the fundamental structure of stories because that’s the way we perceive, think, and

live.

Kathryn Morton (1984) described the ubiquity of storytelling: “The first sign

that a baby is going to be a human being and not a noisy pet comes when he begins

naming the world and demanding the stories that connect its parts. Once he knows the

first of these, he will instruct his teddy bear, enforce his worldview on victims in the

sandlot, tell himself stories of what he is doing as he plays, and forecast stories of what

he will do when he grows up. He will keep track of the actions of others and relate

deviation to the person in charge. He will want a story at bedtime."

"Nothing passes but the mind grabs it and looks for a way to fit it into a story, or

into a variety of possible scripts: he’s late – maybe he was in an accident. Maybe he ran

off to Tahiti with a blond. Maybe he stopped on the way here to buy flowers. She will

keep writing these ‘novels’ until he shows up or till she finds one story in which all

elements, emotional and circumstantial, blend. Then, whatever he says later, she will

know what she ‘knows.’”

Not only is storytelling ubiquitous, but the quality of life depends on the richness

of our stories. “No human society has yet been found in which … mythological motifs

have not been rehearsed in liturgies; interpreted by seers, poets, theologians, or

philosophers; presented in art, magnified in song, and ecstatically experienced in life-

empowering visions. Indeed, the chronicle of our species… has been not simply an

account of the progress of man the tool-maker, but – more tragically – a history of the
 10

pouring of blazing visions into the minds of seers and the efforts of earthly communities

to incarnate unearthly covenants…Man (sic) apparently cannot maintain himself in the

universe without belief in some arrangement of the general inheritance of myth. In fact,

the fullness of his life would even seem to stand in a direct ratio to the depth and range

not of his rational thought but of his local mythology” (Campbell, 1959, pp. 3-4)

But the "depth and range … of … local mythology" is a function of the manner of

storytelling as well of the content of the stories. Various ways of storytelling can be

illustrated in the evolving relationship between Kim Phuc and John Plummer.

In June, 1972, people all over the world were shocked when their newspapers

carried a photo of five children running toward the camera, screaming. Nine-year old

Kim Phuc – naked, burned, terrified – was in the center of the photo. She was running

from her village in Vietnam, on which napalm bombs had been dropped. Clearly visible

in the photo behind the children strode three soldiers, carrying weapons.

Like all things whether mundane, tragic or sublime, this image (as Morton might

put it) was grabbed by minds and fit into stories. Some “familiar” story-forms would cast

Kim Phuc in the role of victim and tell a story of trauma. If this story were lived out, she

might have been a life-long user of psychiatric services. Another familiar story-form

would cast the teller in the role of hero-avenger, setting him or herself to punish the

guilty and prevent a recurrence of the outrageous barbarisms. Hollywood filmmakers

have lived well for years off the proceeds of such stories. Yet another familiar story is the

morality-tale, in which the teller takes the role of sagacious observer and comments –

whether wryly, sadly, or angrily – about politics, human nature, or the tactics of guerrilla

warfare. Other stories, some less familiar, can certainly be developed, and this is a fateful
 11

process. Whatever story is told and the manner of its telling are parts of the creation of

the social worlds in which we all live.

But one aspect of storytelling is that it is never "finished." What some call the

"narrative unity" is always challenged by subsequent events. This story is no exception.

In 1996, 24 years after she was bombed and burned by napalm, Kim Phuc

participated in a Veteran’s Day ceremony at the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial in

Washington, D.C. She said, in halting English, that if she ever met the pilot who bombed

her village, she would urge him to join her in working for world peace. A member of the

audience, former Army Captain John Plummer, now a Methodist minister, wrote on a

scrap of paper “I am that man.” The note was passed to her and moments later they

publicly embraced. “I’m sorry,” he said, crying; “I forgive you,” she replied.

How does this completion/extension of the story fit into your preferred story

about the events in 1972? Amuse yourself by telling a story that includes this

development as well as the original facts. Now reflect on the manner of your storytelling.

Has it changed as you added these events to the story? How would you name these

changes? What is opened and what closed by the difference in your storytelling based on

the events in 1996?

But life goes on and storytelling is never finished. A cynical reporter (what form

of storytelling was he using?) investigated Captain John Plummer's service record and

found that he was not and could not have been the pilot that bombed Kim's village. While

Plummer was a pilot stationed in Vietnam on the day of the bombing (June 12, 1972), he

flew helicopters, not the type of fixed-wing aircraft that bombed Kim Phuc’s village. In

fact, on that day, he had a staff assignment and did not fly at all. Further investigation
 12

reveals that he did not order the strike on Kim Phuc’s village, nor was he authorized to do

so. We now know that the pilot was Vietnamese, not an American (Bowman, 1997).

Now, how shall we tell a story that includes this development? There are at least four

possibilities.

Four Ways of Storytelling

Each of these ways of storytelling require and develop a distinctive set of abilities.

Each may be seen as an acquired art. Useful questions to pose throughout this section are:

“What are the abilities required for these ways of storytelling?” “Which of these abilities

could/should systemic practitioners develop in themselves?” “Could/should systemic

practitioners work to inculcate these abilities in their clients?”

1. The literalist way of storytelling is familiar to all of us. It is institutionalized in

courts of law and scientific journals; its form is prose; and its spirit is flat. This way of

telling stories stresses their adherence to “the facts.” Plain, unadorned speech is preferred;

anything other than “the facts” is understood as surplus meaning of questionable

province; and everything is potentially expressible.

If we tell the story this way, John Plummer’s statement that he is the man who

dropped the bomb on Kim Phuc’s village is a lie, a hoax, or a symptom of a psychiatric

disorder. Whichever interpretation, he is to be rebuked, debunked, punished, or “helped”.

2. The symbolic way of storytelling is institutionalized in places where the literal

style is not. It is the kind of experience we have in theatres, when reading a good book, or

when performing meaningful rituals. In these situations, we identify with the events

being portrayed using a logic Campbell (1959, pp. 21-22) described as "the lesson of the

mask…. The mask in a primitive festival is revered and experienced as a veritable

 13

apparition of the mythical being that it represents – even though everyone knows that a

man made the mask and that a man is wearing it. The one wearing it, furthermore, is

identified with the god during the time of the ritual of which the mask is a part. He does

not merely represent the god; he is the god. The literal fact that the apparition is

composed of A, a mask, B, its reference to a mythical being, and C, a man, is dismissed

from the mind, and the presentation is allowed to work without correction upon the

sentiments of both the beholder and the actor. In other words, there has been a shift of

view from the logic of the normal secular sphere, where things are understood to be

distinct from one another, to a theatrical or play sphere, where they are accepted for what

they are experienced as being and the logic is that of ‘make believe’ – ‘as if’.”

Jerome Bruner's (1986) description of good storytelling appeals to a similar logic.

Good storytelling, he said, recruits or enlists the reader/hearer “in the performance of

meaning under the guidance of the text.” Three mechanisms make for good storytelling,

he said, “The first is the triggering of presupposition, the creation of implicit rather than

explicit meanings. For with explicitness, the reader’s degrees of interpretive freedom are

annulled… The second is what I shall call subjectification: the depiction of reality not

through an omniscient eye that views a timeless reality, but through the filter of

consciousness of protagonists in the story… The third is multiple perspective: beholding

the world not univocally but simultaneously through a set of prisms each of which

catches some part of it … To be in the subjunctive mode is, then, to be trafficking in

human possibilities rather than in settled certainties.”

Is this symbolic way of storytelling something to do only after serious work is

finished? A literalist-minded colleague of ours relegates much of our work to what she
 14

describes as her “weekend reading” category – interesting but not important because not

scientific. Or is this “symbolic” way of storytelling basic to the human condition, with

literal-mindedness a special and unusual variation? Wheelwright (1954, p. 30) is one who

believes that symbolic storytelling is basic: “There is no more ironic illusion than to

suppose that one has escaped from illusions. So subtly do the real and the illusory

interpenetrate that their difference is never finally clear. Mind is by nature a meddler, and

there are no self-evident criteria by which to discriminate its insights from its

commentaries.” Wheelwright bases his claim on the nature of consciousness: “Indeed, the

intimation of a something more, a beyond the horizon, belongs to the very nature of

consciousness. To be conscious is not simply a fact or event like those determinant facts

and events which make up our physical world… To be conscious is not just to be; it is to

mean, to intend, to point beyond oneself, to testify that some kind of beyond exists, and

to be ever on the verge of entering it...” (p. 8). Ursala Le Guin’s (1976) serious call for

adults to read the literary genre of fantasy presumes a comfortable ability for symbolic

storytelling. “Those who refuse to listen to dragons," she warned, "are probably doomed

to spend their lives acting out the nightmares of politicians. We like to think we live in

daylight, but half the world is always dark; and fantasy, like poetry, speaks the language

of the night.”

Told with a symbolic sensibility, the story of John Plummer's scribbling "I am

that man!" and apologizing to Kim Phuc is transparently clear. He identified himself with

the war of which he was a part, although he did not take part in this specific event. In an

interview with the literal reporter who accused him of perpetrating a "hoax," Plummer

said, “Every time I saw that picture, I said, ‘I did that. I’m responsible.’” Asked why he
 15

wrote “I am that man” on the note, Plummer told the interviewer, “I felt tremendous

remorse that a little girl was hurt in something I was involved in, remote as it may be … I

still feel the connection to what happened there – because I was involved in the process”

(Bowman, 1997).

The fact that Plummer's symbolic logic was invisible and incomprehensible to the

reporter does not deny it as "true." In fact, it might well be heard as a more profound truth

than the literal statement that "I was the person who dropped the bomb." By one

definition, a myth is a story that is a lie on the outside but true on the inside. (Please do

not read “inside” and “outside” literally!) Someone once said that there are small truths

and large truths, and you can tell the difference by looking at their opposites. The

opposite of a small truth is a falsehood, but the opposite of a large truth is another large

truth. (If you read “truth” in the preceding statement literally, you must return to the

beginning of the section and try again!) There is more than a whiff of paradox in

symbolic storytelling, and one definition of a paradox claims that it is a truth standing on

its head to get attention (Falletta, 1983, p. xviii). As Campbell (1959, p. 12) said,

“Clearly, mythology is no toy for children. Nor is it a matter of archaic, merely scholarly

concern, of no moment to modern men of actions. For its symbols (whether in the

tangible form of images or in the abstract form of ideas) touch and release the deepest

centers of motivation, moving literate and illiterate alike, moving mobs, moving

civilizations…For surely it is folly to preach to children who will be riding rockets to the

moon a morality and cosmology based on concepts of the Good Society and of man’s

place in nature that were coined before the harnessing of the horse! And the world is now

far too small, and men’s stake in sanity too great, for any more of those old games of
 16

Chosen Folk (whether of Jehovah, Allah, Wotan, Manu, or the Devil) by which tribesmen

were sustained against their enemies in the days when the serpent could still talk.”

3. In recent years, systemic practitioners have found the abilities and affordances

of social constructionist storytelling very attractive. In fact, one impetus for writing this

paper came from our interest in comparing symbolic and social constructionist

storytelling. We used Joseph Campbell to represent symbolic storytelling (see Larsen and

Larsen, 1991; Campbell, 1959, 1962, 1964, 1968) and, for social constructionists, an

intellectual composite of the work of Vern Cronen, John Shotter, Ken Gergen, and

ourselves (see Pearce, 1992; Cronen and Lang, 1994; Pearce, 1995).

While both symbolic and social constructionist forms of storytelling differ sharply

with the literalist, there are some interesting distinctions between them. We envisioned a

triangle with literalist, symbolic, and social constructionist storytelling as the points and a

cluster of differentiations as each line.

Social constructionist storytelling celebrates the generative power of language.

Locating human beings “in” language, it shows how particular linguistic forms and

practices and/or specific instances of conjoint behavior create the events and objects of

our social worlds. Symbolic storytelling, on the other hand, foregrounds a recognition of

the limits of language; these stories are filled with allusions to the ineffable – that which

cannot be expressed and of which every attempted description is a misrepresentation

(Branham and Pearce, 1978; Branham, 1980). For example, Wheelwright (1954) claimed

that “the nature of reality is intrinsically and ultimately hidden from any finite

exploration…Reality is ultimately problematical, not contingently so, for to grasp and

formulate it, even as a set of questions, is to fragmentize it. The best we can hope to do is
 17

catch partisan glimpses… If we cannot hope ever to be perfectly right, we can perhaps

find both enlightenment and refreshment by changing, from time to time, our ways of

being wrong.” Recall Campbell’s provocative description of earthly communities

attempting to incarnate their blazing visions of unearthly realities. In another place but in

a similar mood, he said, “The best things cannot be told; the second best are

misunderstood. After that comes civilized conversation…” (1968, p. 84). We wonder if

this saying was an instance of mere civilized conversation or if it were something better –

but if it were something better, we have probably misunderstood it!

While not contradictory, symbolic and social constructionist forms of storytelling

have very different flavors. One way of describing this difference is to say that symbolic

storytelling is more reflexively aware of a nonverbal reality and/or universal themes and

takes them more seriously than do social constructionists, who are comfortable staying in

the mundane world of empirical events and objects. Following Wittgenstein, social

constructionists believe that it is neither necessary nor helpful to look behind or beneath

an utterance to understand it; all that is important is there if we will only look closely.

The problematic sites for dramatic developments are another distinction between

these forms of storytelling. Symbolic storytelling (particularly in Campbell’s versions)

focuses on the question of how the individual relates to the nonverbal world and/or to the

social group. On the other hand, social constructionist storytelling starts with persons-in-

conversations (and particular persons in specific conversations at that) as the fundamental

human experience, and thus the ideas of being an individual or of nonverbal reality are

the problematic issues.

 18

As Campbell (1968, p. 85) tells the story symbolically, the “collective”

mythologies of primitive and traditional societies (both Eastern and Western) “were

intended, and commonly functioned, to inculcate belief…they determined the form and

content of the most profound personal experiences. No one has yet reported of a Buddhist

arhat surprised by a vision of Christ, or a Christian nun by the Buddha. The image of the

vehicle of grace, arriving in vision from untold depths, puts on the guise of the local

mythic symbol of the spirit, and as long as such symbols work there can be no quarrel

with their retention. They serve no less effectively as guides for the individual than as

stays of the social order." However, modern mythology is different in its emphasis on the

individual’s experience. “Today, more fortunately, it is everywhere the collective

mythology itself that is going to pieces, leaving even the non-individual … to be a light

unto himself. It is true that the madhouses are full; psychoanalysts, millionaires. Yet

anyone sensible enough to have looked around somewhat outside his fallen church will

have seen standing everywhere on the cleared, still clearing, world stage a company of

mighty individuals: the great order of those who in the past found, and in the present too

are finding, in themselves all the guidance needed. The mythologies of this book are the

productions, the revelations -- the letters in a bottle, set floating on the sea – of such men

and women, who have had the courage to be at one in their wanting and their doing, their

knowing and their telling” (Campbell, 1968, p. 85).

Social constructionists, on the other hand, are more interested in what happens in

specific contexts and in the interactions among people. They focus on relationships, joint-

actions, co-constructed entities. They are interested in history – for example, in episodic

questioning – rather than the recurrence of eternal themes or the emergence of heroic
 19

mythogenic individuals. For them (as for Wittgenstein), “meaning is in use” and,

following Dewey, the meaning and value of acts are determined by their consequences.

These distinctions lead to quite different orientations. Symbolic storytelling has

something of the sacred about it, even if the particular stories are raucous or violent; it

somehow looks through or beyond the story per se to its “real” meaning. Social

constructionist storytelling, on the other hand, is fascinated with the mundane. It is

curious, irreverent, and takes a “not-knowing” position with respect to situated actions by

historical human beings (see, e.g., Stratton and Hanks, 1997). Unlike symbolic

storytellers, social constructionists act as if they can – and should -- change reality and

create new things.

Social constructionist storytelling assumes a radically different cosmology than

literalist or symbolic. Apparently substantial events and objects in our social worlds – and

we do mean the “big’ issues of power, class, race, gender, nations and states, war and

peace, economic systems, love and hate, respect and disdain, etc. – are seen as ‘existing”

not as objects in themselves but as local, temporary products of an ongoing, messy ,

unfinished process of communication. Their “substantiality” disappears and is itself seen

as a socially-constructed illusion which constitutes one set of answers to basic human

questions, and, in disappearing, opens spaces for many other and some more interesting

answers to be given. In the place of “objects,” various vortexes of configurations of the

on-going process of communication become the center of our attention. Social

constructionists focus on the consequentiality of communication, not the existence of

objects (Sigman, 1995).

 20

This perspective runs against the grain of ordinary language, tempting

communication theorists to wave their arms about wildly when talking about

communication, to invent neologisms (such as “logical force”) and complicated models

(such as “strange loops”), and to employ exotic metaphors. In our continuing search for

ways of expressing this systemic, social constructionist perspective, we have taken to

using (yet another) of Escher’s works. “Bond of Union” (Escher and Locher, 1971, p.

126) shows faces with no substance; that is, the faces consist in the twists and turns of a

single spiraling ribbon. Were the ribbon straightened or tied in another shape, there

would be no loss of matter but the faces would no longer exist. This image works for us

as a model of the way the process of communication (the ribbon) creates the events and

objects of our social worlds (the faces) not by its substance but by its form.

This shift in perspective does not mean that the “facts of life” are not real. Do we

social constructionists not bleed and bruise and laugh and cry just as literalists do? But

this perspective brings the helpful and hopeful awareness that the “facts of life,” as

Aristotle said about the subject-matter of praxis, can be other than what they are. We may

be stuck in a given configuration of communication processes that confer on us an

unwanted definition of self or relationship, but we are not necessarily stuck with that

configuration. If we take the point of view that our personal and social identities and all

those things for which we hope and which we fear are constellations of the

communication process, this leads to questions such as “who is participating in the social

construction of these events and objects?” “how are they being made and re-made?” and

“what might we do to bring about those things which are our highest imagining?”
 21

If John Plummer’s claim that “I am that man” were read/heard/told/lived in a

social constructionist storytelling, we might see it as the “second” move in the

conversational triplet (Pearce, 1994, p. 121). That is, to understand the note that he wrote,

it is important to see it as a response in a context to a particular act (Kim Phuc’s call for

the pilot to join her in working for world peace) and as eliciting responses from others.

The meaning of an act is not finished when the act is performed, it depends on the way it

is moved toward completion by the subsequent acts of others. If others responded literally

(as did the journalist covering the story), then Plummer’s statement is co-constructed as a

lie, hoax or delusion; if others responded symbolically, we co-construct his statement as

an identification and acceptance of responsibility; and if others responded as social

constructionists, we accept the responsibility for co-constructing his statement and make

our choices in terms of the consequences that would be useful.

As it happened, Kim Phuc responded to the news that John Plummer was not, in

fact, the pilot of the plane that bombed her village by saying, “I believe in him. I think

whatever happened I feel the same way as when we met. He feels so burdened”

(Bowman, 1997). How would you describe Plummer's statement “I am that man” as co-

constructed in the continuing conversation with Kim Phuc?

4. We have been engaged in transcendent storytelling while telling the story of

different ways of storytelling. Recall that we described literal, symbolic and social

constructionist forms of storytelling as forming a triangle, and we spent some time

differentiating among them. Transcendent storytelling is not so much the fourth corner in

a square as the apex that makes the figure a pyramid. Transcendent storytelling can be

literal, symbolic, and social constructionist, all at once or alternating among them. Its
 22

distinctive characteristics involve the amount of reflexive awareness and deliberate

choice among styles, and of the nature of the teller's enmeshment in the storytelling.

Transcendent storytelling is reflexive. The storyteller is aware of him or herself as

a storyteller and makes choices, with more or less insight and ability, among styles of

storytelling. This means that the storyteller must have some access to a “trans-systemic”

(to use Kegan’s, 1994, term) vocabulary that enables him or her to compare various

storytelling forms.

Transcendent storytelling has at least three distinctive characteristics. First, it does

not allow itself to be bounded by the limitations of any of the other styles. That is, a

transcendent storytelling can "use" literal, symbolic, or social constructionist storytelling,

but do so with self-awareness and ability to change. This flexibility is not just an artistic

preference but is called for by the complexities of social life. In the movie Il Postino, a

traditional Italian woman discovers a poem given to her daughter by a young man.

Unable to read the poem, the mother takes it to her priest, who reads it aloud to her. She

quickly fears the worst.23 When asked why she is so upset by the poem, she cites the

presence of metaphors, and, totally unaware of what she is doing, produces a rich,

evocative series of metaphors to denounce the use of metaphors. This story is being told

in many ways simultaneously. The poet, Pablo Neruda, knew what he was doing with the

metaphorical use of language. The postman was quoting the words -- one of the charms

of the film is the postman's growing ability to tell stories symbolically rather than

literally. The screenwriter and the actress are telling the story transcendently. In all

23
Jennifer Clegg (1998) published a very interesting analysis of this movie from a different perspective. It
would be interesting to work out some of the points of convergence and divergence in our mutual
appreciation of the film.
 23

instances, the story is the same, but the way the story is being told and the level of self-

consciousness and self-control as a storyteller, differ substantially.

Second, transcendent storytelling at least implies the existence of a vocabulary

permitting comparison of different, even incommensurate characteristics of other

readings. That is, a transcendent use of social constructionist storytelling can articulate

some of the distinctive perspectives and limitations of that form of storytelling, and know

when it is better to use literal or symbolic storytelling. In stating this characteristic, we

want to be careful not to privilege verbal language (which would carry our social

constructionist commitments into our attempt to understand transcendent). This

"vocabulary" might consist of the ability to "show" or to "use" different storytelling

forms appropriately. For example, we wonder if John Plummer's response to the

interviewer did not use both literal and symbolic forms of storytelling. Perhaps he said

both "On June 12, 1972, I was in my office" and "I was the man who dropped the bomb,"

and understood clearly that these were different forms of storytelling, not a contradiction

within literal storytelling. This possibility makes us think of the use of "strange loops" as

therapeutic interventions (whether in therapy or consultation). What happens when a

client is led around the loop that features formal logical contradictions? One idea is that

the client is being assisted to develop a different form of storytelling -- that which we are

here calling "transcendent." The content of the strange loop is not news to the client, but

to see the whole as a loop invites the client to become more self-reflexive and to develop

a sensibility for thinking about how he or she tells his or her story.

Third, transcendental storytelling requires and confers a different person-position

in relation to one's own stories (see Pearce, 1994a, for a discussion of person-positions).
 24

The teller is simultaneously "in" the story as a "first-person participant" and commenting

"on" the story as a "third-person observer. This makes us think about what happens to our

clients when we use reflecting teams and circular questioning. Both are ways of moving

the client among person positions, and we know that they have powerful effects. One way

of describing these effects is to say that they are invitations to the client to a different,

more complex form of storytelling. Consider the difference between the statements "I am

the man who dropped the bomb" and "The prosecuting attorney who is interviewing me

in a courtroom perceives me as the man who dropped the bomb." The statements invoke

very different rights, duties, and responsibilities of the people involved in the

communication situation, and clearly indicate when a person in John Plummer's situation

should shift from symbolic to literal storytelling. The awareness of these differences, and

the wisdom about making such shifts, is a part of transcendent storytelling.

Transcendent storytelling requires and develops a set of abilities that are

important in contemporary society. Pearce and Littlejohn (1997) studied “moral

conflicts” and concluded that transcendent storytelling provides one way in which people

who not only disagree but who should continue to disagree can find ways of living and

working together. In their summary, transcendent storytelling is “beyond simplicity:

philosophical” in that it goes beyond the taken-for-granted and explores assumptions. It is

“beyond evaluation: comparative” in that it co-creates a new language in which to see

similarities and differences more clearly. It is “beyond obstruction: dialogic” in that it

values listening as much as or more than speaking, understanding more than explaining,

and respect more than persuasion. It is “beyond blame: critical” in that it carefully
 25

assesses the powers and limits of ideas in their contexts; it brings to light the underlying

beliefs that would not normally be revealed and explores the contexts in which those

beliefs have force (Pearce and Littlejohn, 1997, pp. 212-216).

If Plummer’s confession that he was the man were heard transcendently, it would

look a lot like what systemic practitioners strive toward: silent, co-present voices would

be brought out; differences would be compared appreciatively, and the richness of

multiple perspectives would be included. We would explore to whom, in what contexts,

and with what consequences Plummer makes his claim; we would look at what he says in

other contexts and how he reconciles them, etc. It would be a rich story, permitting us

lots of options about how to co-construct a future. We might even say that we, too, are

responsible for dropping napalm bombs on villages and we might accept the

responsibility for caring for injured children. And if we did say to John Plummer and

Kim Phuc that we, too, are responsible for the horrors of the Vietnam War, a very

different conversation would develop than if, for example, we told our story literally by

denying our own involvement and labeling Plummer a liar.

Developing the Abilities for Transcendent Storytelling

In some ways, we think that "transcendent storytelling" is a new name for what

systemic practitioners (and teachers of literature, etc.) have been doing for a long time.

However, we think that identifying the abilities involved in transcendent storytelling can

be a guide to our practice, the training we offer to others, and to our own self-

assessments.

We have come to think of two thresholds in the development of the abilities for

transcendent storytelling. The first threshold is the ability to discern the difference
 26

between one’s own stories and those of other people and to live in the tension between

telling your own story and being profoundly open to the stories of others. The crucial

ability in this threshold involves staying in the tension; resisting the temptation to

“resolving” it either by accommodating to or rejecting the other.4 Among other things,

achieving this threshold seems to have something to do with an acceptance of what

William James (a hundred years ago) called “the pluralistic universe” and the

development of ways of relating to other people that are not predicated on agreeing with

them.

The second threshold is that of becoming the "custodian" or “curator” of the

stories that one tells and of the patterns of communication in which one participates. The

metaphor commends itself curators of museums or art galleries are very knowledgeable

about all the items in a collection, they seek out and add new items to it, and, above all,

cherish and care for the collection.

Among other things, becoming the curator of one's own stories seems to have

something to do with being aware of the communication process per se, and of accepting

at least some responsibility for the content, narrative features, and form of storytelling of

one's own stories. There are some interesting connections to be drawn between the

concepts of storytelling, interpersonal competence, and eloquence (see footnote 2).

In addition, the ability to tell one’s own stories as a curator seems to include a

postmodern sensibility that relishes the “U’s” in the LUUUTT model – that sees the

unknown, untold, and unheard stories as part of the potential richness of the social worlds

in which we live. Treating these “U’s” both as sites for exploration leading to enrichment

4
We are drawing on Martin Buber's description of dialogue.
 27

and as a continuing reservoir of mystery constitutes a particular aesthetic sensibility that

we think is part of the “performance demand” of the contemporary era.

Finally, curators of communication patterns seem to need a co-evolutionary

perspective. Patterns of communication are confluences where different stories, lives, and

objects come together. Storytelling that does not recognize the coevolution of the stories

is too thin to constitute the care of a curator.

How are these abilities developed? Just like any other abilities: by instruction and

exhortation (poorly); by imitation and trial and error (better); and by being invited to fill a

niche within an on-going group who are already using these abilities (best). The

characterization of systemic practice with which we began this essay referred to “joining

with clients to co-construct new stories." In this essay, we have suggested expanding this

characterization to include joining with clients to co-construct the abilities for

transcendent storytelling. In these interactions, systemic practitioners invite and assist

clients to tell their stories in a more complex, rich, and productive way than they

otherwise could and facilitate the development of their abilities for transcendent

storytelling. We look forward to a continuing conversation with systemic practitioners on

ways to develop our own and clients’ storytelling abilities.

 28

REFERENCES

Anderson, H. (1997). Conversation, language, and possibilities: A postmodern approach

to therapy. New York: Basic Books.

Bowman, T. (1997) Vietnam vet’s tale called a hoax. San Francisco Chronicle,

December 18, p. A3.

Branham, R. J. (1980). Ineffability, creativity and communication competence.

Communication Quarterly. 28:11-21.

Branham, R. J. & Pearce, W. B. (1978). The ineffable: An examination of the limits of

expression and the means of communication. Communication Yearbook, II. New

Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Press.

Bruner, J. (1986) Quoted by M. White & D. Epson, Literate Means to Therapeutic Ends.

Adelaide: Dulwich Centre Publications.

Campbell, J. (1959) The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology. New York: Viking.

Campbell, J. (1962) The Masks of God: Oriental Mythology. New York: Viking.

Campbell, J. (1964) The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology. New York: Viking.

Campbell, J. (1968) The Masks of God: Creative Mythology. New York: Viking.

Cronen, V. E. (1995). Practical theory and the tasks ahead for social approaches to

communication. Pp. 217-242 in W. Leeds-Hurwitz, ed. Social Approaches to

Communication. New York: Guilford.

Cronen, V.E. & Lang, P. (1994). Language and action: Wittgenstein and Dewey in the

practice of therapy and consultation, Human Systems, 5: 5-43.

Cronen, V.E. & Pearce, W.B. (1985) Toward an explanation of how the Milan method

works: An invitation to a systemic epistemology and the evolution of family

 29

systems. Pp. 69-86 in D. Campbell and R. Draper, eds. Applications of systemic

Family Therapy: The Milan Approach. London: Grune & Stratton.

Escher, M. C. & Locher, J. L. (1971). The World of M. C. Escher. New York: Harry N.

Abrams, Inc.

Falletta, N. (1983) The Paradoxicon. New York: Doubleday & Co.

Harre, R. (1984). Personal being: A theory for individual psychology. Cambridge:

Harvard University Press.

Kegan, R. (1994). In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life. Cambridge:

Harvard University Press.

Lang, P. & McAdam, E. (1997). “Narrative-ating: Future dreams in present living

jottings on an honouring theme,” Human Systems, 8: 3-12.

Larsen, S. & Larsen, R. (1991). A Fire in the Mind: The Life of Joseph Campbell. New

York: Doubleday Anchor.

Le Guin, U. (1976) Fantasy, like poetry, speaks the language of the night, San Francisco

Sunday Examiner and Chronicle, November 21 (“World” section).

Morton, K. (1984) New York Times Book Review, December 23, page 1.

Oliver, C. (1996). Systemic eloquence. Human Systems, 7: 247-264.

Pearce, W. B. and Littlejohn, S. W. (1997) Moral conflict: When social worlds collide.

Beverly Hills: Sage.

Pearce, W. B. (1995). A sailing guide for social constructionists. Pp. 88-113 in W. Leeds-

Hurwitz, ed. Social Approaches to Communication. New York: Guilford.

Pearce, W. B. (1994a). Interpersonal Communication: Making Social Worlds. New York:

HarperCollins.
 30

Pearce, W. B. (1994b). Recovering agency. Pp. 34-41 in Stanley Deetz, ed.

Communication Yearbook 17. Beverly Hills: Sage.

Pearce, W. B. (1992). A campers’ guide to constructionisms. Human Systems, 2: 139-

162.

Pearce, W. B. (1989). Communication and the human condition. Carbondale: Southern

Illinois University Press.

Pearce, W. B. & Cronen, V. E. (1980). Communication, action, and meaning: The

creation of social realities. New York: Praeger.

Pearce, W. B., Cronen, V. E., & Conklin, R. F. (1979). On what to look at when

analyzing communication: A hierarchical model of actors’ meanings.

Communication. 4: 195-221.

Seligman, P. (1977) Sprouts, jigsaws and acorns, Human Systems. 8: 14-16.

Sigman, S. J. (1995). The Consequentiality of Communication. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence

Erlbaum Associates.

Sluzki, C. (1992) Transformations: A blueprint for narrative changes in therapy, Family

Process, 31: 217-230.

Stratton, P. and Hanks, H. (1997). Reverence for irreverence and the paradox of being

liberated by a powerful influence. Human Systems. 8: 67-71.

Wheelwright, P. (1954). The burning fountain: A study in the language of symbolism.

Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

 31

ENDNOTES
1
This paper grows out of our own practice and theory. A somewhat different paper that
would be rich in different ways would explore the connections between this line of work
and various strands of narrative theory, such as Anderson (1997), White (1995), and
White and Epston (1990).
2
For example, CMM has long struggled with the concept of "variable enmeshment" in
social systems (Pearce and Cronen, 1980). In the present paper, we introduce the
metaphor of the transcendent storyteller as the curator of his/her stories. This is another
attempt to express a perspective described as "social eloquence" in Pearce, 1989;
"gamemastery" in Pearce, 1994a, and "systemic eloquence" in Oliver, 1996. We
encourage further exploration of these ideas in connection with the abilities required in
storytelling.
3
Although we are card-carrying social constructionists, we are concerned that we do not
forget the individual in our focus on the social. This point was the intention of Pearce,
1994b.
4
We are drawing on Martin Buber's description of dialogue.
 32

Stories lived

Unheard stories Unknown stories

Storytelling

Untold stories

Stories told

Figure 1: The LUUUTT Model