Six-Part Story Method (Lahad)

Domain VIII · Creative & expressive arts therapies · Mooli Lahad · 1992 · Israel

What it is

The 6PSM is a single structured procedure rather than a phased therapy. The stages below are the administration sequence plus what clinicians do with the result.

Format

• Session count and length. One session for stages A–D; sources give no fixed time. Dent-Brown's research protocol ran the story within a concurrent-measures session of no more than two hours (thesis pp. 75–77). In practice allow roughly 30–50 minutes for drawing, telling and inquiry.

Who practises it, and how they are trained or regulated

• Professional frame. The method is taught on UK pre-registration dramatherapy courses (thesis p. 16), and Dent-Brown trained community mental health team nurses and occupational therapists to administer it for a personality-disorder assessment battery (Dent-Brown & Wang p. 2; thesis pp. 32, 43). There is no specific 6PSM certification identified in the sources. Administration is simple; interpretation and therapeutic…

Questions to explore with your client

• What drew you to it, and what are you hoping it will change?
• Is there physical contact? Was it explained beforehand, and do you feel free to say no or stop at any point?
• Does it involve intense or unusual breathing? Have you been told about the medical conditions for which that is not advised?
• Is it a group, retreat or community? How do they respond if someone wants to leave or raises a concern?
• How do you and the practitioner understand what is happening, in spiritual or cultural terms? Is that a source of comfort, worry, or both?
• Who runs it, and what training or registration do they hold?
• What actually happens in a session or meeting, and how often?
• What does it cost, and is there pressure to commit to more?
• How do you feel afterwards, in the hours and days that follow?
• Does it fit with, or clash with, the work we do here?

What practitioners of it watch for

• Keep it reflective, not therapy for the supervisee; agree boundaries first.
• Whether the task is chosen or imposed, outward (a quest) or inward (a fear); these shape later reading of coping.
• The client relaxing, engaging and asking for more of the same kind of help. A client who seems more anxious may be being offered the wrong channel.
• Anxiety about drawing, wish to please, suspicion about being "analysed". It is working when the client starts the first frame without repeated reassurance.
• Pushing a channel the client finds aversive (e.g. affect for a client who fears being overwhelmed); go slowly and return to the preferred channel if distress rises.

When to involve someone else

• New or worsening physical symptoms, or advice to stop or change prescribed medication: involve the client's doctor or prescriber.
• Signs of coercion, isolation from family and friends, escalating costs or secrecy: discuss openly and consider safeguarding.
• A crisis or thoughts of suicide: follow your crisis protocol. In the US, call or text 988; in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123.

Drawn automatically from the guide's own sections. Stay curious: neither endorse nor dismiss what the client values, and check anything that matters against the full guide and its sources. Not medical advice.