Narrative approach · Identity tattoo
The identity tattoo: a deeply moving narrative technique
I wanted to go on helping you rediscover the unique, delicate and deeply luminous approach of Charlie Crettenand, through a narrative conversation led with Sébastien Ebener.
In this exchange, the two of them illustrate with great finesse a particularly interesting tool of narrative practices: the identity tattoo.
Starting from a single adjective, the dialogue opens a path towards values, relational commitments, images of oneself, and towards everything that deeply sustains a life. It is a very subtle way of making visible what is sometimes already there, yet still little acknowledged, little named, or little honoured.
Watching this sequence again today carries a particular resonance. In it we find Charlie’s delicacy, his quality of presence, and that singular way he had of helping to bring out what, in each of us, is essential yet sometimes discreet, hidden or hard to recognise.
Warm thanks to Sébastien Ebener for this exchange, for what he shows here of narrative practice, and for the human quality of this conversation.
This sequence is an extract from our online training course on the foundations of the narrative approach.
The full extract — in French — can be watched below.
How to cite this article
Besse, J. (2026, March 22). The identity tattoo: a deeply moving narrative technique. Complexe Systémique. https://app.complexe-systemique.com/en_GB/articles/the-identity-tattoo-a-deeply-moving-narrative-technique
To go further
- Narrative therapiesThe fundamentals of the current born in Australia in the 1980s.
- The art of asking narrative questionsWhat sets a question that opens apart from a question that closes.
- Charlie Crettenand: the narrative approach in therapyThe interview where he describes his own way of inhabiting the narrative conversation.
- Taming death to celebrate life: weaving embodied stories, with Charlie CrettenandSerious illness and the end of life approached through storytelling, with the same delicacy.
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