DANGEROUS STORIES
October 1-3, 2026
UCI Beckman Center, Irvine, CA
I’m honored to be presenting at the 2026 Dangerous Stories therapy salon this October! This innovative conference will feature provocative keynotes and workshops from incredible therapists, cultural critics and artists from around the world. Earn up to 20 CEUs while asking questions about therapy today that most of the field is afraid to ask.
Tickets still available at the link below - here’s a description of my workshop:
Michael White, co-founder of narrative therapy, wrote that reauthoring our lives begins with collecting maps from prior journeys, maps from stories we’ve lived and from ones we’ve encountered. These already-available stories can guide us as we enter unknown territory.
Danny Livingston facilitates California Family Institute’s weekly men’s group, and he’s watched what happens when men go searching for stories expansive enough to provide purpose and meaning. They go online. And figures like Jordan Peterson are waiting there with one: a mythic structure, derived from Jung and Campbell, that promises order and freedom through personal heroism.
There’s real power in that story. There are also major problems.
The myths Peterson and others are selling were forged in cultures where community and cooperation were centered. Viewed through a contemporary, individualist lens, these myths fail to deliver. No single hero’s journey can address the threats to human survival we currently face: the proliferation of AI, nuclear annihilation, an ecological crisis. The lone hero was never built to carry that weight.
At Dangerous Stories (October 1-3, Irvine), Danny asks what narrative therapy, with its lineage of deconstructing grand narratives, owes people today who long for a brighter future. And whether it’s time to build a better myth.
Deconstruction was the easy part. Come for the harder question.
Reclaiming the Myth