Solution Focused Brief Therapy Association

The solution focus community has lost the 2 people most responsible for the development and growth of interest in solution focused brief practice. I have been fortunate to have known and have trained with both Insoo and Steve. I have also been fortunate to have seen both of them work with clients and to know first hand how they have each respected the individual's resources and wisdom. For obituaries of both, click on their pictures.

NEW BOOK

I'm proud to announce that a book I co-authored with Dr. Thorana Nelson has been published by Haworth Press. The book is entitled Solution-Focused Brief Practice with Long Term Clients in Mental Health Services: "I'm More Than my Label" and is available through Taylor & Francis. To learn more, click here

In my years of doing therapy, I have yet to meet someone who has come in to see me who woke up in the morning, realized that they have spontaneously developed a problem and therefore needed to see a therapist. Most (if not all) of the people I've had the pleasure to work with, have experienced a problem for quite some time; they've talked about the problem with friends, family members, perhaps a clergy member, maybe co-workers, etc and yet the problem has persisted and in may cases, has even gotten worse. From a social constructivist point of view, this makes perfect sense. Our conversations and how we make meanings together with others co-constructs what we experience as being real. Simply put, the more we talk about the problem, the more the problem becomes real. Consulting with a therapist is usually one of the last things that people do in hopes of resolving what seems to be intractable problems. Steve de Shazer said that the problem with most people is that they don't extend the logic to it's (often absurd) conclusion. Nothing brings that point home clearer than the idea that many therapists practice from a problem-solving orientation that requires greater clarification, description and, theoretically, insight to the problem. According to this orientation, it is the insight that leads to the eventual resolution of the problem. A failure in resolution is a failure in problem detail and therefore more information is required. One can see the absurdity of this position; the client has already thought about and talked about the problem long before seeing a therapist. They then go to a problem-focused therapist to do more talking about the problem and then wonder why things are not getting better and maybe even getting worse. You probably already have heard this saying: true insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

In their book, Change, Principles of Problem Formation and Resolution, Paul Watzlawick, John Weakland, and Richard Fisch, present a 9-dot puzzle. I'm reproducing it here. You might want to play around with it for a while and see how you do.

Here are 9 dots. The object is to draw 4 straight lines so that each one of the dots is intersected by at least one line. The following rules apply:

I've created a printable form with several 9-dot puzzles. If you like you can download that and play around with this for a while. Frustrated? Here is a solution.

Waltzlawick, et al, make the distinction between first-order and second-order change. First-order change is a change that doesn't make a difference. The client changes with whom they talk about the problem, but it doesn't result in a difference that makes a difference. The therapist using a traditional problem-solving approach is engaging in first-order change. A second-order change is a change that makes a difference to the client and this often requires looking for resources in the client's life that exist beyond the dots.

Have a question, or thought about the above or solution-focus in general? Feel free to email me by submitting this feedback form. If appropriate, I'll include your questions (with responses) and thoughts below. Thanks for taking the time. Joel

In Memoriam