Table Of ContentSolution Focused Brief Therapy
Solution Focused Brief Therapy: 100 Key Points and Techniques provides
a concise and jargon-free guide to the thinking and practice of this
exciting approach which enables people to make changes in their lives
quickly and effectively. It covers:
•
the history and background to solution focused practice
•
the philosophical underpinnings of the approach
•
techniques and practices
•
specifi c applications to work with children and adolescents (includ-
ing schools-based work), families and adults
•
how to deal with diffi cult situations
•
organizational applications, including supervision, coaching, and
leadership
•
frequently asked questions
This book is an invaluable resource for all therapists and counsellors,
whether in training or practice. It will also be essential for any professional
whose job it is to help people make changes in their lives, and will
therefore be of interest to social workers, probation offi cers, psychiatric
staff, doctors, and teachers, as well as those working in organizations as
coaches and managers.
Harvey Ratner, Evan George, and Chris Iveson founded BRIEF in
London in 1989 as an independent training, therapy, coaching and con-
sultation agency for the development of solution focused brief therapy.
100 Key Points
Series Editor: Windy Dryden
ALSO IN THIS SERIES:
Cognitive Therapy: 100 Key Points and Techniques
Michael Neenan and Windy Dryden
Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy: 100 Key Points and
Techniques
Windy Dryden and Michael Neenan
Family Therapy: 100 Key Points and Techniques
Mark Rivett and Eddy Street
Transactional Analysis: 100 Key Points and Techniques
Mark Widdowson
Person-Centred Therapy: 100 Key Points
Paul Wilkins
Gestalt Therapy: 100 Key Points and Techniques
Dave Mann
Integrative Therapy: 100 Key Points and Techniques
Maria Gilbert and Vanja Orlans
Solution Focused Brief Therapy: 100 Key Points and Techniques
Harvey Ratner, Evan George and Chris Iveson
Solution Focused
Brief Therapy
100 Key Points and Techniques
Harvey Ratner, Evan George,
and Chris Iveson
First published 2012
by Routledge
27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex BN3 2FA
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa
business
© 2012 Harvey Ratner, Evan George, and Chris Iveson
The right of Harvey Ratner, Evan George, and Chris Iveson to be
identifi ed as authors of this work has been asserted by the above
mentioned authors in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifi cation and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Solution focused brief therapy : 100 key points and techniques /
Harvey Ratner, Evan George, Chris Iveson.
p. cm. – (100 key points )
ISBN 978-0-415-60612-7 (hardback) – ISBN 978-0-415-60613-4
(paperback) 1. Solution focused brief therapy. I. Ratner,
Harvey. II. George, Evan, 1951– III. Iveson, Chris.
RC489.S65S64 2012
616.89’147 – dc23
2011048157
ISBN: 978-0-415-60613-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-60612-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-11656-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Refi neCatch Ltd., Bungay, Suffolk
v
Contents
Preface
x
Part 1 BACKGROUND
1
1
What is Solution Focused Brief Therapy?
3
2
The origins of Solution Focused Brief
Therapy (1): Milton Erickson
6
3
Origins (2): family therapy and the Brief
Therapy Center at the Mental Research
Institute in Palo Alto
8
4
Origins (3): the Brief Family Therapy Center in
Milwaukee and the birth of a new approach
10
5
The Brief Family Therapy Center: the fi rst phase
12
6
The Brief Family Therapy Center: the second
phase
14
7
Solution Focused Brief Therapy today
16
8
Philosophical underpinnings: constructivism
18
9
Philosophical underpinnings: Wittgenstein,
language, and social constructionism
19
10
Assumptions in Solution Focused Brief Therapy
21
11
The client–therapist relationship
23
12
The evidence that Solution Focused
Brief Therapy works
27
CONTENTS
vi
13
How brief is brief?
29
14
Summary: the structure of solution
focused sessions
31
Part 2 FEATURES OF SOLUTION
FOCUSED INTERVIEWING
35
15
Ideas about therapeutic conversation
37
16
Choosing the next question
38
17
Acknowledgement and possibility
40
18
Compliments
43
19
Deciding who to meet with
45
Part 3 GETTING STARTED
47
20
Problem-free talk
49
21
Identifying resources
52
22
Listening with a constructive ear: what the
client can do, not what they cannot do
54
23
Constructive histories
56
24
Pre-meeting change
58
Part 4 ESTABLISHING A CONTRACT
61
25
Finding out the client’s best hopes from
the work
63
26
The ‘contract’: a joint project
65
27
The difference between outcome and process
67
28
The ‘Great Instead’
70
29
When the client’s hope is beyond the
therapist’s remit
72
30
When the client has been sent
74
31
Building a contract with young people
77
32
When the client says ‘don’t know’
79
33
When the client’s hopes appear to be
unrealistic
81
34
What if there is a situation of risk?
84
35
When the practitioner is a gatekeeper to
a resource
86
36
What if we fail to develop a joint project?
89
CONTENTS
vii
Part 5 THE CLIENT’S PREFERRED FUTURE
91
37
Preferred futures: the ‘Tomorrow Question’
93
38
Distant futures
95
39
The qualities of well-described preferred
futures: the client’s perspective
96
40
The qualities of well-described preferred
futures: other person perspectives
98
41
Broadening and detailing
100
Part 6 WHEN HAS IT ALREADY HAPPENED?
INSTANCES OF SUCCESS
103
42
Exceptions
105
43
Instances of the future already happening
107
44
Lists
109
45
No instances, no exceptions
112
Part 7 MEASURING PROGRESS: USING
SCALE QUESTIONS
113
46
Scale questions: the evaluation of progress
115
47
Designating the ‘0’ on the scale
117
48
Different scales
119
49
Successes in the past
121
50
What is good enough?
123
51
Moving up the scale
124
52
Signs or steps
125
53
What if the client says they are at ‘0’?
127
54
When the client’s rating seems unrealistic
129
Part 8 COPING QUESTIONS: WHEN
TIMES ARE TOUGH
131
55
Handling diffi cult situations, including
bereavement
133
56
Stopping things from getting worse
135
CONTENTS
viii
Part 9 ENDING SESSIONS
137
57
Thinking pause
139
58
Acknowledgement and appreciation
141
59
Making suggestions
143
60
Making the next appointment
145
Part 10 CONDUCTING FOLLOW-UP SESSIONS
147
61
What is better?
149
62
Amplifying the progress made
150
63
Strategy questions
153
64
Identity questions
155
65
When the client says things are the same
157
66
When the client says things are worse
159
Part 11 ENDING THE WORK
161
67
Maintaining progress
163
68
What if there is no progress?
165
Part 12 ASSESSMENT AND SAFEGUARDING
167
69
Assessment
169
70
Safeguarding
171
Part 13 CHILDREN, FAMILIES, SCHOOLS,
AND GROUPWORK
173
71
Children
175
72
Adolescents
177
73
Family work
179
74
Scales in family work
181
75
Couples work
182
76
In the school
185
77
Schools: individual work
187
78
Schools: the WOWW project
190
79
Groupwork
192
CONTENTS
ix
Part 14 WORK WITH ADULTS
195
80
Homelessness
197
81
Alzheimer’s
199
82
Learning diffi culties
201
83
Substance misuse
203
84
Mental health
205
85
Trauma and abuse
207
Part 15 SUPERVISION, COACHING, AND
ORGANIZATIONAL APPLICATIONS
211
86
Supervision
213
87
Team supervision
215
88
Coaching
217
89
Mentoring
219
90
Team coaching
222
91
Leadership
224
Part 16 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
227
92
Isn’t it just a positive approach?
229
93
Isn’t it just papering over the cracks?
232
94
It doesn’t deal with emotions
234
95
Isn’t it just a strengths-based approach?
237
96
What account does it take of culture?
239
97
Isn’t it just a form of problem-solving?
241
98
It’s a formulaic approach
243
99
Can it be used with other approaches?
245
100 Self-help SFBT
247
References
249
x
Preface
At the end of a third session at BRIEF during which the client had
reported signifi cant progress, the therapist asked whether any fur-
ther sessions would be necessary. The client responded by saying:
I don’t feel I’m dependent on these meetings, which is a very
good sign I think. I do feel I’ve changed. I have taken away
some ideas about how to approach things. Some of the
work we’ve done: it’s very subtle, it’s shifted things and
helped a lot, and yet it seems quite simple in some ways,
which is really lovely. I suppose it proves the point that you
only have to make sometimes quite small adjustments that
can have a very large impact on things, which is nice. I do
like the fact that while there is the space here to discuss the
background to things, not going over past things is actually
quite good because that’s a bit of an indulgence, it’s quite
nice to talk about the demons or whatever and sometimes
that can help to take responsibility for the consequences of
whatever, so I’m not saying that that kind of counselling
isn’t valid – I think it is – but I also think if someone’s been
traumatized they can be reliving that and that can almost
make it worse in a way.
The client goes on to say how different the actual experience is
from its description on BRIEF’s website: a great deal more subtle.
PREFACE
xi
So, in this book we will try to boil down Solution Focused
Brief Therapy (SFBT) in a way that we hope will do justice to the
richness of what is a subtle and intricate process. The solution
focused approach is, undoubtedly, a radical approach, claiming
that little or nothing needs to be known about the presenting
problem (or what caused it) for the client to make good progress.
Yet, at the end of the day, it’s just a form of conversation. Steve
de Shazer, one of the founders of the approach, was fond of
repeating the story of when a receptionist at the Brief Family
Therapy Center (BFTC) in Milwaukee asked to watch a session
to see what it was all about. After a few minutes she said ‘oh, it’s
all just a bunch of talk!’, and went back to her desk in the
reception area. But, as in the title of de Shazer’s last book, ‘words
were originally magic’ and a ‘bunch of talk’ is what creates the
world and makes it go round.
BRIEF was established in 1989 by the three authors, all of
whom are from social work backgrounds and are accredited
family therapists. BRIEF is a therapy, coaching, training, and
consultancy centre (www.brief.org.uk) with the largest training
programme for brief therapy in the world. In this book, we will
illustrate the techniques and ideas with examples taken from our
own practice, all of which are, of course, altered in such as way as
to protect the anonymity of clients. We would like to acknowledge
the contribution made in recent years to our thinking by our
former colleagues Yasmin Ajmal and Guy Shennan.
A word as to who this book is intended for. Many if not most of
the approximately 70,000 practitioners who have attended BRIEF
courses have not been working as ‘therapists’ or ‘counsellors’, and
yet the solution focused approach is immensely useful to their
work. As long as the practitioners concerned are working towards
change with their clients, then there is a place for the therapeutic
skills outlined in this book. Therefore, we believe that nurses,
doctors, health advisers, teachers, mentors, social workers,
probation offi cers, residential workers, foster parents, managers,
and others will fi nd much here that is relevant to their everyday
work, as well as those working in more obvious ‘change-oriented’
ways such as therapists, counsellors, and coaches.
Part 1
BACKGROUND
