Chapter 11 Flashcards
solution-focused approach looks for exceptions
times when the problem wasn’t a problem.
takes the elegance of the MRI model and turns it on its head.
Solution-focused therapy
The way people talk about their problems plays a powerful role in how they handle those problems. Thus solution-focused therapists encourage talking about
solutions and discourage “problem talk.
helped to set concrete and minimal goals, they are then encouraged
to build on exceptions to their problems
________ _________ are used to identify and encourage even small steps toward progress, and compliments are used to encourage clients to feel more confident in their problem-solving abilities.
Scaling questions
De Shazer’s term for times when clients are temporarily free of their problems. Solution-focused therapists focus on exceptions to help clients build on successful problem-solving skills.
Exception
The art of solution-focused therapy becomes a matter of helping clients see that their problems have
Execption
Solution-focused practitioners assume that the capabilities of people who come to therapy have been blunted by
A negative mind set
Drawing their attention to forgotten abilities helps release them from preoccupation with their failures and
restore them to their more capable selves.
The late Steve de Shazer was the founder of
solution-focused therapy:
Steve de Shazer’s term for a style of therapy that emphasizes the solutions that families have already developed for their problems.
solution-focused therapy
Early in his career de Shazer worked in Palo Alto and was strongly influenced
The MRI approach
Insoo Kim Berg was, along with de Shazer, one of the primary architects of the
Solution-focused approach
Although Bill O’Hanlon never formally studied at the Milwaukee Brief Family Therapy Center (BFTC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he was trained in brief problem-solving therapy by
Milton Erickson
Milton Erickson is a popular workshop presenter and has written a number of books and articles on his pragmatic approach, which he calls
possibility therapy
As a student of Berg and de Shazer since the mid-1980s, Yvonne Dolan has applied the solution-focused model to
the treatment of trauma and abuse
Lipchik, who worked at the BFTC for eight years until she left in 1988, pioneered the application of the solution-focused model to
Wife battering
______________________________ believe that people are constrained by narrow views of their problems into perpetuating rigid patterns of false solutions.
Like the MRI group, solution-focused therapists
The MRI model was inspired by Milton Erickson’s view of people as containing a vast reservoir of untapped creativity. According to this view, people may need only
a shift of perspective to release their potential
The language of problems tends to be different from
the language of solutions
Problem talk is usually negative, focuses on the past, and implies the permanence of problems. The language of solutions is more
hopeful and future oriented
Part of a therapist’s job is to steer clients from
problem talk to solution talk.
Clients are assumed to be the experts on their own lives. Just as they know what’s troubling them, so, too, they know what they need. This philosophy is exemplified by
practice of routinely asking clients “Is there anything else I should have asked you or that you need to tell me?”
Solution-focused therapists assume that people are
more resourceful than they realize
problems people have are not seen as evidence of failure, but rather as
normal life-cycle complications.
_________ ___________ assume that people already have the skills to solve their problems but have lost sight of their creative abilities because their problems loom so large
Solution-focused therapists
Sometimes a simple shift in focus from what’s not going well to what’s already working can remind
clients of these resources
solution-focused therapists aren’t out to reorganize personalities or family structures, they’re willing to settle for
modest goals.
Helping clients set concrete and reachable goals is a major intervention in itself, and the process of thinking about the future and what one wants to be different is a large part of
What solution-focused therapists do
From Berg and de Shazer’s (1993) point of view, what’s needed for change is a shift in
the way a problem is “languaged”:
Rather than looking behind and beneath the language that clients and therapists use, we think that the language they use is all that we have to go on . . . .
What we talk about and how we talk about it makes a difference
Getting clients to talk positively will help them think positively—and ultimately to act positively to solve their problems.
Solution focused therapy assumption
After a brief description of the presenting complaint, the therapist asks clients
how things will be different when their problems are solved
Then instead of formulating some kind of intervention plan, the therapist asks about
times in the clients’ lives when their problems do not happen or are less severe.
they aren’t interested in family dynamics, solution-focused practitioners don’t feel the need to convene any particular group of people. Instead they say that
anyone who is concerned about the problem should attend.
Solution-focused therapists don’t act like experts in determining what’s wrong (e.g., enmeshment, triangulation) and planning how to correct it. In this therapy
clients are the experts in what they want to change
Although solution-focused therapists don’t play the role of authority figures who will help clients solve their problems, they do take an active position in
moving clients away from worrying about their predicament and toward steps to solution,
Once this description of the goal has been developed, the therapist asks clients to assess their current level of progress by imagining
a scale of 1 to 10,
De Shazer’s term for a client who does not wish to be part of therapy, does not have a complaint, and does not wish to work on anything.
Visitor
De Shazer’s term for a relationship with a client who describes a complaint but is at present unwilling to work on solving it.
Complainant
With complainants, it may be useful to suggest noticing exceptions in the
problem behavior of the other family member
people who steadfastly maintain that everything is someone else’s fault. With such clients you can always ask
“How were you hoping I might be useful to you?”
De Shazer’s term for a client who not only complains about a problem (“complainant”) but is motivated to resolve it.
Customer
With an apparently unmotivated complainer, the therapist’s job is to engage in a
solution-focused conversation, compliment the client,
By not pushing for change but shifting attention away from problems and toward solutions, the therapist may mold the relationship into one in which the client becomes a
customer for change.
The first is developing well-focused goals within the clients’ frame of reference; the second is generating solutions based on exceptions. Therapy is usually brief (three to five sessions), and appointments are made one at a time, on the assumption that one more may be enough.
Solution-focused techniques organized around two strategies
After hearing and acknowledging the clients’ description of their problems and what they’ve tried to do about them, the next step is to
establish clear and concrete goals.
Part of the process of solution-focused therapy is helping clients think about constructive actions they can take, rather than
how they can get others to change.
_______ __________invites clients to envision positive outcomes and begins to activate a problem-solving mind-set by giving them a mental picture of their goals
Miracle question
