Solution Focused Brief Therapy, Steve de Shazer and BRIEF

BRIEF
BRIEF www.brief.org.uk info@brief.org.uk
Steve de Shazer,
Solution Focused Practice
and some
BRIEF reflections Evan George
BRIEF London, UK
+44 (0)20 7600 3366
evangeorge@brief.org.uk
www.brief.org.uk

BRIEFPhotos
Steve de Shazer Harvey Ratner Chris Iveson Evan George

BRIEFBuilding homes
‘Building homes for solutions is what the
solution-focused language game is designed
to do.’
Gale Miller & Steve de Shazer
Emotions in Solution-Focused Therapy
(p 21)

BRIEFBRIEF reflection
 So often in Steve de Shazer's writings you can find something that presages future
developments of the approach. 'Building homes for solutions' - a wonderful idea
that moves the approach away from both 'problem solving' and of course' solution
building'. When we talk about 'solution building' we are staying very close to the
problem since problem and solution are so closely connected as ideas. But
'building homes for solutions‘- this jumps us into something else entirely. And of
course it fits perfectly, even though BRIEF would not use the word 'solutions', with
the way that the BRIEF team will typically start a description of the preferred
future right at the beginning of the day. Recently someone came in to BRIEF to talk
about various work issues - but most of the first meeting was taken up describing
how breakfast would be different on a day when the work issues were resolved.
There was very little talk that was directly about work. During Summer School last
year a volunteer 'coachee', who wanted to think about a specific work challenge,
found a lot of the conversation focused on his commuting drive. No wonder not
only therapists but coaches find our approach challenging!

BRIEFNot directly related
‘Solutions need not be directly related to the
problems they are meant to solve.’
Steve de Shazer
Clues: Investigating Solutions in Brief Therapy
(pp 51 – 52)

 I think that this is one of Steve’s ideas that has caused our field most confusion and
some no small difficulty, particularly when it is repeated in a way that is not quite
what Steve meant (I believe). What you sometimes hear people saying is ‘there is
no connection between the problem and the solution’. And clearly that is not quite
what Steve said. However even what Steve did say might be less than helpful.
 If we accept first of all that by ‘solution’ Steve means ‘the life that contains the
solved state’ or ‘the life after the miracle’, then what we might also be able to
accept is that the client’s preferred future is not predictable from a problem
description. If the client says that s/he is depressed we cannot know from that
statement how s/he would describe the life that s/he would with to be living
(instead).
 However the fact of this unpredictability is not quite the same as ‘need not be
directly related’. I do believe that in the client’s thinking there is (normally) a
connection between their idea of the problem that brings them to us and their
picturing of the preferred future. It is just that we therapists neither can, nor need
to understand that connection. We can just ask ‘what are your best hopes from our
talking together?’ and not worry about how the best hopes and the problem are
connected.

BRIEFTherapy . . . a joint construction
'All that a therapist deals with is his
construction of how the client constructs his
own reality; from these two constructions
client and therapist jointly construct a
therapeutic reality.’
Steve de Shazer
(p 63)

 What Steve is pointing to is that we as therapists never deal directly with the
'problem'. We interact with the client's description of the thing that he or she
has come to call 'my problem'. We are working with the client's account,
their narrative and the change that takes place, if and when we all get lucky,
is in the client's description. It is important for us to remember this because
it helps us to remember what we are up to when we sit with the client.
 All we are doing is co-constructing a new narrative - important, but that's all!

BRIEF
Brief Coaching:
a solution focused approach
Chris Iveson, Evan George
and Harvey Ratner.
Routledge: 2012
"This book offers the expertise of leading solution focused
therapists for an audience that is interested in how to take a
solution focused approach to their coaching work. When
resources are tight, a BRIEF approach offers a well researched
way of making the most from coaching
interventions." - Carole Pemberton, Executive Coach and
author of Coaching to Solutions

BRIEFThe expectation of change
'What seems crucial here is that solutions
develop when the therapist and client are able
to construct the expectation of a useful and
satisfactory change. The expectation of
change or the making of a different future
salient to the present seems to be a skeleton
key to opening the door to solution.‘
Steve de Shazer
Keys to Solution in Brief Therapy
(pp 45- 46)

 Looking back it seems odd to me that I did not 'get' the centrality of Steve's
emphasis on 'expectation', until after he died and I re-read all his books one after
the other. It was at this point that the significance to him of 'expectation' leapt out
at me. And for me this has been a point of central significance in my work ever
since, continually reflecting on the question how can we co-construct in our
conversations with people an evidence-based expectation of good outcome. And
that last phrase is important – ‘evidence-based’.
What evidence is there in someone’s life, in the history of her daily doings, that
change is not only possible but indeed expectable?

BRIEFGetting from A to B
 ‘If you want to get from point A to point B, but know
no details of the terrain in between, the best thing to
do is to assume that you can go from A to B by
following a straight line. If this assumption proves
faulty and you run into huge mountains, then you
need to look for a pass that is as close as possible to
your original straight line. As William of Ockham
might say, never introduce complex descriptions
when simple ones will do. ’
 Steve de Shazer
(p 150)

 I am particularly fond of this quotation. It fits with what I think Chris, Harvey and I
have been up to for the last 15 years. Having tried to learn the approach,
something that perhaps took us (well me at least) 10 years or so, we have then
spent the past 15 years concentrating on straightening out a few seeming kinks,
twists and bends in the line, trying our best to make it a little straighter. Starting
with the ‘best hopes’ question rather than ‘what brings you here’, and prioritising
what we came to refer to as ‘instances’ (little bits of the preferred future
happening), over ‘exceptions’ (times the problem does not), seemed to us to make
the conversation a little more direct. And of course, following Steve’s bias towards
simplicity we came to question the necessity of the ‘miracle’ question and to
wonder about the necessity of what used to be referred to as ‘compliments and
tasks’.
 So many of the later developments of SFBT are ‘previewed’ in Steve’s writings.

BRIEFWho’s got the magic
“ . . . so I went off to learn how to do therapy
magic à la Erickson and I’ve come 180º on that
. . . the therapist doesn’t have the magic . . .
the client has the magic and we’d better do
something small and let the magic operate.”
Steve de Shazer
AAMFT tape "Learning Edge" 1990

 Here is Steve de Shazer in 1990. Who was it who talked about ‘clever therapist’
versus ‘clever client’ models? Was it John Weakland? Here is another way of
saying something similar ‘the client has the magic’ – what a great phrase and one
which fundamentally reframes the well-established idea that it was the client who
had the problem, certainly not the magic, and the therapist who has the solutions,
or the ‘magic’ if you prefer. (It was definitely the therapist who was holding the
wand, the professional who worked the miracle.) This idea shifts the nature of the
relationship between client and therapist, alters the ‘power relationship’. And
perhaps more important than anything else, it impacts on the way that the
professional thinks about the client, and since thinking and ‘treating’ are closely
related, inevitably changes the way that the therapist ‘treats’ the client. And all
this almost 25 years before the word ‘co-production’ appeared in the cutting-edge
mental health professional’s lexicon.

BRIEF
SolutionFocused Brief
Therapy:
100 key points and
techniques
Harvey Ratner, Evan
George and Chris Iveson.
Routledge: 2012
‘All you need to know! What more can I
say. A must read for anyone interested in
Solution Focused work.’
Rob Black

BRIEFContinuing transformation
‘From the beginning of the first session the
therapist and the client are constructing a
therapeutic reality based on continuing
transformation or change rather than on
initiating change.’
Steve de Shazer
(p 5)

 It has seemed sometimes that our confused thinking has led us to curious
conclusions. Therapists have often seemed to confuse the ‘therapy process’ and
the ‘change process’, and since the therapy process, we have tended to assume,
starts when the client sees the therapist (erroneous of course) then we have
tended to believe that change must also start when the client meets the therapist.
de Shazer reminds us that change is continuous, that our meeting with the client is
just one step in the client’s already established change process. It is our job to
support the changes that the client is already making, rather than imagining that it
is our job to initiate change. de Shazer challenges us to give up our sense of self-
importance, to challenge our therapist-centric view of our professional worlds,
and to find a rather more humble place for ourselves in the client’s journey.

BRIEFNormal difficulty
‘It is, of course, easier to develop a solution to
a "normal difficulty" than it is to develop a
solution to a "very pathological problem that
has roots deep in my infancy”.’

Steve de Shazer
Putting Difference to Work
(p 66)

 Here de Shazer reminds us that problems are not found, they are constructed and
the way that we co-construct the problem with the client will inevitably affect the
likelihood of resolution. Making the problem bigger, which is of course easy to do
often merely by exploring the client’s ‘problem-history’, is likely to slow down the
change process and to reduce the client’s expectation of change. When clients ask
me why their problem happens I tend to respond truthfully, saying that it is
difficult to know but that very often we get ourselves stuck in patterns of
behaviour that originally had some usefulness but which have ended up outliving
that usefulness. ‘Getting stuck’ in a pattern offers a way of explaining problems
that is unlikely to exacerbate the difficulty. After all ‘getting stuck’ is normal, we
can all get stuck, and ‘getting stuck’ is minimally critical (or blaming perhaps) of
the client. ‘Problems’ that are positively connoted, framed as ‘originally of use’,
often seem to be easier to leave behind., and clients who are not invited to
criticise themselves, often seem to find it easier to move on from them.

BRIEFAnything
‘Anything that prompts the client to say that
‘things are better’ needs to be identified as
verification of change, and anything that is
new or different or more effective that the
client reports needs to be encouraged or
amplified.’
Steve de Shazer
Keys to Solution in Brief Therapy

BRIEFBRIEF reflection: part 1
 Of course the word that most interests me here is the word that Steve de Shazer uses
twice in this short sentence (and which I have italicized), the word ‘anything’. We are
not being invited to be interested in particular changes, even perhaps changes that are
seen as fitting with the client’s ‘goal’, but in ‘anything that prompts the client to say
that ’things are better’. What we are focusing on, it seems, is the co-construction of an
experience of change, rather than the construction of any particular change. And it is
this idea, the idea that people are more likely to change when they ‘expect’ change to
occur, and that they are more likely to expect change to occur when they are already
noticing change, that lies behind BRIEF’s non-contractual stance. At BRIEF we are not
interested in firming up or specifying with people what particular actions they could,
should or indeed will be taking following a session. This reduces the odds on change
being noticed if merely because the client’s focus is now too narrow, focused
predominantly on those actions which they have agreed to take. We are much more
interested in inviting them to keep their attention and focus as wide as possible,
suggesting that they might wish to ‘watch out for anything, anything at all, that you
find yourself doing, that is different or that is taking your life in a good direction’.
Keeping the focus so wide increases the odds that the client will notice ‘something’
and when they notice something or indeed anything that is different, de Shazer’s cycle
of change comes into play.

 In the following paragraph, again from Keys to Solution in Brief Therapy (p 77) just
count the number of ‘anys’ that de Shazer uses.
 ‘Since solutions are not predictable in any detail and since there is more than one
potential way of behaving in the future without the complaint, the new set of
expectations can be constructed out of any satisfactory or beneficial changes. Any
change stands a chance of starting a ripple effect which will lead to a more
satisfactory future. Therefore, the brief therapist reacts to any change as an
indication that things are starting to go right for the clients. It does not seem to
matter if a particular change is new or different behaviour, or if it is an exception
to the rules of the complaint, or even if it seemingly has nothing to do with the
complaint. Any change is a difference that could well prove different enough to be
part of the solution. In any case, any change can become part of the construction
of a new set of expectations that will be part of creating the solution.’
 de Shazer really could not be clearer, the brief therapist should not be picky in the
way that we respond to changes ‘any change could well prove different enough to
be part of the solution.’

BRIEFResistance?
‘It must be kept clear that resistance is only a
metaphor for describing certain regularities of
phenomena, and that other metaphors can be
used. Resistance is not something concrete,
only a concept used as an explanatory
metaphor.’
Steve de Shazer
Patterns of Brief Family Therapy
(p 12)

 Finding this in Steve’s very first book, written before he had perhaps realised that
he was developing a ‘solution focused’ approach, made a useful difference to my
thinking and to my practice. It is, as Steve makes clear, so tempting to think of
‘resistance’ as something ‘real’, ‘concrete’, ‘out there’, something that can be
pointed to and prodded, a product of the client’s “internal dynamics” (p 10). But if
we think about it as a ‘metaphor’, then it becomes just one of many possible
metaphors, one of a myriad of different possible ways of describing, of different
words that we can use to speak of what is going on. After all we do not judge
‘metaphors’ according to their truth. We might judge them in relation to their
elegance, to their beauty, in relation to their capacity to encapsulate a complex
experience or to highlight a particular aspect or element of the distinction that we
are attempting to communicate or to grasp.
(continued on next slide)

 And in therapy, as opposed perhaps to in literature or poetry, it would seem
sensible to evaluate a ‘metaphor’ pragmatically, considering and reflecting on
what the effect on me as the worker is of describing things in any particular way.
And when I focus on the effects of the ‘resistance’ metaphor, I find that those
effects are generally unhelpful, leading almost inevitably to a conflictual model for
therapy, a conflictual way of describing and conceptualising the interaction
between client and therapist. As Steve writes “From the earliest days, 20th-
century psychotherapy has most often been described as a contest . . . The contest
was this: The therapist (for change) had joined battle against the client's resistance
(a force against change). Once the therapist "won" this contest, the client was no
longer seen as resistant, and there was a "cure"; the problem was solved. (p 13)”
Accepting Steve’s invitation and developing a ‘cooperating’ model has proved, for
me, altogether more fruitful.

BRIEFReferences
 de Shazer, Steve (1982) Patterns of Brief Family Therapy: an
ecosystemic approach. New York: Guildford.
 de Shazer, Steve (1985) Keys to Solution in Brief Therapy.
New York: Norton.
 de Shazer, Steve (1988) Clues: Investigating Solutions in Brief
Therapy. New York: Norton.
 de Shazer, Steve (1990) "Learning Edge“: AAMFT tape
 de Shazer, Steve (1991) Putting Difference to Work. New
York: Norton.
 Miller, G., de Shazer, S. (1998) Emotions in Solution-Focused
Theapy: a Re-examination. Family Process. Vol 39 No 1

BRIEFBRIEF
 BRIEF, established in 1989, is the UK’s longest established
Solution Focused training, consulting and practice
organisation. Situated in the heart of the City of London our
work has taken us to all parts of the UK, across the whole of
Europe and indeed further afield to Australia, Singapore,
Thailand, Abu Dhabi and to the USA and Canada.
 Inspired by de Shazer and his emphasis on developing the
approach through a constant observation of sessions and
what works even better, BRIEF has remained at the forefront
of developments in the model and is recognised as a world
leader in the approach.
 Find out more about BRIEF and its work and programmes at
www.brief.org.uk

BRIEFSome useful links
 Chris Iveson article freely available on-line
http://apt.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/8/2/149
 BRIEF Practice Notes
http://www.brief.org.uk/practice-notes.php
 BRIEF FAQ’s
http://www.brief.org.uk/faq.php
 Training opportunities
http://www.brief.org.uk
 International discussion list
http://sikt.nu/enginstrsft.html
 SF Research summary
http://www.solutionsdoc.co.uk/sft.html
 BRIEF Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/BRIEF.SolutionFocus
 BRIEF Twitter feed
https://twitter.com/briefsolutions

BRIEF
Brief Coaching with
Children and Young People:
A Solution Focused
Approach
Harvey Ratner, Denise Yusuf
Routledge: 2015
‘For readers new to the Solution Focused way of
working, this text offers an accessible, user-friendly,
yet comprehensive guide to having solution-building
conversations. For readers already familiar with the
Solution Focused approach, this book offers REAL,
practical advice on the HOW of having Solution
Focused conversations with children and adolescents.’
Michael Durrant

BRIEF
Evan George
© BRIEF 2016 The ‘BRIEF reflections’ in this
slideshow were authored by Evan George on behalf of
BRIEF. They are and remain the intellectual property
of BRIEF. They cannot be used for commercial
purposes without the permission of the copyright
holder/owner.
BRIEF
7 – 8 Newbury St.
London EC1A 7HU UK
+44 (0)20 7600 3366 tel.
evangeorge@brief.org.uk
www.brief.org.uk
http://www.facebook.com/BRIEF.SolutionFocus

Solution Focused Brief Therapy, Steve de Shazer and BRIEF

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