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The Origin of the Solution-Focused Approach

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The Origin of the Solution-Focused Approach International Journal of Solution-Focused Practices Copyright © 2013 by the Author. By virtue of publication in IJSFP, 2013, Vol. 1, No. 1, 10-17 this article is free to use with proper attribution in educational and DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14335/ijsfp.v1i1.10 other non-commercial settings. ISSN 2001-5453 (Print) ISSN 2001-6980 (Online) www.ijsfp.com The Origin of the Solution-Focused Approach Coert F. Visser Psychologist doctorandus and master in management consultancy Abstract The solution-focused approach to therapy and coaching has its roots in the work done by therapists in the second half of the twentieth century. This article discusses some important precursors, such as Milton Erickson and the Mental Research Institute. Further, it shows how the members of the Brief Family Therapy Center, led by Insoo Kim Berg and Steve de Shazer, developed the core of the solution-focused approach in the 1980s. Key concepts and publications are discussed and a description is given of how the team members worked together closely to find out what works in therapy. Keywords: solution-focused, BFTC, solution-focused history, de Shazer, Berg The solution-focused approach is now an established so that it could be solved. Causes were thought to be hidden psychotherapy and coaching approach for which there is a away deep in the psyche of the patient and were often good evidence base (Franklin, Trepper, Gingerich, & related to unresolved problems in early childhood McCollum, 2011; Gingerich & Peterson, 2013). Both (Seligman, 1990). Furthermore, patients were generally solution-focused interventions such as the miracle question, thought to resist treatment unconsciously. What patients scaling questions, coping questions, and exception-seeking directly told about their problems and goals, therefore, had questions, and solution-focused assumptions, such as that to be taken with a pinch of salt. The most useful information there are always exceptions to problems and that clients was thought to be information that trickled through from the already have solutions to their problems, are now relatively unconscious. To obtain that information, psychotherapists well known among therapists and coaches. The aim of this used techniques like dream analysis and interpretation, article is to show that, while the roots of many of these hypnosis, drugs, and different kinds of projective practices go back to the 1950s or thereabouts, the real techniques. hotbed of these innovations was a think tank called the Brief Psychotherapy usually took a long time and did not tend Family Therapy Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (US), to be very pragmatic and goal-oriented. A funny parody which, in a burst of collective creativity led by the illustrating this is a scene from the movie Annie Hall by innovative therapists Insoo Kim Berg and Steve de Shazer, Woody Allen: created the core of the solution-focused approach in the first half of the 1980s. Woody Allen plays Alvey Singer (…) who tells his girlfriend Annie he has been in therapy for thirteen years. Yet it is clear he still has many problems. Precursors to the Solution-Focused Approach Annie asks, surprised, why there is little improvement after so much therapy. Alvey responds During the middle of the previous century, change was that he intends to give it fifteen years, and if he has in the air. This was also the case in the profession of not gotten any results by then, he is going to visit psychotherapy. Many psychotherapists were dissatisfied Lourdes. (O’Hanlon, 2000, p. 2) with traditional views on psychotherapy. Since its emergence as a discipline, the dominant view had been that Halfway through the previous century, several therapists psychotherapy had to focus on problems and problem causes were looking for ways to make therapy briefer, more goal- (Walter & Peller, 2000). The therapist was seen as the expert oriented, and more pragmatic. The dominance of who would expose the nature and the causes of the problem behaviorism within psychology played a critical role in this This article was published September 16, 2013. Coert F. Visser is a psychologist doctorandus with a master degree in management consultancy. Please send correspondence concerning this article via: www.solutionfocusedchange.com VISSER (see, for instance, Skinner, 1938 and Watson, 1913). However, Bateson’s greatest contribution to solution- Behaviorism had dissociated itself from psychoanalysis and focused therapy may well be that he started The Bateson focused on intervening in concrete, observable behaviors. Project (Cade, 2007). This was a communications research Albert Ellis was a well-known therapist who developed a project in which researchers like John Weakland, Jay Haley, more pragmatic form of therapy, rational emotive therapy and William Fry observed and analyzed videotapes of (RET; Ellis, 1962). Within this form of therapy, problems famous therapists like Milton Erickson and Don Jackson. were thought to be maintained by irrational beliefs of the This project formed the basis of the Mental Research client. By identifying and then replacing these irrational Institute and has enabled the work of Erickson to acquire a beliefs with more rational ones, the problem could be large audience and influence. solved. The ideas on pragmatism that William James (1907) had formulated decades earlier had regained popularity both in science and in society, and were another source of The Mental Research Institute influence to many therapists of that time. The pragmatists suggested shifting the emphasis from trying to explain and The Mental Research Institute (MRI) has played a vital predict truth to identifying and using what works. James role in the development of the solution-focused approach. At argued that people are creators of reality. This way of the MRI in Palo Alto, California, which was founded in thinking certainly played a role in the work of another 1958 by Don Jackson, researchers and therapists like Jay pioneering therapist. Haley, Paul Watzlawick, John Weakland, Richard Fisch, and Janet Beavin developed innovative approaches to therapy (Weakland, Fisch, Watzlawick, & Bodin, 1974). Milton Erickson Within the MRI, Fisch, Weakland, and Watzlawick founded the Brief Therapy Center in 1966 (Cade, 2007). The This pioneering therapist was Milton Erickson. He was therapists within this center developed a briefer, more goal- an American psychiatrist who had quite a few unorthodox oriented and pragmatic approach to therapy. They viewed ideas about therapy, which he used successfully (Erickson, the person who came for therapy not as a patient but rather 1980; Erickson & Rossi, 1979; Rosen, 1982). We now know as a client or even a customer (Haley, 1976, 1980). They that many of his ideas pointed forward to the principles of took what the client said very seriously, which meant that the solution-focused approach. Erickson did not believe in they focused on the problem that the client presented. diagnostic labels and strongly believed in the power of Previously, it had primarily been the therapist who people to solve their own problems. He was convinced that determined what the topic of the conversation should be. therapy often did not need to take long and believed that a Further, the MRI therapists believed it was not necessary to small change by the client was often enough to set a process talk extensively about the childhood of the client and about of larger change in motion. Erickson also used paradoxical any underlying problem causes. They believed that the techniques such as prescription of the symptoms. reasons for the current problems existed in the here-and-now Characteristic of his approach was that he used whatever and that solutions could be found in the present, too. Their was there in the context of the client: each seemingly logic was that if the client has a problem, he or she must be coincidental feature or event in the life of the client could doing something wrong now: He or she must inadvertently turn out to be part of the solution. do something which maintains the problem. The goal of In a typical illustration of how Erickson viewed life, he therapy became to find out what the client does wrong and once said the fact that he had had polio at age 17, which to convince him or her to stop doing this and to replace it totally paralyzed him, had been an important advantage to with some other, more effective behavior. him. The reason he said this was that he was convinced it had helped him to become very good at observing other people. Instead of complaining about his situation, he The Birth of the Solution-Focused Approach accepted it and turned it into an advantage. He is said to have conquered his paralysis later by teaching himself step In the 1960s, Insoo Kim Berg, a young American by step to move again. By the way, besides having been therapist of Asian origin, was, like quite a few other paralyzed, Erickson is said to have had quite a few other therapists, was dissatisfied with the traditional way of doing limitations: he was colorblind, dyslexic, tone deaf, and therapy. She felt it did not work well. Looking back on this arrhythmic (Cade, 2007). period in 2004, she said: Gregory Bateson was another influence on the solution- focused approach. He was an English anthropologist, the son I realized: “This doesn't work.” And that was quite of the famous geneticist William Bateson, and was married something! You must know, I had a typical Asian to the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead. Bateson girl background: very obedient. I was sent to thought and wrote about systems theory and cybernetics finishing high school in Korea, the type of school (Bateson, 1972, 1979). One of his influences on the that teaches you to be a good housewife. And my development of the solution-focused approach was his view mother’s main mission had been to have me married that the social system in which people function is of great into a nice family.
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