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8/9/2019 Systems and Solutions - The Discourses of Brief Therapy.pdf
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SYSTEMS AND SOLUTIONS:
THE
DISCOURSES
OF
BRIEF THERAPY
Gale Miller
ABSTRACTS
The author describes how brief therapy has evolved in
the past 10 to 15 years from ecosystemic to solution-focused brief
therapy. SFBT is characterized as a radically constructivist approach
to
personal problems which emphasizes how troubles and solutions
are socially constructed
realities.
KEY WORDS:
ecosystemic therapy; solution-focused brief therapy.
5
Contemporary Family Therapy, 19 1),
March 1997
®
1997 Human Sciences
Press,
Inc.
Gale Miller, is with the Department of Social and Cultural Sciences, Marquette, University,
PO
Box 1881, Milwaukee, WI 53201-1881. E-mail:
Let
me introduce myself. I am a sociologist who has devoted most
of his career to such classically academic concerns as writing and
teaching about social theory based
on my own and others' research.
While my research requires that I get involved with the people
that
I
study,
my
involvement
is not that of a
participant.
I
observe what
others do, ask
them
to
explain their actions,
and
sometimes tape
re-
cord
their interactions.
My
job, as I see it, is not to critique the people
who
grant me the opportunity to observe them as they go about their
everyday lives. They—not I—are
the
experts
on the
professional sig-
nificance
of their
activities,
including whether they are doing them
properly. My contribution involves describing and commenting on
what
I see
from
the
perspective
of a
naive outsider.
My
role might
be
characterized as acting like a member of a
friendly
but
foreign
culture.
What
follows are some of my impressions about how brief ther-
apy has changed since the mid-1980s when I first encountered
this
approach
to solving personal problems at the Brief Family Therapy
Center (BFTC). I became involved with the center at the behest of the
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CONTEMPORARY
FAMILY THERAPY
staff who
stated
that
they wished to be evaluated
from
a qualitative
standpoint. Prior studies of them had used quantitative procedures
that they considered useful, but unable to get at some important
aspects of their work. Thus, I was invited to meet with the
staff.
I
started observing at the clinic a few months after this meeting, and
have—to varying degrees—been studying
the
staff's
activities
ever
since, more than 12 years now.
PERSPECTIVE AND
ORG NIZ TION
OF THE ESS Y
In this paper, I
discuss
some of the most important changes that
have
taken place
in
brief therapy
in the
last
10 to 15
years.
I find it
useful
to describe the changes as a movement from ecosystemic to
solution-focused brief therapy.
The
former approach builds
on
themes
in Milton Erickson's (Erickson, Rossi, & Rossi, 1976) uncommon ther-
apy and the systems approach of the Mental Research
Institute
(Watzlawick, Weakland, &
Fisch,
1974). It emphasizes how
clients'
lives
and
troubles
are
embedded
in
social systems that must
be
changed if the
troubles
are to be
remedied. Solution-focused therapy,
on
the other hand, is a radically constructivist approach to personal
troubles which emphasizes how troubles and solutions are socially
constructed
realities
(Efran, Lukens, & Lukens,
1988).
Central to this
process is
clients'
and therapists' use of language to create troubled
and untroubled lives. That
is,
clients
use
language
to
portray their
lives
as dominated by troubles, and act in ways
that
affirm
their
por-
trayals.
Solution-focused therapists'
major
responsibility, then, is to
help their clients literally talk themselves out of
their
troubles by
encouraging them to describe
their
lives in new ways.
I further analyze these developments in brief therapy as
institu-
tional discourses made
up of
related,
but different
assumptions
and
concerns
about social reality, vocabularies for depicting it, and inter-
action patterns
(Miller,
1994). For example, ecosystemic brief therapy
assumes that diverse aspects of clients' lives are interconnected such
that a change in one part of clients' lives may initiate changes in
other parts of their lives. Ecosystemic
therapists
express this and re-
lated assumptions by using a systems vocabulary in describing
their
clients' lives and troubles and in assessing how
therapists
might ap-
propriately respond to clients' troubles. The systems vocabulary in-
cludes such terms as homeostasis, double bind, and paradoxical inter-
vention.
Ecosystemic therapists and their clients enter into this
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GALE
MILLER
institutional discourse by adopting ecosystemic assumptions and
using the ecosystemic vocabulary to interactionally construct sys-
temic understandings
of
particular clients' troubles
and how
they
might be
remedied.
Ecosystemic understandings
of, and
responses
to,
clients' trou-
bles
may be
compared
and
contrasted with those constructed
by
ther-
apists and clients using the assumptions and vocabularies of alterna-
tive therapy discourses, such as the discourses of psychoanalysis,
narrative therapy, and solution-focused brief therapy. The
differences
between these
discourses have important practical implications for
therapists
and
clients because each encourages different kinds
of
therapy relationships, and is associated with different understand-
ings of social reality. Shumway (1989) analyzes
this
aspect of
institu-
tional discourse
by
comparing
it to a
dice game.
He states
that while
no one can absolutely predict what combinations of numbers will ap-
pear on any single throw of the dice, the game is organized to produce
a limited number of combinations. We also
know
that over the course
of many games, some combinations are much more likely to show up
than others. These conditions apply regardless of the hopes and
dreams
of the
players.
I discuss some of the major differences between ecosystemic and
solution-focused brief discourses in the rest of the paper. The discus-
sion focuses on their distinctive assumptions and vocabularies, and
how these discourses structure
the
reality-creating possibilities
in
therapist-client interactions. That is, how they are organized to en-
courage some (therapeutically preferred) realities, and discourage
others?
The
differing assumptions
of
ecosystemic
and solution-focused
discourse
are inextricably linked to the questions that ecosystemic
and solution-focused therapists
ask
their clients. Ecosystemic ther-
apists ask about problems and systems, whereas solution-focused
therapists
ask
about exceptions
and
miracles. Further, asking these
questions is not a matter of personal choice for ecosystemic and solu-
tion-focused
therapists. They must be asked if
either
form of therapy
is to be
done.
I begin with the basics of ecosystemic therapy discourse, and
then discuss the major assumptions and concerns of solution-focused
therapy.
I further contrast these approaches to brief therapy in later
sections
of the
paper
by
discussing three questions about ecosystemic
and solution-focused
brief therapy discourses. The questions ask, are
clients' problems and their systemic contexts
objectively
real condi-
tions, or are they linguistic constructions which clients
affirm
by in-
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CONTEMPORARY
FAMILY
THERAPY
terpreting their lives
as
saturated with troubles;
how are
therapist,
client, and team member roles and orientations organized within
these discourses;
and do
they involve distinctive orientations
to
time?
It
also bears emphasizing that while ecosystemic
and
solution-
focused brief therapy
are
different approaches
to
understanding
and
remedying personal troubles, they share some features. After all, so-
lution-focused therapy emerged from
the BFTC staff's
implementa-
tion
and
experimentation with
the
ecosystemic approach.
ECOSYSTEMIC
BRIEF THERAPY
Ecosystemic therapists assume
that
the
troubles
that
bring cli-
ents
to
therapy
are the
result
of
clients
and
others
in
their
social
systems having
become
stuck. They are temporarily unable to adapt
to
ongoing changes
in
their environments.
One
indicator that clients
are
stuck
is
their primary
focus on the
troubled aspects
of
their lives.
This
focus makes it impossible for them to interpret their lives in
positive ways. Thus, a major responsibility of ecosystemic therapists
is to help their clients use their already
developed
skills at managing
their lives
to get
unstuck. Small changes
that
disrupt clients' exist-
ing trouble-focused patterns
of
action, thought, and/or relationships
are
often sufficient
to
achieve this goal.
A major intervention strategy used by ecosystemic therapists in
getting their clients unstuck from their problems is the first session
task.
It involves asking clients to pay attention to previously ignored
aspects
of
their lives and/or
to
think about
the
positive aspects
of
their lives. The task disrupts clients' primary
focus
on their troubles
and offers them an alternative (positively oriented) framework for in-
terpreting their lives. Ecosystemic therapists
state
that one of the
reasons that their approach may be accurately
called
brief is because
the first session task is often all
that
clients need to get them started
again. Disrupting
an
interpretive pattern
is
often enough
to
create
new behavioral patterns and social relationships.
Getting clients unstuck involves, at least, three other respon-
sibilities for ecosystemic therapists. First, ecosystemic therapists
must elicit
information
from clients that they can use in developing
effective interventions into the clients' social systems, de Shazer
(1985) calls this
moving
from
complaints
to
problems. Complaints
are
vague
descriptions of troubles for which there are no solutions. Prob-
lems,
on the
other hand,
are
trouble descriptions that
are
sufficiently
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GALE MILLER
precise that solutions
to
them
can be
identified.
To say my
spouse
doesn't love me is a complaint. But to say I know my spouse doesn't
love
me because he or she doesn't
listen
when I talk is the beginning
of a problem. The latter statement suggests that the trouble involves
a
behavioral
and
maybe
an
interpretive sequence.
It
also suggests
that
the
trouble might
be
remedied
by a
change
in the
existing pat-
tern. Problems are circumstances that clients can evaluate as present
or absent
in their
lives,
and as
getting better
or
worse.
Related to ecosystemic therapists' responsibility to
elicit
problem
statements
from clients is
their
interest in mapping clients' troubles
(de Shazer, 1982). Mapping involves eliciting information
from
clients
about their social systems, thus producing social contexts for under-
standing clients' troubles
as
problems
that
recur
at
particular times,
in
particular places,
and
with particular people (Lipchik, 1986). Eco-
systemic therapists
map
their clients' troubles
by
asking
two
general
types of questions (detective and constructive questions) and the
four
subtypes that are represented in Table 1.
Detective
questions
are
intended
to
detect presently existing
situations. They ask, Why
is it a
problem
and how did it
come
about? Individual detective questions are concerned with clients'
opinions about their circumstances. An example is Why do you think
that this
is a
problem? Systemic detective questions deal with
the
relationships among persons
in
clients' social systems. Such questions
might ask, What do you think your spouse thinks about the troubled
circumstance or Who in the family is most upset about this
situa-
tion? Constructive questions are concerned with goal
setting
and so-
lutions. Thus, they are always
future
oriented. Constructive systemic
questions ask about possible
future
developments in
clients'
social
systems, such as Who do you think will notice it first when you don't
have
a
problem
any
more? Constructive individual questions,
on the
other hand,
ask
about clients' future behavior
or
perspectives
on the
future. An example is How will you
know
when this problem is
gone?
9
TABLE 1
Types
of
Ecosystemic Questioning
Detective Questions
Individual
Systemic
Constructive
Q uestions
Individual
Systemic
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CONTEMPORARY FAMILY
THERAPY
Ecosystemic
therapists' interest
in mapping their clients' troubles
is inextricably linked to
their
third
major
responsibility, developing
effective strategies for changing
clients'
social systems in positive
ways.
The
strategies must
disrupt the
troublesome sequences
in
cli-
ents'
lives, and fit with
clients'
perspectives and social systems. This
requires developing
new
approaches
to
clients' lives that
are
compati-
ble
with
clients'
perspectives and experiences, but which also recast
them
in
important ways. Ecosystemic
therapists may use a
variety
of
techniques in achieving
their
interventionist goals, including
compli-
ments, reframing techniques, and paradoxical interventions. These
are
indirect responses
to
clients' troubles (they
do not
directly chal-
lenge
clients' perspectives on
their
lives and troubles) which subvert
clients' perspectives
by
introducing
new
concerns
and
possibilities
into clients social systems
that
may
initiate
both small- and large-
scale changes.
While
ecosystemic
therapists state that effective
interventions
must
fit with their
clients'
perspectives and social systems, they
also
stress
the development of general intervention
strategies
that
will be effective
with diverse
clients and
troubles.
One
metaphor used
by
ecosystemic
therapists to
explain
the latter
goal involves describ-
ing
clients' circumstances as like a lock that needs to be opened, if
change is to happen (de Shazer, 1985). Therapists have two choices in
choosing a key to
open
the
various locks presented
by
their clients.
One
strategy
is to
search
for the
unique
key
that
fits
each
and
every
client circumstance and trouble, a strategy that promises to be both
time
and
energy consuming.
The
second,
and
more
efficient,
strategy
is to find one or a few skeleton keys that may be used to
open
sev-
eral
different
locks, such as the first session
task.
Ecosystemic thera-
pists argue that the latter strategy is preferable when possible.
BECOMING SOLUTION FOCUSED
Becoming
solution-focused
involves entering
a new
discourse
that
provides brief therapists with
new
assumptions about social reality
and
therapeutic relationships,
new
practical concerns about thera-
peutic
processes and
therapists'
responsibilities within them, and
new
strategies
for
constructing change
in clients'
lives. Thus, while
traces
of the
ecosystemic approach
are
still evident
in
solution-fo-
cused
therapy,
the
significance
of
these apparent continuities
is
dif-
ferent in
solution-focused
therapy. For example,
solution-focused
dis-
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GALE MILLER
course involves a reflexive orientation that is not associated with the
practice of ecosystemic therapy.
Therapists
adopt a
reflexive
orienta-
tion by
treating their interactions with clients
as sites for self-con-
sciously
constructing social realities, not just for describing them. In-
deed,
from a reflexive standpoint, the descriptions are themselves
reality-creating activities (Garfinkel 1967).
The reflexive emphasis in solution-focused discourse provides
therapists with opportunities to make choices about the social real-
ities that
they interactively construct with
their
clients,
and
about
how
they
are
going
to
construct them.
A major
choice
is
whether
to
stress problem definition (that is, turning complaints into problems)
or
constructing solutions to whatever problems clients might have (be
they
defined
or
undefined).
Solution-focused
therapists
prefer
to
con-
struct solutions and not
define
problems. The choice is partly practi-
cal, because solution-focused
therapists
argue that a focus on solu-
tions is the quicker route to change. But it is also related to the
solution-focused
assumption that change is an ever present aspect of
life.
Within
this
discourse, then, clients are not so much stuck on
their complaints
as
they
are
unable
to see that the
solutions
to their
problems are already present in their lives.
de Shazer (1991) offers a post-structuralist understanding of so-
lution-focused discourse in arguing for a deconstructionist perspec-
tive
on therapeutic processes and
realities.
The approach assumes
that
the
meaning
of any
reality claim lies
in the
diverse interpretations
made
about
it by
both authors (the claims-makers)
and
readers
(those
to
whom
the
claims
are
directed),
de
Shazer further argues
that
therapists'
and
clients' interpretive activities
in
therapy sessions
are best described as misreadings, because there is no way in which
anyone can determine the ultimate meaning of clients descriptions of
their lives and concerns.
Viewed
as a deconstructivist process, then,
solution-focused
brief therapy involves
the
self-conscious development
of
misreadings
of clients'
lives
and
options
in
solving their troubles.
The issue is not discovering an ultimate truth, but developing effec-
tive strategies for misreading clients' lives and troubles in change-
oriented ways.
The questions asked of clients by
solution-focused therapists,
then, are designed to misread clients' lives in
solution-focused
ways.
The
questions
may be classified in four major
types: getting by,
ex-
ception,
scaling,
and
miracle questions. Getting
by
questions
em-
phasize how clients are already managing their problems, and how
they might build on their present successes in the future. Positive
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CONTEMPORARY FAMILY THERAPY
client answers to these questions give
therapists
opportunities to
compliment
clients
and to ask
clients
how they have accomplished
their
successes.
The latter
queries—which might
be
termed how
did
you do that questions—emphasize how clients already possess the
personal and social resources needed to solve their problems and com-
petently manage
their lives.
Exception
questions ask about the times when
clients'
troubles
are
less
severe or
absent
from
their
lives. They take for granted that
clients' lives are not always the same, and that change is an ever
present aspect of everyday
life
(Berg & Miller, 1992; Berg , 1994; de
Shazer, 1994). Scaling
questions ask
clients
to rate the
troublesome-
ness
of
their present circumstances
and
sometimes
to
rate
the
trou-
blesomeness of prior
times
of
their
lives. A
therapist
might ask, for
example, On a scale of zero to 10, with zero being the worst things
have ever been and 10 being when everything is
better,
where are you
today?
Scaling questions are the work horses of solution-focused therapy
because they
are
frequently asked,
and
solution-focused therapists
use them to achieve a variety of therapeutic ends. As the above exam-
ple
shows, scaling questions may be used to elicit information about
whether clients believe
their
lives are getting
better
or worse. Scaling
questions
are
also
helpful in
constructing exceptions.
For
example,
when clients
rate
other
times
of their lives as less troublesome
than
in the present, the rating provides a justification for
therapists
to ask
about the details of the previous times and how clients were able to
better
manage
their
troubles
then
(O'Hanlon
&
Weiner-Davis
1989).
Other times, solution-focused
therapists
use scaling questions to
focus on
solutions
and to
identify concrete signs
of
change, such
as by
asking
'So
what will
you (or
other people) notice about
you
when
you
have reached [a higher number on the scale]? The miracle question
asks clients
to
imagine that their lives have changed
in
desired direc-
tions
and to
describe
how
they will
know
that their lives have changed
(Berg & Miller, 1992; Berg 1994). The question can be asked in several
different
ways.
As in the following
example, some solution-focused
therapists treat
the miracle as something
that just
happens. Suppose
that one
night, while
you are
asleep, there
is a
miracle
and the
problem
that
brought you into therapy is solved. However, because you are
asleep you don't
know
that the miracle has already happened. When
you wake up in the morning, what will be different that will tell you
that this
miracle
has
taken place? (Miller
&
Berg 1992,
p. 13)
But
other
solution-focused
therapists cast the miracle
as a
thera-
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GALE MILLER
peutic
accomplishment. O'Hanlon, for example, sometimes asks his
clients,
If I
pulled
out a
magic wand
and
were able
to perform
magic
on
your situation, what will
be
happening
that is different from be-
fore?
(O'Hanlon
&
Weiner-Davis 1989,
p.
106).
However it is an-
swered, asking the miracle question often creates opportunities for
therapists to ask related solution-focused questions, such as excep-
tion, scaling, and how did you do that questions.
ARE
TROUBLES REAL?
While ecosystemic brief therapy might be interpreted as a semi-
constructivist discourse because many of its intervention strategies
assume that clients' problems are partly matters of perspective, it
clearly stops short
of the
radically constructivist assumptions
of
solu-
tion-focused
brief therapy. Ecosystemic therapists assume
that
cli-
ents' perceptual and other problems are embedded in social systems
that exist in worlds outside therapy sessions. The systems can be de-
scribed,
assessed, and changed. But they are not socially constructed
realities that only exist within the therapy interactions in which they
are talked into existence, as
solution-focused therapists
assume.
The
constructivist emphasis in ecosystemic therapy is perhaps
most evident in therapists' interest in refraining their clients' lives
and
troubles. This involves offering clients alternative understand-
ings
of
their circumstances, usually by renaming clients' troubles and/
or raising
alternative understandings of clients' lives. Ecosystemic
therapists use these techniques to assign positive meanings to
clients'
troubles. An example involves a family who came to therapy because
of the disruptiveness of one child. The interviewing therapist and
team suggested to the
family
members
that
they had a feeling
that
the child's seeming disruption was really a positive contribution to
the family but they were not sure about how it was positive. The
therapist also asked the family members to think about this alterna-
tive possibility,
and
report
on
their thoughts
at the
next session.
In
refraining their
clients' troubles, however, ecosystemic therapists
maintain their
interest
in altering clients' social systems. These sys-
tems are the primary contexts (if not causes) of clients' troubles.
Within solution-focused brief therapy discourse, on the other
hand, clients' troubles are
matters
of talk and story-telling. Solution-
focused
therapists
state that
trouble-focused stories worsen clients'
troubles when they are treated as master narratives
that
define
the
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CONTEMPORARY
FAMILY THERAPY
most important aspects
of
clients' lives
and
selves. They become self-
fulfilling prophecies which both predict that
clients'
lives will be trou-
bled
and
encourage clients
to interpret
their lives
as filled
with signs
of trouble.
By
emphasizing solutions, then, solution-focused thera-
pists
avoid stories
that
they consider
to be
part
of
clients'
problems,
and may begin to build alternative stories within which clients are
competent
and leading satisfactory lives.
Solution-focused therapists treat clients' answers to
their
ques-
tions
as
resources
for
constructing
new
stories
about
clients'
lives.
The stories blend clients' reports on aspects of
their
lives with thera-
pist generated plots which assign positive significance
to
clients'
re-
ports. They are
narrative
frameworks for constructing hopeful life
stories. Therapists'
emplotment
of
clients'
lives range
from
expres-
sions
of respect and amazement at
clients'
coping skills to stories that
describe clients' lives as improving. Further, the life stories initiated
in
solution-focused therapy
are not
designed
to be
completed texts,
but to be
lived
and
thus
continuously revised over time.
de Shazer (1991), for example, describes the case of a married
couple
who
came
to
therapy seeking
a
cure
for the
wife's nympho-
mania.
She
stated
that she had
recently developed
a
need
for sex at
least once a day or she couldn't sleep. Both the wife and husband
complained of the circumstance. She
stated
that she felt controlled by
her
compulsion,
and he
complained
of
becoming
a
stud whose only
function was to service his wife. The clients also reported at subse-
quent sessions that
the
trouble
was
getting worse.
A
significant shift
occurred, however, when
the
husband
stated
that
he
believed
that
the
problem was not sex, but a sleeping problem. The
wife
responded by
asking
the
therapist,
Do you
have
any
cures
for
insomnia?
(de
Shazer 1991,
p.
65).
de
Shazer (1991) explains
that
this shift in
focus
opened the dis-
cussion
to a
variety
of new
possibilities, such
as
that
the
problem
might really be the
wife's
new exercise regimen which started at
about the same time as her need for daily sex emerged. Equally im-
portant for solution-focused therapists, the shift in language
recast
the trouble as nonpathological (lots of normal people have sleeping
problems, whereas the language of nymphomania suggests mental ill-
ness) and made a variety of new solutions available for consideration.
The
shift
in
terminology,
in
other words, provided
the therapist and
clients
with a new theme for constructing a new story about the cli-
ents' lives
and
trouble.
This example shows how solution-focused therapists look for so-
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GALE
MILLER
lutions in
their
clients' talk. While accepting the couple's character-
ization of the problem as nymphomania, the
therapist
did not ques-
tion them about
the
causes
of the
wife's recently
increased sexual de-
sire. To do so would make nymphomania the only available definition
for the clients' problem. Indeed, the therapist orchestrated the inter-
view to facilitate the possibility of other definitions emerging,
defini-
tions
that
might be more easily solved than nymphomania. Notice,
also,
that the therapist did not
provide
the
alternative definition
for
the clients, but waited for it to emerge within the interview.
Finally,
a major
implication
of the
constructivist emphasis
in so-
lution-focused
brief therapy is
that
therapists no longer need to as-
sume
that
problems
and
their
solutions are
linked.
That
is, if clients'
troubles and the solutions to them are both produced in clients' and
therapists'
interactions, then
there
is no necessary connection be-
tween
them. They
treat
people's usual linking of them as a
matter
of
cultural convention. Indeed, solution-focused
therapists state that it
is
possible
to
solve
clients'
troubles without ever
specifying a
problem
to be solved. It is a matter of negotiation between solution-focused
therapists and clients. Sometimes they collaboratively construct prob-
lems and solutions, and other times only solutions.
One
way in which solution-focused
therapists
may encourage
their
clients
to
solve
their
problems without
defining
them
is by
ask-
ing the miracle question very early in the interview. The question
does
not
need
to specify a
concrete problem that
will
miraculously
disappear. It is
sufficient
to ask clients how
would
your
life
be differ-
ent if a miracle happened and the concerns
that
you brought here
today
went away, just like
that?
A related strategy involves asking
clients to compare their present circumstances with past times by rat-
ing them on a 10-point scale. If clients state
that
their present lives
are better than in the past, then defining a problem on
which
thera-
pists
and
clients might
work
becomes irrelevant. Rather,
solution-fo-
cused therapists
respond
by
asking
how the
clients have accomplished
the improvements, and how they might further improve their lives.
ROLES AND ORIENTATIONS
Ecosystemic
brief therapy discourse positions therapists
as
help-
ful
interveners into clients' lives
and
social systems. They
are
experts
on
problems
and
social systems
who
help their clients
become un-
stuck
from their
troubles
by
altering aspects
of
clients' social systems.
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CONTEMPORARY FAMILY THERAPY
Within solution-focused
discourse, on the other hand,
clients'
troubles
are embedded in the interactional circumstances shared by therapists
and clients. A major practical and ethical responsibility of solution-
focused therapists
is to aid clients in developing therapeutic goals and
strategies that
are mutually agreeable and achievable within the con-
text of their relationships (O'Hanlon & Weiner-Davis, 1989).
Ecosystemic and
solution-focused
brief therapy, then, involve dif-
ferent orientations to the therapy process. Ecosystemic therapy might
be described
as the
more complex
of the two
because
it
involves
two
closely
related parts, each of which is central to solving clients' trou-
bles. The ecosystemic interview is the site within which clients' com-
plaints are transformed into problems, intervention messages are
read to clients, and
therapists
inquire about the
effectiveness
of sug-
gestions made in prior therapy sessions. Equally important are the
activities
that
take place behind the mirror and out of the sight and
hearing of clients. These activities involve team members' and thera-
pists' assessments of clients' troubles and social systems, discussions
of how the
systems
might be altered to remedy the
troubles,
and de-
velopment
of the intervention messages
that
are given to clients.
The
complexities involved
in
fitting ecosystemic intervention
messages with
clients'
problems and social systems may be seen in
the extended negotiations that sometimes take place among thera-
pists
and team members about how to most appropriately respond to
clients' circumstances. Consider, for example, the
following therapist-
team discussion about how to respond to Freda's and Naomi's con-
cerns about
Jane's
unhealthy
eating
practices. Notice
the
range
of
concerns expressed by the therapist (Ther) and team members (TM1
and TM2) in this negotiation, including concern for making the inter-
vention
message consistent, selecting an appropriate word for describ-
ing Jane's situation,
and
selecting
a
task
for
Jane, Freda,
and
Naomi.
TM1: Well, (pause)
I
think, what
can I
say, that
we are
very puzzled
by someone who is so perfectionistic (pause) is so
imperfect,
so im-
perfect (pause)
in her
ability
to
take care
of
herself.
TM2:
Well,
that might be the last thing, further down, our punch line
here (pointing to the bottom of the therapist's paper on which she is
writing
the
intervention message).
Ther: That's
fine
'cause
I was
thinking
the way to go
was, it's
an
achievement
thing. Just, just say that, it that way, yeah.
TM3: Well,
I, uh,
that doesn't mesh with what
we
were saying earlier
though about, that
now
she's taking care
of
herself, (pause) She's
getting more proteins, uh, more. I think you might want to use that
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GALE MILLER
later with her, individually, you know, when you see her alone,
(pause) You're already complimenting her on the changes
she's
al-
ready made, taking better care
of
herself.
TM1: Well, we can say that we're puzzled by the changes.
Ther:
We can say
that we're puzzled
by why
she's already making
the
changes, that's
one way
around that.
. . . I'm
impressed with
the
changes.
(A telephone call for TM1 interrupts the discussion which be-
gins again when she rejoins the group.)
TM2: OK,
what
was the phrase,
(looking
at
TM1)
you had a
nice
phrase.
TM1:
OK, (to the
therapist
who is
writing)
the
team
is
wondering
why
(pause) why someone like (pause)
Jane,
who is so perfectionis-
tic, is so imperfect (pause) in her ability to take care of herself.
(pause)
And we
don't quite understand that.
Ther: So, no
task?
TM2: Well, I'd sure like to give a task.
(Discussion
turns
to several ideas for
tasks
which are rejected
as
good
ideas that might be
useful
in
later
sessions, such as
displaying Jane's imperfection for her by flushing the food that
she doesn't eat down the
toilet,
or as inappropriate because
they are too obvious, such as having
Jane's
parents' keep track
of her calorie intake.)
TM1: Listen,
why
don't
you
just
give
a
normal
task
around,
uh, her
doing what's good for herself, that they'd like to see, keep, you
know, happening.
TM2: OK, right on.
Ther:
That
they see what she does that's good for her?
TM1: Uh, huh.
Ther (writing): OK, and then everybody keeps
track
of it.
TM1: Everybody keeps track
of it.
TM2: Secretly, all three of 'em, independently and secretly keep track
of
what
she
does (pause)
that's
good
for
her.
TM1: That they like, they'd like to see, keep on, keep on, see her
continue to do.
Ther (finishes writing): OK, sounds good. (She rises and leaves the
observation room to return to the interview
room.)
The solution-focused brief therapy process, on the other hand, is
very much oriented toward the therapy interview as the primary site
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CONTEMPORARY FAMILY THERAPY
for solving clients' troubles. Asking questions about
how
clients
are
getting by
and
about exceptions
to
their troubles
are two
ways
in
which solution-focused
therapists
orient to interviews as sites for
solving clients' troubles. Further, when clients respond to these and
other solution-focused questions, there is little need for extensive
therapist-team negotiations about how to respond to clients' circum-
stances. They compliment clients
on the
positive changes reported
by
clients
as
already present
in
their lives
or on
clients' success
in
spec-
ifying new—postmiracle—lives, and recommend that clients do more
of whatever is working. These responses restate and affirm the do
more
suggestions already made by solution-
focused therapists
in
their conversations with clients. Solution-focused therapists some-
times combine compliments and do more suggestions with
tasks,
such as the
following
recommendation that the clients pay attention
to their continuing successes.
TM1:
Well, they're basically on the right
track.
They just need to
keep doing what
they're
doing. Maybe they should watch and
see that
they don't
get off the
track.
You
know, they don't want
to fall
back.
TM2: How about if we say that they should watch how they stay on
track, that's more positive.
TM1:
Yeah. OK. Tell em to keep track of how they stay on track.
Then they'll
know when
they
are
getting off track.
TIME IN
BRIEF THERAPY
Looked at one way, both ecosystemic and solution-focused brief
therapy discourses involve
a
diachronic orientation
to
time. That
is,
they assume that past, present,
and
future
are
connected
so
that
changes made in the present will have implications for clients' future
lives. They
differ,
however, in which of these time periods they em-
phasize, and how they link the present with the
future.
Ecosystemic
therapy is more present oriented than solution-focused therapy which
emphasizes the future. For ecosystemic
therapists,
clients' problems
are located in
their
present lives and social systems. Thus, most of
their
questioning
of
clients
focuses on clients'
present perceptions,
ac-
tivities, and relationships
with
others.
This is not to say
that
ecosystemic
therapists
have no
interest
in
the past or
future.
Indeed, ecosystemic therapists often ask their cli-
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GALE
MILLER
ents to compare and contrast their present circumstances with the
past, particularly by asking clients about past times when their prob-
lems were less severe
or
absent
from
their lives. This information
is
useful
to ecosystemic
therapists
and teams in formulating interven-
tion
messages designed to disrupt present troublesome patterns. Eco-
systemic
therapists
also
ask
about
the
future.
For
example, they
sometimes ask their clients to imagine
that
they are looking into a
crystal ball where they
can see their
lives after
their
problems have
passed, and to describe what they see
there.
Ecosystemic
therapists
use this technique to encourage their clients to develop positive ex-
pectations about the
future,
and to identify concrete goals fo r change.
This technique is effective, ecosystemic therapists explain, because
part
of
getting unstuck
from
one's problems involves developing new,
positive expectations about the future.
Despite their questions about the past and
future,
however, eco-
systemic
therapists treat
the
solutions
to
clients' problems
as
changes
in clients' present circumstances. They assume that changes initiated
in the present will continue into the future and potentially create far
reaching changes in clients' social systems. The
future
is something
for
ecosystemic therapists and clients to look forward to, a place that
lies down the road, not in the present. The
future
is also a somewhat
mysterious place for ecosystemic
therapists
and their clients because
they
can
never fully describe
or
predict
how
changes introduced
in the
present will affect clients' social systems in the future.
Uncertainty about the future is particularly associated with par-
adoxical
and other ecosystemic interventions which are designed to
confuse
clients, or to encourage clients to act in opposition to
part
or
all of intervention messages. The split team technique is perhaps the
most obvious example of how ecosystemic therapists encourage uncer-
tainty about the future in clients. The technique involves telling cli-
ents that members of the team are divided (or that the team and
interviewing therapist disagree) about whether or not clients' trou-
bles will get better or about how clients should respond to their trou-
bles. The clients are asked to think about the
differing
points of view,
and
to report on their thoughts at the next therapy
session.
Ecosys-
temic therapists use this technique to encourage clients to make
choices about their
future
lives and/or about how they wish to change
their social systems.
But
they
can
only guess
at
which choices clients
will
make and what the practical implications of the choices
will
be
for
clients' lives.
Solution-focused therapists, on the other hand, blur the distinc-
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CONTEMPORARY
FAMILY
THERAPY
tion
between present and
future
by encouraging
their
clients to think
of
their hopes for the future as already happening. The future is now,
although clients cannot
see it
because they
are
absorbed
in
trouble-
focused
stories. Central to
solution-focused
therapists' blurring of the
past-future
distinction is the miracle question. While
this
question is
answerable by virtually any client, answering it requires
that
clients
consider possibilities that they
are
unlikely
to
have thought about
in
some time. It is
difficult
to think about miracles when you are
focused
on your troubles.
The miracle question also asks clients
to
think about what they
want added to their lives, not just what they would like to see elimi-
nated. This, too,
is an
issue
that
many clients stop thinking about
when
they become problem-focused.
One way in
which solution-fo-
cused therapists use the miracle question, then, is to elicit concrete
goal
statements from clients about their hopes for the future and for
therapy.
The
question also makes
it
possible
for
clients
and therapists
to
separate problems
from
solutions (de Shazer, 1991, 1994). Problem
definition becomes superfluous once clients have specified
the
details
of
their
miracles.
The
relevant task
at
hand
is figuring out how the
miracle is already evident in clients' lives. Thus, solution-focused
therapists encourage participants
in
their
workshops
to ask the
mira-
cle question early in
their
conversations with clients.
A
significant
difference in
ecosystemic
and
solution-focused orien-
tations
to the relationship between the
present
and future is revealed
in what
the
miracle question does
not
ask. Unlike
the
crystal ball
technique, the miracle question does not ask clients to project them-
selves several weeks or months forward in time and then to describe
how their lives have changed. Rather, solution-focused
therapists
ask
their
clients
to imagine
that
a miracle will happen when clients are
asleep tonight
or
sometime soon.
The
clients' task
is to
discover
the
signs
that
change
has
happened without their knowing about
it.
This
phrasing
of the
question casts
the
change
as
something that just hap-
pens
(it is
beyond
the
clients' control)
and
suggests that clients must
work at recognizing that it has happened.
Put differently, the miracle question organizes the future in more
concrete and certain terms than do most ecosystemic intervention
messages. Consider,
for
example,
a
solution-focused therapy session
in which the client stated
that
one sign that her miracle had hap-
pened would be that she
would
smile more. Later in the session, and
well after
the discussion of the client's miracle, the client smiled in
responding
to a question asked by the
therapist.
The therapist asked,
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GALE MILLER
So, when
you
just smiled like that
now ... is
that what your face will
look like
at 10,
after
the
miracle? Notice that
the
therapist
did not
ask if this is what the client's face might or would look like after her
miracle,
but
will look like
at 10,
after
the
miracle.
The miracle question might be analyzed, then, as the first two
steps in the construction of
self-fulfilling
prophecies. The question en-
courages clients to assume that
their
lives will get better, and pro-
vides them with
interpretive lenses
for seeing
their
lives in new
ways. Clients' task
is to
choose
to
look
at
their lives through solution-
focused lenses.
CONCLUSION
This essay summarizes the major choices available to brief
thera-
pists
in thinking about their professional responsibilities and rela-
tionships with clients. My purpose has been to act somewhat like a
therapist for brief therapy. That is, as an outsider, I can contribute to
brief therapists' development of binocular vision (Bateson, 1979) on
their professional assumptions
and
practices. Binocular vision
in-
volves
encouraging change (in this case, clarification and insight) by
describing others' circumstances from compatible—but
different—
perspectives. As Bateson (1979, p. 68) states, it takes at least two
different
somethings
to
create
a
difference.
The
difference
at issue here is what kind of brief therapy do you
wish to practice, since it is not possible to do both ecosystemic and
solution-focused
therapy
at the
same time.
One part of me
says
that
you will chose to do ecosystemic therapy, and the other half thinks
you
will choose
the
solution-focused
alternative. But I
also wonder
if a
miracle might happen tonight, and you will wake up tomorrow with
this
issue resolved. I will have done my
part
if
this
essay helps you
make an
informed
choice between these approaches to brief therapy,
or if it
helps
you
recognize
that
your miracle
has
occurred.
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Mind and
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A solution-focused
approach.
New
York:
Norton,
de
Shazer,
S.
(1994). Words were originally magic.
New
York: Norton.
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