It is over thirty years now since I started introducing people to the Solution Focused approach, indeed it will I think be 35 years next year. That is a very long time and during that time the approach has changed hugely and BRIEF has been at the heart of many of those changes – it has been a privilege. However in addition it has been so pleasurable, so much fun to spend so much time introducing people to a way of working that they really like. I often talk about falling in love with the approach when I first came across it in 1987 and describe my relationship with the model as a passion that has lasted by far the greater part of my working life. And that is an experience, well the falling in love anyway, that many of those who come on our courses also share.
So what is it that people seem to love? I personally doubt that it is the questions that we ask. Now of course the questions that we ask are great, they work, they make a difference and they have been ‘honed’ over the years. But does anyone really ‘fall in love’ with an exception question, does anyone, apart from our colleague Harvey, truly feel passionate about the scale question? I doubt it. What I think that people fall in love with is an attitude towards clients that is implicit. Making the choice to believe in our clients’ capacity to change, choosing to view our clients as competent, regarding our clients as the experts in their own lives, choosing to assume motivation and banishing the concept of ‘resistance’ from our thinking are all hugely impactful upon the manner in which we interact with people. Back in 1952 Don Jackson a core team member at the Mental Research Institute (MRI) wrote “It seems to be difficult for most persons in our culture to give credence to the idea that the individual does the best he (sic) can at any given moment. Why should it be otherwise, when we all would rather be comfortable than in distress? The terms “lazy,” “stubborn,” “no will power” are not merely descriptive, but imply moral censure and unspoken “he (sic) could do better if he wanted to.”” The ‘moral censure’ to which Jackson refers has struck me as not infrequently implicit in clinical discussions and this I think is recognised by many and leaves many professionals instinctively uncomfortable. Most workers actually prefer to think about their clients in the way that we do in the Solution Focused world and our model gives them permission, invites them to appreciate that ‘resistance’ is not real, it is merely a way that workers choose to describe certain patterns of interaction. We can, as Don Jackson suggests, choose to assume that people are giving of their best at all times and see it is our responsibility to find a way of working with, of cooperating with, their best. For many ‘meeting’ the Solution Focused approach occasions a huge sigh of relief and for some that relief turns into a 35 year love affair.
Jackson, Donald. (1952) The Relationship of the Referring Physician to the Psychiatrist. California Medicine; San Francisco Vol. 76, Issue 6, (Jun 1952): 391.
Evan George
London
23rd June 2024
