T is for tasks – a draft.

End of session homework tasks were central to the early development of the Solution Focused approach, and the early writings of both Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg are full of references to ‘tasks’ or ‘homework tasks’. The team’s key early paper ‘Brief Therapy: Focused Solution Development’ (de Shazer et al., 1986) stresses that the central purpose of the ‘Intermission – Consultation Break’ is the ‘Intervention design’ and they refer to the need to ‘Decide what will fit for the particular client(s), i.e. which task, based on which variable . . . , will the client(s) most likely accept and perform. What will make sense to the particular client(s)?’. Indeed in de Shazer’s work a significant part of the interview is focused on asking questions which will help in the ‘design’ of the end of session intervention or task. The task was an intrinsic part of the work as is clear in Clues: ‘intervention design can be seen to actually begin during the conversation between the therapist and the client, and the therapist needs to pave the way for the task assignment during the interview by focusing on change talk. Searching for exceptions and defining how to know when the problem is solved are two of the techniques designed to elicit and promote change talk. The effectiveness of a well designed task depends, at least in part, on how logical and reasonable it seems to the client, and this logic is built up through talking about change during the session’ (de Shazer, 1988).  Here de Shazer appears to be implying that engaging the client in ‘change talk’ is intended to serve the purpose of effective ‘task assignment’. The task is viewed as pre-eminent and the engaging in ‘change talk’ is framed as secondary, as serving the process of effective task assignment.

However, elsewhere in the Milwaukee team’s writings and teachings the position appears more nuanced, less clear cut. For example Berg and Miller, in Working with the Problem Drinker, and writing about the ‘interviewing and the homework task components’  state ‘our current belief is that all solution-focused interventions, both the interviewing and the homework task components, are designed to elicit, trigger, and repeat exceptions the client generates . . . Frequently, the sheer act of identifying what the goals are can be tremendously therapeutic’ (Berg and Miller, 1992, pp 94 – 95).  Indeed de Shazer in a teaching tape, Learning Edge, dated 1990 says ‘“ . . . 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.” Where does this leave the role of tasks we might well ask. And returning to de Shazer’s earlier book Keys, de Shazer describes a surprising discovery, a ‘shock’, ‘we also found that accepting nonperformance (of an assigned task) as a message about the client's way of doing things (rather than as a sign of “resistance”) allowed us to develop a cooperating relationship with clients which might not include task assignments. This was a shock to us because we had assumed that tasks were almost always necessary to achieve behavioural change’ (de Shazer, 1985, p 21). And in his posthumously published book, More than Miracles, we find the following ‘experiments and homework assignments. While many models of psychotherapy use intersession homework assignments to solidify changes begun during therapy, most of the time the homework is assigned by the therapist. In SFBT, therapists frequently end the session by suggesting a possible experiment for the client to try between sessions if they so choose. These experiments are based on something the client is already doing (exceptions), thinking, feeling, etc. that is heading them in the direction of their goal. Alternately, homework is sometimes designed by the client’  (de Shazer et al., 2007 p11).

Reflecting on these excerpts from the Milwaukee team’s work we seem to find a number of contradictory positions:
Tasks are primary or maybe they are not
Tasks are necessary or maybe they are not
Tasks are designed by the team or maybe by the client.
There is not even agreement on what ‘tasks’ should be called. Whilst the word ‘task’ predominates it is used alongside a range of others with little apparent attempt at purposeful distinction. For example the de Shazer team write ‘Clues are focused therapeutic suggestions, tasks, or directives about other sorts of things that the clients might do that will likely be good for them and will lead in the direction of solution’ (de Shazer et al., 1986). And in addition to references to ‘tasks’, ‘homework tasks’, ‘suggestions’, ‘directives’, ‘clues’, ‘interventions’ we find the use of the term ‘experiment’. Given the lack of a clear position in the Milwaukee output, teams and practitioners around the world, adopting the Solution Focused approach, can with justification make up their own minds about the place of tasks in their practice.

At BRIEF in London the first shift in our thinking was to drop the terms ‘task’ and ‘homework’ out of our practice and out of our thinking. Both the words task and homework have inherently unpleasant, noxious connotations. A frequently cited synonym for task is ‘chore’ and it surely goes without saying that there are few children who grow up welcoming and enjoying homework. Furthermore both terms imply hierarchy. Only someone in a more powerful position can give homework or prescribe a task to someone in a less powerful position, and of course we all know what happens when homework is not completed - trouble. So we adopted the term ‘suggestion’ from de Shazer and colleagues. Suggestions cannot be prescribed, they cannot be imposed, they can only be offered, and if the client does nothing with an offered suggestion it was easier for us to turn the gaze onto ourselves and to question the appropriateness of the suggestion that we had offered rather than blaming the client. This suited us and our developing practice better. Having made the shift we noted that increasingly, the only suggestion that we offered was, one way or another, to invite the client to ‘watch out for signs of change’, whilst typically prefacing, whatever we said, with ‘what you might like to do’ and ‘don’t worry if you forget or you have too much on your plate or if it does not make sense’. Suggestions were placed in the control of the client and clients would make of them what they wished. Even more recently we have come to question the necessity for any sort of suggestion at all even though the form that this questioning of necessity has taken has varied. Chris Iveson might, at times, finish a session with a statement ‘I’m all out of questions’ followed with another question ‘do you want another session’. Evan, having negotiated with clients their follow-up preferences, says to those who do wish to return something along these lines  ‘perhaps I could just warn you – when you come back the very first question that I will ask you is ‘what’s been better?’ and so if you watch out for better between now and next time it will make your next session easier for you – but it is not up to me to boss you about!’. Most people smile at this point. Evan refers to this ending as a ‘friendly heads up’ or ‘the benevolent warning’.

In summary we have seen, over a period of approximately 30 years, the end of session ‘homework task’ retreat from a position of centrality in most Solution Focused practice towards invisibility, towards insignificance, in the practice of some and of course it is the interviewing process that has taken its place. The interview is the intervention. For those of us who take this position it is the client hearing their own answers to the questions asked that makes the difference.

 

Berg, Insoo Kim and Miller, Scott (1992) Working with the Problem Drinker: a solution focused approach. New York: Norton.
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 , S. (1990) Learning Edge. AAMFT tape
de Shazer, S., Kim Berg, I., Lipchik, E., Nunnally, E., Molnar, A., Gingerich, W., Weiner Davis, M. (1986) Brief Therapy: Focused Solution Development. Family Process 25:207-221.
de Shazer, Steve, Dolan, Yvonne, Korman, Harry, Trepper, Terry, MacCollum, Eric and Berg, Insoo Kim (2007) More Then Miracles: the state of the art of solution focused therapy. New York: Haworth.

Evan George
London
06 April 2025