P is for Preferred Future (part 2)

It is a truth that should perhaps be more universally acknowledged that a detailed description of a preferred future must be in want of a structure. So might Jane Austen have written should she have been contemplating the process underpinning the construction of Solution Focused conversations. Of course, given that 2025 is the 250th anniversary of her birth such a prospect, albeit intriguing, must remain beyond the realms of possibility except perhaps in the world of AI.

 

When Chris Iveson, Harvey Ratner and I first met Steve de Shazer in 1990 and had the opportunity to observe his work, both recorded and live at first hand, we noticed that the responses that he elicited from his use of the miracle question were markedly ‘broad brush’; there was notably little detail. Of course at this time the main focus of a first session would be on exceptions and the development and delivery of an end of session intervention. As exceptions and ‘homework tasks’ (de Shazer et al., 1986) have faded in significance from Solution Focused first sessions, a detailed description of a preferred future has become more central and more significant taking up, in my practice, more than half of the time available. This extension of focus requires that thought be given to structure; how might we find ways of organising such an extended ‘intervention’. It seems to me that there are (at least) three complementary ways of structuring the description.

 

1. Time-line (Chris Iveson) (1). The timeline structure can best be initiated using a Tomorrow Question (Ratner et al., 2012) ‘If you woke up tomorrow to discover that (your best hopes were all happening) what is the very first thing that you might notice?’. In response it is not unusual for the client to initiate the description of difference at the point that the problem which has been bothering them typically first manifests itself, for instance ‘I’d get to work on time’. The client despite having been invited to specify their ‘best hopes’ is still in problem-solving mode. I can imagine my colleague Chris at this point smiling and responding with ‘hang on a minute – you haven’t even got out of bed yet – what is the very first thing that you notice different – perhaps even before you open your eyes – on a (best hopes happening) sort of day?’. We are interested not in how the ’best hopes happening’ impacts their problem but on how the ‘best hopes happening’ transforms their life. It is the transformed life that is the focus, a description of a life within which the problem has no place. When slowed down in this way it is not unusual for people to respond with ‘I’d feel like getting up, I’d be looking forward to the day’ and on we go inviting them to describe the transformation in each and every moment of tomorrow, the getting up, the making breakfast (or not), the good-bye to those with whom they live, the journey to work, the arrival at their destination (which might be on time) and so on through to their arrival at home, their evening and their good night converstion with their partner (perhaps). And at each point we are interested in the best-hopes-transformed-differences. What is different is the key focus; waking up happy, for instance, potentially changes everything.

 

2. Other person- perspectives. Whilst the time-line structure more often than not works well and offers us a clear way to organise the eliciting of difference an alternative is to invite detail through the introduction of a range of alternate perspectives. ‘Who’ we might ask ‘will be the first person to notice (the best hopes happening)?’ and ‘what will be their unique way of noticing?’. Asking ‘who else might notice?’ invites a different set of noticings since our different relationships with those around us ensure that the client’s answers have a good chance of reflecting those different relationships; a child will notice very different things from a partner and indeed from a parent. We might ask’ who will be most pleased to notice? or ‘who will be most surprised to notice?’ or indeed ‘least surprised to notice?’ and each of these differences are likely to serve the purpose of supporting the emergence of an increasingly finely textured rich description of a daily living as transformed by the presence of the best hopes.

 

3. Multiple contexts. The third generic way of eliciting a detailed description is to invite the client to describe difference in the wide range of contexts of their life. How will the changes show at home, at work, at college, at the gym and so on. ‘Where’ we might ask ‘could the (best hopes happening) show up first?’. We could leave the question open-ended or we could close it a little by offering alternatives ‘where do you think that the (best hopes happening) might show up first, at home or at school?’. If the client responds with ‘school’ then we can invite the client to consider differences in the class-room, in the play-ground, in their favourite lesson, in their least favourite lesson, on the way to school, on the way home and so on. Of course if a young person were to answer ‘school’ then we can switch to other person perspective questions within the school context, teachers, class-mates, best friend, year-head, head-teacher, an enormous array of possibilities for describing difference.

 

These three different ‘structures’, which can of course be inter-woven, are sufficient to support, to scaffold a conversation that can be maintained for the whole of a first session if required with each emergent difference a possibility for action and a potential marker, when noticed in fact, that change is indeed happening.

 

(1) I always credit Chris Iveson for the 'time-line' approach even though many since have followed his practice example.

 

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.

 

Evan George

London

23rd February 2025.