Solution-Focused Therapy

Paper Summary:

Solution-focused therapy is a radically constructivist approach to personal troubles which emphasizes how troubles and solutions are socially constructed realities. The paper explains that, 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 portrayals. The paper shows that 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.

From the Paper:

"Ecosystemic therapists assume that the troubles that bring clients 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' existing trouble-focused patterns of action, thought, and/or relationships are often sufficient to achieve this goal (Miller, 1997)."

More papers on Solution-Focused Therapy:

• Term Paper # 124279 : "Solution Focused Therapy"
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• Research Paper # 70245 : "Solution-Focused Group Therapy"

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