ABSTRACT
Early in my career I studied strategic family therapy, receiving advanced training with Jay Haley (1977, 1980) and Cloé Madanes (1981,1984). They, of course, were influenced by the psychiatrist Milton Erickson (1980; also see Goldfield, 1994; Haley, 1973, 1985), who advocated that clinicians accept and “utilize” their patients’ symptoms; I went on to study Ericksonian approaches with Jeff Zeig and Stephen Gilligan (see Goldfield, 1994, 2003). I also absorbed ideas from the Mental Research Institute (MRI: Watzlawick, Weakland, & Fisch, 1974; Fisch, Weakland, & Segal, 1982) about positive feedback loops, unsuccessful attempted solutions, and second-order change; as well as concepts from Salvador Minuchin (1976; Minuchin, Rosman, & Baker, 1978) about hierarchies and family structure. Later, I was also influenced by the competence-emphasizing ideas of solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT: de Shazer, 1985, 1988; Berg, 1994) and the re-storying concepts of narrative therapy (White & Epston, 1990; see Goldfield, 1993, 1998a, 1998b, 2013; Ronch & Goldfield, 2003).
