ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how clients typically express their therapeutic goals regarding their target problems. It offers the client feedback as elsewhere, regarding the problematic nature of their goal before negotiating a goal based on this feedback. When people discuss their problems in therapy they talk about their disturbed responses to situations they find problematic. A client’s target problem may be centred on their relationship with another person or group of people, and if so their goal may be to change the other. The best time for the client to influence another person for the better, is when they are in a constructive frame of mind rather than a disturbed one. A client sometimes nominates a goal, which, in Law and J. Jacob’s terms, is ‘unacceptable’. Having selected a target problem and put it in its general and specific context, it is necessary to engage with the client in the process of understanding the nature of the problem.
