ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with their initial entrance into the ecosystemic language of change, and then analyzes how therapists and clients construct, elaborate on, and negotiate change. The changes of interest to ecosystemic brief therapists include those that might be attributed to their prior intervention messages, but also other developments in clients' lives. While ecosystemic brief therapists emphasize change in second and subsequent interviews, they also ask questions about clients' troubles and social systems. The responses display clients' orientations to present and prior interviews, including their orientations to past suggestions made by therapists and team members for dealing with their problems. Ecosystemic brief therapists readily accept clients' claims that their lives are improving, often expressing their approval by congratulating clients on and/or expressing amazement at their successes. Ecosystemic brief therapists' strategies for negotiating solutions with clients in second and subsequent interviews are similar to those they employ in first sessions with new clients.
