ABSTRACT
All the models in this section are influenced by both Erickson and Bateson. However, they balance that influence in different ways. MRI therapists put considerable emphasis on embracing the client’s reality (Chapter 29) and see that embrace as in itself therapeutic. It is from within that reality that the MRI therapist suggests a qualitatively different type of solution behavior. From the perspective of SFBT, the therapist is comfortable shifting the client’s reality from the presence of the problem to the absence of the problem (Chapter 30). The therapist then builds on the patterns of behavior that sustain the absence of the problem (the exception). The Milan therapist makes overt the ways in which the supposed problem is actually a solution and plays with that different perspective, traditionally through a message from the team or, less traditionally, as in Rhodes’s chapter for this book, with a playful intervention (Chapter 31). While these differences in approach are important, it is also important to note what the models in this group share. In this respect, it is illustrative to note the influence of hypnotherapy on all these models (Chapter 28).
