ABSTRACT
My professional world, the world of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy, is a topsy-turvy world where success still depends on trust – but on the therapist trusting the client rather than the other way around. Expertise is also crucial – however, it is the client’s expertise, not the therapist’s, that counts. Instead of the therapist understanding and solving problems, we have developed a conversational process which draws out and relies entirely on the clients’ knowledge to create new possibilities for their lives. Taking the radical position that we cannot know (or prescribe) the “right” way forward for our clients, we have to trust their knowledge and treat them as the only experts in their own lives. We do this by establishing the client’s desired outcome from our work together, not so much a goal, but a more encompassing “preferred future,” or way of living where goals and other aspirations might be realized. We elicit a detailed description of how an outcome might manifest itself in the routine of the client’s everyday life, and then trawl the past and present for the antecedents of this desired outcome. In other words, we invite clients to describe the future they are seeking and then look back from this point to discover the future’s history. It is these detailed descriptions of possible futures and successful pasts that so often lead to the rapid and lasting changes associated with this model (Gingerich & Peterson, 2013; Ratner, George, & Iveson, 2012; Shennan & Iveson, 2011).
