ABSTRACT
In this technological age, few would dispute that scientific knowledge has been advancing at a remarkable rate. Yet how institutionalized theories and concepts evolve and transform is rarely clear. This is especially true in the field of psychology. It seems that once a psychotherapy theoretical orientation has been implanted in an organization it is extremely difficult to alter it or add a new innovative method in conjunction to it. It is particularly difficult if the proposed new theoretical orientation is based on vastly different premises and assumptions than mainstream psychotherapy such as Brief Strategic Therapy (Watziawick, Weakland, and Fisch, 1974; Fisch, Weakland, Segal, 1982). Brief Strategic Therapy as practiced at the Mental Research Institute (MRI) has been applied to many settings by numerous theorists and therapists oftentimes with some difficulty. However, despite much verbal discussion about the prevalence of such difficulties, the literature concerning how such an innovative method can be implemented in these diverse settings is quite sparse. This article is intended to contribute to the discussion of this important process. I will attempt to outline some of the difficulties I have faced in implementing a Brief Strategic Therapy approach to a particular community mental health setting and some basic principles that I have found to be of some significance in this process. The agency in discussion is a psychiatric residential/daytreatment facility. There are unique difficulties presented by the particular characteristics of residential and daytreatment settings which offer a fonnidable challenge above and beyond the more typical outpatient setting. In addition, since much of psychotherapy theory is based on individual or family therapy within an outpatient setting, adapting a theory (including Brief Strategic Therapy) to a residential/daytreatment setting requires some innovation. There are also a number of difficulties one faces in implementing a novel clinical approach in any agency. A brief discussion of these general issues should provide a foundation for the more specific issues related to the implementation of the Brief Strategic method to a residentialldaytreatment center.
