ABSTRACT
One well-known game-planning procedure practiced in psychotherapeutic circles, especially in the UK, is what's called formulation. A helper thinks about the person she's helping and formulates her thoughts, often in a narrative way by writing out what her client is presenting, what she, the helper, thinks is going on, and what she thinks might help. Since formulation is a kind of overarching structure for tailoring our knowledge and evidence to the individual, it is compatible with a number of different therapeutic approaches. A helper could use whatever language she wanted to use, making sure to indicate where her language came from: that is, in addition to a long list of everyday inferences there might be also long lists of Jungian inferences, existential inferences, and so on. The life formulation model would go a long way toward providing a helper with a conceptual framework that honors the richness of life and the naturalness of distress.
