ABSTRACT
Dominant practice models for social work were originally developed and intended for work with voluntary clients. The professional literature indicates that use of these models with involuntary clients often alienates rather than engages. This article describes the use of solution-focused interviewing as a way to engage involuntary and mandated clients. A conversation with a court-ordered client is presented and analyzed to demonstrate how practitioners can begin the co-construction of cooperation with mandated clients through adopting a not-knowing posture, focusing on and amplifying what clients want and client strengths and successes, and asking relationship questions to generate possibilities for change specific to the mandated context. The ethical implications of this noncoercive, nonconfrontational approach are addressed, along with its implications for a view of how clients change.
Subject(s)
Communication , Patient Participation , Professional Competence , Professional-Patient Relations , Social Work/methods , Adult , Ethics, Professional , Female , Humans , Interviews as Topic , Social Work/standards , Social Work, Psychiatric/methods , United StatesABSTRACT
The last decade has seen a dramatic increase in the literature addressing family therapy training and supervision (Liddle, Breunlin, & Schwartz, 1988; Morris & Chenail, 1995; Selekman & Todd, 1995; Thomas, 1994). Most of this literature, however, focuses on theory rather than practice. This paper presents a study of solution-focused therapy's model of supervision, which we have labeled focused supervision. This supervisory process is conceptualized as a conversation during which supervisor and supervisee engage in a dialogue that mutually shapes the meaning of the experience. This study attends to the actual words spoken and utilizes recursive frame analysis to get closer to the talk of a focused supervisory session.
Subject(s)
Family Therapy/education , HumansABSTRACT
The purpose of this essay is to develop a way to look at doing therapy based on (a) Wittgenstein's concept of "language game"; (b) the relationship between Wittgenstein's "private language" argument, language games, and constructivism; and (c) post-structural thinking about language, how therapy works within language, and how language works within therapy. Case material is used to illustrate the usefulness of this approach.
ABSTRACT
This article describes the form of brief therapy developed at the Brief Family Therapy Center. We have chosen a title similar to Weakland, Fisch, Watzlawick, and Bodin's classic paper, "Brief Therapy: Focused Problem Resolution" (20) to emphasize our view that there is a conceptual relationship and a developmental connection between the points of view expressed in the two papers.
