Emotions in solution-focused therapy: a re-examination.

This article re-examines whether and how emotions are an aspect of solution-focused therapy. A major theme in the article focuses on the usual ways that therapists define and discuss emotions in solution-focused and other therapies. We argue that these discussions are a source of much confusion about emotions and about solution-focused therapy, including the confusing idea that emotions are neglected in solution-focused therapy. The second major theme describes an alternative approach to these issues, one that we believe better fits with the assumptions and concerns of solution-focused therapy. The approach is based on Wittgenstein's writings about language games, private experience, and how emotions are rule-following activities. Viewed from this perspective, solution-focused therapists take account of their clients' emotions by helping clients to create new emotion rules to follow.

Have you heard the latest rumor about...? Solution-focused therapy as a rumor.

This essay treats solution-focused therapy as a rumor. Solution-focused therapy is a series of stories that members of diverse therapist communities tell one another. Our version of this rumor stresses how solution-focused therapy is a job involving language games, political relations, and ethical issues. We use this starting point to tell a story that links solution-focused therapy to Wittgenstein's philosophy of language, and to aspects of postmodernist social thought. We also discuss how solution-focused therapy is organized as a politics of possibilities.

DOING THERAPY: A POST-STRUCTURAL RE-VISION.

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.

Muddles, bewilderment, and practice theory.

"Useful distinctions in conceptual schemes lead to explanatory or descriptive metaphors that have a clear form. Muddles, on the other hand, are created when useful distinctions that could be drawn are not[,] or when an unnecessary distinction is drawn" (5, p. 71; italics omitted), or when when a useful distinction is minimized or blurred. The field of family therapy (particularly its theories), as a whole, has various muddles of each kind. The purpose of this essay is to describe some of these muddles (in the field and its theories) and to suggest that the distinctions (a) between descriptions of doing therapy that exclude the therapist and descriptions of doing therapy that include the therapist (1, 5-9, 11), (b) between explanation and description, and (c) between ideology and grounded theory, are useful, and that in de-radicalizing and minimizing these distinctions, these differences creates mayhem and muddle--a veritable fog of non-clarity.

The BRIEFER project: using expert systems as theory construction tools.

This article describes the development of BRIEFER I and BRIEFER II, expert systems that advise the therapist on selecting, designing, and developing an intervention at the end of the first therapy session. The process of developing expert systems has aided us in describing what brief therapists do, in modeling the intervention design process, and in training brief therapists.

Brief therapy: focused solution development.

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.

Changing teams/changing families.

A therapist's view of the nature of change and the processes of changing directly influences what the therapist does clinically. This essay describes how we have moved our clinical practice closer to our epistemological premises about the processes of change. For us, one key element in initiating the processes of therapeutic change is the introduction of randomness into the system. In our view, the system under consideration is the family-system plus the therapist (team)-system, and the random can be introduced anywhere in that suprasystem. Therefore, changing the therapy team can promote changing the family's problematic pattern.

The death of resistance.

For any conceptual distinction to be useful (5) within the field of family therapy, it needs to lead to some clear answers to the question: What does this distinction mean for clinical practice? The distinction between (a) the family-as-a-system, and (b) family-therapy-as-a-system leads to a clinical perspective, or stance, that includes a focus on changing. Once this focus is clear, the therapist can help to create the expectation of changing and consequently promote changing. That is, techniques can be developed using positive feedback loops. Moreover, this distinction leads to a therapeutic stance in which not changing is a surprise.

Some conceptual distinctions are more useful than others.

Useful distinctions in conceptual schemes lead to explanatory or descriptive metaphors that have a clear form. Muddles, on the other hand, are created when useful distinctions that could be drawn are not or when an unnecessary distinction is drawn. The field of family therapy, now involved in an explicit epistemological and paradigmatic shift, has various muddles of each kind. The purpose of this essay is to describe some of these muddles and to suggest that making a distinction between "the study of the family-as-a-system" and "the study of family-therapy-as-a-system" leads to some useful and clear metaphors.