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SYSTEMS AND SOLUTIONS:

THE

DISCOURSES

OF

BRIEF THERAPY

Gale Miller

ABSTRACTS

The author describes how brief therapy has evolved in

the past 10 to 15 years from ecosystemic to solution-focused brief

therapy. SFBT is characterized as a radically constructivist approach

to

personal problems which emphasizes how troubles and solutions

are socially constructed

realities.

KEY WORDS:

ecosystemic therapy; solution-focused brief therapy.

5

Contemporary Family Therapy, 19 1),

March 1997

®

1997 Human Sciences

Press,

Inc.

Gale Miller, is with the Department of Social and Cultural Sciences, Marquette, University,

PO

Box 1881, Milwaukee, WI 53201-1881. E-mail:

[email protected].

Let

me introduce myself. I am a sociologist who has devoted most

of his career to such classically academic concerns as writing and

teaching about social theory based

on my own and others' research.

While my research requires that I get involved with the people

that

I

study,

my

involvement

is not that of a

participant.

I

observe what

others do, ask

them

to

explain their actions,

and

sometimes tape

re-

cord

their interactions.

My

job, as I see it, is not to critique the people

who

grant me the opportunity to observe them as they go about their

everyday lives. They—not I—are

the

experts

on the

professional sig-

nificance

of their

activities,

including whether they are doing them

properly. My contribution involves describing and commenting on

what

I see

from

the

perspective

of a

naive outsider.

My

role might

be

characterized as acting like a member of a

friendly

but

foreign

culture.

What

follows are some of my impressions about how brief ther-

apy has changed since the mid-1980s when I first encountered

this

approach

to solving personal problems at the Brief Family Therapy

Center (BFTC). I became involved with the center at the behest of the



CONTEMPORARY

FAMILY THERAPY

staff who

stated

that

they wished to be evaluated

from

a qualitative

standpoint. Prior studies of them had used quantitative procedures

that they considered useful, but unable to get at some important

aspects of their work. Thus, I was invited to meet with the

staff.

I

started observing at the clinic a few months after this meeting, and

have—to varying degrees—been studying

the

staff's

activities

ever

since, more than 12 years now.

PERSPECTIVE AND

ORG NIZ TION

OF THE ESS Y

In this paper, I

discuss

some of the most important changes that

have

taken place

in

brief therapy

in the

last

10 to 15

years.

I find it

useful

to describe the changes as a movement from ecosystemic to

solution-focused brief therapy.

The

former approach builds

on

themes

in Milton Erickson's (Erickson, Rossi, & Rossi, 1976) uncommon ther-

apy and the systems approach of the Mental Research

Institute

(Watzlawick, Weakland, &

Fisch,

1974). It emphasizes how

clients'

lives

and

troubles

are

embedded

in

social systems that must

be

changed if the

troubles

are to be

remedied. Solution-focused therapy,

on

the other hand, is a radically constructivist approach to personal

troubles which emphasizes how troubles and solutions are socially

constructed

realities

(Efran, Lukens, & Lukens,

1988).

Central to this

process is

clients'

and therapists' use of language to create troubled

and untroubled lives. That

is,

clients

use

language

to

portray their

lives

as dominated by troubles, and act in ways

that

affirm

their

por-

trayals.

Solution-focused therapists'

major

responsibility, then, is to

help their clients literally talk themselves out of

their

troubles by

encouraging them to describe

their

lives in new ways.

I further analyze these developments in brief therapy as

institu-

tional discourses made

up of

related,

but different

assumptions

and

concerns

about social reality, vocabularies for depicting it, and inter-

action patterns

(Miller,

1994). For example, ecosystemic brief therapy

assumes that diverse aspects of clients' lives are interconnected such

that a change in one part of clients' lives may initiate changes in

other parts of their lives. Ecosystemic

therapists

express this and re-

lated assumptions by using a systems vocabulary in describing

their

clients' lives and troubles and in assessing how

therapists

might ap-

propriately respond to clients' troubles. The systems vocabulary in-

cludes such terms as homeostasis, double bind, and paradoxical inter-

vention.

Ecosystemic therapists and their clients enter into this

6



GALE

MILLER

institutional discourse by adopting ecosystemic assumptions and

using the ecosystemic vocabulary to interactionally construct sys-

temic understandings

of

particular clients' troubles

and how

they

might be

remedied.

Ecosystemic understandings

of, and

responses

to,

clients' trou-

bles

may be

compared

and

contrasted with those constructed

by

ther-

apists and clients using the assumptions and vocabularies of alterna-

tive therapy discourses, such as the discourses of psychoanalysis,

narrative therapy, and solution-focused brief therapy. The

differences

between these

discourses have important practical implications for

therapists

and

clients because each encourages different kinds

of

therapy relationships, and is associated with different understand-

ings of social reality. Shumway (1989) analyzes

this

aspect of

institu-

tional discourse

by

comparing

it to a

dice game.

He states

that while

no one can absolutely predict what combinations of numbers will ap-

pear on any single throw of the dice, the game is organized to produce

a limited number of combinations. We also

know

that over the course

of many games, some combinations are much more likely to show up

than others. These conditions apply regardless of the hopes and

dreams

of the

players.

I discuss some of the major differences between ecosystemic and

solution-focused brief discourses in the rest of the paper. The discus-

sion focuses on their distinctive assumptions and vocabularies, and

how these discourses structure

the

reality-creating possibilities

in

therapist-client interactions. That is, how they are organized to en-

courage some (therapeutically preferred) realities, and discourage

others?

The

differing assumptions

of

ecosystemic

and solution-focused

discourse

are inextricably linked to the questions that ecosystemic

and solution-focused therapists

ask

their clients. Ecosystemic ther-

apists ask about problems and systems, whereas solution-focused

therapists

ask

about exceptions

and

miracles. Further, asking these

questions is not a matter of personal choice for ecosystemic and solu-

tion-focused

therapists. They must be asked if

either

form of therapy

is to be

done.

I begin with the basics of ecosystemic therapy discourse, and

then discuss the major assumptions and concerns of solution-focused

therapy.

I further contrast these approaches to brief therapy in later

sections

of the

paper

by

discussing three questions about ecosystemic

and solution-focused

brief therapy discourses. The questions ask, are

clients' problems and their systemic contexts

objectively

real condi-

tions, or are they linguistic constructions which clients

affirm

by in-



CONTEMPORARY

FAMILY

THERAPY

terpreting their lives

as

saturated with troubles;

how are

therapist,

client, and team member roles and orientations organized within

these discourses;

and do

they involve distinctive orientations

to

time?

It

also bears emphasizing that while ecosystemic

and

solution-

focused brief therapy

are

different approaches

to

understanding

and

remedying personal troubles, they share some features. After all, so-

lution-focused therapy emerged from

the BFTC staff's

implementa-

tion

and

experimentation with

the

ecosystemic approach.

ECOSYSTEMIC

BRIEF THERAPY

Ecosystemic therapists assume

that

the

troubles

that

bring cli-

ents

to

therapy

are the

result

of

clients

and

others

in

their

social

systems having

become

stuck. They are temporarily unable to adapt

to

ongoing changes

in

their environments.

One

indicator that clients

are

stuck

is

their primary

focus on the

troubled aspects

of

their lives.

This

focus makes it impossible for them to interpret their lives in

positive ways. Thus, a major responsibility of ecosystemic therapists

is to help their clients use their already

developed

skills at managing

their lives

to get

unstuck. Small changes

that

disrupt clients' exist-

ing trouble-focused patterns

of

action, thought, and/or relationships

are

often sufficient

to

achieve this goal.

A major intervention strategy used by ecosystemic therapists in

getting their clients unstuck from their problems is the first session

task.

It involves asking clients to pay attention to previously ignored

aspects

of

their lives and/or

to

think about

the

positive aspects

of

their lives. The task disrupts clients' primary

focus

on their troubles

and offers them an alternative (positively oriented) framework for in-

terpreting their lives. Ecosystemic therapists

state

that one of the

reasons that their approach may be accurately

called

brief is because

the first session task is often all

that

clients need to get them started

again. Disrupting

an

interpretive pattern

is

often enough

to

create

new behavioral patterns and social relationships.

Getting clients unstuck involves, at least, three other respon-

sibilities for ecosystemic therapists. First, ecosystemic therapists

must elicit

information

from clients that they can use in developing

effective interventions into the clients' social systems, de Shazer

(1985) calls this

moving

from

complaints

to

problems. Complaints

are

vague

descriptions of troubles for which there are no solutions. Prob-

lems,

on the

other hand,

are

trouble descriptions that

are

sufficiently



GALE MILLER

precise that solutions

to

them

can be

identified.

To say my

spouse

doesn't love me is a complaint. But to say I know my spouse doesn't

love

me because he or she doesn't

listen

when I talk is the beginning

of a problem. The latter statement suggests that the trouble involves

a

behavioral

and

maybe

an

interpretive sequence.

It

also suggests

that

the

trouble might

be

remedied

by a

change

in the

existing pat-

tern. Problems are circumstances that clients can evaluate as present

or absent

in their

lives,

and as

getting better

or

worse.

Related to ecosystemic therapists' responsibility to

elicit

problem

statements

from clients is

their

interest in mapping clients' troubles

(de Shazer, 1982). Mapping involves eliciting information

from

clients

about their social systems, thus producing social contexts for under-

standing clients' troubles

as

problems

that

recur

at

particular times,

in

particular places,

and

with particular people (Lipchik, 1986). Eco-

systemic therapists

map

their clients' troubles

by

asking

two

general

types of questions (detective and constructive questions) and the

four

subtypes that are represented in Table 1.

Detective

questions

are

intended

to

detect presently existing

situations. They ask, Why

is it a

problem

and how did it

come

about? Individual detective questions are concerned with clients'

opinions about their circumstances. An example is Why do you think

that this

is a

problem? Systemic detective questions deal with

the

relationships among persons

in

clients' social systems. Such questions

might ask, What do you think your spouse thinks about the troubled

circumstance or Who in the family is most upset about this

situa-

tion? Constructive questions are concerned with goal

setting

and so-

lutions. Thus, they are always

future

oriented. Constructive systemic

questions ask about possible

future

developments in

clients'

social

systems, such as Who do you think will notice it first when you don't

have

a

problem

any

more? Constructive individual questions,

on the

other hand,

ask

about clients' future behavior

or

perspectives

on the

future. An example is How will you

know

when this problem is

gone?

9

TABLE 1

Types

of

Ecosystemic Questioning

Detective Questions

Individual

Systemic

Constructive

Q uestions

Individual

Systemic



CONTEMPORARY FAMILY

THERAPY

Ecosystemic

therapists' interest

in mapping their clients' troubles

is inextricably linked to

their

third

major

responsibility, developing

effective strategies for changing

clients'

social systems in positive

ways.

The

strategies must

disrupt the

troublesome sequences

in

cli-

ents'

lives, and fit with

clients'

perspectives and social systems. This

requires developing

new

approaches

to

clients' lives that

are

compati-

ble

with

clients'

perspectives and experiences, but which also recast

them

in

important ways. Ecosystemic

therapists may use a

variety

of

techniques in achieving

their

interventionist goals, including

compli-

ments, reframing techniques, and paradoxical interventions. These

are

indirect responses

to

clients' troubles (they

do not

directly chal-

lenge

clients' perspectives on

their

lives and troubles) which subvert

clients' perspectives

by

introducing

new

concerns

and

possibilities

into clients social systems

that

may

initiate

both small- and large-

scale changes.

While

ecosystemic

therapists state that effective

interventions

must

fit with their

clients'

perspectives and social systems, they

also

stress

the development of general intervention

strategies

that

will be effective

with diverse

clients and

troubles.

One

metaphor used

by

ecosystemic

therapists to

explain

the latter

goal involves describ-

ing

clients' circumstances as like a lock that needs to be opened, if

change is to happen (de Shazer, 1985). Therapists have two choices in

choosing a key to

open

the

various locks presented

by

their clients.

One

strategy

is to

search

for the

unique

key

that

fits

each

and

every

client circumstance and trouble, a strategy that promises to be both

time

and

energy consuming.

The

second,

and

more

efficient,

strategy

is to find one or a few skeleton keys that may be used to

open

sev-

eral

different

locks, such as the first session

task.

Ecosystemic thera-

pists argue that the latter strategy is preferable when possible.

BECOMING SOLUTION FOCUSED

Becoming

solution-focused

involves entering

a new

discourse

that

provides brief therapists with

new

assumptions about social reality

and

therapeutic relationships,

new

practical concerns about thera-

peutic

processes and

therapists'

responsibilities within them, and

new

strategies

for

constructing change

in clients'

lives. Thus, while

traces

of the

ecosystemic approach

are

still evident

in

solution-fo-

cused

therapy,

the

significance

of

these apparent continuities

is

dif-

ferent in

solution-focused

therapy. For example,

solution-focused

dis-

10



GALE MILLER

course involves a reflexive orientation that is not associated with the

practice of ecosystemic therapy.

Therapists

adopt a

reflexive

orienta-

tion by

treating their interactions with clients

as sites for self-con-

sciously

constructing social realities, not just for describing them. In-

deed,

from a reflexive standpoint, the descriptions are themselves

reality-creating activities (Garfinkel 1967).

The reflexive emphasis in solution-focused discourse provides

therapists with opportunities to make choices about the social real-

ities that

they interactively construct with

their

clients,

and

about

how

they

are

going

to

construct them.

A major

choice

is

whether

to

stress problem definition (that is, turning complaints into problems)

or

constructing solutions to whatever problems clients might have (be

they

defined

or

undefined).

Solution-focused

therapists

prefer

to

con-

struct solutions and not

define

problems. The choice is partly practi-

cal, because solution-focused

therapists

argue that a focus on solu-

tions is the quicker route to change. But it is also related to the

solution-focused

assumption that change is an ever present aspect of

life.

Within

this

discourse, then, clients are not so much stuck on

their complaints

as

they

are

unable

to see that the

solutions

to their

problems are already present in their lives.

de Shazer (1991) offers a post-structuralist understanding of so-

lution-focused discourse in arguing for a deconstructionist perspec-

tive

on therapeutic processes and

realities.

The approach assumes

that

the

meaning

of any

reality claim lies

in the

diverse interpretations

made

about

it by

both authors (the claims-makers)

and

readers

(those

to

whom

the

claims

are

directed),

de

Shazer further argues

that

therapists'

and

clients' interpretive activities

in

therapy sessions

are best described as misreadings, because there is no way in which

anyone can determine the ultimate meaning of clients descriptions of

their lives and concerns.

Viewed

as a deconstructivist process, then,

solution-focused

brief therapy involves

the

self-conscious development

of

misreadings

of clients'

lives

and

options

in

solving their troubles.

The issue is not discovering an ultimate truth, but developing effec-

tive strategies for misreading clients' lives and troubles in change-

oriented ways.

The questions asked of clients by

solution-focused therapists,

then, are designed to misread clients' lives in

solution-focused

ways.

The

questions

may be classified in four major

types: getting by,

ex-

ception,

scaling,

and

miracle questions. Getting

by

questions

em-

phasize how clients are already managing their problems, and how

they might build on their present successes in the future. Positive

11



CONTEMPORARY FAMILY THERAPY

client answers to these questions give

therapists

opportunities to

compliment

clients

and to ask

clients

how they have accomplished

their

successes.

The latter

queries—which might

be

termed how

did

you do that questions—emphasize how clients already possess the

personal and social resources needed to solve their problems and com-

petently manage

their lives.

Exception

questions ask about the times when

clients'

troubles

are

less

severe or

absent

from

their

lives. They take for granted that

clients' lives are not always the same, and that change is an ever

present aspect of everyday

life

(Berg & Miller, 1992; Berg , 1994; de

Shazer, 1994). Scaling

questions ask

clients

to rate the

troublesome-

ness

of

their present circumstances

and

sometimes

to

rate

the

trou-

blesomeness of prior

times

of

their

lives. A

therapist

might ask, for

example, On a scale of zero to 10, with zero being the worst things

have ever been and 10 being when everything is

better,

where are you

today?

Scaling questions are the work horses of solution-focused therapy

because they

are

frequently asked,

and

solution-focused therapists

use them to achieve a variety of therapeutic ends. As the above exam-

ple

shows, scaling questions may be used to elicit information about

whether clients believe

their

lives are getting

better

or worse. Scaling

questions

are

also

helpful in

constructing exceptions.

For

example,

when clients

rate

other

times

of their lives as less troublesome

than

in the present, the rating provides a justification for

therapists

to ask

about the details of the previous times and how clients were able to

better

manage

their

troubles

then

(O'Hanlon

&

Weiner-Davis

1989).

Other times, solution-focused

therapists

use scaling questions to

focus on

solutions

and to

identify concrete signs

of

change, such

as by

asking

'So

what will

you (or

other people) notice about

you

when

you

have reached [a higher number on the scale]? The miracle question

asks clients

to

imagine that their lives have changed

in

desired direc-

tions

and to

describe

how

they will

know

that their lives have changed

(Berg & Miller, 1992; Berg 1994). The question can be asked in several

different

ways.

As in the following

example, some solution-focused

therapists treat

the miracle as something

that just

happens. Suppose

that one

night, while

you are

asleep, there

is a

miracle

and the

problem

that

brought you into therapy is solved. However, because you are

asleep you don't

know

that the miracle has already happened. When

you wake up in the morning, what will be different that will tell you

that this

miracle

has

taken place? (Miller

&

Berg 1992,

p. 13)

But

other

solution-focused

therapists cast the miracle

as a

thera-

12



GALE MILLER

peutic

accomplishment. O'Hanlon, for example, sometimes asks his

clients,

If I

pulled

out a

magic wand

and

were able

to perform

magic

on

your situation, what will

be

happening

that is different from be-

fore?

(O'Hanlon

&

Weiner-Davis 1989,

p.

106).

However it is an-

swered, asking the miracle question often creates opportunities for

therapists to ask related solution-focused questions, such as excep-

tion, scaling, and how did you do that questions.

ARE

TROUBLES REAL?

While ecosystemic brief therapy might be interpreted as a semi-

constructivist discourse because many of its intervention strategies

assume that clients' problems are partly matters of perspective, it

clearly stops short

of the

radically constructivist assumptions

of

solu-

tion-focused

brief therapy. Ecosystemic therapists assume

that

cli-

ents' perceptual and other problems are embedded in social systems

that exist in worlds outside therapy sessions. The systems can be de-

scribed,

assessed, and changed. But they are not socially constructed

realities that only exist within the therapy interactions in which they

are talked into existence, as

solution-focused therapists

assume.

The

constructivist emphasis in ecosystemic therapy is perhaps

most evident in therapists' interest in refraining their clients' lives

and

troubles. This involves offering clients alternative understand-

ings

of

their circumstances, usually by renaming clients' troubles and/

or raising

alternative understandings of clients' lives. Ecosystemic

therapists use these techniques to assign positive meanings to

clients'

troubles. An example involves a family who came to therapy because

of the disruptiveness of one child. The interviewing therapist and

team suggested to the

family

members

that

they had a feeling

that

the child's seeming disruption was really a positive contribution to

the family but they were not sure about how it was positive. The

therapist also asked the family members to think about this alterna-

tive possibility,

and

report

on

their thoughts

at the

next session.

In

refraining their

clients' troubles, however, ecosystemic therapists

maintain their

interest

in altering clients' social systems. These sys-

tems are the primary contexts (if not causes) of clients' troubles.

Within solution-focused brief therapy discourse, on the other

hand, clients' troubles are

matters

of talk and story-telling. Solution-

focused

therapists

state that

trouble-focused stories worsen clients'

troubles when they are treated as master narratives

that

define

the

13



CONTEMPORARY

FAMILY THERAPY

most important aspects

of

clients' lives

and

selves. They become self-

fulfilling prophecies which both predict that

clients'

lives will be trou-

bled

and

encourage clients

to interpret

their lives

as filled

with signs

of trouble.

By

emphasizing solutions, then, solution-focused thera-

pists

avoid stories

that

they consider

to be

part

of

clients'

problems,

and may begin to build alternative stories within which clients are

competent

and leading satisfactory lives.

Solution-focused therapists treat clients' answers to

their

ques-

tions

as

resources

for

constructing

new

stories

about

clients'

lives.

The stories blend clients' reports on aspects of

their

lives with thera-

pist generated plots which assign positive significance

to

clients'

re-

ports. They are

narrative

frameworks for constructing hopeful life

stories. Therapists'

emplotment

of

clients'

lives range

from

expres-

sions

of respect and amazement at

clients'

coping skills to stories that

describe clients' lives as improving. Further, the life stories initiated

in

solution-focused therapy

are not

designed

to be

completed texts,

but to be

lived

and

thus

continuously revised over time.

de Shazer (1991), for example, describes the case of a married

couple

who

came

to

therapy seeking

a

cure

for the

wife's nympho-

mania.

She

stated

that she had

recently developed

a

need

for sex at

least once a day or she couldn't sleep. Both the wife and husband

complained of the circumstance. She

stated

that she felt controlled by

her

compulsion,

and he

complained

of

becoming

a

stud whose only

function was to service his wife. The clients also reported at subse-

quent sessions that

the

trouble

was

getting worse.

A

significant shift

occurred, however, when

the

husband

stated

that

he

believed

that

the

problem was not sex, but a sleeping problem. The

wife

responded by

asking

the

therapist,

Do you

have

any

cures

for

insomnia?

(de

Shazer 1991,

p.

65).

de

Shazer (1991) explains

that

this shift in

focus

opened the dis-

cussion

to a

variety

of new

possibilities, such

as

that

the

problem

might really be the

wife's

new exercise regimen which started at

about the same time as her need for daily sex emerged. Equally im-

portant for solution-focused therapists, the shift in language

recast

the trouble as nonpathological (lots of normal people have sleeping

problems, whereas the language of nymphomania suggests mental ill-

ness) and made a variety of new solutions available for consideration.

The

shift

in

terminology,

in

other words, provided

the therapist and

clients

with a new theme for constructing a new story about the cli-

ents' lives

and

trouble.

This example shows how solution-focused therapists look for so-

14



GALE

MILLER

lutions in

their

clients' talk. While accepting the couple's character-

ization of the problem as nymphomania, the

therapist

did not ques-

tion them about

the

causes

of the

wife's recently

increased sexual de-

sire. To do so would make nymphomania the only available definition

for the clients' problem. Indeed, the therapist orchestrated the inter-

view to facilitate the possibility of other definitions emerging,

defini-

tions

that

might be more easily solved than nymphomania. Notice,

also,

that the therapist did not

provide

the

alternative definition

for

the clients, but waited for it to emerge within the interview.

Finally,

a major

implication

of the

constructivist emphasis

in so-

lution-focused

brief therapy is

that

therapists no longer need to as-

sume

that

problems

and

their

solutions are

linked.

That

is, if clients'

troubles and the solutions to them are both produced in clients' and

therapists'

interactions, then

there

is no necessary connection be-

tween

them. They

treat

people's usual linking of them as a

matter

of

cultural convention. Indeed, solution-focused

therapists state that it

is

possible

to

solve

clients'

troubles without ever

specifying a

problem

to be solved. It is a matter of negotiation between solution-focused

therapists and clients. Sometimes they collaboratively construct prob-

lems and solutions, and other times only solutions.

One

way in which solution-focused

therapists

may encourage

their

clients

to

solve

their

problems without

defining

them

is by

ask-

ing the miracle question very early in the interview. The question

does

not

need

to specify a

concrete problem that

will

miraculously

disappear. It is

sufficient

to ask clients how

would

your

life

be differ-

ent if a miracle happened and the concerns

that

you brought here

today

went away, just like

that?

A related strategy involves asking

clients to compare their present circumstances with past times by rat-

ing them on a 10-point scale. If clients state

that

their present lives

are better than in the past, then defining a problem on

which

thera-

pists

and

clients might

work

becomes irrelevant. Rather,

solution-fo-

cused therapists

respond

by

asking

how the

clients have accomplished

the improvements, and how they might further improve their lives.

ROLES AND ORIENTATIONS

Ecosystemic

brief therapy discourse positions therapists

as

help-

ful

interveners into clients' lives

and

social systems. They

are

experts

on

problems

and

social systems

who

help their clients

become un-

stuck

from their

troubles

by

altering aspects

of

clients' social systems.

15




Within solution-focused

discourse, on the other hand,

clients'

troubles

are embedded in the interactional circumstances shared by therapists

and clients. A major practical and ethical responsibility of solution-

focused therapists

is to aid clients in developing therapeutic goals and

strategies that

are mutually agreeable and achievable within the con-

text of their relationships (O'Hanlon & Weiner-Davis, 1989).

Ecosystemic and

solution-focused

brief therapy, then, involve dif-

ferent orientations to the therapy process. Ecosystemic therapy might

be described

as the

more complex

of the two

because

it

involves

two

closely

related parts, each of which is central to solving clients' trou-

bles. The ecosystemic interview is the site within which clients' com-

plaints are transformed into problems, intervention messages are

read to clients, and

therapists

inquire about the

effectiveness

of sug-

gestions made in prior therapy sessions. Equally important are the

activities

that

take place behind the mirror and out of the sight and

hearing of clients. These activities involve team members' and thera-

pists' assessments of clients' troubles and social systems, discussions

of how the

systems

might be altered to remedy the

troubles,

and de-

velopment

of the intervention messages

that

are given to clients.

The

complexities involved

in

fitting ecosystemic intervention

messages with

clients'

problems and social systems may be seen in

the extended negotiations that sometimes take place among thera-

pists

and team members about how to most appropriately respond to

clients' circumstances. Consider, for example, the

following therapist-

team discussion about how to respond to Freda's and Naomi's con-

cerns about

Jane's

unhealthy

eating

practices. Notice

the

range

of

concerns expressed by the therapist (Ther) and team members (TM1

and TM2) in this negotiation, including concern for making the inter-

vention

message consistent, selecting an appropriate word for describ-

ing Jane's situation,

and

selecting

a

task

for

Jane, Freda,

and

Naomi.

TM1: Well, (pause)

I

think, what

can I

say, that

we are

very puzzled

by someone who is so perfectionistic (pause) is so

imperfect,

so im-

perfect (pause)

in her

ability

to

take care

of

herself.

TM2:

Well,

that might be the last thing, further down, our punch line

here (pointing to the bottom of the therapist's paper on which she is

writing

the

intervention message).

Ther: That's

fine

'cause

I was

thinking

the way to go

was, it's

an

achievement

thing. Just, just say that, it that way, yeah.

TM3: Well,

I, uh,

that doesn't mesh with what

we

were saying earlier

though about, that

now

she's taking care

of

herself, (pause) She's

getting more proteins, uh, more. I think you might want to use that

16



GALE MILLER

later with her, individually, you know, when you see her alone,

(pause) You're already complimenting her on the changes

she's

al-

ready made, taking better care

of

herself.

TM1: Well, we can say that we're puzzled by the changes.

Ther:

We can say

that we're puzzled

by why

she's already making

the

changes, that's

one way

around that.

. . . I'm

impressed with

the

changes.

(A telephone call for TM1 interrupts the discussion which be-

gins again when she rejoins the group.)

TM2: OK,

what

was the phrase,

(looking

at

TM1)

you had a

nice

phrase.

TM1:

OK, (to the

therapist

who is

writing)

the

team

is

wondering

why

(pause) why someone like (pause)

Jane,

who is so perfectionis-

tic, is so imperfect (pause) in her ability to take care of herself.

(pause)

And we

don't quite understand that.

Ther: So, no

task?

TM2: Well, I'd sure like to give a task.

(Discussion

turns

to several ideas for

tasks

which are rejected

as

good

ideas that might be

useful

in

later

sessions, such as

displaying Jane's imperfection for her by flushing the food that

she doesn't eat down the

toilet,

or as inappropriate because

they are too obvious, such as having

Jane's

parents' keep track

of her calorie intake.)

TM1: Listen,

why

don't

you

just

give

a

normal

task

around,

uh, her

doing what's good for herself, that they'd like to see, keep, you

know, happening.

TM2: OK, right on.

Ther:

That

they see what she does that's good for her?

TM1: Uh, huh.

Ther (writing): OK, and then everybody keeps

track

of it.

TM1: Everybody keeps track

of it.

TM2: Secretly, all three of 'em, independently and secretly keep track

of

what

she

does (pause)

that's

good

for

her.

TM1: That they like, they'd like to see, keep on, keep on, see her

continue to do.

Ther (finishes writing): OK, sounds good. (She rises and leaves the

observation room to return to the interview

room.)

The solution-focused brief therapy process, on the other hand, is

very much oriented toward the therapy interview as the primary site

17




for solving clients' troubles. Asking questions about

how

clients

are

getting by

and

about exceptions

to

their troubles

are two

ways

in

which solution-focused

therapists

orient to interviews as sites for

solving clients' troubles. Further, when clients respond to these and

other solution-focused questions, there is little need for extensive

therapist-team negotiations about how to respond to clients' circum-

stances. They compliment clients

on the

positive changes reported

by

clients

as

already present

in

their lives

or on

clients' success

in

spec-

ifying new—postmiracle—lives, and recommend that clients do more

of whatever is working. These responses restate and affirm the do

more

suggestions already made by solution-

focused therapists

in

their conversations with clients. Solution-focused therapists some-

times combine compliments and do more suggestions with

tasks,

such as the

following

recommendation that the clients pay attention

to their continuing successes.

TM1:

Well, they're basically on the right

track.

They just need to

keep doing what

they're

doing. Maybe they should watch and

see that

they don't

get off the

track.

You

know, they don't want

to fall

back.

TM2: How about if we say that they should watch how they stay on

track, that's more positive.

TM1:

Yeah. OK. Tell em to keep track of how they stay on track.

Then they'll

know when

they

are

getting off track.

TIME IN

BRIEF THERAPY

Looked at one way, both ecosystemic and solution-focused brief

therapy discourses involve

a

diachronic orientation

to

time. That

is,

they assume that past, present,

and

future

are

connected

so

that

changes made in the present will have implications for clients' future

lives. They

differ,

however, in which of these time periods they em-

phasize, and how they link the present with the

future.

Ecosystemic

therapy is more present oriented than solution-focused therapy which

emphasizes the future. For ecosystemic

therapists,

clients' problems

are located in

their

present lives and social systems. Thus, most of

their

questioning

of

clients

focuses on clients'

present perceptions,

ac-

tivities, and relationships

with

others.

This is not to say

that

ecosystemic

therapists

have no

interest

in

the past or

future.

Indeed, ecosystemic therapists often ask their cli-

18



GALE

MILLER

ents to compare and contrast their present circumstances with the

past, particularly by asking clients about past times when their prob-

lems were less severe

or

absent

from

their lives. This information

is

useful

to ecosystemic

therapists

and teams in formulating interven-

tion

messages designed to disrupt present troublesome patterns. Eco-

systemic

therapists

also

ask

about

the

future.

For

example, they

sometimes ask their clients to imagine

that

they are looking into a

crystal ball where they

can see their

lives after

their

problems have

passed, and to describe what they see

there.

Ecosystemic

therapists

use this technique to encourage their clients to develop positive ex-

pectations about the

future,

and to identify concrete goals fo r change.

This technique is effective, ecosystemic therapists explain, because

part

of

getting unstuck

from

one's problems involves developing new,

positive expectations about the future.

Despite their questions about the past and

future,

however, eco-

systemic

therapists treat

the

solutions

to

clients' problems

as

changes

in clients' present circumstances. They assume that changes initiated

in the present will continue into the future and potentially create far

reaching changes in clients' social systems. The

future

is something

for

ecosystemic therapists and clients to look forward to, a place that

lies down the road, not in the present. The

future

is also a somewhat

mysterious place for ecosystemic

therapists

and their clients because

they

can

never fully describe

or

predict

how

changes introduced

in the

present will affect clients' social systems in the future.

Uncertainty about the future is particularly associated with par-

adoxical

and other ecosystemic interventions which are designed to

confuse

clients, or to encourage clients to act in opposition to

part

or

all of intervention messages. The split team technique is perhaps the

most obvious example of how ecosystemic therapists encourage uncer-

tainty about the future in clients. The technique involves telling cli-

ents that members of the team are divided (or that the team and

interviewing therapist disagree) about whether or not clients' trou-

bles will get better or about how clients should respond to their trou-

bles. The clients are asked to think about the

differing

points of view,

and

to report on their thoughts at the next therapy

session.

Ecosys-

temic therapists use this technique to encourage clients to make

choices about their

future

lives and/or about how they wish to change

their social systems.

But

they

can

only guess

at

which choices clients

will

make and what the practical implications of the choices

will

be

for

clients' lives.

Solution-focused therapists, on the other hand, blur the distinc-

19



CONTEMPORARY

FAMILY

THERAPY

tion

between present and

future

by encouraging

their

clients to think

of

their hopes for the future as already happening. The future is now,

although clients cannot

see it

because they

are

absorbed

in

trouble-

focused

stories. Central to

solution-focused

therapists' blurring of the

past-future

distinction is the miracle question. While

this

question is

answerable by virtually any client, answering it requires

that

clients

consider possibilities that they

are

unlikely

to

have thought about

in

some time. It is

difficult

to think about miracles when you are

focused

on your troubles.

The miracle question also asks clients

to

think about what they

want added to their lives, not just what they would like to see elimi-

nated. This, too,

is an

issue

that

many clients stop thinking about

when

they become problem-focused.

One way in

which solution-fo-

cused therapists use the miracle question, then, is to elicit concrete

goal

statements from clients about their hopes for the future and for

therapy.

The

question also makes

it

possible

for

clients

and therapists

to

separate problems

from

solutions (de Shazer, 1991, 1994). Problem

definition becomes superfluous once clients have specified

the

details

of

their

miracles.

The

relevant task

at

hand

is figuring out how the

miracle is already evident in clients' lives. Thus, solution-focused

therapists encourage participants

in

their

workshops

to ask the

mira-

cle question early in

their

conversations with clients.

A

significant

difference in

ecosystemic

and

solution-focused orien-

tations

to the relationship between the

present

and future is revealed

in what

the

miracle question does

not

ask. Unlike

the

crystal ball

technique, the miracle question does not ask clients to project them-

selves several weeks or months forward in time and then to describe

how their lives have changed. Rather, solution-focused

therapists

ask

their

clients

to imagine

that

a miracle will happen when clients are

asleep tonight

or

sometime soon.

The

clients' task

is to

discover

the

signs

that

change

has

happened without their knowing about

it.

This

phrasing

of the

question casts

the

change

as

something that just hap-

pens

(it is

beyond

the

clients' control)

and

suggests that clients must

work at recognizing that it has happened.

Put differently, the miracle question organizes the future in more

concrete and certain terms than do most ecosystemic intervention

messages. Consider,

for

example,

a

solution-focused therapy session

in which the client stated

that

one sign that her miracle had hap-

pened would be that she

would

smile more. Later in the session, and

well after

the discussion of the client's miracle, the client smiled in

responding

to a question asked by the

therapist.

The therapist asked,

20



GALE MILLER

So, when

you

just smiled like that

now ... is

that what your face will

look like

at 10,

after

the

miracle? Notice that

the

therapist

did not

ask if this is what the client's face might or would look like after her

miracle,

but

will look like

at 10,

after

the

miracle.

The miracle question might be analyzed, then, as the first two

steps in the construction of

self-fulfilling

prophecies. The question en-

courages clients to assume that

their

lives will get better, and pro-

vides them with

interpretive lenses

for seeing

their

lives in new

ways. Clients' task

is to

choose

to

look

at

their lives through solution-

focused lenses.

CONCLUSION

This essay summarizes the major choices available to brief

thera-

pists

in thinking about their professional responsibilities and rela-

tionships with clients. My purpose has been to act somewhat like a

therapist for brief therapy. That is, as an outsider, I can contribute to

brief therapists' development of binocular vision (Bateson, 1979) on

their professional assumptions

and

practices. Binocular vision

in-

volves

encouraging change (in this case, clarification and insight) by

describing others' circumstances from compatible—but

different—

perspectives. As Bateson (1979, p. 68) states, it takes at least two

different

somethings

to

create

a

difference.

The

difference

at issue here is what kind of brief therapy do you

wish to practice, since it is not possible to do both ecosystemic and

solution-focused

therapy

at the

same time.

One part of me

says

that

you will chose to do ecosystemic therapy, and the other half thinks

you

will choose

the

solution-focused

alternative. But I

also wonder

if a

miracle might happen tonight, and you will wake up tomorrow with

this

issue resolved. I will have done my

part

if

this

essay helps you

make an

informed

choice between these approaches to brief therapy,

or if it

helps

you

recognize

that

your miracle

has

occurred.

REFERENCES

Bateson, G. (1979).

Mind and

nature:

A

necessary unity. New York: E. P. Dutton.

Berg, I. K. (1994).

Fa mily-based services: A

solution-focused

approach.

New York: Norton.

Berg, I. K., & Miller, S. D. (1992).

Working with the

problem-drinker:

A solution-focused

approach.

New

York:

Norton,

de

Shazer,

S.

(1994). Words were originally magic.

New

York: Norton.

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de

Shazer,

S.

(1991).

Putting difference

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work. New

York: Norton.

de

Shazer,

S. (1985). Keys to solution in brief therapy. New York: Norton.

de Shazer, S.

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fam ily therapy: An ecosystemic approach.

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Efran, J. S., Lukens, R. J., & Lukens, M. D.

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O'Hanlon,

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Weakland,

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Fisch,

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22

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