1st Edition

Becoming Miracle Workers Language and Learning in Brief Therapy

By Gale Miller Copyright 1997
    252 Pages
    by Routledge

    237 Pages
    by Routledge

    Brief therapy is a postmodern treatment mode that treats problems as social constructions, encouraging those seeking treatment to replace personal troubles (negative stories) with new problem-solving skills (positive stories). The significant differences discussed in this book do not involve sociologists and brief therapists. The differences are between brief therapists, on the one hand, and practitioners of psychotherapy and family therapy on the other. One indicator of these is brief therapists' describing the people who seek their services as clients. The terminology may be contrasted with the language of patients used by many other therapists. At the very least, this difference suggests how brief therapy departs from therapy approaches that are based on the medical model.

    Becoming Miracle Workers takes the reader inside "Northland Clinic," one of the most innovative and important centers of brief therapy in the world. Based on twelve years of research, Miller's book discusses how brief therapy has evolved into its present, postmodern form. He describes the details of brief therapist-client interactions, and the behind-the-scenes discussions among brief therapists about their clients' problems. This readable account of the workings of brief therapy invites readers to sit in on brief therapy sessions, provides them with new understandings of personal troubles as social constructions, and shows how brief therapists help their clients develop new, untroubled, life stories.

    1: Opening Moves; I: Contexts of Brief Therapy; 2: Encountering Brief Therapy; 3: Troubles as Systems Problems; 4: Troubles as Language Games; II: Workings of Brief Therapy; 5: Constructing Ecosystemic Problems; 6: Constructing Change in Ecosystemic Brief Therapy; 7: Teamwork in Ecosystemic Brief Therapy; 8: Constructing and Delivering Ecosystemic Interventions; 9: Constructing Solutions in Solution-Focused Brief Therapy; III: Implications of Brief Therapy; 10: Final Messages

    Biography

    Gale Miller