Over the years I have commented on the power of words to get us into trouble. Of course my thinking about this was in no way original. Steve de Shazer repeatedly both warned us of the dangers and alerted us to the possibilities inherent in the way that words work. He opens chapter 6 of ‘Putting Difference to Work’ (de Shazer, 1991) referencing Humpty Dumpty.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean different things – that’s all.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master – that’s all’
de Shazer adds ‘and the answer is, it is the word that is master. A word always means more and less than we mean it to mean’ (de Shazer, 1991, p 63). Later in the same chapter de Shazer offers us another striking and memorable image ‘words are like freight engines that are pulling boxcars behind them filled with all their previous meanings’ (de Shazer, 1991, p 67). Perhaps I would adjust the image and suggest that words are like ghostly freight engines that are always pulling behind them invisible boxcars filled with meanings of which we are hardly aware and which are constantly ‘slipping and sliding’ as de Shazer writes (ibid, pp 69 – 70).
So if we call the freight engine ‘information’ what meanings are to be found in the boxcars trundling along behind? A Thesaurus is an obvious place to start this examination. Colins offers us a range of possibilities including ‘details, facts, figures, materials, documents, intelligence, statistics, gen (British, informal), dope (informal), info (informal)’. And ‘facts and figures and statistics’ find their home in the world of knowing, of understanding, of figuring out of making sense. But that is almost the opposite of the home that the Solution Focused approach feels comfortable within. We are never seeking to know anything about our clients, we are never seeking to understand them, we are not wanting to figure them out or to make sense of what is going on.
All that we are doing is listening to our clients’ responses to hear the words and the phrases that can be built into the next question. The word information fits into the problem-solving world not into the Solution Focused world, finding things out about people so that we can ‘fix’ them. The word fits with the idea that we can understand people, that we can know what they mean. The word is a part of the ‘concrete and stone’ world the relative absence of which de Shazer celebrates when he writes ‘These cases suggest that reality is constructed out of some rather flimsy stuff, not concrete and stone. For therapists this is good news. Even problems that are traditionally seen as "difficult" are subject to rapid transformation - under the right conditions’ (de Shazer, 1988, p 113). Solution Focused Brief therapists need to let go of the delusion of certainty that ‘information’ invites us into and find a way to thrive in a world where meanings ‘slip and slide’, in a world where the best that we can hope for is that our inevitable ‘misunderstandings’ turn out to be ‘creative’. As de Shazer writes ‘Perhaps the best therapists can do is creatively misunderstand what clients say so that the more useful, more beneficial meanings of their words are the ones chosen. Thus, creative misunderstanding allows the therapist, and the client to together construct a real that is more satisfactory to the client' (de Shazer, 1991, p 69).
The word ‘information’ is dangerous and if taken seriously will undermine our Solution Focused practice!
de Shazer, Steve (1988) Clues: Investigating Solutions in Brief Therapy. New York: Norton.
de Shazer, Steve (1991) Putting Difference to Work. New York: Norton.
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english-thesaurus/information
Evan George
London
21st June 2026
