From 1990 until 2005, the year of his sadly early death, BRIEF invited Steve de Shazer to present his work and his thinking regularly in both London and Glasgow and doing so was such an honour and a privilege. Steve’s thinking was developing rapidly at the time and it was so exciting, on the occasion of each visit to hear his latest thoughts. We set up a number of conferences, we hosted workshops and seminars and live clinical events and there was just one thing that Steve said, not infrequently, that bothered me. Someone would ask him a question, normally a ‘what do you do when’ sort of question, and Steve would respond ‘never happens to me, next question’. And I am sure that he was right, it never happened to him, and yet, on behalf of all the people who had paid to attend, BRIEF’s customers, as it were, I would always wish that he would say ‘well it never happens to me but if it did I would . . . ‘, thereby stepping a little closer to the questioner. (As it happens I did sometimes notice him, a little obliquely, addressing the question later in the presentation and I always hoped that the original questioner had also noticed.)
Well there I was this week with another lovely group and someone asked ‘what do you do when the client is so problem-dominated, so overwhelmed with problems and so focused on problems that they cannot answer the ‘best hopes’ question?’. My immediate thought was ‘never happens in my work’ and that is true. I absolutely cannot recall the last time that a client was not able to answer the best hopes question during a first session and typically during the first10 minutes of the first session. But why is that the case? Surely the assumption contained within the question is almost more expectable. People come to see professionals expecting to talk (directly) about the problem, some of them will have had previous therapy and will have been trained to focus on the problem, manly of them will have focused on the problem for a while so how come when Solution Focused practitioners ask them ‘so what are your best hopes from our talking together (George et al., 1999)’ that they answer?
Obviously it is hard to know the answer to this question for certain. However my guess is that it is primarily to do with a number of things that the worker brings to the conversation. First of all I assume not only that every client can answer the question but that every client will answer the question. It never occurs to me that the client will not be able to do this. In addition I know that an answer to this question is necessary. If the client does not answer then I would not know what to focus on, I would not know what to do. I would have no alternative. And in addition I truly believe that colluding with lengthy problem descriptions is not being kind to the client since it seems to me to slow down the change process and thus I would never do anything to detain the client in their problem story. And actually, if we explain the purpose of the ‘best hopes’ question to the client I think that it makes absolute sense to them as in ‘it is going to be really difficult for me to have the best possible chance of making our talking of use to you if I do not know what you want’. And all of this means that I am happy to be kindly and politely and nicely persistent in my questioning if the client does not answer straight off (as most do!).
So, as Steve used to say, ‘never happens to me’!
George, E., Iveson, C. and Ratner, H. (1990; Revised and expanded Edition 1999) Problem to Solution: Brief Therapy with Individuals and Families. London: BT Press
Evan George
London
05 July 2026
