Understanding Solution Focused practice
This piece by Evan George highlights a key, but often unrecognised feature of Solution Focused Practice.
I was wondering about L – perhaps ‘L is for language’, but then it struck me that I have been talking about language a lot, both directly and indirectly, and so I have decided L is for Lists. Lists were developed by the BRIEF team and have proved extremely flexible and useful (Ratner et al, 2012). The format is simple ‘Tell me 20 things that he has done over the course of the past few weeks that you have been pleased to notice?’ inserting a number rather than leaving the question open-ended ‘what have you pleased to notice . . ?’. One of our very early experiences of a list was striking. The worker asks the client ‘What have you done that has been good for you since you were released from prison?’. The client responds saying ‘nothing’ and is insistent that he really has done ‘nothing’. At this point the worker changes the question and inserts a number ‘Tell me 35 things that you have done that have been good for you since you have been released’, and puzzlingly the client responds by listing 35 things. So somehow the insertion of the number made a difference and this is something that since that time we have noticed over and over.
So why does the number make a difference? Clearly we cannot know for sure. It does work, we know that, and therefore is well worth repeating, but as soon as we try to answer the question ‘why does it work?’, we are straying into the field of speculation. Some years ago, in a personal communication (1), Denise Yusuf offered a convincing explanation. She suggested that when we ask ‘so what have you done that is good for you?’ the client assumes that we are looking for ‘big and important things’ and if there is nothing substantial the client is likely to answer ‘nothing’. However when we ask ‘tell me 35 (or 10, 15, 20) things . . .’ the client realises that even really small and seemingly insignificant differences are of relevance and so we hear people saying, for example, ‘I made myself a cup of tea’, ‘I tidied up the flat’. ‘I did my washing’. Now as the client ‘gets onto a roll’, bringing to mind a series of potentially small differences, we typically notice clients ‘remembering’ larger and significant differences ‘I got myself out of the flat on Thursday – I haven’t done that for a while’. And of course, even if all the client’s listed changes were to be small, there is no way that clients will fail to see significance in ’35 (or 10, 15, 20) things’. So it seems that the numbers act as a ‘rule-changer’, changing the rules of inclusion, of relevance, in the conversation/game. Of course there are alternative potential explanations one of which maybe the change of tone. Asking the client ‘so what have you done that is good for you since . . . ?’ is a ‘serious’ question but asking ‘tell me 20 things that you have done . . ?’ is playful, less serious and engages a different sort of thinking. The worker has changed the question thus creating the possibility for the different response. And there is no reason for both of these explanations not to be true.
As it happens one further small point regarding Lists is worth making. We can use so-called mini-lists in our questions, building them into the conversation. For example with scale questions we can ask ‘tell me 5 ways that you would know for sure that you are one point up on the scale’ or ‘tell me five things that you know about yourself that give you 7 confidence of being able to make changes’. We can include these mini-lists in our other person perspective questions ‘tell me 8 things that your teacher will notice that will tell her that you are happier at school’ or ‘tell me 10 things that you will notice about your mother that will tell you that she has noticed the changes in you’. Mini-lists are useful!
In their paper ‘Making Numbers Talk: Language in Therapy’, (Berg & de Shazer, 1993) Insoo and Steve refer to the ‘magic’ of numbers ‘as anyone who has played around with numbers knows’ (p 9). They were of course referring to scale questions. However Lists offer another way of embedding numbers into our Solution Focused language that indeed seems magical in its effect.
(1) Personal communications with Denise Yusuf are made easier by the fact that we have lived together for over 40 years. It is hard to remember the date of this particular ‘personal communication’!
Berg, I. K. & de Shazer, S., (1993). Making numbers talk: Language in therapy. In Friedman, S.,(ed), The New Language of Change: Constructive Collaboration in Psychotherapy. New York: Guildford Press
Ratner, H., George, E., Iveson, C. (2012) Solution Focused Brief Therapy: 100 Key Points and Techniques. London: Routledge.
Evan George
London
19 January 2025
This piece by Evan George highlights a key, but often unrecognised feature of Solution Focused Practice.