The Centre for Solution Focused Practice

M is for Minimalism

In 1987 Steve de Shazer published an important, and simple, paper entitled Minimal Elegance (1987). In the conclusion he writes ‘based on the kind of simple ideas I described above, I have been called “the most minimal of minimalists” (Brewster, 1985). I do not think he was planning to compliment me, but I certainly take it as a compliment’. (de Shazer, 1987, p 60). In Solution Focused Practice minimalism lies at its core, and should be thought about in two ways. (1) What is the least that we can do with people during sessions that is associated nonetheless with good outcome? (2) What is the smallest number of sessions that are required to arrive at the same point?

 

de Shazer’s paper clearly and straightforwardly sets out the BFTC’s thinking at this early point in the development of the Solution Focused approach and the focus, it seems to me, is on simplicity and the conceptual requirements for doing less in sessions. As de Shazer argues ‘no matter how complex the (problem) description, the intervention should still be the simplest possible’ (ibid, pp 57 – 58). He adds ‘therapists as well as their clients often make the assumption that a complicated problem needs a complicated solution and that its duration is directly related to its severity and intractability. They assume that their complicated description (or analysis or map) of a problem means that the problem is complicated and, therefore, needs a complicated solution. But brief therapists think differently. No matter how complicated the description of the problem or the (apparent) duration, they believe that a small and simple difference that is noticed will often lead to unpredictably large changes. An unrecognised difference (since it goes by unnoticed) will not receive the amplification needed and will remain a difference that does not make a difference. A simple difference, often just some doubt, can be enough to begin changing a lifelong pattern or way of thinking’ (ibid, p 58). As he argues ‘simple interventions do not often come about spontaneously. They take time and a lot of thought’ (ibid, p 58). It is I think the disconnection of the problem pattern from the solution pattern that allows for the possibility of this sort of minimalism.de Shazer concludes as follows ‘if you want to get from point A to point B, but know no details of the terrain in between, the best thing to do is assume that you can go from A to B by following a straight line. . . . As William of Ockham might say, never introduce complex descriptions when simple ones will do’ (ibid, p 60). Minimalism in terms of our interventions requires us to hold a way of conceptualising that justifies and legitimises it, that ‘allows’ it.

 

The second aspect of minimalism, in the number of sessions that we deliver, requires us similarly to develop a way of thinking that supports it, such that we are clear that we are not offering a second-class sort of therapy within with the client is short-changed; we are not cheapskate therapists dancing to the tune of budget managers. So here are four assumptions that provide for us a basis for minimal interventions.

 

1. Less is better than more. Minimalism is founded on a belief, a belief that is a prerequisite for minimalistic practice. We have to believe that people have better things to do in their lives than spending their time talking with therapists. We do have to believe that life is for living rather than for talking about and so the less time that people spend with us and the more time that they spend out and about living their lives the better. This position is of course merely a position and many therapists take the opposite position, choosing to believe that therapy is good in itself and that more is better than less, a view that will almost inevitably be associated with longer therapeutic contacts.

 

2. The task of therapy is to help people to ‘get themselves moving’ again. Invariably there are times in our lives when we get ourselves stuck, when we can’t see a way forward, when what we are doing is the obvious thing to do, and yet whatever that obvious thing is just does not work and yet we find ourselves trying it over and over. We are stuck. The therapist’s view of their task in Solution Focused Practice is to work with the client in such a way that clients get themselves ‘unstuck’, such that the client is able to begin moving forward again in life. We do not take the view that the job of the therapist is to ‘cure’ or to ‘treat’ or to ‘resolve the client’s issues’, just for clients to experience themselves moving again in such a way that they will be able to again face all those difficulties that life throws at us with hopefulness and with an expectation that they can be faced successfully. John Weakland from the MRI in Palo Alto used to refer to this shift as the change from ‘the same damn thing over and over’ to ‘one damn thing after another’.

 

3. Every session can make a difference. Many therapists seem to have taken the view that the first few sessions in any new piece of work are involved in assessment and building rapport, almost that nothing therapeutic really happens in those sessions. Minimalists of course would not agree with this view. We would remind ourselves that one session is the mode in any therapy; more people come just once than any other specific numbers of session, and so it behoves us to remember that this really might be the last time that we see this client. This raises the question ‘how can we do something independently useful in this session today, something that might make a difference?’. And repeatedly we see that if we start with the assumption that one session can make a difference, that very often it does.

 

4. Trust. The hardest of all the challenges that face us when we meet a new client is ‘trusting’. Training as therapists introduces us to the surprising ideas that clients do not want to change, that they are resistant, that they don’t tend to mean what they say and that we often know better. These ideas invite us into a conflictual rather than a collaborative relationship with our clients that is bound to make our work with them longer, more complicated and less minimal. Learning to truly ‘trust’ our clients is vital, to take them seriously, to assume that they do indeed want to make the changes that they describe and that they are trying to do their best at all times.

 

Minimalism is not easy and it requires discipline and radical thinking.

 

Brewster, F. (1985) Seeing Something. Networker, 9(6), 61 - 64

de Shazer, S. (1987) Minimal elegance. Family Therapy Networker, 11(8): 57-60.

 

Evan George

26th January 2025

London

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