Introduction to solution talk

Abstract

While there are many types of brief counselling or brief therapy, this book has the specific goal of bringing before the reader solution-focused and narrative approaches and of showing how they can be combined in practice in what Furman and Ahola (1992) call solution talk. Solution talk is a relatively recent ‘wave’ in the development of brief counselling, sharing many of the principles and skills of other forms of brief counselling but having an entirely different philosophy and theoretical basis. O’Hanlon (1993) quotes a conversation with Tapani Ahola in which they talk of the first wave in therapy as pathology based, where people’s psyche is seen as ill or disturbed and this emotional state as in need of healing. The person is the problem and the approaches are based mainly on psychodynamic theory. The second wave covers the main problem-focused and problem-solving approaches. While the first wave is also problem-focused in that pathology is a problem, the second wave sees problems more as dysfunctions or deficits of thinking/beliefs or behaviour, based largely on learning theories; or as resulting from unwise attempted solutions that serve only to maintain or increase the problem.