Switch - Chip Heath [111]
Solutions-focused brief therapy. A relatively new therapeutic approach, solutions-focused brief therapy (SFBT) was pioneered by therapists at the Palo Alto Mental Research Institute, where Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg did their training. De Shazer and Berg are known for their emphasis on solutions and on the Miracle Question, which we consider later. SFBT has been applied in many different arenas. Wallace J. Gingerich of Case Western Reserve keeps a list of SFBT studies on his website: http://www.gingerich.net/SFBT/2007_review.htm. For his 2007 review of the literature, Gingerich accumulated a list of 150 studies, most conducted since 1997, that investigated the effect of SFBT on behavior. SFBT has been applied to day-to-day situations such as couples therapy, bullying at school, and how kids perform in math. It also has been used with even more serious problems: domestic violence offenders, prisoners, substance abusers, individuals found guilty of DUI, and suicide prevention programs. See Steve de Shazer, Yvonne Dolan, Harry Korman, Terry Trepper, Eric McCollum, and Insoo Kim Berg (2007), More than Miracles: The State of the Art of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy, New York: Haworth Press, p. 157.
Marriage therapist Michele Weiner-Davis. The quotations in this section and the golf example are from Weiner-Davis, Divorce Busting (1992), New York: Simon & Schuster, pp. 15–18. This is one of the most insightful and practical books on change we found in any domain. Even if your relationship is going well, you’ll benefit from reading this book.
Miracle Question. This version of the question is from de Shazer et al., More than Miracles, the book that brought de Shazer and Berg, the founders of SFBT, together with four other experienced solutions-focused therapists to talk about current practice. SFBT therapists typically record their counseling sessions, with their clients’ permission, for use in training new therapists and refining their own technique, and these authors spent time reviewing videotapes of therapy sessions and asking one another, “Why did you ask that there?” Reading More than Miracles is the therapy equivalent of sitting around reviewing game tapes with Super Bowl–winning football coaches. It’s a great experience for a therapist or counselor.
Brian Cade. The two counseling sessions by Brian Cade are described in Kathryn Shine (March 24, 2002), “C’mon, get happy,” Sun Herald, p. 38. Also see Cade and William Hudson, A Brief Guide to Brief Therapy (1993), New York: Norton.
Man with a drinking problem. The example is from the Harvard Mental Health Letter (September 1, 2006), “Solution-focused therapy (methods of psychotherapy).”
Xolair. The Xolair example is described in Richard Pascale and Jerry Sternin (May 2005), “Your Company’s Secret Change Agents,” Harvard Business Reviews, pp. 73–81.
Learn English at home. Go to http://www.english-at-home.com/vocabulary/english-word-for-emotions/ (accessed May 17, 2009).
Bad is stronger than good. This review paper is unusually long, thorough (233 references!), and depressing. See Roy F. Baumeister, Ellen Bratslavsky, Catrin Finkenauer, and Kathleen D. Vohs (2001), “Bad Is Stronger than Good,” Review of General Psychology, 5, 323–370. The final summary quotation is on p. 355.
Marcus Buckingham. Interested readers could start with this book: Buckingham (2007), Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance, New York: Free Press.
A husband forgot his wife’s birthday. For an even freakier world, imagine that the husband had forgotten all but one of his wife’s last fourteen birthdays, yet she, being a bright-spot aficionado, was energized because she knew success was possible.
Solving problems versus scaling successes. Another domain in which people have made progress following bright spots is the field called Appreciative Inquiry (AI), which focuses on analyzing successes rather