Solution Focused Brief Therapy

Solution Focused Brief Therapy
Bobby Daniels
Grand Canyon University
PCN 515
November 12, 2012

Solution Focused Brief Therapy
The helping profession is a constantly changing profession that requires continued education and training on the part of the providers. The idea that therapy requires an in-depth look and analysis of a consumer’s past is rapidly becoming obsolete at the new breed of providers begin to look for immediate relief to consumers presenting problems. Milton Erickson was an American psychiatrist whose ideas would later become the framework that introduces the constructs for Solution Focused Brief Therapy. Erickson possessed an assortment of unorthodox ideas relating to therapy that he often successfully used (Visser, 2008, Para 4). Erickson did not believe in labeling diagnostically and believed in the power of people to solve their own problems. He also believed that therapy could be brief with a positive outcome.   In this paper I, the writer will present an overview of how the Solution Focus Brief Therapy theoretical model originated and how it affects the way in which I present as a counselor.
It is reported that Erickson was influenced by the likes of a pragmatist named William James (Visser, 2008, Para 3). Pragmatists contended that the concentration on helping should be in the here and now and not in the past as traditional psychoanalysts believed (Visser, 2008, Para, 3). The old traditional therapist, being psychoanalytical in nature, took months and often years to analyze the core reasons as to why a certain problem exists. They termed it searching for the truth as the root cause. Visser, 2008, contends that James once stated that the truth is what works.
Nancy Murdock contends that Solution Focus Therapy is drawn from two different approaches and is rooted in communications and systems theory (Murdock, 2009).   According to Murdock, (2009. pp., 461), there are two variants to Solution Focused Therapy and the first is associated with...