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On the Client's Path: A Manual for the Practice of Brief Solution-Focused Therapy
According to the solution-focused model, the answer to a client’s problem will ultimately come from the client’s own repertoire of coping strategies. On the Client’s Path provides everything you need in terms of theory and the step-by-step components of the solution-focused process. It shows how this therapy can be applied to a variety of clients in a range of clinical and medical settings. Additional chapters cover worst-case scenarios and crisis situations. Numerous case notes offer client-therapist dialogues drawn from a broad range of case histories.
176 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1995
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March 30, 2014
On the one hand this book teaches a therapeutic approach that can be powerful and useful in the right situations. Clients who do not want to be in counseling, for whatever reason, will find themselves disarmed by a counselor using solution-focused therapy like this book describes. Clients with problems that they feel are too big to get a handle on will find themselves encouraged and empowered by a counselor using solution-focused therapy. Many clients can benefit from this approach in the early sessions of therapy when it is important to set realistic goals and strive to meet them.
On the other hand though this therapeutic approach may put a little too much faith in the client. The client sets the agenda. The client defines the path of the therapy. The client leads and the counselor follows like a loyal puppy right behind. The benefit of this is that the client will not be resistant (because she would only be resisting herself). The trade-off is that the client can easily avoid real problems and real emotions because she is the one in control. The author calls this "trusting the client to know what she needs and when she needs it." In one sense this is a powerful expression of high-level empathy. I worry though that it would be easy for a counselor to use this way of thinking as an excuse to abdicate her own responsibility to help clients in a real and meaningful way. In my opinion part of being a counselor means that we sometimes need to help clients see ways that they are being disingenuous with themselves and with others. Of course we need to establish a healthy rapport with our clients first and it is just such a rapport that this counseling approach can help to create.
Counselors who find themselves working with resistant clients as well as counselors who find themselves in need of a simple and useful method for conducting short counseling sessions should really read this book and glean what useful information they can. I especially recommend this book to counselors who seem to be making no impact at all on their clients and who often find themselves arguing with their clients or frustrated with them. I will certainly be adding this counseling technique to my tool box. I only suggest caution, that this counseling system by itself may not be enough to do what you need to do as a counselor. It may help to keep in mind that there is a thin line that separates healthy coping from unhealthy avoidance and it is often up to us as counselors to plot this line in a client's life.
On the other hand though this therapeutic approach may put a little too much faith in the client. The client sets the agenda. The client defines the path of the therapy. The client leads and the counselor follows like a loyal puppy right behind. The benefit of this is that the client will not be resistant (because she would only be resisting herself). The trade-off is that the client can easily avoid real problems and real emotions because she is the one in control. The author calls this "trusting the client to know what she needs and when she needs it." In one sense this is a powerful expression of high-level empathy. I worry though that it would be easy for a counselor to use this way of thinking as an excuse to abdicate her own responsibility to help clients in a real and meaningful way. In my opinion part of being a counselor means that we sometimes need to help clients see ways that they are being disingenuous with themselves and with others. Of course we need to establish a healthy rapport with our clients first and it is just such a rapport that this counseling approach can help to create.
Counselors who find themselves working with resistant clients as well as counselors who find themselves in need of a simple and useful method for conducting short counseling sessions should really read this book and glean what useful information they can. I especially recommend this book to counselors who seem to be making no impact at all on their clients and who often find themselves arguing with their clients or frustrated with them. I will certainly be adding this counseling technique to my tool box. I only suggest caution, that this counseling system by itself may not be enough to do what you need to do as a counselor. It may help to keep in mind that there is a thin line that separates healthy coping from unhealthy avoidance and it is often up to us as counselors to plot this line in a client's life.
Displaying 1 of 1 review