More Than Miracles: The State of the Art of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy

by Steve de Shazer, Yvonne M. Dolan, Harry Korman

Written by pioneering experts in the field, More Than Miracles remains the authoritative text on solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT). The final work of the world-renowned family therapists and original developers of SFBT, the late Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg, this comprehensive resource informs practitioners and students in how to apply this practical, internationally acclaimed approach.

With a new preface, this classic edition outlines the latest developments in the fields of family therapy, brief therapy, and psychotherapy training and practice. A succinct overview orients the reader to the current landscape of SFBT and provides three real-life case transcripts that illustrate the practical applications of SFBT techniques. The seminar format of the text allows readers



sit in on surprising psychotherapy sessions



eavesdrop on the authors’ commentary about the sessions



gain a comprehensive overview on the current state of SFBT



review and understand the major tenets of SFBT



learn specific interventions, including the miracle question and the reasons for asking it



understand treatment applicability



read actual session transcripts



understand the "miracle scale"



get insight into the unique relationship between Wittgenstein’s philosophy and SFBT



better understand SFBT and emotions



examine misconceptions about SFBT



and more

Suitable for both advanced practitioners and ambitious beginners, this book is the ideal resource for anyone seeking an in-depth understanding of the SFBT approach, the concepts that inform it, and the specific techniques that characterize its implementation.

Genres: Psychology, Counselling, Nonfiction, Mental Health, Grad School

191 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Steve de Shazer (M.S., Social Work, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee; B.F.A., UWM) was a psychotherapist who developed and pioneered solution focused brief therapy.

Reviews

[Corey Riley]

I think the first half of this is full of helpful information for jumping right in to using SFBT. I think the entire back half (with the exception of maybe the transcripts in Ch 5 and 7) is useless. I found the overlay of Wittgenstein’s philosophy boring, distracting, and unhelpful.

The book seems brief but is quite wordy. Lastly, I really don’t like how much the authors stress that SFBT should only be used in full fidelity and cannot fit within an eclectic approach.

I say all of these negative things but still rated 3 stars because I really did find good information and SFBT skills in this book that I will apply in practice.

[Carly]

First, on Goodreads, 2 stars means "It was OK" and 3 was "I liked it". This book was OK, hence the 2 stars.

Before I picked up this book, I thought, Solution Focused therapy might be my 'thing'. After reading this book (on solution focused therapy)...my thoughts have changed slightly. I am grateful for the chance to read about a theory and get to know it better, and especially thankful for the transcripts of sessions in this book (to be able to see how a SF counselor interacts with the client), but I don't think that this theory is 100% me.

Reasons I am FOR solution focused therapy:
Believes that clients have the solutions within themselves and the counselor is really there to just help client work it out. (Client autonomy!)
Still being unconditionally accepting of client.

But when I read the book, I didn't feel it clicked with me. The counselor talked SO much--bleh.

There might be another SF book out there to bring me back, but I'm going to explore other theories now...

[Mr. Dokkie]

New to this therapy world, my learning curve is quite high. Main thoughts of this book are:
- I thought it is a worthwhile approach to consider.
- Focusing on the positive leads to more positive.
- general impression is that this book sought to validate itself as a worthy approach through much comparison of how it is not like other approaches
- the miracle question seems like a great vision casting type question
- book is filled with useful nuggets of information (like an answer given to a question may reveal that the question was understood differently than was intended… thus the challenge is figuring out what question was asked that the client would answer the way they did)

[Caroline Abbott]

I read this for a class in Brief Therapy. The beginning of the book was very helpful, and gave many examples of therapists using this technique. The second half of the book was not as great, in my mind. The chapter on the verb "to be" was pretty confusing to me. All in all, a good resource for brief therapy

[Rachelle]

This book was great for learning about the philosophy of SFBT, but the quality of the writing left a lot to be desired!!

[Dena McGoldrick Butler]

Compilation of SFBT by the founders.
Each chapter stood alone. Some were descriptions and others were transcripts of sessions.
Good overview

[Tomáš Kratochvíl]

This book is very interesting and I would definitely recommend it to anyone keen in psychotherapy.

However, I totally agree with some of the older reviews... The first half of the book is very focused, full of information and understandable examples with (usually) helpful comments. The second half gets a bit lost in the philosophy which gave ground to the therapeutic approach. Comments of the authors and the quotes by Wittgenstein get rather distracting and difficult to understand and connect to the rest of the text.

This is actual a general problem - I understand why the authors did not want to distract the reader by adding who wrote which comment. But this way it was really difficult to know when the commentor changes and when it's just a new paragraph by the same person. The editor should have done something about that. At least use "-" for each new comment. Also, sometimes it was difficult to decide whether the comment relates to the previous paragraph in or to the paragraph after it.

But setting this aside, the book explains really well what are the bases of the SF therapy. It also shows examples of how to use various SF techniques and it even codifies how "an SF-acquainted therapist", "SF therapist" and "SF believer" operates. Sometimes the comments really make the experience much more wholesome. So for me a good read which definitely convinced me to continue reading about this therapy and probably even trying to make use of it.

[Amanda]

I love SFBT because it taps on the client’s own strengths, solutions and past exceptions to solve problems. If something is not broken, don’t fix it. The transcripts of SFBT sessions conducted by Steve De Shazer and Insoo Kim Berk, founders of the therapy, were especially helpful for me to understand how to apply it practically.

[JaninasBooks]

Gute Fachliteratur. Guter Therapieansatz.

[Jong Yik Khoon]

Overall is a good book to understand more about SFBT. Just part of the book talking about Wittgenstein's philosophy is hard to digest.

[Nathalie Karasek]

I really liked the first 5 chapters

[Justin]

I don't think it quite stands alone but if you take this book with the 100 keys together I think they're a good pair

[Carolynne]

This book was excellent - when I have more time, I'll read it in depth. I only read it to prepare for writing a paper on SFBT.

More than Miracles by de Shazer and Dolan was like a mini-seminar on Solution-focused Brief Therapy. From reading this I have not only gained a deeper understanding of the practice, but further assurance that this is the type of therapy I would like to practice in my future counseling career. I look forward to attending SFBT seminars, and deeply regret that de Shazer and Berg are both gone, and I will never be able to study with them personally.

[Lara]

This book relied heavily on session transcripts to illustrate concepts which I found helpful. Background knowledge (on the part of the reader) on SFBT is useful in placing the demonstrations in conceptual context. Quick to read and very illustrative.

[Lawrence P]

Deep Therapy

Asking questions about soluntions and the future gets clients to think in news ways. The questions get clients to detail their own hypnotic trance and make up their own post hypnotic suggestions.

[Jose]

Really good, helped me understand more about sfbt...need to finish this book

[Desi]

Great book for a detailed discussion of the Solution Focused Family Therapy approach. Easy to follow and made me feel much more able to actually practice using this theory.

[Elizabeth]

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard biblio

[Ronald]

interesting read

Very interesting. Very incite full. This makes a lot of sense for my clients. I work with leaders who are very stuck with difficult employees

[Israel]

found it theory based on the end - highlighted parts throughout that were most helpful and would return to review