A comprehensive text on the Solution Focused approach to working with people — Solution Focused Brief Therapy, but also coaching, consulting, working with organisations and schools.

Here in Australia, books from the Northern Hemisphere are often not readily available. Thus, my initial reason for writing this book was to make a systematic treatment of Solution-Focused ideas more available to people in Australia and New Zealand.

However, it became clear to me that I wanted to be true to the Solution-Focused Brief Therapy tradition but also explore various more recent developments and different applications of the approach and write something twenty years more up-to-date. Some colleagues suggested that the book might be of use and interest to people beyond Australia and New Zealand.

1. Perspectives

2. Building possibilities rather than confronting reasons

3. Exceptions

4. Beginnings

5. The preferred future

6. What if they give an unrealistic answer to the miracle question?

7. Scaling

8. Endings

9. Subsequent sessions

10. The magic of words (Language matters)

11. Strengths, resilience and Positive Psychology

12. The power of description

13. Solution focus in schools

14. SF in organisations and coaching

15. Post-traumatic success

16. A Solution-Focused purist? And questions about the approach

Michael Durrant’s wealth of clinical experience, keen understanding of the assumptions that drive the Solution-Focused approach and the techniques that characterize its most effective implementation are clearly evident throughout this excellent book, making it an invaluable resource for both experienced and new SF practitioners.

— Yvonne Dolan, Founding Director of The Institute for Solution-Focused Therapy, author of Solution-Focused Therapy: The
basics and co-author (with Steve de Shazer) of More than miracles: The state of the art of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy.