Clues
Investigating Solutions in Brief Therapy
13 July 1988
Description
How do solutions develop? This question leads de Shazer to a provocative discussion of all the solution-related things that client and therapist do during a session, which ultimately point to a task that says, "Now that you know what works, do more of it."
Once therapist and client are focused on investigating solutions rather than problems, therapy inevitably becomes brief—sometimes only one session.
Engaging cases, often with surprising twists, illustrate this practice-based theory of brief therapy with a wide range of complaints. Some of these, such as drug addiction or severe marital record, previously have been thought to be too "difficult" for brief therapy. however, as de Shazer shoes time and again, once therapist and client together discover "what works," obstacles in the pathway to solutions disappear.
An innovation is de Shazer's computer analysis of therapy sessions, which provides a map for analyzing situations and finding solutions. Pieces of the computer program are highlighted with individual cases, enabling the reader to move easily from the map to the territory and back again.
Both theoretically stimulating and clinically sound, de Shazer's investigations turns up clues with the potential to revolutionize the way psychotherapy is thought about and practiced.
Also By: Steve de Shazer 
Putting Difference to Work
Paperback, 2008
Words Were Originally Magic
Paperback, 1994
While this book evolves naturally from de Shazer's earlier works, here he abandons his characteristically terse style.
Keys to Solution in Brief Therapy
Paperback, 1985
This book describes a general view of solutions and how they work and of related specific procedures that have been developed during 15 years of doing and studying brief therapy.