As I grow closer to completing my degree in Marriage and Family
Therapy, I find myself growing more and more anxious about what I offer
as a therapist. While the bulk of my training has focused on
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (specifically Object Relations), I have
found that the more clients I see, and the more work I do in my own
therapy, the less I find useful ways to apply the depth work I have
been trained in. This is not a criticism of my training, rather a
commentary on my own journey to develop what I consider most important
as a therapist- being useful. It is this desire to be useful to clients
that compels me to go beyond the requirements of my degree and eventual
licensure. My interests are supported by some basic beliefs about human
nature that, while they are arguable, form the foundation of what I do.
Put
simply, my core beliefs are that we as human's being are imperfect, but
fundamentally endowed with enough resources to manage most any
experience that life has in store for us. That is not to say that we DO
manage our experiences, simply that we are ABLE to. That ultimately is
the role of the therapist: aiding clients in managing their lives. It
is our job to do the work of understanding the client well enough to
identify the strengths and resources they posses which enable them to
make the changes they seek therapy for.
This
brings me to the study of solution-focused therapy. Attributed to the
works of Milton Erickson, Bill O'Hanlon, Michele Weiner-Davis, and
others, Solution-Focused Therapy combines positive psychology and
psychotherapy to harness the effect of the therapeutic interaction to
formulate a client's "problem" in such a way that is not only clearly
identified, but resolvable with the resources the client brings to
therapy. A fundamental idea in Solution-Focused Therapy states that the
orientation the therapist brings to the therapeutic relationship has a
great deal to do with how the client comes to formulate the problem. A
behavioral therapist, for example, will formulate a clients presenting
issue into a behavioral problem. A psychotherapist will inevitably
identify unresolved issues from prior experience (typically childhood);
a marriage and family therapist will undoubtedly define the problem in
terms of systemic relationships. The Solution Focused Therapist chooses
to define the problem in terms of a resolvable issue that the client
currently has the ability (or access to the necessary tools) to resolve.
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