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PrintBrief Solution Focused Therapy
B.S.F.T. seeks to solve current problems and work with a clients resources rather than merely looking for causes and is highly successful at relieving suffering in the long as well as short term. (1)Pioneers of this approach are people such as Milton H Erickson, Paul Watzlawick and Virginia Satir. For the first time (perhaps since ancient times), psychotherapy is aligning with what science can tell us about how the brain works. Rather than devising ideologies and trying to get people to fit our ideas (and then accuse them of being 'in denial' if they don't) we are looking to how the brain actually works and fitting psychotherapy to that.
By using all that is useful we can be effective, rather than trying to carve out a relative 'truth' and then desperately trying to protect that limited truth by 'proving' it with our clients.
The Human Givens Approach
In a remarkable effort to extract what actually works from the messy history of psychotherapy, the European Therapy Studies Institute have pioneered the 'Human Givens' approach to psychotherapy.
In brief, they examine how the sciences such as biology, brain research, social research and anthropology align with common sense to produce an accurate picture of the common needs and characteristics of human beings.
So rather than concocting a mythology or complex ideology and then trying to get people to fit the ideology they look at what we know about people and identify the common effective factors in different therapeutic approaches.
They see people as having basic emotional needs which 'seek completion' in the environment. Emotional needs include:
- Security - safe territory and room to 'unfold' well
- Sense of autonomy and control
- Being part of a wider community
- The need for attention (to give and receive it)
- Friendship, fun, love and intimacy.
- Being emotionally connected to others.
- A sense of status within social groupings
- A sense of achievement
- The need for meaning, being 'stretched' in life.
