By Steve de Shazer - More Than Miracles: The State of the Art of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy: 1st (first) Edition

by Steve De Shazer

The latest developments in this groundbreaking therapy approach More Than Miracles: The State of the Art of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy is a ground breaking, intellectually provocative book, revealing new advances in the widely used, evidence based Solution-focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) approach. The final work of world renowned family therapists and original developers of SFBT, the late Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg (who passed away shortly before the book's release) this definitive resource provides the most up-to-date information available on this eminently practical, internationally acclaimed approach. New revelations about the impact of language in therapeutic change are presented precisely and clearly, illustrated with real life case examples that give readers a "hands-on" view of the newest technical refinements in the SF approach. Challenging questions about the applications of SFBT to complex problems in "difficult" settings are given thoughtful, detailed answers. The book's unique design allows the reader to "listen in" on the lively discussions that took place as the authors watched therapy sessions. The solution-focused brief therapy approach is based upon researchers observing thousands of hours of psychotherapy sessions and studying which questions and responses were most effective in helping people develop solutions to their problems. More Than Miracles: The State of the Art of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy is the most up-to-date, comprehensive review of this approach. This book discusses 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 state of SFBT, and provides three real life case transcripts that vividly illustrate the practical applications of SFBT techniques. The seminar format of More Than Miracles: The State of the Art of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy allows readers to: sit in on surprising psychotherapy sessions eavesdrop on the authors' commentary about the sessions get 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" More Than Miracles: The State of the Art of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy is illuminating reading for psychotherapists, counselors, human services personnel, health care workers, and teachers.

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

Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Corey Riley · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 · Rating 2 out of 5]

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 · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 · Rating 4 out of 5]

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

[Tomáš Kratochvíl · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gute Fachliteratur. Guter Therapieansatz.

[Jong Yik Khoon · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked the first 5 chapters

[Carolynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Jose · Rating 5 out of 5]

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

[Desi · Rating 5 out of 5]

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