Guest blog for BRIEF (EN)

I think this is exactly what talking about the preferred future right from the beginning of the day, like done at BRIEF, is all about. First we have invited the client to recall all kinds of resources. In doing so we have built a strong foundation upon which the preferred future can be built. When we invite the client to use language to describe the preferred future in minute detail, we are inviting them to create, as it were, ‘memories yet to happen’. This way they quite literally build a home for the various ways the preferred future might present itself. Preferably this description contains elements of sight, smell, sound, touch - even emotion (and this reminds me of some wonderful discussions with Harry Korman during last year's Summer School), to create this home in which the preferred future (or 'solution', in de Shazer’s words) can happen. On that day the client will experience a kind of home-coming, because everything that he or she notices, has somehow already happened in their mind. I like to think that when even the tiniest element of that description happens on that day, the brain recognizes it. The likelihood that other elements of the path that was described in the session will happen increases umpteen fold. Our language game has created the perfect environment for the ‘solution’, whatever it may be, to unfold itself.

* Gale Miller & Steve de Shazer, Emotions in Solution-Focused Therapy: a Re-examination. Family Process vol 39 No 1. p 21'