Customer Reviews

More Than Miracles: The State of the Art of Solution-focused Brief Therapy (Haworth Brief Therapy)

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More than Miracles provides the state of the art for this model. This work represents the best distillation of the model to date. I especially appreciate the chapter covering its philosophical basis in Wittgenstein. I also appreciate the use of multiple cases to demonstrate the nuances of this model. Whether you like or approve of postmodern types of therapy, More than Miracles introduces you to the best of this type of therapy. It is a must have to complete any therapy or therapist's library.

The book, good as it is on the actual practice of SFT, should only be half the size. All the therapy stuff is great, but half the book is on Wittgenstein philosophy, forced into a therapeutic context. This (unhealthy??) focus on ONE philosophical paradigm is annoying because one buys a book for what the title suggests, in this case, learning about SFBT, not philosophy. You don't have to know the "why" to get the "how". In the same way that one doesn't need to know why one has problems (psychoanalytical) to find solutions (the premise of SFT), one doesn't need to know "why" SFT works (philosophical theories) to know "how" to do it. As regards Wittgenstein philosophy discussed in half the book, Wittgenstein himself was at least humble enough to acknowledge, in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, that his book did not measure up to his own criteria of meaning, since philosophical theories set their own criteria of meaning which often cannot be met! De Shazer, however, did not seem to have the same measure of humility: anyone calling his own therapy "state of the art" is in effect negating other forms of therapy as somehow inferior or not up-to-date, when research strongly suggests that all models of therapy enjoy very similar empirical outcomes.