Brief Therapy and Beyond: Stories, Language, Love, Hope, and Time

Brief Therapy and Beyond is a collection of client-therapist vignettes of time-sensitive treatment to relieve psychological distress and/or promote growth. The stories involve a plot in which characters have experiences and employ imagination to resolve problems over time. From this perspective, therapy can be understood as the purposeful development of a more functional story; “better” stories are those that bring more of what is desired and less of what is not desired. Aesthetics, effects, and ethics are all important. Stories that are well told; that are vivid and eloquent; that involve the generation and resolution of some tension; that see protagonist(s) emerge successfully, perhaps even triumphantly inform and inspire. A “good” story does more than merely relate the evidence of effective therapy; a “good story” invigorate both client and therapist.