Post-Modern Therapeutic Approaches

Hello and welcome to BEH 217 Behavioral Approaches. Today, we're going to be discussing postmodern approaches, specifically solution-focused brief therapy and narrative therapy.

Each of the models of counseling and psychotherapy we have studied so far has its own version of reality. Modernists believe in the ability to describe something objective reality accurately and assume that it can be observed and systematically known through the scientific method. Modernist belief: people seek therapy for a problem when they have deviated too far from some objective norm. For example, clients may think they are abnormally depressed when they experience sadness for longer than they think is normal. They might then seek help to return to normal behavior.

And at the bottom here is a triangle, which is the eras of psychotherapy or a psycho-behavioral approaches, which prior to the 1800s is pre-modern. Modern era is late 1800s to the 1980s, and postmodern era is 1980s and beyond. And of course, on the right-hand side on the bottom is Edward Munch's famous depiction of the scream. But basically, what modernists say is, you got to see it, you got to believe it, you got to have absolute proof that it exists for it to actually exist.

Now, postmodernism, which is the era in which we're living in, reality is often now understood as representing points of view bounded by history and context rather than being objective, immutable facts. Social constructionism is a psychological expression of this postmodern worldview. It values the client's reality without disputing whether it is accurate or rational.

So, to use an example from history, American history specifically, the vast majority of people in the United States understand that the Civil War was largely fought to free the slaves from their tyranny of working and being basically enslaved in the South. Now, there are those people who probably reside somewhat south of the Mason-Dixon line who say that the Civil War was more about expansion through the West and the power differentials and how industrialization in the North and agriculture in the South were competing forces of economics. And you could look at all of those and say there is some element of truth. But for the vast majority of people in this country, we were taught this little war was about freeing the slaves. And yet, social constructionists can create their own reality and say, no, slavery was only one small part of it. It was actually an economic war. So again, not saying that slavery was not the point of the Civil War, but that social constructionists would say that it is an equally valid argument.

To social constructionists, any understanding of reality is based on the use of language and is largely a function of the situations in which people live. Once a definition of the self is adopted, it is hard to recognize behaviors counter to that definition. For example, it is hard for someone who is suffering from depression to acknowledge the value of having a periodic good day in their life. So, you know, somebody who's going through a severe depression, they have a great day. The sun is shining, there's no humidity, they get no traffic on their commute, they get free lunch at work, everything kind of in their favor. But their self is identified as being depressed, so they do not look beyond that particular self-identifier.

In postmodern thinking, forms of language and the use of language and stories create meaning. There may be as many meanings as there are people to tell the stories, and each of these stories expresses a truth for the person telling it. Every storyteller has their own perspectives on the story. Many years ago, there was a Japanese movie called Doraemon, and I'm probably butchering the name, but it was about samurai who witnessed and participated in a battle, and each of the samurai give their own perspective or tell their own story of how they saw the battle going through. And the point is that everybody tends to make themselves the hero of their own story. So you may look at eight different tellings of a story about the same circumstances, and you will get literally eight different stories.

SI SI several years ago did a reconstruction of this kind of thing with all of the SI SI people at a wedding and their own perspectives on what they did and how they interacted with the guests. So, in case you saw that. Understanding narratives and deconstructing language processes, or as they like to call them in academia, discourses, are the focus for both understanding individuals and helping them construct desired change. What we consider to be truth is a product of interactions between people in daily life. Thus, there is not a single or right way to live one's life or to understand the world.

So again, the postmodern philosophy is to conceptualize the world as being impossible to strictly define or understand. In other words, you may see a red ball and perceive it as a tomato. Somebody else may see that red ball and perceive it as an apple. It is all about how we interpret things from our own perspective.

Social constructionism. As researchers began to emphasize the ways in which people make meaning and social relationships, the field of social constructionism was born. This explains how values are transmitted through language, by the social situation, and suggests that individuals are constantly changing with the ebb and flow of the influences of family, culture, and society.

So, over on the right-hand side, you'll see a picture at the top right. It says, "Warning: Reflections in this mirror may be distorted by socially constructed ideas of beauty." And that's a perfect example of what social constructionism is. You go back to the 1800s, women with full figures, size 16, 18, 20 were considered to be gorgeous because at that time, food was not always so plentiful. You couldn't just go to Whole Foods and fill up your cart. So a woman who had a big figure demonstrated that she was superior to women who were skinny because skinny women were a dime a dozen. On the other hand, today, women are considered to be beautiful if they are super thin. And again, society dictates what is considered beautiful and what isn't. You go to another country, and small feet might be considered the paragon of beauty. You go to another country, and having a long neck might be the sign of beauty. And again and again, you go to different countries, and you'll see that these ideas of beauty are going to change based on the culture and the society in which people live.

The collaborative partners between the therapist and client in the therapeutic process is considered more important than assessment or technique. And remember, that is pretty much consistent throughout all of the behavioral approaches. That partnership between the therapist and the client is so vital because trust must be established. In social constructionism, clients are viewed as experts about their own lives.

So, moving on to the idea of deconstructing cultural narratives. The creation of the self, which has so dominated the modernist search for human essence and truth, is being replaced with the concept of socially storied lives. Change begins by deconstructing the power of cultural narratives and then proceeds to the co-construction of a new life of meaning.

This PowerPoint will address two of the most significant postmodern approaches: solution-focused brief therapy and narrative therapy. Starting with solution-focused brief therapy. This is a future-focused, goal-oriented therapeutic approach to brief therapy. It emphasizes strengths and resilience of people by focusing on exceptions to their problems and their conceptualized solutions. SFBT is an optimistic, anti-deterministic, meaning which they don't believe that it's fate or destiny, future-oriented approach based on the assumption that clients have the ability to change quickly and can create a problem-free life as they strive for a new reality. The solution-focused philosophy rests on the assumption that people can become stuck in unresolved past conflicts and blocked when they focus on past or present problems rather than on the future. It is built on the optimistic assumption that people are healthy and competent and have the ability to construct solutions that can enhance their lives. So, we're giving people credit, you know, instead of saying that people are like children or sheep and they need to be led to a solution, what we're saying is people are competent and they can do this. The therapist's role is to help clients recognize these competencies they already possess and apply them towards solutions. So, in a sense, it's almost like this idea of life coaching. Solution-focused brief therapy has parallels with positive psychology, which concentrates on what is right and what is working for people rather than dwelling on deficits, weaknesses, and problems. By emphasizing positive dimensions, clients quickly become involved in resolving their problems, which makes this a very empowering approach. So, the idea here is that the therapist points out the positives, helps the client come up with solutions, emphasizing their strengths, and the client ultimately solves their own problems.

Solution-focused practitioners counter client presentation with optimistic conversations that highlight a belief in achievable and usable goals. Therapists can be instrumental in assisting clients in making a shift from a fixed problem state to a world with new possibilities. One of the goals of SFBT is to shift clients' perceptions by reframing clients' problem-saturated stories through the counselor's skillful use of language. So, when somebody tells a story and it's filled with negativity, the idea is for the therapist to reframe what the client is saying into a more positive perspective. The emphasis of SFBT is to focus on what is working in the client's lives, which is in stark contrast to the traditional model of therapy that tends to be focused on, "Tell me your problems." Purpose: assist clients in paying attention and promoting hope by helping clients discover exceptions or times when the problem was less impressive, less intrusive in their life. SFBT focuses on finding out what people are doing that is working and then apply this knowledge to eliminate problems in the shortest amount of time possible. Identifying what is working and encouraging clients to replicate these patterns is extremely important. A key theme is: when you know what is working, do more of it. If something is not working, try something different. I know that sounds very simple, but if you think about your own experiences, especially with your love life, you can see that it's not always that easy to do.

The core task of SFBT practitioners is to learn how to rapidly and systematically identify problems, create a collaborative relationship with clients, and intervene with a range of specific methods. Because most therapy is time-limited, therapists need to practice brief therapy to learn it well. So, it's not something you learn in two days. This is something you learn as a process.

So, there are some solution-focused brief therapy assumptions. It is a model that explains how people change and how they can reach their goals, rather than a model of the causes of the problems. So, we're not looking at why mommy and daddy caused all your problems. Here are some of the basic, some basic assumptions: Individuals who come to therapy do have the capability of behaving effectively, even though this effectiveness may be temporarily blocked by negative cognitions or negative thinking. There are advantages to a positive focus on solutions and on the future. There are exceptions to every problem, or times when the problem was absent. No problem is constant, and change is inevitable. Clients are doing their best to make change happen, and clients can be trusted in their intention to solve their problems.

The main goal of brief therapy is to help clients efficiently resolve problems and to move forward as quickly as possible. The average length of therapy is three to eight sessions, with the most common length being only one session. So, as you can see, this is something that can be done, once you're good at it, fairly quickly.

Some of the defining characteristics of brief therapy include the following: creating a rapid working alliance between therapist and client, clear specification of achievable treatment goals, a clear division of responsibilities between the client and the therapist with active client participation and a high level of therapist activity, emphasis on clients' strengths, competencies, and adaptive capacities, expectation that change is possible and realistic, and that improvement can occur in the immediate future. Here are now orientation with a primary focus on current thinking, feeling, and behaving, specific, integrated, pragmatic, and eclectic techniques, periodic assessment of progress towards goals and outcomes, time-sensitive, including making the most of each session and ending therapy as soon as possible.

Solution-focused counseling assumes a collaborative approach, and clients can generally build solutions to their problems without any assessment of the nature of their problems. So, we don't need to figure out that you have issues with men because of the way your father treated you. That's irrelevant. We're going to fix the problems you have with men. So again, we get down to the three basic rules: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Once you know what works, do more of it. And if it's not working, do something different.

Within the SFBT framework, the structure of solution building differs greatly from traditional approaches to problem-solving, as can be seen in this brief description of the steps involved: Clients are given an opportunity to describe their problems. Number two, the therapist works with clients in developing well-formed goals. The question is posed: "What will be different in your life when your problems are solved?" Number three, the therapist asks clients about those times when their problems were not present or when the problems were less severe. Number four, at the end of the solution-building conversation, the therapist offers clients summarizing feedback, provides encouragement, and suggests what clients might observe or do before the next session to further solve their problem. The therapists and clients evaluate the progress being made in reaching satisfactory solutions by using a rating scale. Clients are asked what needs to be done before they see their problems as being solved, and also what their next step will be. So again, we're putting the onus of responsibility primarily on the client to determine when they feel the problem is solved.

The solution-focused therapist believes people have the ability to define meaningful personal goals and that they have the resources required to solve their problems because success tends to build upon itself. Modest goals are viewed as the beginning of change. Initially, therapists assist clients in creating well-defined goals that are: number one, stated positively in the client's language; number two, are action-oriented; number three, are structured in the here-and-now; number four, are attainable, concrete, specific, and measurable; number five, are controlled by the client.

Clients are encouraged to engage in change or solution talk rather than problem talk, on the assumption that what we talk about most will be what we produce. Talking about problems can produce ongoing problems. Instead, we talk about change. Much of what the therapeutic process is about involves clients thinking about their future and what they want to be different in their lives. Consistent with the postmodern and social constructionist perspective, solution-focused brief therapists adopt a non-knowing position to put clients in the position of being experts about their own lives. Although therapists have expertise in the process of change, clients are the experts on what they want changed. Clients will have their own ways of building their preferred futures, even if this is often not clear to them when they begin therapy. The therapist's task is to point clients in the direction of change without dictating what to change. Therapists strive to create a climate of mutual respect, dialogue, and affirmation, in which clients experience the freedom to create, explore, and co-author their evolving stories. The therapists ask questions, and based on the answers, generates further questions. Examples of some useful questions are: "What do you hope to gain from coming here?" "If you were to make the changes you desire, how would that make a difference in your life?" "What steps can you take now that will lead to these changes?"

Before we move forward, I just want to briefly focus on the three kinds of relationships that may develop between a therapist and their clients. Number one, the customer. The client and therapist jointly identify a problem and a solution to work toward. Now, that's obviously, in this case, a great construct. Complaintant. The client describes a problem but is not able or willing to assume a role in constructing a solution. Obviously, in this postmodern approach, that's not going to be a very helpful position to take. Visitor. The client comes to therapy because someone else, possibly a spouse, parent, teacher, probation officer, thinks the client has a problem. Of course, the visitor doesn't think he or she has a problem, but you know, these kinds of things oftentimes occur, especially with addiction issues, anger issues, issues that involve any kind of compulsive behaviors. DeJong and Berg recommend using caution so that therapists do not box clients into a static identity. These three roles are only starting points for the conversation.

So, getting back to SFBT. Pre-therapy change. Simply scheduling an appointment often sets positive change in motion. During the initial therapy session, it is common for solution-focused therapists to ask, "What have you done since you called for the appointment that has made a difference in your problem?" Exception questions are asked by therapists to direct clients to times when the problem did not exist or when the problem was not as intense. Exceptions are those past experiences in a client's life when it would be reasonable to have expected the problem to occur, but somehow it did not.

Therapy goals are developed by using the miracle question, which is a main SFBT technique. The therapist asks, "If a miracle happened and the problem you have was solved overnight, how would you know it was solved and what would be different? What will you be doing differently?" So, this miracle question basically says, okay, miracle occurs, what's different? How are you different? How's the situation different? This process of considering hypothetical solutions reflects the belief that reviewing of the perceived problem as potentially solved changes the problem.

Solution-focused therapists also use scaling questions when change in human experiences are not easily observed, such as feelings, moods, or communication, and to assist clients in noticing that they are not completely defeated by their problem. For example, a woman reporting feelings of panic or anxiety might be asked, "On a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being how you felt when you first came to therapy and 10 being how you feel the day after your miracle cure happens and your problem is gone, how would you rate your anxiety right this minute?" So, you know, if your client's been with you for three or four sessions and you think they're making significant progress, 0 or 1 being day 1, 10 is the miracle cure, how do you feel today? They might say a 6. They might say it, it really depends on their issues of anxiety and panic if that is their situation.

The formula first session task is a form of homework. A therapist might give clients to complete between their first and second sessions. The therapist might say, "Between now and the next time we meet, I would like you to observe family life, marriage relationship, so that you can describe to me next time what happens in your family life, marriage relationship that you want to continue to have happen." So, you're looking for the positives, not the negatives. At the second session, clients can be asked, "What did you observe and what would you like to have happen in the future?" This kind of assignment offers clients hope that change is inevitable. It is not a matter of if change will occur, but when it will happen. This intervention tends to increase clients' optimism and hope about their present and future situation. The formula first session tasks technique emphasizes future solutions rather than past problems.

The solution-focused group practitioner believes that people are competent from the beginning. The group members are given an opportunity to describe their problems briefly. It is the facilitator's role to create opportunities for the members to view themselves as being resourceful. Because SFBT is designed to be brief, the leader has the task of keeping group members on a solution track rather than a problem track, which helps members to move in a positive direction. The art of questioning is a main intervention used in solution-focused groups. Group leaders use questions that presuppose change and remain goal-oriented and future-oriented. The leader is attempting to help the members identify exceptions and begin to recognize personal resiliency and competency. Solution-focused group counseling offers a great deal of promise for practitioners who want a practical and time-effective approach to interventions in school settings. This model has much to offer to school counselors who are responsible for serving large caseloads of students in a K through 12 school system, for example.

So, moving on to the final stage of the therapeutic relationship, which is terminating. From the very first solution-focused interview, the therapist is mindful of working toward termination. Once clients are able to construct a satisfactory solution, the therapeutic relationship can be terminated. The ultimate goal of solution-focused counseling is to end treatment. Because this model of therapy is brief, present-centered, and addresses specific complaints, it is very possible that clients will experience adult mental concerns at a later time. Clients can be invited to ask for additional sessions whenever they feel a need to get their life back on track or to update their story.

Okay, so we're going to move on to narrative therapy. Individuals construct the meaning of life through interpretive stories, which are then treated as truths or their truth. Often, the power of these stories works against the perspective of the individual. Narrative therapists help clients modify their painful beliefs, values, and interpretations as clients create meaning and new possibilities from the stories they share. Adopting a postmodern, narrative, social constructionist view sheds light on how power, knowledge, and truths are negotiated in families and other social and cultural contexts. Narrative therapy is a strengths-based approach that emphasizes collaboration between client and therapist to help clients view themselves as living the way they want.

Narrative therapists strive to listen to the problem-saturated story of the client without getting trapped in the client's truth. Therapists stay alert for details that give evidence of the client's competence in taking stands against oppressive problems. The therapist believes the client's abilities, talents, positive intentions, and life experiences can be catalysts for new possibilities for action. The narrative therapist demonstrates faith that these inner resources and competencies can be identified, even when the client is having difficulty seeing them. So, you have people who truly believe that they are terrible human beings because their mother, their father, whatever voice from their childhood told them that they were terrible or ugly or stupid, any number of terrible things. And as they've grown up, they've internalized those words, so now it has become their truth. The therapist's job in this case is to help them realize that this truth is not actually true.

So, during the narrative conversation, attention is given to avoiding totalizing language, which reduces the complexity of the individual by assigning an all-embracing single description to the essence of that person. So, if you have a person who says, "I'm ugly" or "I'm stupid," you know, you can always find somebody who's stupider and uglier, I promise you. The point being is, there are always going to be things that a person can be smart about. You know, you may be not the smartest person when it comes to math, but you're an excellent writer. Or you may not be, you know, as beautiful as Beyonce, but you are definitely attractive, or you have beautiful hair, or you have a gorgeous face, you know, whatever they say. So, therapists begin to separate the person from the problem in their mind as they listen and respond. This is called double listening.

The steps in the narrative therapeutic process illustrate the structure of the narrative approach: Collaborate with the client to come up with a mutually acceptable name for the problem. Personify the problem and attribute oppressive intentions and tactics to it. Investigate how the problem has been disrupting, dominating, or discouraging to the client. Ask the client to speculate about what kind of future could be expected from the strong, competent person who is emerging. Find or create an audience for perceiving and supporting the new story. The narrative therapist is an active facilitator. The concepts of care, interest, respectful curiosity, openness, empathy, contact, and even fascination are seen as a relational necessity. The not-knowing position, which creates participant-observer and process facilitator roles for the therapist, integrates therapy with a postmodern view of human inquiry. Like the solution-focused therapist, the narrative therapist assumes the client is the expert when it comes to what he or she wants in life.

I have a quote by Maya Angelou at the top right that I just love: "There is no greater agony than burying an untold story inside of you." So, a lot of times, what you have with clients is that they have internalized a story that was beat into them, and yet there is this other story that is inside of them that's just wanting to get out. And as a therapist, your job is to help them unlock that story.

Narrative therapists place great importance on the values and ethical commitments a therapist brings to the therapy venture. Clients function as authors when they have the authority to speak on their own behalf. In the narrative, the therapist as expert is replaced by the client as expert. This notion challenges the stance of the therapist as being an all-wise and all-knowing expert. When a client has limited perception of his or her capacities due to being saturated in problem thinking, it is the job of the therapist to prompt other strength-related stories to modify the client's perception. So, you have three elements of working with the narrative: external, what happened; internal, how you felt; and reflexive meaning, what it meant. And that is why the narrative sequence is such an important element in any therapeutic relationship. A narrative approach to counseling is more than the application of skills. It is based on therapists' personal characteristics that create a climate that encourages clients to see their stories from different perspectives. Narrative therapists emphasize their willingness to see beyond dominant cultural norms and to appreciate clients' differences by using questions as a way to generate experience rather than to gather information. The aim of questioning is to progressively discover or construct the client's experience so that the client has a sense of direction. This questioning process helps bring out the culturally saturated assumptions that contribute to the original construction of the problem, identifying preferred directions and creating alternative stories that support these preferred directions.

Narrative therapists believe that it is not the person that is the problem, but it is the problem that is the problem. Externalization is one process for deconstructing the power of a narrative. This process separates the person from identifying with the problem. Externalizing conversations counteract oppressive, problem-saturated stories and empower clients to feel competent to handle the problems they face. There are two stages of structuring externalizing conversations: one, to map the influence of the problem in the person's life, and two, to map the influence of the person's life on the problem. It's almost like a snake chasing its own tail. One way is through asking questions in which we change the adjectives that people use to describe themselves. So instead of, "I am a depressed person," we change it into, "How long has this depression been influencing you?" or "What does the depression tell you about yourself?" So, you have to change the way you use the language in order to externalize the conversation.

Mapping the influence of the problem on the person generates a great deal of useful information and often results in people feeling less shamed and blamed. It is important to identify instances when the problem did not completely dominate a client's life. This kind of mapping can help the client, who is disillusioned by the problem, see some hope for a different kind of life. Through these sorts of questions, some space is created between the person and the problem, and this enables the person to begin to revise their relationship with the problem. Therapists are looking for these sparkling moments as they engage in externalizing conversations with clients.

Constructing counter-stories goes hand in hand with deconstruction, and the narrative therapist listens for openings to counter-stories. So, the client is telling the story, deconstructing this story, and the therapist helps the client construct a new story. People can continually and actively reauthorize, and narrative therapists invite clients to author alternative stories through unique outcomes. Narrative practitioners believe that new stories take hold when there is an audience to appreciate and support them. Gaining an audience for the new stories needs to occur if alternative stories are to stay. So, clients must consciously seek out an appreciative audience to new developments, so a support system, family, friends.

Now, in terms of group counseling, Winslade and Monk claim that narrative's emphasis on creating an appreciative audience for new developments in an individual's life lends itself very well to group counseling. Groups provide a ready-made community of concern and many opportunities for the kind of interaction that opens possibilities for a new way of living. New identities can be rehearsed and tried out into a wider world. And we have some examples on page 135 in your textbook. They give several examples of working in a narrative way with groups and schools.

Getting back on track with homework, adventure-based programming, anger management groups, and grief counseling groups. So, moving on to multiculturalism and social constructionism. Lots of isms. Social constructionism is congruent with the philosophy of multiculturalism. One of the problems that culturally diverse clients often experience is the expectation that they should conform to the truths and reality of the dominant society of which they are a part. With the emphasis on multiple realities and the assumption that what is perceived to be the truth is the product of social construction, the most modern approaches are a good fit with diverse worldviews. Clients are encouraged to explore how their realities are being constructed out of a cultural discourse and the consequences that follow from such constructions.

So, for example, if you had a client come in who was a member of a religious organization that believed in polygamy, marrying more than one spouse, you know, that is a cultural abnormality in the United States. I'm not saying that it's wrong, I'm just saying it's not the norm. A therapist who understands the social construction construct and also the narrative therapy idea won't necessarily see that as the primary problem unless the client brings that up. Within the framework of their cultural values and worldview, clients can explore their beliefs and provide their own reinterpretations of significant life events. The practitioner with a social constructionist perspective can guide clients in a manner that respects their underlying values. This dimension is especially important in those cases where counselors are from a different cultural background or who do not share the same worldview as their clients. Narrative therapy is grounded in a socio-cultural context, which makes this approach especially relevant for counseling culturally diverse clients.

So, for example, let's say that you are your religion is Baptist, and you have somebody come to see you, a client who is Jewish, and they're having issues with their family because they want to marry a Muslim. All of these issues are outside of your culture in and of itself. But the important thing to keep in mind is that from a social constructionist perspective, you are helping them find the way to create, recreate their story so that they can solve their own problems. So, not knowing the entire history of Judaism and Islam is not necessary for you to help this person solve their issues.

Here are some questions that these therapists suggest as a way to more fully understand multicultural influences on a client: "Tell me more about the influence that some aspect of your culture has played in your life." "What can you share with me about your background that will enable me to more fully understand you?" "What challenges have you faced growing up in your culture?" "What, if anything, about your background has been difficult for you?" "How have you been able to draw on strengths and resources from your culture, and what resources can you draw on in times of need?" Questions such as these can shed light on specific cultural influences that have been sources of support or that contributed to a client's problem.

So, let's address some of the shortcomings of postmodern approaches. A potential shortcoming of the postmodern approach pertains to the not-knowing stance the therapist assumes, along with the assumption of the client as expert. Individuals from many different cultural groups tend to elevate the professional as the expert who will offer direction and solutions for the person seeking help. If the therapist is telling the client, "I am not really an expert, you're the expert, I trust in your resources for you to find solutions to your problem," this may engender a lack of confidence in the therapist by the client. To avoid this solution, the situation, the therapist using a solution-focused or a narrative orientation needs to convey to clients that they are the experts in knowing what they want in their lives. So, it's all about the language again. The postmodern approaches stress being transparent with clients and honoring their hopes and expectations in therapy. This emphasis creates a context for providing culturally responsive services.

McKenzie and Munk expressed their concerns over counselors who attempt to employ narrative ideas in a mechanistic fashion. They cautioned that a risk is that some beginners mechanically question their clients. In such situations, McKenzie and Munk are convinced that mechanically using these techniques will not be effective. They add that although narrative therapy is based on some simple ideas, it is a mistake to assume that the practice is simple. Some solution-focused practitioners now acknowledge the problem of relying too much on a few techniques, and they are placing increasing importance on the therapeutic relationship and the overall philosophy of the approach.

So, are postmodern approaches successful? Are they well? We are using a non-pathologizing stance, which is characteristic of postmodern practitioners with a social constructionist, solution-focused, or narrative orientation, as a major contribution to the counseling profession, which is basically, in a nutshell, rather than dwelling on what's wrong with a person, these approaches view the client as someone who is competent and resourceful and needs some coaching to help them figure out what's wrong. People cannot be reduced to a specific problem, nor accurately labeled and identified with a disorder. A major strength of both solution-focused and narrative therapies is the use of questioning, which is the centerpiece of both approaches. Effective questioning can help individuals examine their story and find new ways to present it. The postmodern approaches have much to offer practitioners, regardless of their theoretical orientation. Many of the basic concepts and techniques of both solution-focused brief therapy and narrative therapy can be integrated into other therapeutic approaches. So, again, it's not necessary to use it within a vacuum, but it can be applied to other approaches as well.

So, that's it for today's presentation. If you have any questions, please feel free to text or email your instructor. Alternatively, if you are not in this class, please leave a comment, and we will get back to you as quickly as we can. Very much, and have a wonderful day.