Solution Focused Practice: How Do You Do That? by Michael Durrant
2024, Kurrajong Press, 254pp, ISBN 978-1-76359120-2, AU$49.90 pbk
This new book by the Australian clinical psychologist and Solution Focused (SF) therapist Michael Durrant is in some ways everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-SF-but-were-afraid-to-ask. Did you know that beer-loving Steve de Shazer co-owned a house in that beer-mecca Belgium with fellow ale aficionado (and SF pioneer) Luc Isebaert? Or that de Shazer scaled 0 to 10, while Insoo Kim Berg scaled 1 to 10?
I do not mean to trivialize this book; Solution Focused Practice: How Do You Do That? is a tour de force. It is both a superbly detailed overview of the solution-focus field, and an in-depth training manual. It is arguably the book that anyone interested in understanding and practising SF therapy should be advised to read first.
Durrant, the founding editor of this journal, first met de Shazer and Berg in the mid-1980s. Now describing himself as a ‘solution-focused purist’, he has used SFBT exclusively for nearly forty years, giving the book real authority. The content is so rich that this reviewer feels the urge to summarise large tracts — but I will restrict myself to highlighting some of the principal treasures. Prominent among these are the many transcribed dialogues, which showcase Durrant’s mastery of SF therapy. Their deftness may also persuade SF sceptics that the approach has a genuine capacity, in the hands of a skilled practitioner, to mitigate (to misquote Shakespeare) the heartache and thousand natural shocks that humans are heir to. Durrant writes in a powerful phrase of ‘the reality of working in the field of human distress’. His book is full of vivid, compassionate examples of precisely that.
Durrant states at the outset that his writing goal was to explore developments and different applications over the twenty years since books by de Shazer, Berg, Eve Lipchik, Chris Iveson, Evan George and Harvey Ratner appeared. His book’s utility and boldness draw significantly on his readiness to tackle SF’s sometimes contentious techniques and issues, including miracle questions, exceptions, compliments, the preferred future, description, hope, emotion, the evidence base that SF actually works, whether or not it is a strengths-based approach, and just how brief brief therapy should be (and also whether brief is always better).
Durrant is clear that he personally ‘would only use a solution-focused approach and… not try to blend it with other approaches,’ but he does not disparage those who employ more eclectic approaches. He cautions that some may find his book idiosyncratic — indeed, Chris Iveson in the Foreword queries the presence of Erickson’s hypnotic techniques, and hints that the book may promote misunderstandings (albeit ones that lead to creative responses); but for most readers, such hesitations are unlikely to detract from the bracing benefits of Durrant’s readiness to tackle SF’s orthodoxies.
It is sometimes said that emotion and empathy have very limited roles in solution-focused therapy. Durrant tackles this notion with the assertion that while SF is not ‘emotion-driven’, identifying and acknowledging emotion is still essential. ‘We can validate emotion by highlighting exceptions but still acknowledging the pain’. He quotes Eve Lipchik on the importance of building a sense of understanding and empathy, both verbally and nonverbally. ‘People need to feel heard!’ Durrant declares.
Or take SF’s problem with ‘problems’. Durrant writes that even the word ‘solution’ is problematic, because it describes a solution to a given problem. If we were inventing this approach today, he frankly states, ‘we would probably not call it Solution-Focused [… but rather] Future-Focused or Outcome-Focused’. Acknowledging that some solution-focused practitioners believe they ‘should’ not explore problems, Durrant clarifies that we may need to talk about the problem so that the client feels heard — ‘but we don’t need to talk about the problem to help the process of change proceed’. In his excellent chapter on trauma, he quotes Eve Lipchik to the effect that “the construction of solutions is greatly facilitated when the clients feel their complaints are accepted as stated and that they are being understood”. He summarises crisply: ‘Solution-Focused practice does not set out to solve people’s problems. It sets out to help people achieve the kind of future they want.’
It is surely undeniable that people have different capacities, but Durrant argues that SF is not based on a client’s strengths. The strengths view, present in some SF writing since the '90s, is quite frequently encountered today — indeed, ‘strengths cards’ were distributed in the goodie bags at the UKASFP’s 2025 conference. In his chapter ‘Strengths, Resilience and Positive Psychology’, Durrant distinguishes the two. The strengths approach, he suggests, amounts to a set of positive attitudes concerning dignity, capacities, rights and the like, whereas SF is an explicit practice, with a structure and techniques for working with people. It is characterised by attention to what is useful and what has been achieved (exceptions, for example), and it is oriented towards the future. Nor does it assume that the practitioner knows best: being driven by the client’s goals does not mean knowing what clients should do to harness their strengths. Durrant quotes Chris Iveson to the effect that SF more usefully asks ‘what did you DO to cope/succeed/get through this?’ rather than ‘what does this tell us about your strength?’ All this suggests that SF attends more to doing than being — though it may not always be clear where the one ends and the other begins.
Durrant discusses in detail the concept of the preferred future. He recounts how this principle was adapted by Chris Iveson from Michael White’s Narrative Therapy as a more inclusive concept than ‘solutions’. In SF parlance, it replaces the concept of goals. This segues into an extensive and subtle discussion of how the ‘miracle question’ might be understood today.
There is also, inevitably, detailed discussion of ‘description’. Durrant emphasises that the therapist should interfere in the client’s life as little as possible. This leads to the conclusion that the extended description of the preferred future is the most efficacious technique in SF. How far should it extend? Durrant notes with, I think, mild humour, that BRIEF in London have pursued an approach ‘where they ask a future-focused or preferred-future question, invite the client to elaborate on “the day after the miracle” for 40 or 45 minutes, AND DO NOTHING ELSE’ (his caps). He discusses McKergow’s (2016) distinction between ‘SFBT 1.0’ and ‘SFBT 2.0’ (broadly, a shift from exception-based to description-based practice) and suggests that the miracle question and the preferred future were SFBT 2.0, and a focus on description is arguably SFBT 3.0.
He cites de Shazer and Harry Korman in contending that the real focus of SF always has been a detailed description of ‘What’s better?’ He makes clear that in his reading, BRIEF are suggesting that more description might in itself be enough; he agrees with substantial emphasis on description, but believes it may not, on its own, suffice — he prefers to finish the therapeutic conversation by giving the client something ‘tangible’ to take away. But — ‘To what extent is this therapeutically important… Or does it just help us feel like we have done our job?’ It would be fascinating to hear Durrant and others elaborate on this question.
Much more of tremendous interest is to be found in this far-ranging, immensely practical book. I have highlighted some elements I found significant, but sections including ‘Subsequent Sessions’ and ‘Endings’ are excellent. I think it is fair to say that the book’s emphasis is therapeutic, but there are chapters on SF in schools, organizations and coaching, and other topics. Readers will enjoy finding their own favourites along the way.
Solution-Focused Practice is not without minor imperfections: the bibliography seems partial, the index could be fuller, and surely it should be De Shazer, not de Shazer, at the start of a sentence? These are small niggles. This book’s utility is unassailable, as is Durrant’s admirable sincerity. That sincerity extends to his bravery in choosing to describe his own mental health crisis. After twelve months of antidepressant medication proved ineffective, he turned to solution-focused psychotherapy, centred almost exclusively on detailed descriptions of his preferred future.
A classic is born. For everyone interested in solution-focused practice, Michael Durrant’s new book is unmissable.
This book is currently available only through the author’s website at https://www.brieftherapysydney.com.au/solution-focused-practice-book. An e-book version is in preparation.