Más allá de las excepciones: Historia y reflexiones de la práctica centrada en soluciones edited by Hans Jara Iglesias
Ediciones Centro Latino, 2023, 291 pages, ISBN 978-612-49422-0-4.
(Beyond Exceptions: History and reflections on solution focused practice)
Read this book review in Spanish – click here.
The book discusses Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) as a process, without suggesting that it is a complementary technique to other models or that it is only meant for easy cases. In the Spanish-speaking context, it provides confidence and consistency to practitioners, as both globally recognized figures and practitioners from the region itself participate in it.
This work allows readers to remain engaged in the solution-focused process while exploring diverse applications, both within the clinical setting and beyond. It outlines the foundations and evolution of this practice while providing an overview of developments within the Spanish-speaking world, incorporating an ethical perspective tailored to the sociocultural conditions of each region.
By outlining the continuous development of the solution-focused approach, it places this practice within the framework of common factors in therapeutic success, emphasizing the idea of “radical trust” (confianza radical) in the client’s capabilities, which directly influences the therapeutic relationship. It also offers a review of intervention possibilities from a single encounter, group work, bullying prevention, and a clear overview of intervention within judicial and family protection contexts.
The historical review informs that the developers came from different fields, such as psychology or social work. Although the shared applications in the book are proposed by psychologists, this leaves the door open for practitioners in the Spanish-speaking context who do not exclusively belong to the field of psychology.
In the first part of the book, the compiler and author organises the contributions to clearly demonstrate the importance of a solution-focused mindset, subsequently exploring practical applications in the second part. Both sections provide a framework for practitioners to reflect on what they say they do in therapy.
Any professional entering solution-focused practice will find information regarding both the mindset and the intervention possibilities, articulated and described in Spanish. This information would help ensure that, in the Spanish-speaking world, solution-focused practice is finally carried out by professionals beyond just psychologists, and would initiate a dialogue between disciplines—a dialogue that is currently lacking.
The author establishes that the books Keys to Solution in Brief Therapy by Steve de Shazer and 24 Ideas para una Psicoterapia Breve by Mark Beyebach, both presented in Spanish, served as his foundation and inspiration from the beginning. Now, this compiled work represents a next step in the contribution to Spanish literature, as it successfully presents a text where the principles of the solution-focused approach, its constant development, and, most importantly, its nature as a consistent approach—similar to others but unique in its application and mindset—are combined, which is novel in Spanish-language literature. With this, we have a purely Solution-Focused book for Spanish-speaking practitioners.
Read this book review in Spanish – click here.