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Solution Focused Brief Therapy Essay

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Introduction
The emergence of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) marked a changing of the guard within the realm of psychotherapy. For the previous century, the profession had been dominated by theories and practices, which was focused on unearthing a client’s repressed memories or family issues in hopes of identifying cracks in their mental and/or their emotional foundation that needed to be fixed. The change in perspective and approach presented by Steven de Shazer and his counterparts provided therapist and clients alike an opportunity to center in on the presenting issue, instead of prolonging the process in search of hidden truths. While de Shazer presented an alternative thought process to the therapeutic process, his model was the culmination of various therapist and models continuing to push the envelope.
Historical Background
The American psychiatrist, Milton Erickson had been credited as one of the pioneers for stepping away from conventional thinking. He suggested therapy must be intensive and required a long-term commitment. In fact, his stance of successful therapy often did not necessitate a lengthy therapeutic relationship along with a small change by the client was the catalyst needed to bring about larger change are both cornerstones in SFBT (Visser, 2013). Psychiatrist Gregory Bateson was responsible for two significant contributions in the development of SFBT. The first was his view that the social environment each person resides in has a

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