Why do you practice psychotherapy? In this exciting volume, some of the field’s leading therapists tell true stories which evoke the pleasures, joys, and satisfactions that inspire passion for therapeutic work. Rather than focusing on the stresses and strains of being a clinician, these dramatic, poignant, wise, sometimes humorous and always soulful stories will help […]

Changing the Unchangeable is a myth shattering book that revealshow short-term therapy can be used as a powerful tool for treatingclients who present a range of complex psychological disordersincluding severe depression, delusions and paranoia, anorexia,alcoholism, obsessive-compulsive behavior, and borderlinepersonality disorder. “Fisch and Schlanger have done an admirable job of addressing thedifficult. They have done this […]

John Weakland was one of a handful of irreplaceable figures in the development of Communication/Interactional Theory, Family, and Brief Therapy. The first person asked by Gregory Bateson to join his now famous Palo Alto Research Group, Weakland’s quiet influence, through his contributions to communication theory (Bateson, Jackson, Haley, & Weakland, 1956, 1963) and his innovative […]

The Mental Research Institute, or MRI, was founded in 1958 in Palo Alto, California, by Don D. Jackson. The goal of the Institute was to do research on interactional therapy, which later extended to the practice of family therapy, in the prevalent environment of psychoanalysis. Jackson began applying systemic thinking to understanding psychological problems. He […]

This study aimed to analyze a case conducted by John Weakland, as a cofounder of Problem Solving Brief Therapy (PSBT), in order to have a better understanding of the model and how it is developed. Existing literature was reviewed emphasizing the most characteristic aspects of PSBT, which focuses primarily on promoting changes. The case studied […]

Problem-solving brief therapy (PSBT), as developed at the Brief Therapy Center/Mental Research Institute (MRI) in Palo Alto, California, is an effective and efficient therapeutic approach to help families dealing with behavioralproblems and accompanying suicidal threats in work with adolescent clients.This article (a) describes a case of an adolescent with such problems with one goal: reduce […]