Resource Focused Therapy

Bradford Keeney

'This model does not dwell on the mental maps which families use to construe problems or solutions. Instead, it aligns people with resources which enable them to behave and ultimately see themselves differently. These resources may spring from many places: internal maps, family relationships, neighborhood groups, or untapped community resources. The authors work alongside their clients to create a resourceful event or a resourceful environment in which the family will have their own unique experience. Such experiences often have the effect of enabling the family to see strength or resources they were previously not aware of.'Readers will find this book free from ideology, but it is also a difficult book to pigeon-hole. It makes one think about metaphor, brainstorming, and community. Resource Focused Therapy is a new way of thinking about therapy, about the relationship between therapist and client, and about the available resources in the world we and our clients, together, are living in.'- David Campbell and Ros Draper'Wendel Ray and Bradford Keeney have beautifully merged a sensible and practical approach with the creative a theoretical strategies of my father, the late Milton H. Erickson, M.D. What a pleasure to read state-of-the-art therapeutic methodology that so clearly carries forth the essence of Erickson's work.'- From the Foreword by Betty Alice Erickson'Wendel Ray and Bradford Keeney have achieved an important step forward for family therapists, demonstrating how it is possible to create methods to help people come out of apparently impossible situations. The reader will certainly enjoy, as I have, reading how improvisation, play, and invention help create systems where resources and not problems become the context markers for therapy.'- Gianfranco Cecchin

• Editors' Foreword , Foreword , Introduction , Theoretical and procedural maps (and anti-maps) , Worrying about the coach , The spell , The family football game , A history with voodoo: follow-up with James and Mary , Training exercises for developing the therapist's creativity and resourcefulness , After words