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Problem-Solving Family Therapy

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Name of Model

Problem-Solving Family Therapy

Synonyms

Brief strategic; Communication approach; Interactional approach; MRI

Prominent Associated Figures

Problem-solving family therapy began, most notably on the West Coast, as an evolution of the Gregory Bateson Team research project that spawned Communication/Interactional theory and present day family therapy. Jay Haley (1987) is often associated with this approach because he wrote a book with the title Problem-Solving Therapy. Yet, there are many more people associated with the creation of problem-solving therapy: Gregory Bateson, Don D. Jackson, Milton Erickson, John Weakland, Jay Haley, and William Fry. Don Jackson founded the Mental Research Institute (MRI), one of the first free-standing marriage and family therapy training institute in the United States where he and Richard Fisch, John Weakland, and Paul Watzlawick developed the Brief Therapy Center, as part of the MRI, in which problem-solving family therapy was practiced and...

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References

  • Chubb, H. (1995). Outpatient clinic effectiveness with the MRI brief therapy model. In J. Weakland & W. Ray (Eds.), Propagations: Thirty years of influence from the Mental Research Institute (pp. 129–132). New York: The Haworth Press.

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  • Hale, D., & Frusha, C. (2016). MRI brief therapy: A tried and true systemic approach. Journal of Systemic Therapies, 35(2), 14–24.

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  • Haley, J. (1987). Problem-solving therapy. San Francisco: Josey-Bass, Inc.

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  • Haley, J. (1993). Uncommon therapy: The psychiatric techniques of Milton H. Erickson, M.D. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

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  • Nardone, G., & Watzlawick, P. (2007). Brief strategic therapy. New York: Aronson.

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  • Ray, W., Schlanger, K., & Sutton, J. (2009). One thing leads to another, redux: Contributions to brief therapy from John Weakland, Ch.E., Paul Watzlawick, Ph.D. and Richard Fisch, M.D. Journal of Brief, Strategic, and Systemic Therapies, 3, 15–37.

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  • Weakland, J., & Ray, W. (Eds.). (1995). Propagations: Thirty years of influence from the Mental Research Institute. New York: The Haworth Press.

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  • Weakland, J., Fisch, R., Watzlawick, P., & Bodin, A. (1974). Brief therapy: Focused problem resolution. Family Process, 13, 141–168.

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  • Weakland, J., Watzlawick, P., & Riskin, J. (1995). Introduction: MRI – A little background music. In J. Weakland & W. Ray (Eds.), Propagations: Thirty years of influence from the Mental Research Institute (pp. 1–15). New York: The Haworth Press.

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Correspondence to David Hale .

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Hale, D., Bertram, D.E. (2019). Problem-Solving Family Therapy. In: Lebow, J.L., Chambers, A.L., Breunlin, D.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49425-8_332

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