Systemic Therapy with Individuals

Until recently systemic therapy has been identified with family therapy. This no longer applies; the systemic approach and its techniques can now be used with profit in therapy with individuals. This book introduces and describes the first adaptation of the systemic model in the individual context.

Boscoli and Bertrando describe the work they are doing with individual clients in Milan. Locating themselves clearly within the tradition of the Milan approach and more recent social constructionist and narrative influences, and articulating continually a broad systemic framework emphasizing meaning problems in context and relationship, they introduce a range of ideas taken from psychoanalysis, strategic therapy, Gestalt therapy and narrative work. They describe the therapy as Brief/Long-term therapy and introduce new interviewing techniques, such as connecting the past, present and future in a way that releases clients and helps them construct new narratives for the future; inviting the patient to speak to the therapist as an absent family member; and working with the client to monitor their own therapy.

The book is written with a freshness that suggests Boscolo and Bertrando are describing "work in progress", and the reader is privy to the authors' own thoughts and reactions as they comment on the process of their therapy cases. This is a demystifying book, for it allows the reader to understand why one particular technique was preferred over another.