Kevin Clouthier,  M.Sc., is a clinical member of AAMFT, faculty member of BTTC-I, and an assistant editor of Journal Of Systemic Therapies.  He has trained and consulted in Canada and the U.S.   At The Millennium Conference June 7-10, 2000 in Toronto  Canada our roving enthusiast Caroline Rabbat had an opportunity to catch up to Kevin and ask him a few questions following his workshop "Co-creating Change In One Session".  Thanks Caroline and Kevin for your time and thoughts.  If you want to attend one of Kevin's workshops he's back in Toronto March 29 and 30 presenting "Single Session Therapy"  for BTTC-I.

Q: I think the concept of the single session , and selling it as a single session is what gets a lot of people's back up.  You know you hear, "you can't do your work in a single session"!  Really if you just buy into the framework and the process of a single session and did it in every session&ldots;. 

(Kevin)  Right.  Absolutely! 

(Caroline):   Your doing  single session work!!!

K:  Exactly. 

C:  It's focused- "getting to the point",  "checking with your client", "asking your client do you want to come back", "is this helpful".

K:  Can I deal with you more?  The people do react to the notion that its constructed as one time  and one time only.  Both clients and the therapists react to that whenever  they are thinking something is being withheld from them.   So as a clinician you can go in and just take the attitude I'm going to give them whatever they need in the best way that we can do it, then it will more often that not  turn out to be. 

C:  What is the benefit in doing that.

K:  I think that where the benefit comes from is that there is a therapeutic world, a world with therapists and there is an organizational world and there's another  world where people engage life and although we might go about developing and providing clients with the best, there needs to be some kinds of parameters placed on that from an organizational perspective in terms of some of the realities of being able to provide this kind of service.  I think that as I mentioned earlier clinicians will get upset over the fact that they would be denying something by only seeing the person once, to try and sell  as ultra brief therapy or not sell it but present it as such, and they are not going to make the distinction that makes the distinction.

C:  I understand that and I just find that what you presented today was how to conduct a good session and be effective, and focused.  That became the model or framework which people come to know how you conduct your sessions. [That Framework demonstrates] how much more helpful we could be to our clients on the whole. 

K:  You have good questions and  you make good comments.

C:  I guess what I was curious about on a personal level  - you stated that your work has been influenced by solution focused and narrative models. What led you to this.  I can't image your first training was solution focused so you like many people of your and my generation, I am assuming we are about the same place, started with something different.  So what brought you to solution and narrative, the drawing card.?

K:  What brought me was that when I was an under graduate in social work we had been taught to unconditionally accept and respect all those notions and in fourth year I was told okay now you are going to diagnose people and I was tremendously uncomfortable.  I felt unprepared and ill equipped and I thought it was rather presumptuous that this guy is 22/23 years old or for that matter any body is going decide what is right about this person and it sent me on a quest, there has got to be alternative ways than having the expert position that "I know".  So I started doing reading with William Reeds Task Oriented Therapy and led from there into some strategic Minuchin and Haley.  I found myself going down this path and it was one that was comfortable so I just kept going more and more.

C:  It just fit?

K:  Yes.

C:  My experience  of it is that it is a fit for anyone who is humble enough to accept the fit of  "I'm not the expert".  I think some people want to be  an expert and I think then this is not a fit for them.

K:  I don't want that kind of power to have people looking at me in that light and having to make those kinds of decisions where I need to make pronouncements about people.  I'd rather have conversations with people.

C:  When you think of it, if you use the word power in terms of  "helpfulness",  there is incredible power of helpfulness in this model, these models!

K:  Absolutely.  It has been  interesting that this whole notion of The Common Factors has given me a lot of freedom to be able to have experiences with clients that are enlightening because I don't have to or I don't get caught in that "well what am I doing here", am I doing this kind of therapeutic technique?  I can just be in the relationship with the client and whatever happens happens and I can discuss afterwards whether it's this that or the other that makes the difference. 

C: I'm just curious because you mentioned earlier that part of why when you were talking about single session why call it even a single session just as opposed to the way we do business.  I remember earlier on 7 or 8 years ago when I first started being introduced to solution focus having this discussion with Matthew Selekman and my first question to him and I guess out of place, out of ignorance, was so which came first the HMO's or solution focused.  Thinking about the impact that health management has had on our  field -  to me part of the positive impact this has had is that it has forced us to look for most effective, creative ways but there has also been a down side because it is also, at some level for lack of a better word, bastardized the good work in the solution focus work or in that phase. 

K: Constructivist.

C: Yea.

K:  That's the point I was making earlier about there are other systems of significance in terms of how these models are applied or accepted by the more mainstream and HMO is a wonderful example of the  kinds of significant systemic influences that  can drive movement in a certain direction and to be able to sell it and I don't mean that in a derogatory term but to help people to come to understanding that their common factors that if we do it in one session or two session or ten sessions or twenty sessions as long as we are doing what is most effective.

C:  What advice would you pass on to the new generation of therapist emerging in the field given the opportunity.  The under 30.

K: I think the advice that I would give to people who are entering into this field at this time to look toward their own contribution they want to make and even if it was so concrete as to mark those down and hold them for the future and check them every once in a while and see what they are doing towards earning those achievements because there is a lot of energy that exists whenever you are fresh and young and open to new opportunities that gets diminished when you have been in the field for a while.

C:  That's those larger systems again.

K:  It is amazing how they influence you.  I would say yes, acknowledge what your contribution is going to be and do what you can to do that because there is so much more potential around what we can learn.  -END

INSOO KIM BERG

Q:  What's happening in the field, right now, that you find most exciting and energizing?

A:  I would say, where there seems to be a lot of energy is in the application of Solution Focused principles.  We are taking it out of a therapy context and doing a lot of work in other areas.  I think it is because , essentially the model is about relationships, not just therapist client relationships but people-people relationships.  Let me give you and example of that, I'm doing a lot of work in social service field, like the child protection, investigation process.  We used to think that it had nothing to do with therapy, but we are raising a lot of interest  in this way of work in that field.  For example we are talking about schools, school is an educational institution,  it institutes education, and yet because of the interest of working with people they have taken this thinking on .   There are people who work in prisons who come to training.   Surprisingly, I had prison guards come to training so I asked them , "what are you doing here,  you are prison guards".   I was taken aback [when they said]  "most people don't realize we spend more time with prisoners than prison psychiatrist, chaplains, counselors or social workers or Prison Wardens".   We have more opportunity to talk to them.

(So they can have a helpful conversation as well!)

Right- In business it has just taken off. Businesses  are now realizing that teaching technology is easier than teaching people to get along with each other (right).    Most industry and businesses are saying it's the people skills that take a long time for them to learn.  Technology we can learn that very quickly.  We are talking about totally unrelated fields.  For example, people from police departments are being trained; just a number of fields we have never thought about are now finding that this kind of thinking helps to conceptualize in a different way.  I think it's very fascinating when you think about it.  People can come from very different professions and yet where there are people involved that is where we are sort of going to infiltrate because that is where we can be helpful to them.