The Brief Therapy Network

Certificate program

Dual certification

The Intensive Training Program in Brief and Narrative Therapy offered dual certification from Dalhousie University School of Social Work and Brief Therapy Training Centres-International. Faculty for the program were Scot Cooper, Jim Duvall, Eric King and Karen Young.

Read faculty biographies

The Brief Therapy Network brings together practitioners who share a genuine curiosity about how change happens in the consulting room and beyond. Rather than treating brief and narrative approaches as fixed methods to be applied, the network treats them as living traditions shaped by conversation, reflection, and the experience of the people who seek help. Members come from a range of backgrounds, and what unites them is an interest in ideas that are relational, practical, and open to revision. The site exists as a place to gather those interests and to make them available to others who are thinking along similar lines.

Narrative therapy invites us to notice that people make sense of their lives through stories, and that some stories come to dominate while others remain unheard. The work of re-authoring is not about replacing one story with another, but about creating room for alternative accounts that are richer and more generous than the problem-saturated version. Practitioners in this network are drawn to the idea that meaning emerges in dialogue, and that the therapist's role is less about expertise and more about curiosity, listening, and careful questioning that opens space rather than closes it.

Brief therapy has long been associated with a focus on what is workable rather than what is exhaustive. Its practitioners tend to ask what would make a meaningful difference, how small shifts might ripple outward, and what resources people already carry with them. This orientation does not mean rushing or dismissing complexity; it means respecting the time and effort that people bring to therapy and treating each session as consequential. The network's interest lies in how brevity and depth can coexist, and in how a focused conversation can sometimes accomplish what a longer one might not.

The collaborative and dialogical strands of this work have been shaped by many thinkers whose influence continues to be felt across the field. Some have emphasized the relational nature of therapy, arguing that understanding is something co-created rather than delivered. Others have concentrated on language, on the way questions and descriptions shape what becomes possible. Still others have brought attention to context, culture, and power. The network does not treat any single voice as authoritative; instead, it holds these influences together as a conversation that practitioners can draw on in their own way.

Training in brief and narrative approaches tends to be experiential rather than purely theoretical. Participants are encouraged to try ideas out in live conversation, to reflect on their own positioning, and to notice how their assumptions shape what they hear and how they respond. Supervision and peer consultation are central to this process, offering a space where work can be examined without judgment and where practitioners can develop their own voice. The network values training that is rigorous but not rigid, and that leaves room for the personal and professional growth of everyone involved.

A recurring theme in the network's interests is the value of transcripts and recorded conversations. Reading a session closely, line by line, reveals the small moves that make a difference: a question that opens something up, a pause that allows a different account to surface, a moment of shared meaning that neither person could have produced alone. These glimpses into practice are often more instructive than abstract description, because they show how ideas actually live in the give and take of a real conversation between two people.

The reading list that accompanies this work draws on a wide range of sources, from foundational texts to newer writing that extends and challenges established ideas. Reviews and abstracts help members decide what might be worth their time, while longer papers offer the chance to sit with an argument and consider its implications for practice. The aim is not to build a canon but to keep curiosity alive, and to make it easier for practitioners to find the ideas that speak to the questions they are currently living with in their work.

Conferences, roundtables, and informal gatherings give the network a chance to do in person what it does online: share questions, test ideas, and learn from one another. These events are typically structured around dialogue rather than presentation, with contributors offering work in progress and inviting response. The atmosphere is intended to be generous and unguarded, a place where people can think aloud, be challenged constructively, and leave with something that shifts how they approach their next conversation with a client or colleague.

The network's contributors include authors, trainers, clinicians, and researchers whose work sits at the intersection of systemic thinking and narrative practice. Some are known for their writing, others for their teaching, and others for the quiet consistency of their clinical work over many years. What they share is a willingness to keep learning and to hold their ideas lightly enough to revise them. Their contributions give readers a sense of the field as something alive and contested rather than settled and complete.

Underlying all of this is a simple commitment to compassion and skill in equal measure. Brief and narrative approaches are only useful insofar as they help people feel understood and find ways forward that fit their lives. The network exists to support practitioners in holding both the intellectual and the human dimensions of this work, and to remind them that the ideas are always in service of the relationship. Anyone interested in these questions is welcome to read, reflect, and join the conversation in whatever way suits them.