This article describes the form of brief therapy developed at the Brief Family Therapy Center. We have chosen a title similar to Weakland, Fisch, Watzlawick, and Bodin's classic paper, "Brief Therapy: Focused Problem Resolution" (20) to emphasize our view that there is a conceptual relationship and a developmental connection between the points of view expressed in the two papers.

aThis special issue on research aspects of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy is timely and needed. We are pleased that the Journal of Family Therapy decided to embark on this endeavour. Because the model developed deductively, that is, first try something, then see if that worked, try to describe it in detail, etc., the approach can be described as experimental and research orientated from the beginning. Years later, when we read what Lincoln and Guba (1985) wrote about 'naturalistic inquiry', we saw that what we were doing was sufficient in itself as a research endeavour.We started out by seeing clients in our living room with the video camera (and operator/team member) on the landing of our stairs; the consulting break was taken in one of the upstairs bedrooms. We were interested in finding out what differences made a difference and we were not at all interested in proving anything to the outside world. Now that the approach is becoming more accepted by academia, including those with scientific minds and backgrounds in traditional research methods, it is coming under the same kind of scrutiny as other approaches and is being measured by the standard ways of assessing effectiveness. We not only lacked the resources to undertake such studies, but the basic assumptions and premises of the two worlds clashed. Being clinically orientated, we were more than satisfied with our naturalistic research projects.Although Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) began to develop in 1980 and we gave it its name in 1982, research into the approach -other than our own exploratory/experimental, model/theory construction research projects (de Shazer, 1985(de Shazer, , 1988(de Shazer, , 1991(de Shazer, , 1994 and our own follow-ups -has been minimal. Primarily this is due to BFTC's having been a teaching-and trainingfocused endeavour. We and our clients were busy inventing a rather radical approach to 'therapy'. We were interested in 'searching' for

For any conceptual distinction to be useful (5) within the field of family therapy, it needs to lead to some clear answers to the question: What does this distinction mean for clinical practice? The distinction between (a) the family-as-a-system, and (b) family-therapy-as-a-system leads to a clinical perspective, or stance, that includes a focus on changing. Once this focus is clear, the therapist can help to create the expectation of changing and consequently promote changing. That is, techniques can be developed using positive feedback loops. Moreover, this distinction leads to a therapeutic stance in which not changing is a surprise.

Brief therapy has often been regarded as “problem solving therapy.” This article discusses the development of a solution‐focused approach to clinical practice. Solution‐focused therapeutic tasks and interventions are described.

This paper reports the authors' “accidental” discovery that change in the problem situation frequently occurs prior to the first session, and that clients can often recall and describe such changes, if prompted. The authors describe one technique for eliciting reports of pretreatment change from clients, and discuss the results of an informal survey of 30 families who responded to this intervention. Rather than discounting pretreatment change as a “flight into health,” it can be framed in Batesonian terms as a “difference that makes a difference.”