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Becoming Miracle Workers: Language and Meaning in Brief Therapy, by Gale Miller. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter, 1997. 237 pp. $41.95 cloth. ISBN: 0-202-30570-8. $20.95 paper. ISBN: 0-02-30571-6.
ANNE FIGERT Loyola University, Chicago [email protected]
When I first read the title of this book, I had visions of fast food therapy-something along the lines of Freud-in-a-Box. Clients line up to have quick and efficient service to produce cures for their problems. Of course, this is not the case; but there are some similarities between brief therapy and fast food restaurants. As Miller describes it, brief therapy is designed to be short and efficient and to provide solutions to people's problems. Problem definition and solutions are the keys to successful therapy. The client (with the help of a therapy team) tells her or his story. In the course of storytelling, the client begins to define the problems and the possible solutions. Thus, negative stories (problems) are turned into positive stories (problem solving).
Gale Miller does a fine job of examining how and why brief therapy works, based upon his many years of observation of "Northland Clinic." Northland is the one of the training...