我第一次见到Steve是在1994年的加利福尼亚州、帕洛阿尔托的交流会议上。

     虽然当时我并不知道，那次会议在互动和系统观发展中具有里程碑意义，而且那也是为数不多的由Steve de Shazer 和Insoo Kim Berg亲自发起的会议。

      我再次遇到Steve是在1995年的伦敦，我的同事Harry Norman邀请他接受一次访问。起初并不顺利，Steve并不想接受邀请。

      Steve是一个狂热的啤酒酿造师和啤酒爱好者，Harry想法设法吸引Steve，品尝了正宗酿造的中世纪啤酒。而这可能就是我们最终能成功邀请到他的关键!

      访问前一周，Steve带领了一次大型焦点解决治疗培训。大概有100多人参加了此次培训。

     Steve手拿麦克风从舞台上缓步走来，像他以前经常做的一样他深深地呼气，然后说：“你们最好问我一些问题”。

      一阵骚动在房间蔓延开来。他才是专家，我们希望被教导该如何去做，但是现在，他却拒绝告诉我们。

      现场出现一阵沉默。

       “它对治疗酗酒者有用吗?”台下学员提了一个问题。“我不知道。下一个问题。”

       “它对治疗人格障碍有效吗?”“我不知道。下一个问题。”

       更多的疾病诊断名称被提及，而每次答案都相同——“我不知道”。

      我感到惊讶和迷惑。我渴望找出更多SFBT对改变有用的信息，而这位名人却告诉我，他不知道是否对酗酒者有用。发生什么了？

      我的不适感显然其他观众也有。过了一会，一些人开始离开现场。

       “你能给我们示范问一个奇迹问题吗?”有人提问。

       史蒂夫明显兴奋起来。“啊！当然可以，我相信我能做到这一点。谢谢你能这么问。”我们放松了一些，至少他开始要做些什么了。

      随着会话继续，我陷入对史蒂夫“我不知道”回答的沉思中。

      这种方法可适用于各种各样的病人？难道没有研究想要证明这一点？我突然意识到，史蒂夫当然知道这一切。

      事实上，那一刻他在给我们示范如何进行焦点解决治疗，而从那一刻开始，我称呼他为“与众不同的智者”。

      为了回答这个看似简单的问题“对治疗酗酒者有用吗？”，其实必须要接受两个前提。

     首先，存在酗酒者。其次，这种（提问中的治疗方案）方法是任何人都可以复制和使用的。

      让我们来看第一个前提，存在酗酒者吗？显然，这个名词曾被多次使用，就好像真的存在这样一种人，但是焦点解决的实践并不是基于诊断——客户的抱怨与他们想要的（焦点解决中的解决）及已发生的次数并不是相关的。

      史蒂夫的工作是，在任何情况下，甚至在有准确评估的情况下，质疑诊断的价值。

      每个人都想要有些不一样——这使得每个案例的治疗过程都是不同的，因此考虑客户是否是一个'酒鬼'是没有价值的。他的“我不知道”是对类似这种术语的拒绝。

      另一个前提是：“是否有效”。“是否有效？”暗含着“它”可以是有效的，而非某个人通过某种技巧使之发生。

     我们可能会问这架钢琴：“它是有用的吗？”——如果有人按键，就会出现一些声音。不论是谁在弹奏，声音都会出现。

      在SF实践中，解决方案在对话中建构。这即是一门艺术，也是一门科学。因此提问SF治疗是否有效，类似于质疑钢琴是没用的，而非提问钢琴演奏是否有效。

      这不是一个合理的问题——通过熟练的技巧练习可以使钢琴发出优美的声音，而某些没有接受过训练的人却声称弹钢琴是没有用的——原因只在于：他们还不够熟练。

      如果这样提问或许就能从史蒂夫那得到一个较好的回答：“你是否曾经成功地使那些想要少喝酒的客户少喝一些酒？”

      这种情况下提问的问题是关于他自己的经历，并且是根据他们想要什么来定义客户。这与“是否对酗酒者有用？”之间的区别，对我而言，是SF实践的核心。

       或许，史蒂夫对我们的馈赠是：停止尝试回答泛泛的问题，转而关注构建解决之道的微观对话。

附：原文

Mark McKergow

Steve de Shazer - a Different Kind of Cleverness

I first met Steve in 1994 at the Interaction View conference in Palo Alto, California. Although I did not know it at the time, this was a milestone event in the development of interactional and systemic ideas - one of the few times where the Mental Research Institute group (Paul Watzlawick, John Weakland and Dick Fisch amongst them) came together with the Solution-Focused therapy crowd led by Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg.

Steve and Insoo had trained at MRI two decades earlier, and had introduced new subtleties and simplicity into the MRI model - improvements, as they saw it. However, the link between the two centres was maintained by Steve’s relationship with John Weakland, his supervisor and mentor.

I next met Steve in London. My colleague Harry Norman had approached him for an interview, which we finally managed to do in London in 1995. I only discovered later that he was noted for not giving interviews, and that this was a great privilege. Steve was a keen brewer and beer drinker, and Harry had managed to interest him in sampling some ‘medieval beer’, brewed in tiny quantities to authentic recipes. This may have been the key to our success!

In the week before the interview Steve was leading a training in Solution-Focused Therapy, with a large audience (well over 100 people). Steve ambled onto the stage with a microphone, exhaled deeply as he always did before starting, and said…”So.. you’d better ask me some questions”. A shiver went around the room. Surely he was the expert, and we wanted to be told what to do. Yet here he was, refusing to tell us. There was a silence.

“Does it work with alcoholics?”, came a question from the floor. “I don’t know. Next question.” “Does it work with personality disorders?” “I don’t know. Next question.” Several more diagnoses were mentioned, and each time the answer was the same - “I don’t know”.

I was amazed and disturbed. Here I was, keen to find out more about this fantastic approach to change, and the star performer was telling me he didn’t know if it worked with alcoholics. What was going on? My discomfort was clearly shared by other audience members - after a while, some started to leave.

“Can I see you ask the Miracle Question?” asked someone. Steve brightened up visibly. “Ah! Yes, I’m sure I can do that. Thanks for asking.” We relaxed a little - at least he was going to do something.

As the session went on, I reflected on Steve’s remarks of “I don’t know”. Surely this approach did work with many kinds of patient? Were there not studies to prove it? I came to realise that Steve, of course, knew all this perfectly well. Actually, he was showing us how to do Solution-Focused therapy in that moment, engaging what I have to come call his ‘different kind of cleverness’.

In order to answer the apparently simple question “Does it work with alcoholics?”, one must accept two presuppositions. Firstly, there is such a thing as an alcoholic. And secondly, that it (the treatment in question) is replicable by anyone who applies it.

Let’s look at the first one first - is there such a thing as an alcoholic? Clearly the word is used as if there was, but SF work is not based on diagnosis - the client’s complaint is not relevant in determining what they want (the ‘solution’ in Solution Focus) and times when that happens already. Steve’s work was part of the tradition that questions the value of diagnosis in any case, and even if an accurate assessment of the condition could be made, each one would want something different - leading to a course for treatment which would vary in each case. There was therefore no value in even considering whether the client was an ‘alcoholic’ or not. Part of his ‘I don’t know’ was a rejection of this as a relevant term in his work.

The other presupposition is in the ‘Does it work’ element. ‘Does it work?’ implies that ‘it’ is working, rather than someone is acting skilfully to make something happen. We might say of a piano, ‘Does it work?’ - meaning that if someone hits the notes, then the relevant sounds will emerge. It doesn’t matter who is hitting the notes, the sounds will emerge. In SF work, solutions are constructed in conversation, which is an art as well as a science. To ask if SF therapy works is therefore to ask not if the piano works, but instead to ask if piano-playing ‘works’. This is not a sensible question - pianos can be made to sound beautiful with skill, but someone without the skill could scarcely claim that playing the piano didn’t work - just that they were not yet individually skilful enough.

A question which may have had a better reaction from Steve was “Have you got successful outcomes with clients who want to drink less?” In this case, the question is about his own experience, and related to a client group defined in terms of what they wanted. The distinctions between this and ‘Does it work with alcoholics?’ are, for me, at the heart of SF practice. Maybe Steve’s legacy to us is to stop trying to answer big questions and focus instead on the tiny micro-construction of conversations which build solutions.

学习、练习、实践、反思、督导，是一个SF取向工作者的快速成长之路。敬请期待下期分享。