Solution-focused brief family therapy (SFBFT) is a brief, future-oriented, goal-directed, and pragmatic approach to family therapy and family systems work. This therapy is focused on identifying and punctuating families’ strengths to develop solutions to client-identified concerns. Treatment is typically short-term, and SFBFT has a growing evidence base demonstrating its efficacy with a wide array of demographics and symptomatology.

Historical Context

SFBFT was developed by Steve de Shazer, Insoo Kim Berg, and their colleagues at the Brief Family Therapy Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, during the 1980s through watching hundreds of tapes, identifying what was working, and doing more of it. Both de Shazer and Berg had been trained at the Mental Research Institute (MRI) in Palo Alto, California, and were greatly influenced by the MRI’s pragmatic and brief ...

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