Miller, William R.

William R. Miller (1947– ), along with Stephen Rollnick, founded the counseling approach known as motivational interviewing. Its development can be traced to Miller’s work in 1975 to 1976 at a summer internship in a Veterans Administration hospital, where he worked with patients suffering from alcoholism. Still interested in working with addiction, after graduating with his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Oregon in 1976, he accepted a faculty position at the University of New Mexico. In 1982, Miller spent 6 months on a sabbatical in Norway, where he worked with new psychologists, helping them develop therapeutic skills with difficult clients. Miller, who had been working from a modified client-centered perspective, found his supervisees to be engaged and interested in hearing more about ...