Solution-Focused Responses to “No Improvement”: A Qualitative Analysis of the Deconstruction Process

When a client reports no improvement since the previous session, one response for the therapist can be to deconstruct this description and seek improvements, however small. A qualitative, discovery-oriented study examined the process of deconstruction in eight solution-focused brief therapy sessions where clients had initially reported no improvement. The findings suggested that the deconstruction of initial reports of no improvement is a complex process in which therapists do not follow a single path but respond in a flexible way to their clients' discourse: They may move directly into deconstruction, elaboration, and consolidation or may begin indirectly by first connecting with the negative report and preparing for deconstruction. Overall, maintaining positive (versus negative) topics in the conversations is important, but other therapeutic topics can be helpful at some points. It may also be useful to move systematically along a specificity-generality continuum, whether from specific episodes to general evaluations or the reverse.