Making Numbers Talk; Language in Therapy

Insoo-Kim-Berg, Steve-De-Shazer and Harvey-Ratner

Abstract

“Here’s something we wrote recently. I think you’ll like it”. And into my eager hands Insoo Kim Berg put a copy of ‘Making Numbers Talk’. It was during the first EBTA conference in Bruges, excellently hosted by Luc Isebaert (the food he prepared was a culinary marvel, much appreciated by fellow cook and enthusiast Steve de Shazer). Insoo was right: the article has remained one of my favourite SFBT writings ever since, and has been a standard fixture on the BRIEF Diploma reading list.

Introduction

Abstract

The metaphor of therapy as conversation is simultaneously useful and dangerously misleading. The danger lies in what is probably an inevitable vowel shift from a to i, that is, from “therapy as conversation” to “therapy is conversation.” The vowel shift marks a transformation from metaphor to metaphor disguised as concept.

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