Northern Arizona University

From the SelectedWorks of Timothy Thomason

2012

Jay Haley and the Art of Strategic Therapy

Timothy Thomason, Northern Arizona University

Available at: http://works.bepress.com/timothy_thomason/65/

 Jay Haley and the Art of Strategic Therapy

Timothy C. Thomason
2012

Jay Haley was a highly influential psychotherapist, and his unconventional therapeutic
approach challenged the received wisdom of traditional psychotherapy. Haley criticized
both psychodynamic and client-centered approaches, and advocated for a brief therapy
approach that emphasized addressing clients’ problems with specific targeted
interventions. This paper presents his ideas on therapy as presented in conversations with
the author and at training workshops.

Jay Haley is generally recognized as one of the most influential psychotherapists

of the past 50 years. Although he is best known for his influence on the field of family
therapy, he is also known for introducing Milton H. Erickson to the world in the book
Uncommon Therapy (1986). Haley worked with anthropologist Gregory Bateson at
Stanford and later he worked with John Weakland and other psychologists at the Mental
Research Institute in Palo Alto. He was the founding editor of the journal Family Process
and was a main force in the development of Strategic Family Therapy. In addition to
Uncommon Therapy (1986) he authored the influential books Problem Solving Therapy
(1987), Ordeal Therapy (1984), and Leaving Home (1980). Haley died in 2007.
Haley was a wonderful speaker and trainer of therapists. He was perhaps the best
lecturer I have heard. His ideas were intrinsically interesting, but he expressed them in a
humorous way that was both entertaining and very convincing. Many of his ideas
challenged traditional assumptions regarding how therapy should be practiced. Haley was
particularly critical of psychodynamic psychotherapy and Client-Centered Therapy. For
example, he said that therapists should be active and directive. “Therapy is not
spontaneous.” Therapists should have a plan for exactly what they plan to accomplish in
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each session. In strategic therapy the therapist takes responsibility for directly influencing
the client. Clients may resist change, but if they do not change within psychotherapy it is
the therapist’s fault. Haley said “Never ask clients how they feel; you don’t want to
know” and “Talking about feelings is a waste of time.” He also said “Don’t let clients
talk about the past.” “Having insight about the cause of a problem will not solve it.”
Contrary to Freud, Haley said that therapists cannot be neutral and non-directive.
Haley believed that all therapists (including Carl Rogers) are directive. All therapists pay
more attention to some client statements than others, and reinforce some client behaviors
more than others. If it is inevitable that all therapists influence clients, why not simply
admit it and design specific directives that help clients achieve their goals? If the client
does not respond to straightforward directives, then the therapist can use indirect or
paradoxical directives. Each client deserves and requires an individualized approach.
Haley also disagreed with Freud’s concept that the unconscious is negative; like
Erickson, Haley believed in the positive power of the unconscious. Clients are not
“resistant” if the therapist reframes their resistance as cooperation. The therapist’s task is
to arrange it so that the client can only resist the therapist by giving up the symptom.
Haley emphasized the importance of focusing on the client’s presenting problem rather
than the past, personality issues, or delving into supposedly repressed causes for
problematic behavior. The goal of therapy is simply to resolve the problem presented by
the client. Symptoms do not reflect underlying psychopathology.
Haley was not a fan of the psychiatric diagnostic system. Too often diagnostic
labels simply reify the problem and make it harder to solve. Haley did not claim to know
any truths about psychotherapy; his advice was to think about clients and problems in a
way that makes client’s problems more easy to solve. Thinking that symptoms are simply
the surface manifestation of deep pathology is not helpful in psychotherapy. Wouldn’t it
be better to think of problems as temporary dysfunctions? So the therapist’s task becomes
getting the client back on track and back to their normal life as quickly as possible.
During the 1980s and 90s I was privileged to be able to attend training workshops
with Haley, and I also met with him individually to talk about his approach to therapy. I
was interested in his approach because it provided new ways of thinking about how best
to practice psychotherapy. I was not a family therapist, but I was fascinated by Haley’s
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ideas about how systems theory can be applied to therapy. His ideas about how to use
strategic interventions and paradox in therapy were also fascinating. Haley modeled
many of his therapeutic methods after those of Milton Erickson, but he refined the
methods and was able to articulate how they worked. He may have surpassed Erickson
himself in his ability to teach other people how to implement the techniques of
Ericksonian psychotherapy.
In his lectures and presentations, and in our talks, Haley always emphasized that
therapy should be systems therapy, meaning therapy in a group of at least three people,
including the therapist. The group could be a therapist and a couple, a therapist and a
family, a therapist and a client and the extended family, etc. Haley implied that he would
not do therapy with only one client, since that would be a group of two instead of three or
more. In one conversation I pressed Haley on this point. Would he really never do
therapy with one client? He said that was correct. I asked “What if the client is single, has
no partner, and has no family anywhere nearby?” Haley said “There is always someone
who is a part of the client’s system who can come to therapy with the client. It may be a
friend or a former therapist or even the client’s physician.” So Haley never retreated
regarding his belief in the importance of intervening with people as parts of a system.
Another time I asked Haley “Is insight-oriented therapy ever good for anything?”
He said “No, it creates more problems than it solves.” I asked “So you would not take
clients who simply want to improve themselves in general, or work toward self-
actualization?” He answered “No.” For Haley, therapy was all about addressing the
problems that prevent people from functioning normally, rather than striving for optimal
functioning. He believed that therapy should be as long as necessary, but as brief as
possible.
Based on his study of Milton Erickson’s work on direct and indirect hypnosis,
Haley refined therapeutic techniques that became standard practices in strategic
psychotherapy. These techniques include reframing, paradoxical interventions,
prescribing the symptom, restraint from change, ordeal therapy, the guaranteed cure, and
many others. While not appropriate with every client, these methods add valuable tools to
the therapist’s toolbox. Any therapist who is interested in the theory and practice of brief
 4

targeted methods to solve specific problems could benefit from learning about Haley’s
approach.
The following are notes made by the author at training workshops conducted by
Jay Haley. They are not a verbatim record of Haley’s comments, but they are as accurate
as I could make them. Haley’s use of contractions and personal pronouns, which may not
be correct regarding APA style for an article, have been preserved here to accurately
reflect what Haley actually said. Of course readers should refer to Haley’s books for a
more complete understanding of his ideas. These notes cannot adequately convey Haley’s
style of teaching, but they may provide some useful information on his innovative ideas
and techniques.

Notes on Training Workshop with Jay Haley

Feb. 17, 1995

This is an exciting time in psychotherapy because there is no orthodoxy, so you

can’t be a deviant. It used to be that if you gave people directives you were considered a
deviant. We’ve had a hundred years of psychotherapy and there is still no agreement
about what you should do – even whether you should formulate a problem. The insurance
companies are pushing for brief therapy, which is good, because it pushes us to
emphasize formulating and solving peoples’ problems.
I had a case where the parents asked me to help their 12 year old son stop wetting
the bed. I told them to tell the boy they would give him $50 that night if he did not wet
the bed. He did not wet the bed that night so he got $50. He also got $50 for each of the
next two nights for not wetting the bed. That’s all it took. He didn’t wet the bed again,
and the parents were only out $150. A pediatrician who was a behaviorist told me I was
crazy for using that intervention, that it wouldn’t work. But it did work.
Therapists need to have a theory of change. It is interesting that most symptoms
come in pairs of opposites; for example, the client eats too much or eats too little. The
definition of a symptom is “I can’t help myself.”
There are three main wrong theories of what causes symptoms. The first is the
unconscious, as Freud said. The second is spirit possession (which is the most common
 5

theory worldwide). In most of South American, Africa, and Asia the belief in spiritism is
very common. The third theory is multiple personality, of which there were 40 cases in
1960 and 6,000 in 1980 (they’re multiplying).
Freud said that the therapist should be neutral and non-directive, and is not
responsible for the outcome of therapy. These ideas were based on the theory of
repression (the unconscious is negative and wants to emerge in symptoms). So Freud’s
main therapeutic tool was interpretation.
Is my Problem-Solving Therapy manipulative? Every time you smile and nod
when a client does something you like, you are shaping them behaviorally. The strategic
therapy approach owes a lot to Milton Erickson. He thought the unconscious was
positive, not negative like Freud. There are no interpretations in strategic therapy, and
especially no negative interpretations.
In strategic therapy the therapist is not neutral. The therapist should be involved
with the client. Give clients directives. People do not change unless they are given
directives. Of course, the directive may be implicit in the conversation rather than open
and explicit.
You cannot not be directive. All therapists are directive. Even Carl Rogers reflects
only certain things the client says. So why not give directives deliberately?
There are various ways to look at the cause of our clients’ symptoms. Suppose an
adult woman was abused as a child and now she is having sexual difficulties with her
husband. Are her problems due to the child abuse or are they due to her relationship with
her husband? There are contrary premises, and you have to choose which side to work
on.
Symptoms do not occur randomly; they cluster at certain points. Problems tend to
occur at developmental milestones: for example, at marriage, when the children are born,
when the children go to school, and in adolescence when the child is preparing to leave
home. It is normal for adolescents to have problems; they must prepare to leave home. It
is complicated if there is a divorce.
Complications are added when the client is from a different ethnic group.
Psychotherapy was designed for Europeans and European immigrants in America. As
 6

therapists we struggle when our clients have different premises from us. The ethnicity
must be considered in addition to the psychopathology.
What is true? Nothing. Everything is just a hypothesis. Choose the hypotheses
that are best for you as a therapist. The ideas you use as a therapist can be different from
the ideas you use outside of therapy. People are different, so you need more than one
method. It is best to create a unique therapy for each client.
Diagnosis is not helpful very often. Most diagnosis is negative. You need to have
a positive view of the client rather than focus on pathology. There is no one described in
the DSM-IV that you would want to have as a friend. For example, it is hard to think well
of a person diagnosed as borderline.
Science is not helpful in therapy. Scientists try to be objective and neutral, but in
therapy you need to get involved if you want people to change. Science is complex, but
therapy should be simple. People in conversation interchange thousands of bits of
information, including not only words but also vocal inflections, etc. Systems theory is
good as a theory, but in reality the system acts to prevent change.
The unit of therapy changes depending on how you work. With three people you
can have coalitions. For example, as the therapist you can join with the wife against the
husband. Another example is when the adolescent child steps in to save the parents. If
you work with clients as units of threes, it is hard to go back to working with clients as
units of ones and twos.
In the first session with new clients, do not take a social history or ask them
“What’s the problem?” If you just let them talk, you will be surprised at what comes up.
If you take a social history in the first session, you are teaching them that therapy is
history-taking and that history is important.
Hierarchy is important in therapy. Whoever you, as the therapist, pays attention to
is empowered. That can be a problem if you pay attention to an adolescent but you want
the parents to take control of the adolescent.
Therapists need to have a theory of motivation; why people do what they do. You
should choose hypotheses that help you like the client. The best hypothesis to have as a
therapist is “people do what they do to help other people” or “people do what they do to
 7

preserve their family.” For example, an adolescent may attempt suicide to try to preserve
the family. A wife nags her husband because she wants to help him.
Be directive in therapy. Just having an insightful conversation will not produce a
change. We have the inertia of traditional therapy to fight against. Therapy was easy
when we could just say “tell me more” or “how do you feel?” Therapy is harder now with
managed care, because we are expected to actually help people change (but that’s good).
It is very difficult to be a directive therapist. You have to get the family
organized, think up good directives, make sure people understand the directives, etc. It’s
difficult. Brief therapy is much more difficult than long-term therapy. The work expands
to fill the time allowed for it.
Ask the client “would you like to change slowly or quickly?” Ask “would you be
willing to make a sacrifice to solve the problem?” “Would you be willing to do whatever
is necessary?” The answers to these questions will tell you how motivated the client is for
change.
Directives can be straightforward or indirect. If you have enough authority, you
can just tell the client what to do. It is OK to give advice. It’s like coaching. You may
need to tell a husband how to win back his wife. You may need to tell an adolescent how
to get along with his parents. An example of a straightforward directive is when you tell
the parents to go away for a weekend and leave their adolescent child a note saying that
he is responsible for himself for the weekend.
An example of a straightforward directive is prescribing an ordeal. The ordeal
should be harder than the symptom. It should be preferable to the client to give up the
symptom rather than go through the ordeal. For example, for an insomniac, you can
prescribe that the client get out of bed and exercise if they do not fall asleep within five
minutes. The client will fall asleep to avoid the ordeal. To think of an ordeal to prescribe,
ask the client what they should do more of.
Another example of a straightforward ordeal is prescribing a penance. For
example, a man has an affair. Ask his spouse what he would have to do for her to forgive
him. Then if he does it she has to forgive him. So you tell him to do what she wants.
 8

People do not like insight. Do not make interpretations. For example, do not tell
the parents that the adolescent is acting out to help the parents’ marriage. They don’t need
to know that. It is hard for therapists to give up educating clients.
In family therapy you often see a power struggle between the parents and the
adolescent. The adolescent wins because she can always act out, threaten suicide, etc.
The girl is willful. You could frame that as bad (stubborn) or good (determined). Put the
adolescent in charge of her own behavior. Ask her “How would you arrange things for
the next week?” She sets the rules, so she limits her own behavior.
With parents who are upset and disturbed about an adolescent’s acting out, you
can use the Gandhi technique. “Go home and just stay there and do nothing.” You can
also use this technique with alcoholics; if the client takes a drink, the whole family must
stay home for 24 hours (or two days or a week).
Before the end of each session of family therapy, ask a family member to
summarize what they have agreed to do. For example, if the daughter gets hostile, the
other family members must hug and kiss her.
One problem in brief therapy is that sometimes you can solve the problem in two
sessions. It can make you the therapist seem too powerful, and the family may relapse. It
is better to explain the cause of the change as a mystery.
You can prescribe the symptom. Ask the client to deliberately have the symptom
they are complaining about. Ask the adolescent girl “Can you relapse once, so the family
can practice handling it?”
The Solution-Focused approach is good. It comes from Milton Erickson. It’s
basically solution stealing. Ask the clients what they have tried before to solve the
problem, and prescribe whatever worked best in the past.
Talking about feelings is a waste of time. The problem is not solved by talking
about it. To change the client’s feelings, change the family organization.
It is best not to use medications. It stabilizes the client where they are.
Narrative therapy is interesting, but it is simply a step forward within the domain
of individual therapy. It is not a family therapy approach.
There are non-voluntary clients, but therapy should never be compulsory. Neither
the therapist nor the client wants to be there. All of our theories of psychotherapy were
 9

built on the assumption that clients are voluntary. Therapy with involuntary clients
should not be called therapy; it confuses the issue; it should be called something else. In
the case of a court-ordered client, the therapist becomes the agent of the state.
Indirect techniques are good if clients say they cannot change themselves.
Restrain the client from change; ask what would happen if they changed; caution them
not to change too quickly. Use paradoxical prescription; ask the client to have the
symptom. Be cautious, because it may be hard to handle what comes up. Encourage
clients to keep the symptom; if they improve, criticize them for improving, since they
were supposed to keep the symptom. Use metaphor; talk about A in order to change B.
Talk about change within an analogy. Advise doing nothing. Eventually the client will
get frustrated with the lack of change and change spontaneously.
Another example of an indirect technique is the absurd task. The client cannot
resist an absurd task because it is so absurd. Milton Erickson was a master at this. This
technique is best for rational, scientifically-minded people; they can’t handle absurdity. I
had a couple where the husband was rational and the wife was emotional. He had what I
call “engineer’s syndrome.” I told the husband to take a drive up a mountain to a scenic
area, go 1.3 miles from the entrance, park, and find a reason for being there. They always
find some reason (pretty flowers, the view). Afterwards they are different, more human.
I had a family who presented the problem that the 12-year-old boy masturbated in
front of his mother and five sisters. My goal was to get the boy to masturbate privately.
First we got a baseline of how often he masturbated, which was four times per day. Then
I told him to do it eight times per day. When the family came back they reported that the
boy did it eight times on Sunday, but only once on Monday, and none thereafter. The
therapist told the boy his new prescription was to masturbate 12 times per day (the idea
was to make it difficult). At the next session the family reported that the boy had not
masturbated in front of them at all. The problem was solved.
In another case, an adolescent boy was smoking marijuana. He stopped, and I
persuaded the family to take action to prevent the boy’s using it again. The family
decided that they would shun the boy for three months if he relapsed, and they told him
this. He did not relapse.
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Notes on Training Workshop with Jay Haley

Feb. 20, 1982

Diagnostic categories are not very helpful. We need categories of problems that
help you know what to do to change the problem. What’s wrong with a girl who won’t
eat? Does she have “anorexia”? No, her problem is that she won’t eat.
The goal of psychotherapy should be to get the person over the presenting
problem and back to their normal life. Therapy is not educating the client. Therapy as
education is never finished. Therapy is not to provide clients with insight. Being
insightful can prevent the client from getting over the problem. Therapists should not
give interpretations; there is no good reason to do so. Providing clients with insight and
providing interpretations produces resistance on the part of clients. Clients will punish
you for insight, and they will try to get even with you. You will get more cooperation
from clients if you talk about the symptom rather than what is “underneath” the problem.
Having insight about the cause of a problem will not solve it. People are also not changed
by expressing their emotions. Repression does not occur. Never ask clients how they feel;
you don’t want to know.
People can change without being aware of why they change. Advising clients on
interpersonal relationships is different from advising someone on how to build a bridge.
As Gregory Bateson said, there is a difference between kicking a stone and kicking a dog.
Therapy sessions should be thoroughly planned in advance. Therapy is not
spontaneous. You must work on a specific problem. Therapy is like training. Most
therapy is teaching a skill. It is not possible to be eclectic. You can’t mix different
theoretical approaches (for example, combining insight-oriented therapy with behavioral
therapy).
Most therapy today focuses on the individual, and the DSM only has diagnoses
for individuals. But problems happen in the relationship among individuals. The partners
in a couple follow rules, and you have to change the interaction. For example, suppose
that in a particular couple the wife criticizes and the husband defends. So to change the
interaction you tell the husband to criticize the wife.
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A parent and child may have a problem, but the problem is in the interaction
between them. When there is a unit of three, such as a couple and a therapist, the therapist
is always in a coalition with one of the members of the couple. For every case you have
to determine whether the problem is a problem of the unit; is the problem in one person,
two people, or three people? I think problems occur in three or more people as a unit.
You must consider hierarchy in psychotherapy. There is always a difference in
status. Parents are in charge of their children. Problems (symptoms) result from a
problem in hierarchy. As the therapist, you are part of the hierarchy. When doing family
therapy, you should enter the family through the most powerful parent. In a family
therapy session, you should speak to the most powerful parent first. Your job is to get the
parents to work together to solve the child’s problem. Do your therapy through the
parents. Do not align with the child; that does not respect the hierarchy of the family.
A confusion of hierarchy produces psychopathology. For example, the parent
should take care of the children, not a grandparent. Make the clients own their roles;
make the parent be the parent; don’t let a child become the parent. There can be a
complex hierarchy if, for example, there is an absent family member, such as an absent
partner due to divorce. In family therapy, do not criticize the parent; that lowers them in
the family hierarchy. If you have to criticize someone, criticize the child. By the way, the
problem with play therapy is that it only occurs with the child, not the family.
The first interview is very important. You should see positive change by the third
interview. Therapy should usually last six to eight sessions. In the first interview, always
see the entire family; later you may see subsets of the family. When seeing a family, you
may decide to call an “executive session” of just the parents. Most families do not just sit
down and work on solving a problem in the family. So this gives them a way to do that.
As the therapist, you must have a plan for the therapy. Don’t just be ambiguous
and wait for the family to project on you. Put the parents in charge; make them be
authoritative. The therapist must be firm with the parents if you expect them to be firm
with their kids. Of course an exception is with older teenagers, since if they choose to
they can simply leave the home.
Marital conflict often produces problems in the child. Kids make a conscious
decision to stabilize the family by acting out. Their acting out is protective, not hostile.
 12

Your job is to help the clients help each other. As the therapist you don’t care what rules
the parents come up with for the child, you just want them to agree on the rules. Be aware
that as the family system starts to change as a result of therapy, often someone in the
family will storm out or threaten to quit. You can’t let a kid running out of therapy affect
what you do. Feelings will come up when you change the system, but the clients will
work through them. But don’t focus on the feelings; that doesn’t help.
In therapy what is true is not as relevant as what works. In therapy you are not
after the truth; you are after a workable hypothesis about what will create change in the
family. If you have a theory of change then you just see clients in that light and try to
make you theory work. Clients don’t know what therapy is. They will think that whatever
you do is therapy, even if it is lying on a couch and staring at the ceiling for six years.
People’s problems are patterns, and your job is to introduce more variety and
flexibility into their pattern. For example, if you have a family where the dad attacks the
kids and the mother defends, them, ask mom and dad to switch roles.
Some therapists think that the problem child is a scapegoat for the problems of the
parents. But that’s a bad idea, because it makes the therapist side with the child. The
problem is not in the child, but in the interaction between the child and the parents. By
the way, you may make suggestions in therapy that do not generalize outside therapy.
What you say to a particular family about child rearing, for example, may not apply to
society in general.
Kids only leave happy homes. If the home is unhappy the child will stay and try
to help the parents fell better. Kids may collapse as a way to stabilize the home. Your job
is to get the parents to expel the child from the home. When kids have problems, you can
usually assume that one or both of the parents are uninvolved.
Some clients are troublemakers; they force everyone around them to deal with
them. Some clients are apathetic; their behavior makes the family get organized to get
them active. Usually the problem child is trying to help or protect the parent, but it
creates a worse problem. A child’s desire to help the parents creates a problem in the
family hierarchy. The parents should help the child, not the other way around.
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Cut off discussion of the past. What is happening is being maintained by what is
happening in the present. Don’t let clients talk about the past unless that is how they talk
about the present. Focus on the presenting problem.
Therapy is like a religion, but you don’t have to suffer to get better.

Notes on Training Workshop with Jay Haley

Feb. 21, 1982

Psychotherapy is not a logical enterprise. The oldest tradition that is akin to

psychotherapy is Zen, which is 7,000 years old. Change results when the client gets
frustrated that nothing is being done to help them. You must direct the client to change
spontaneously. In hypnosis the therapist directs the client to do something without
choosing to do it, for example “let your arm rise in the air.” In essence, you are saying
“Do what I say but do it spontaneously, not because I told you to do it.”
Inertia exists to make a relationship stay the same. Whatever the relationship is,
there will be resistance to change. Therapy should be directive. In non-directive therapy
the therapist is paid to help someone by not helping them.
So therapy should be directive, but sometimes you cannot use straightforward
directives. You cannot just tell a client with an elevator phobia to go use an elevator. You
can use paradoxical techniques. You can encourage someone to get worse if you want
them to do the opposite. You can ask a client “What is the best time this week for you to
have an anxiety attack?” as if that is a logical question.
You see the use of paradox in hypnosis, schizophrenia, and psychotherapy. If I
say “I want you to disobey me” then you do not really have two options; either way you
do what I want.
The client feels unable to change himself, and he pays the therapist to change him.
The therapist helps by showing the client that he is not helpless; that he can actually
change himself. Of course this is a paradox since without the therapist’s help the client
may not have changed.
Use indirect suggestions when the client does not want to be told what to do
directly.
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Accept what the client offers as resistance and define it as cooperation (so that
they cannot resist you). Arrange it so that the client can only resist you by giving up the
symptom.
Paradoxical techniques should only be used in the context of a therapeutic
process, not as a one-time thing. First, establish a relationship so the client cares about
what you say. Then clarify the symptom. Then encourage the symptom (tell the client to
make the symptom worse, or to have it more often). When the client improves, criticize
them for not cooperating with your directive to make the symptom worse.
You might direct a client who has anxiety attacks to have an anxiety attack
spontaneously sometime in the coming week. If the client returns next week and says
they had no attacks, then criticize him for not cooperating. Prescribe the spontaneous
anxiety attack again, but tell him to come back in two weeks, and then three weeks, until
the client is over the problem. Do not take the prescription of the symptom to an absurd
level; back off as they drop the symptom.
Ask the client to consider the negatives of giving up the symptom. Ask the client
to make a list of the consequences of giving up the problem. When a client pushes you to
help him, you should resist and restrain yourself from providing help.
If a client notices that you are using paradox and says “You’re using reverse
psychology with me” just say “Yes, I am” or “That’s one of the things I’m doing.”
People have to do things their own way. People jump off the bridges in the San
Francisco Bay Area to commit suicide. Sometimes they survive, and the police go out in
a boat to get them. Sometimes the people won’t get in the boat, and in that case the police
manual says the police should threaten to shoot them if they do not get in the boat. They
always get in the boat. The person wants to die, but only in their own way.
Do not use paradoxical techniques with schizophrenics, by which I mean anyone
who has delusions. They have very good interpersonal skills; they know how to get what
they want from other people.
To build motivation, you can ask the client “Are you really committed to making
a change?” “Would you like to change quickly or slowly?” You should always give the
client a directive at the end of the first interview. When they come back, if they did the
 15

directive it implies they are committed to making a change. Giving a directive also keeps
the client thinking about the therapy over the week until the next appointment.
When you are seeing a couple, their nonverbal behavior is a message to you, the
therapist. For example, notice what it means if the couple crosses their legs away from
each other.
Define the problem to the clients as a unique situation; a situation that may not be
rational and may not respond to a rational approach. This makes the clients more free to
change. If you are willing it be irrational you can get results you cannot get otherwise.
Reframes may be irrational; for example, if you tell a couple that the husband beats the
wife because he loves her too much. This is not rational (or true) but it may be a way to
reach the husband and prepare him to change.
Remember that in therapy you want to empower the clients. Whatever you do that
is helpful keeps clients from helping themselves and becoming equal and independent.
Milton Erickson invented the technique of the guaranteed cure. You tell the client
that if they follow your directive their problem will be solved. Delay telling the directive
until the client is begging to hear it. It is a way to motivate the client to follow the
directive. The more they want to hear it, the more likely they are to follow it. After giving
the directive, tell the client not to come back unless they followed it.
Use ordeal therapy to make it harder for the client to keep the symptom than to
give it up. The person will give up the symptom so they don’t have to go through the
ordeal. Make the ordeal something that the client says he should do more of anyway,
such as exercise, reading, or cleaning house.
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References and Recommended Reading

Fisch, R., Weakland, J. H., & Segal, L. Tactics of change. San Francisco: Jossey-
Bass Publishers.
Grove, D. R. & Haley, J. (1993). Conversations on therapy. New York: W. W.
Norton & Company.
Haley, J. (1987). Problem-solving therapy. Second edition. San Francisco: Jossey-
Bass Publishers.
Haley, J. (1986). Uncommon therapy: The psychiatric techniques of Milton H.
Erickson, M.D. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Haley, J. (1984). Ordeal therapy. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Haley, J. (1980). Leaving home: The therapy of disturbed young people. New
York: McGraw-Hill Book Company.
Haley, J. (1963). Strategies of psychotherapy. New York: Grune & Stratton.

Jay Haley website: http://www.jay-haley-on-therapy.com/index.html