To my knowledge, the Miracle question was first mentioned in Steve de Shazer's 1988 book Clues: Investigating Solutions in Brief Therapy. In this book he calls the miracle question an adaptation of Milton Erickson's crystal ball technique (in which the client is invited to create a representation of the future in which the problem was solved and then to look backward from the future and explain how the problem had been solved). Tapio Malinen, in this article, mentions a few different accounts of how the miracle question was invented
- An account by a certain Wilks in (Kiser, 1995, p.136) suggests that Steve de Shazer invented in
- According to Weiner-Davis, Eve Lipchik was the first in the work team who used this question.
- Scott Miller and Insoo Kim Berg (1995) say the miracle question was invented while a certain client said: "My problem is so serious that it will take a miracle to solve it!” Following her lead, the therapist simply said, “Well, suppose one happened…?”
This last account is confirmed in 1996 by Steve de Shazer in this interview, saying:
The Miracle Question evolved out of one day Insoo asking a question and the answer was "Oh it would take a miracle!" and Insoo said "Well yes, suppose ... suppose a miracle did happen" ... and that started the whole thing. The answer was pretty nice, whatever it was .. the answer was nice. So. Almost all our stuff like that is invented by clients first.
Insoo once personally confirmed to me this indeed was the way the miracle question was invented. By the way, elsewhere in the same interview Steve said about Insoo's influence:
Well, everything that we do over the years is trying to figure out how she and her clients did it. She is the Master. I don't know what other word to use. She is the Master. So all this stuff - what it really is about is attempts to describe what she and her clients do in such a way that other people - first me - the rest of the team - can do it.
All in all my interpretation is: the miracle question was invented by Insoo Kim Berg (while talking to her client), further developed by many of the members of the Brief Family Therapy Center and first published by Steve de Shazer.
Also read:
Positive psychology, the strengths movement and the solution-focused approach
Milton Erickson
A situational model of solution-focused change
Remembering Insoo Kim Berg
Poll: most frequently used solution-focused techniques
Milton Erickson
A situational model of solution-focused change
Remembering Insoo Kim Berg
Poll: most frequently used solution-focused techniques
This is a wonderful therapeutic tool for clients who are convinced that their problems are too big to be solved. It basically asks the client to imagine, what if it could be solved, what would your life look like then? This can be a revolutionary thought in some cases, opening the client up to possibilities instead of continuing to focus on hopelessness.
ReplyDeleteI like this "leapfrog" approach to change especially when the stuckness seems overwhelming or not open to change. First look at what life might look like beyond the stuckness (inspires hope and possibility), and then look at how to get there (looking at do-ablity). Svea
ReplyDeleteHi Svea, one of the wonderful things about the miracle question I find that once you get people to describe their future behavior their future context in a more positive terms this sets in motion a chain of events in the brain which is very likely to produce that very behavior even if you do nothing else. This has got to do with the motor perception link within our brain. Behavior we perceive, we tend to prepare.
ReplyDeleteWhen we've asked the miracle question and the client has described his desired positive behaviors in situations which are relevant for him or her, we can ask another wonderful type of question which can be phrased for instance like: "are there things among those things you mentioned which you can already start doing?"
The Wilks you mentioned is Jim Wilks, who was the co-author for my first book (Shifting Contexts). Insoo and Steve brought him to work in Milwaukee with them after I introduced them and Jim spent much of the year sharing some principles he and I had worked out, which were the beginnings of my solution-oriented therapy and later, possibility therapy. They together worked out many of the principles that later became solution-focused therapy. Jim says he was watching behind the one-way mirror the day the miracle question was first used, so his is a first-person witness account.
ReplyDeleteJim is a management consultant in the UK if you want to contact him to follow up.
Hi Bill, nice to hear from you. Thank you for explaining that! So you are confirming it was in fact Steve who first asked the MQ?
ReplyDeleteI think it was Insoo, from what Jim Wilk told me, and then Steve recognized how powerful it was and codified it.
ReplyDeleteSomeone later told me that Alfred Adler had used a similar miracle question, but in his hands it was designed to ferret out the "function" of the "symptom."
thanks Bill!
ReplyDeleteAs a friend of James Wilk [sic] I can corroborate Bill O'Hanlon's version of events. The setting was a Milan family therapy session. de Shazer was in the room with the family and asked some version of the question, without fully realising its significance. Wilk was behind the mirror, was aware of the significance and spent several months using and refining it with clients in his private practice. The results were fed back to de Shazer who rightly claimed authorship of the MQ. James Wilk is not a management consultant, but leads Interchange Research, an independent, international scientific research enterprise that owns the proprietary scientific know-how forming the basis of Minimalist Intervention. He is also Associate Lecturer in Philosophy University of Oxford. Biography here: http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/members/lecturers/james_wilk.
ReplyDeleteHi Jack, thank you!
ReplyDelete"...the miracle question was invented by Insoo Kim Berg (while talking to her client),..."
ReplyDeleteSo, does anyone know the name of the client?