In addition to telling the story of Bradford Keeney, the first non-African to be inducted as a shaman in both the Kung Bushman and Zulu cultures, the authors present applications of indigenous shamanistic concepts to the practice of helping and healing.

In this unusual volume, Bradford Keeney depicts psychotherapy as a performing art. Emphasizing the advantages of improvising one's own therapeutic style, he presents a host of tried-and-true strategic interventions, a short course on brief intervention design, a way of "scoring" conversations with clients much like one would score music, a collection of therapeutic moves, and chapters on creating one's own clinical design.

Completing Distinctions develops a new way of thinking about the connection between problems and solutions for family and systems therapists. The author suggests that addiction and other social and ecological dilemmas stem from the belief that distinctions such as hate and love, sickness and health, or problem and solution are irreconcilable oppositions. Flemons shows how such separations can be completed so that genuine healing can occur in individuals, families, organizations, and ecologies. Written in a playful style, the book includes short client-therapist dialogues that illustrate the...

The fundamental concern of psychotherapy is change. While practitioners are constantly greeted with new strategies, techniques, programs, and interventions, this book argues that the full benefits of the therapeutic process cannot be realized without fundamental revision of the concept of change itself. Applying cybernetic thought to family therapy, Bradford P. Keeney demonstrates that conventional epistemology, in which cause and effect have a linear relationship, does not sufficiently accommodate the reciprocal nature of causation in experience. Written in an unconventional style that...

For some time the family therapy field has been moving away from a problem-based approach to work with clients. Ideas such as creating a new family story, focusing on strengths and solutions, and making contracts with family members have all shifted interest toward a new approach to therapy. Ray and Keeney have been in the forefront of this thinking for several years and they have been experimenting with their ideas by working together with clients in order to create their own coherent, effective model for therapy. Resource Focused Therapy is the result

In The Creative Therapist, Bradford Keeney makes the case that "creativity is the most essential aspect of vibrant, meaningful, and successful therapy." No matter what therapeutic orientation one practices, it must be awakened by creativity in order for the session to come alive. This book presents a theoretical framework that provides an understanding of how to go outside habituated ways of therapy in order to bring forth new and innovative possibilities. A basic structure for creative therapy, based on the outline of a three-part theatrical play, is also set forth. With these frameworks,...