Brett Brasher

I see the role of therapy as the mutual creation of a context where collaboration and change can occur. Problems that clients bring to us are not individual circumstances or action taken in isolation. They are ascription of meaning that arises within a particular tradition. Therapists need to adopt a position of "not knowing". Clients tell us their stories. These are stories of hurt, pain, joy, and, at times, success. The goal of therapy is the process of creating those stories that are not yet told, not as a process to correct a client’s life, but as an enrichment of a client’s potential. Sensitivity to context increases possibilities. Feelings unite humanity. How do our clients decide, after an hour or less, that we can be trusted with personal stories that they have never told anyone else? It is because we offer a context of sensitivity that allows for magic to occur. For many years I have been an actor in community theater, particularly Shakespeare. In Macbeth Shakespeare gives the best description of therapy I have heard: “Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak whispers the o’er fraught heart, and bids it break.” (Macbeth, Act IV, scene 1).