Journal of Systemic Therapies, Vol. 38, No. 1, 2019, pp.

30–43

STRATEGIC THERAPIES:
ROOTS AND BRANCHES
MICHAEL F. HOYT
Independent Practice

A longtime participant-observer of the theory and practice of brief therapy and

strategic therapy, the author shares observations about where we’ve come from,
some of the challenges we face, and where he hopes that our field is going. He
emphasizes the value of theoretical and technical diversity and innovation, and
invites additional developments.

For many of us interested in therapy, Milton Erickson was like Zeus: Realms of
strategic therapy, hypnotherapy, brief therapy, and family therapy seem to have
sprung from his forehead. (In the Greek legend, creation also came from his upper
leg: Zeus rescued the unborn Dionysus by sewing him into his thigh—which, in
my poetic mind, has to do with Erickson having polio and being in a wheelchair,
therefore he learned to observe carefully and use language extra skillfully to get
people to do things therapeutically.)
Erickson designed specific interventions for different clients. He sent them look-
ing for answers up a local mountain or to a botanical garden, told them metaphorical
stories, directed behaviors that would disrupt problems, sometimes had them do the
very symptoms they sought to overcome, often used hypnotic trance, and generally
practiced therapy in a highly creative “uncommon” way (see Battino & Smith, 2005;
Haley, 1973; Short, Erickson, & Klein, 2005; plus O’Hanlon & Hexum, 1990, for
a compendium of Erickson’s known cases).
Inspired by his many years of study with Erickson, Jay Haley (1973, 1985)
popularized the term strategic therapy (1963) and defined it (1973): “Therapy
can be called strategic if the clinician initiates what happens during therapy and
designs a particular approach for each problem” (p. 1). A related definition was
An abbreviated version of this article was presented as the opening session of a LACT international
webinar, June 19, 2019.
Thanks to Monte Bobele, Flavio Cannistrá, Michele Ritterman, Grégoire Vitry, and the anonymous
journal reviewers for many helpful comments.
Address correspondence to Michael F. Hoyt, Ph.D., 90 Thalia St., Mill Valley, CA 94941. E-mail:
drmhoyt@comcast.net

© 2019 JST Institute LLC

30

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 Strategic Therapies: Roots and Branches 31

offered by Bob Rosenbaum (1990): “Strategic therapy is not a particular approach

or theory . . . it rather refers, in its broadest sense, to any therapy in which the
therapist is willing to take on the responsibility for influencing people and takes
an active role in planning a strategy for promoting change” (p. 354). Rosenbaum
conceptualized ten distinguishing characteristics:

1. Therapists are in the business of influencing people.

2. Strategic therapists meet the client at his or her view of the world.
3. Strategic therapists work with a systemic epistemology.
4. Strategic therapy focused on problems and their solutions.
5. Strategic therapists tend to see client problems as maintained by their
a6tempted solutions.
6. Only a small change is necessary.
7. Strategic therapy is brief therapy.
8. Strategic therapists utilize whatever clients bring in order to help them make
a satisfactory life.
9. Strategic therapists do not punctuate client actions with the concept of
­resistance.
10. Strategic therapists tend to design a particular approach for each problem.

Controversies developed regarding the practice of strategic therapy, including

whether such approaches were controlling and manipulative (see Rosenbaum,
1990; Wilner, Breir, & Im, 1988). Even the word strategic was questioned. John
Weakland (1993) made clear his position:

[O]ur work is very strategic. This is not in the military sense, since we view treatment as
a cooperative endeavor, not an adversarial one. . . . Strategy involves deliberate choice
of action, and particularly deliberate influence. . . . In such a situation, to be strategic
does not mean to be exploitative; it means to be competent, like a skilled technician,
at the job one is hired to do. (pp. 142–144)

In his book Putting Difference to Work, Steve de Shazer (1991) wrote: “The
use of strategy and tactics, meant to suggest careful planning on the part of the
therapist, implies at the very least that the therapist and the client are involved in a
contest” (p. 33). In his Foreword to de Shazer’s book, however, Weakland (1991)
wrote that the term “strategic” does not necessarily imply a contest and proposed
that “de Shazer carries on his conversations strategically” (p. viii). Weakland
and de Shazer continued this colloquy (in Hoyt, 1994b/2001, pp. 22–25). John
emphasized the idea of deliberate influence, while Steve (also see Lipchik & de
Shazer, 1986) acknowledged the mutuality of influence and noted the frequent
“extra baggage” of the military metaphor and preferred the term “purposeful.”
Paul Watzlawick (in Watzlawick & Hoyt, 1998/2001) finessed the argument by
explaining: “My ‘informed consent’ is the question: ‘The next time you find

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 32 Hoyt

yourself in the problem situation, would you be willing to carry out an experi-
ment, namely to . . .’ ” (p. 154).1,2
For me, to be “strategic” means to be purposeful, working with the client to solve
the problem presented by the client. As Haley (1963) noted, “The patient must
be persuaded to participate in bringing a change about” (p. 45). Thus, Duncan,
Hubble, and Rusk (1994) pointed out, “To intervene or not to intervene” is not the
question: How is the question.
In the 1980s, strategic therapy flourished in three unique and creative groups:

1. Paul Watzlawick, John Weakland, Dick Fisch and their colleagues at the
Mental Research Institute’s (MRI’s) Brief Therapy Center (Fisch et al., 1982;
Fisch & Schlanger, 1999; Watzlawick et al., 1974) in Palo Alto, California,
with later collaborations with Giorgio Nardone (e.g., 1995; Nardone & Wat-
zlawick, 2005) at Il Centro di Terapia Strategica d’Arezzo (Italy).
2. Haley (1963, 1977), Cloé Madanes (1981, 1984), and their colleagues at the
Family Therapy Institute in Washington, D.C.
3. The team of Mara Selvini Palazzoli and her colleagues (1978; Boscolo et al.,
1987) in Milan, Italy.

Other approaches also involve strategic elements. Salvador Minuchin’s (1974)

Structural Family Therapy, for example, developed after collaboration with Haley
at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic, uses strategic techniques to reorganize
dysfunctional hierarchies. Studying at MRI, de Shazer (1982) also reported strategic
interventions; but then de Shazer and colleagues (1986) initiated solution-focused
therapy (see de Shazer, 1988, 1991) when they moved from describing problem
formation and resolution to focused solution development.
The essence of these strategic therapies is an interactional-systemic perspective
(Watzlawick, Beavin, & Jackson, 1967; Watzlawick & Weakland, 1980) that fa-
vors short-term problem-solving approaches. There are now many propagations
and hybrids (see Rambo, West, Schooley, & Boyd, 2013; Ray & de Shazer, 1999;
Weakland & Ray, 1995) that address positive feedback loops, successful and un-
successful attempted solutions, paradoxes and counterparadoxes, hierarchies, and
first-order versus second-order change by using strategic therapy methods such as
reframing and utilization and behavioral directives such as symptom prescription,
ordeals, and acting “as-if.”

1Cloé Madanes (2006) also made clear: “We must not forget our roots in humanism and we must remain

systemic thinkers, always remembering that therapy is only possible when it takes place in a context
of freedom from political, institutional, and mind control. Therapy is an art more than it is a science,
and, as such, it is inextricably linked to liberty” (p. x).
2In 1993 the Journal of Strategic and Systemic Therapies changed its name to the Journal of Systemic

Therapies (see Efron, 1991, 1992, 1993).

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 Strategic Therapies: Roots and Branches 33

Both/And: Unique and Patterned

For those of us who study and practice psychotherapy, there is an inevitable tension:
we need to see each case as individual and unique and we need to look for patterns
to guide and organize what we do to help us to be more effective. Thus, back in
1956, Bateson, Jackson, Haley, and Weakland wrote:

Many of the uniquely appropriate therapeutic gambits arranged by therapists seem

to be intuitive. We share the goal of most psychotherapists who strive toward the day
when such strokes of genius will be well enough understood to be systematic and
commonplace. (p. 263)

Erickson (quoted in Zeig, 1980) also famously said:

And I do wish that Rogerian therapists, Gestalt therapists, transactional therapists,

group analysts, and all the other offspring of various theories would recognize that not
one of them really recognizes that psychotherapy for Person #1 is not psychotherapy
for Person #2. (frontispiece)

I think Erickson was getting at the idea that each person forms his or her own
idea of reality, that one size doesn’t fit everyone and so therapy needs to be bespoke,
that is, custom-tailored to the specific individual, couple, or family.

Good Ideas
In addition to the original brilliance of the Palo Alto School, the Washington School,
and the Milan School, I appreciate many authors’ contributions. Recently, Grégoire
Vitry and his confreres (2018) have produced a new book (in French) on the es-
sential MRI prescriptions, giving excellent examples and showing connections
to other models. I also find useful Flavio Cannistrá’s (2019) delineation of the
logics underlying different brief therapy interventions, which appears in a new
book co-edited by Hoyt and Bobele (2019) in which various experts illustrate a
range of strategic therapy concepts and methods. But, despite all this fine work,
there are future problems of which we should beware and future possibilities and
opportunities for us to develop.

Dangers Ahead
There are several threats to the further development of strategic therapies. Some
of these involve “Attacks from the Outside”:

1. The attempted hegemony of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). There is

some evidence that CBT can be useful, but the empirical support is not nearly
as strong as it has been portrayed. Leichsenring et al. (2018), for example, in

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 34 Hoyt

their careful review argue that CBT is being oversold as the “gold standard,”
noting that “mechanisms of change, quality of studies, and efficacy [are] not
as robust as some researchers claim. Most important, there is no consistent
evidence that CBT is more efficacious than other evidence-based approaches.”
We might also note that practice in “real-life” situations is seldom so “pure”
and controlled as in many CBT effectiveness studies.
2. The dangerous dominance of psychiatric medication. Medications also can
sometimes be useful, but they are being much overprescribed (see Whita-
ker, 2010)—their effectiveness is not as strong as claimed, and sometimes
it is very difficult to discontinue them once started. “Skills, not pills” can
often be better. As part of a memorium (Ray et al., 2011) written about the
late Richard (“Dick”) Fisch, I described an instance in which I challenged
Dick (who was a psychiatrist) about why he was not quickly prescribing an
antipsychotic medication to a young man. It turned out that Dick was right:
the fellow got well with strategic therapy and without medications, and thus
avoided many possible side effects including chronic damage to his brain, to
his self-esteem, and to his role in the family.3
3. At least in the U.S., another threat is the growing support by insurance com-
panies for paint-by-the-numbers routines rather than client-specific strategic
interventions. This threat also tends to favor individual approaches rath-
er than potentially more complex (but contextually more comprehensive)
­systemic-interactional perspectives. Back in the late 1990s, when I asked Paul
Watzlawick why he thought reception for strategic/interactional therapies
has been better overseas than in the U.S., he answered: ”[M]ore exposure to
other languages and cultures” (Watzlawick & Hoyt, 1998/2001, p. 155).
4. Homogenization rather than appreciating cultural differences and strengths.
I might also borrow here an idea from some colleagues, John Miller et al.
(2018), who point out that most of the people in the world are not white Eu-
ropeans, that Caucasians and their views about therapy therefore are actually
the minority, and that other cultures/nationalities have other healing traditions.
This fact becomes especially clear when we Westerners attempt therapy in
the non-Western majority world.
5. Disregarding and discarding reality. Even if one accepts a radical postmodern/
constructivist emphasis on the social construction of reality, interventions
should speak to the client’s real situation and strengths and not falsify, delude,
or fabricate whole-cloth. Freud began by recognizing that mental disturbances
were caused by childhood physical and sexual abuse, but later recanted and
proposed, instead, that mental problems emerged from children’s unresolved

3Fisch and Schlanger (1999), among others, noted the unfortunate and often unnecessary tendency
that “[f]or these so-called serious problems, biological explanations have become attractive, and re-
ferral to psychiatrists—with the attendant use of drugs as the primary treatment—has become more
widespread” (p. xiii).

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 Strategic Therapies: Roots and Branches 35

inner fantasies and imaginations (Masson, 1984). As Madanes (2006) has not-
ed, “Not until the 1950s did the family therapy movement once again insist that
personal relationships—between parents and children, wives and husbands,
friends and coworkers—were the key to understanding human emotional life”
(p. 1). It is important to recognize that some of the problems we are asked to
address in our offices have their roots in larger social problems, such as vio-
lence, warfare, racism, economic displacement, misogyny, and homophobia.

Other dangers involve “Attacks from the Inside.” We need to be careful about
in-fighting. There used to be three schools of Transactional Analysis—and they ef-
fectively killed each other. And there are various psychodynamic schools—and they
don’t talk much to one another. Don Meichenbaum (2013), one of the founders of
cognitive-behavioral therapy, has written about similar battles in the world of CBT,
where he was almost excommunicated by behaviorists for promoting a cognitive
perspective. I recall (Hoyt, 1997/2000) once being at a Therapeutic Conversations
conference and being jarringly challenged, “Are you Solution or are you Narra-
tive?” I could give examples of Catholics versus Protestants, Sunnis versus Shiites,
battles between Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Jews. The list could go on.

So: Are You Real Strategic, Orthodox Strategic, Genuine Strategic,

Original Strategic, or Strategic Strategic? Answer NOW!!!
Don’t worry—unless you gave the “wrong” answer! The “schools” of strategic
therapy are like characters in search of an author (grazie, Luigi Pirandello!). And
“author” is a good term since the underlying unified field theory has to do with
communication and constructivism, which emphasizes how people make meaning
and author (and re-author) their experience and lives.
When I asked Jay Haley why they called it “Brief Therapy,” he told me (per-
sonal communication, December, 1995) it was mostly to distinguish it from the
then-dominant psychoanalytic perspective that treatment should be “long term.” To
us, the differences are very important; but to most people, they’re all flavors of brief
therapy—strategic, systemic, Ericksonian, MRI, solution-focused, resource-based,
narrative, etc., are all “brief.”4
I’m not trying to blur differences, I’m trying to say that we should look for “what
works” and not get too hung–up on labels and brand names. Different “schools”
have different theories and traditions, but then, when you ask, “What did you actu-

4Back in 1995, a meeting entitled “Unmuddying the Waters” was held in Northern California. Many
of the leading “first generation” strategic therapists were there, including Haley, Watzlawick, Fisch,
Weakland, Madanes, and Carlos Sluzki (see Efron, 1995; Hoyt, 1997/2000; Miller, Duncan, & Hubble,
1999). Weakland (1995; also see Weakland, 1999) said and later wrote: “While not always easy, one of
the strengths of the field from its earliest days has been the constructive reflection and discussion of its
diversity. . . . The participants of the meeting . . . hope this will reinvigorate this tradition of viewing
diversity usefully” (p. 16).

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 36 Hoyt

ally do?” you usually find that effective and efficient therapists co-created with the
client a specific goal; they identified client strengths and resources, what the client
could do differently (sometimes by looking at exceptions to the problem); they
evoked hope and effort; they helped the client to “see” things differently; and they
encouraged and guided the client to use whatever had been successful before, gave
directives to disrupt unsuccessful attempted solutions, and also sometimes taught
them new skills. The language and technologies may be different, but good practice
comes together much more than separate “theory silos” might suggest. That’s one
of the things I learned while editing three volumes (Hoyt, 1994a, 1996b, 1998) all
with the term constructive therapies [plural!] in their title. My point here is that
we need to avoid having a single story. All the good knowledge isn’t in one head.
In 1998, when I asked Watzlawick what he thought or hoped would be his en-
during contribution to the psychotherapy field, Paul answered (in Watzlawick &
Hoyt, 1998/2001):

I do not believe in any ‘enduring contribution’ to any field of science. For me, the task
of scientific research is the development of methods and techniques that are useful for
a specific purpose, but will certainly be replaced by more effective approaches within
a few years. (p. 155)

Or, to put it more succinctly (as was their wont), in another conversation, with
Steve de Shazer and John Weakland (1994b/2001), John said:

Well, I’ll tell you what I’d like to leave as a message: “Stay curious.” And everybody
is rushing like hell to try to get away from that. (p. 31)

We all “look” through our theories and experiences. We need to use all our “eyes”
and theoretical “lenses” to “see” the whole person and decide which interventions
would be best for this person in this situation at this time. And, I would add (Hoyt,
2000), “how we look influences what we see, and what we see influences what
we do” and “some stories are better than others” (p. 17). Who knows, you may
learn something new.

WHAT’S NEXT?

At the end of Weakland’s (1999) Epilogue in Evolving Brief Therapies, the festschrift
honoring him, John expressed concern that the original excitement of the profound
shift to an interactional view of human behavior and problems might be replaced
by a more “business as usual” attitude. He noted, however:

There are a few more positive signs: expansion of interactional views and practice
into new areas [. . .], innovative and effective therapy with problems long believed
intractable, and a few people still producing creative ideas within a broad interactional
framework . . . [T]his might be enough to counter stagnation and regression. (p. 219)

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 Strategic Therapies: Roots and Branches 37

It’s very hard to make predictions, since so many factors—politics, science, the
culture, and everything else—have an influence. But here are five future trends—
five branches from our strategic therapy roots—that I think will grow and help
fulfill John’s hopes:

1. More research on methods, outcomes, and contexts. Although MRI Brief

Therapy can be said to have “stood the test of time” (Hale & Frusha, 2016),
since it continues to be practiced worldwide, it has been the subject of sur-
prisingly little quantitative research, especially about specific strategic therapy
interventions. There is a dearth of data. In addition to theory and case stud-
ies—which is where I really learn strategies and techniques—we also need
more statistical research if we want strategic therapy to be taken seriously by
others in the psychotherapy field, including insurance companies and policy-
makers. As Rosenbaum (1990, pp. 370–371; also see Coyne & Liddle, 1992)
has written: “There is so much individual richness that the single case study,
with interventions tailored for that specific individual, has tremendous appeal.
On the other hand, there is a recognition that if we only have information
about an individual, without finding some kind of classificatory schemata, it
will be hard to organize a coherent theory and proceed in a classical scientific
fashion.”
  The idiographic-nomothetic debate has a long history in psychology and
counseling (Cone, 1986; McLeod, 2007). Both can be valuable although, as
May (1958; also see Bohart et al., 1998) recognized, qualitative case studies
actually can be more empirical because they convey more of what actually
happens in a therapeutic encounter. Nomothetic (from the Greek nomos,
meaning “law”) studies are usually quantitative and based on comparisons of
numerical data across groups; they can also be useful, suggesting patterns that
may be likely to be repeated. I am very glad to see that LACT in partnership
with MRI, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Paris 8
University, the Centro di Terapia Strategica d’Arezzo, and others (see Vitry
et al., submitted) have developed an international practice research network
and have begun collecting data. We need to identify, document, and do what
works (and not do what doesn’t work)—but the practice of psychotherapy
is an art and craft and we need to be careful to not manualize and codify
methodologies to the point that growth is thwarted.
2. More innovative integration of different strategic approaches. Even if one
adheres to a specific theoretical model—such as MRI’s guiding idea that
unsuccessful attempted solutions serve to perpetuate the problem and thus
need to be interrupted (see Rohrbaugh & Shoham, 2001)—one can draw from
a variety of technical approaches (again, see Coyne & Liddle, 1992; also see
Castonguay et al., 2015). As Michele Ritterman (1983/2005) has written:
“Truly, human problems seem complex enough to warrant a therapy that works
on multiple levels” (2005, p. xvi). New clinical opportunities beckon. Done

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 38 Hoyt

poorly, eclecticism can result in chaos and confusion; done well, it is entirely
consistent with the spirit of Haley’s (1973) original definition: “Therapy can
be called strategic if the clinician initiates what happens during therapy and
designs a particular approach for each problem” (p. 1).
3. More awareness of cultural nuance. Much of therapy, as most of us understand
it, was developed by white Europeans on a white European population. How
to do therapy may be somewhat different with French or Italians or Swedes
or Brits, but the differences may be even greater when working with people
from China or Africa or Latin America or the Pacific Islands or the Middle
East than with Westernized folks from Europe or the U.S. As James Hillman
and Michael Ventura (1993) noted:

If you’re out of your mind in another culture or quite disturbed or impotent or

anorexic, you look at what you’ve been eating, who’s been casting spells on you,
what taboo you’ve crossed, what you haven’t done right, when you last missed
reference to the gods or didn’t take part in the dance, broke some tribal custom.
Whatever. It could be thousands of other things—the plants, the water, the curses,
the demons, the gods, being out of touch with the great spirit. It would never, never
be what happened to you with your mother and your father 40 years ago. Only our
culture uses that model, that myth. (p. 17)

 In The Art of Strategic Therapy, Jay Haley and Madeleine Richeport-Haley
(2003, pp. 17–29) highlighted the importance of ethnicity issues. How do we
adapt the basic model so that we are working with (or at least, not against)
someone’s ethnicity and culture? Terry Soo-Hoo (e.g., 2018) and Karin Sch-
langer (e.g., Schlanger & Krohner, 2019) have written very well about this.
As we know from Bateson (1972) and cybernetics, what we sometimes call
“resistance” can be created by a positive feedback loop. “Insistence produces
resistance, imposition produces opposition, push produces pushback” (Hoyt,
2017, p. 296). Especially as our worlds become more diverse, we will need
much more intercultural humility, sensitivity, and competence.
4. Increasing use of the Internet for education, training, and professional net-
working, as well as for doing therapy across the planet (including the de-
velopment of new therapy apps). With the expanding use of technology,
strategic therapists (and others) will need to adapt accordingly, including
being increasingly cognizant of different contexts. What works in one culture
or setting may not translate or fit well in another.
5. More single-session/one-at-a-time therapy (SST: see Dryden, 2018; Hoyt
et al., 2018; Hoyt & Dryden, 2018; Hoyt & Talmon, 2014; Slive & Bobele,
2011; Talmon, 1990). When we only have one meeting, we need to bring
whatever is useful, including ideas and techniques from different strategic
therapies. One session is already recognized as the most common length
of therapy, with many positive results with difficult problems, and such
­approaches will continue to expand and be an important venue for strategic

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 Strategic Therapies: Roots and Branches 39

therapies as we both “capture the moment” and “create the moment.” There is
happiness in helping someone quickly. The next international symposium on
SST will be held October 24–25, 2019 in Melbourne, Australia (visit www.
bouverie.org.au/sst-2019/).

CONCLUSION

These are exciting times. Strategic therapies, from Erickson to whatever is next, have
an important part to play. Evidence of what works and does not work is valuable,
and we also have to be careful not to foreclose inquiry and creative innovations.
While I have focused on strategic therapies, the importance of remaining curious
and the need to tailor treatment to the needs of each client is relevant across the-
oretical perspectives.
Can you imagine Milton Erickson having to provide a DSM-5 diagnosis and
explain his treatment plans to justify “pre-authorization of services”? How about
Haley asking permission to use a paradoxical intervention, or Steve de Shazer
wanting to ask about a “miracle,” or Michael White asking an encopretic little boy
about how Sneaky Poo tries to trick him?
I look forward to further developments.

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