cover image Fire Your Shrink!: Do-It Yourself Strategies for Changing Your Life and Everyone in It

Fire Your Shrink!: Do-It Yourself Strategies for Changing Your Life and Everyone in It

Michele Weiner-Davis. Simon & Schuster, $21.5 (270pp) ISBN 978-0-671-86755-3

Putting the ``self back in self-help'' is the stated goal of this exuberant explication of a different therapy approach-solution-oriented brief therapy (SBT), ``enabling most people to resolve their problems in three to six sessions.'' Therapist Weiner-Davis (Divorce Busting) eschews the whys of problems and instead identifies possible solutions that allow some people to feel better about their lives without undergoing extended therapy, and often without the intervention of a therapist. Unorthodox in its approach, SBT uncovers creative solutions shown to work in the vignettes of counseling sessions presented here. Replete with practical problem-solving ideas, this presentation demonstrates an empowering technique that is the polar opposite of the ``inner-child'' scenario. Illustrations. First serial to Cosmopolitan and Ladies' Home Journal; author tour. (Jan.)