Welcome to the 2016 Editions

Mark McKergow , Kirsten Dierolf , Anton Stellamans & Carey Glass

Editorial Volume 8 Issue 1

Extending the mind, extending SF practice

As InterAction enters its eighth year of publication, we are delighted to welcome members of ASFiO, the new Association for Solution Focus in Organisations. ASFiO members will be receiving the InterAction journal as part of their membership package, and we are delighted to both have you as readers and invite you to consider contributing to future issues.

This issue we are taking a step back to look at some fasci- nating areas which underpin the success of SF practice in organisational work and elsewhere. Guy Shennan has written a paper based on his Masters thesis which looks at the Extended Mind hypothesis, embodied and enactive approaches and how they connect with SF practice with regard to how we think about personal identity. This leads to a potential broadening of our focus of work, from conversation “beyond talking, beyond the clinic or office and beyond the individual”.

To go along with this paper, we are delighted to include a genuine philosophy classic paper, The Extended Mind by Andy Clark and David Chalmers (1998). As well as being excellent background for Guy Shennan’s work, this paper shows brilliantly how a simple idea can be used to cast new light on centuries of thinking – how mind might not be contained within the skull but may include the environment. Mark McKergow’s new introduction to the paper builds more of the connection with SF work.

Mark McKergow also has a new peer-reviewed paper where he takes a closer look at the stance with which SF prac- titioners sit down with their clients. What are we trying to do, what are we trying to focus on? The distinctions he makes between third-person analysis and first-person engagement shines a light on some of the special features of SF practice which, while they may seem like second nature to us, look rather odd to other practitioners. Mark also connects this work with new developments in philosophy of mind.

We have no new case studies in this issue. Instead, case studies editor Anton Stellamans has produced an excellent guide to how to produce case studies! The methods he outlines are many and varied, and we would be delighted to receive some submissions from new authors for future editions.

Our interview this time is with the legendary guardian of effective therapy, Scott D. Miller. Scott was a key member of Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg’s team at BFTC Milwaukee for several years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and has gone on to a career examining in the broadest terms what makes for effective talking cures. Kirsten Dierolf asks him about extending this work into the coaching field, and brings out a lot of fascinating points in their lively exchange. This interview is worth reading and re-reading.

The review section of the journal contains our usual fasci- nating mix. Hannes Couvreur has written up an excellent Research Review including a piece entitled ‘Towards a living library of useful misunderstandings’, where he looks at the relationship between subject-scientific research and SF. We have news of a Piece of Work review from Sirkkaliisa Heimonen of Finland, and our book reviews combine the (relatively) old and the brand new by featuring The Power of Positive Deviance alongside Todd Rose’s fascinating The End of Average and Jon Harvey’s great little consultant’s book Cracking Questions.

Finally, we welcome three new members to our Editorial Advisory Board: Dr Wendel Ray, Jim Duvall and Prof Max Woodtli.

Editorial Volume 8 Issue 2

Change is happening all the time …

One of the working maxims of solution-focused (SF) practice is that ‘change is happening all the time’. This is a reminder to us that not only is change the norm, but that it should not be fought – rather, it should be used to help our clients build towards the better futures they hope for and desire. This is also true for journals.

Since our first edition in May 2009, InterAction has provided a regular collection of peer-reviewed papers, case studies, classic papers, interviews, research and book reviews relating to SF in organisations to SFCT members and a wider online readership. This is the sixteenth edition of InterAction – and it is also the last in the current form. Our parent organ- isation, SFCT, has no members or funds remaining. All the funds in hand for 2017 are being spent in pursuit of SFCT’s purpose, in continuing the online availability of all the past editions of InterAction. We therefore need to establish a new future.

InterAction will close and SFCT will dissolve in December 2016. Discussions are continuing about what happens next. One possibility is that our friends at the Association for SF in Organisations (ASFiO) and the Australasian Association for Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (AASFBT) will collaborate on integrating an organisational element part into the AASFBT journal, the Journal of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy. Whatever happens, all the editors of InterAction remain committed to ensuring that there is a continuing publication place for peer-reviewed and high quality work about SF in the organisational and management world, and we all look forward to playing our parts in the continuing development of SF practice and theory within an academic framework.

This edition of InterAction continues our tradition of combining practical and conceptual work. On the practical side we have a survey of ways to use SF ideas in supporting clients in making decisions, and there is an excellent case study about using SF in a large and complex organisation (Highways England). On the conceptual side is our interview with Professor Dan Hutto, a leading philosopher of mind, about the connections between enactivist views of cognition and SF work – this is an important contribution which will attract a broader readership. Our old friend Klaus Schenck has produced a wide-ranging research review, and there are book reviews about both the practical (dialogic organisation devel- opment (OD)) and the conceptual (Vincent Descombes’ critique of cognitivism). Our final classic paper is, perhaps fittingly in a recursive world, a piece from our very first edition – the interview with Gale Miller about his experiences with Steve de Shazer, Insoo Kim Berg and their colleagues at the dawn of SF practice – with a new introduction. This paper has been cited by several authors and gives a vivid account of life at BFTC in the 1980s.

We close by thanking everyone who has contributed to InterAction over the years – in writing, in producing research and book reviews, by getting reviewed by SFCT, by editing and proofing, and by distributing the journal by post to the four corners of the globe. We hope you, like us, are looking forward to continuing the development of SF work in all its forms.