Learning to ask an elegant difference question which effectively explores the practitioner’s best hunch about the presenting difficulties is no easy task. It can easily become a highly intellectual task and fail to incorporate the person of the practitioner as part of the therapeutic system. Just as the client will be changed by the question we ask so will we. Genuinely incorporating ourselves creates a fully second-order cybernetic view. It is this understanding that underpins Karl Tomm’s 1988 paper Interventive Interviewing: Part III. Intending to Ask Lineal, Circular, Strategic, or Reflexive Questions?’
The Origins of the Paper
Karl Tomm was an enthusiastic proponent of the Milan Team, introducing their approach to the Family Therapy Program located within the faculty of medicine at the University of Calgary. The group visited on a regular basis to provide training to staff and students and Tomm published widely, bringing the approach to Northern American and Australian practitioners. His writing provided a clarity that the original work lacked, perhaps at least partly due to the impact of translation from Italian. He also expanded upon and teased out detail that was assumed rather than articulated.
In explaining the set of three papers published under the title Interventive Interviewing in 1988 Tomm said, ‘I began examining the interviewing process in greater depth and eventually came to the conclusion that it would be more coherent and heuristic to regard the whole interview as a series of continuous interventions.’ He noted that ‘it is impossible for a therapist to interact with a client without intervening in the client’s autonomous activity. The therapist assumes that everything she or he says and does is potentially significant with respect to the eventual therapeutic outcome.’ In summary, ‘interventive interviewing refers to an orientation in which everything an interviewer does and says, and does not do and does not say, is thought of as an intervention that could be therapeutic, nontherapeutic, or counter-therapeutic.’
The Dimensions Behind Questions
Two basic dimensions for categorising questions were identified. The first is the intended location of change behind the question ranging from change in the practitioner through their understanding of the situation through information gathered or change in the client. The second variable is whether the question assumes a lineal or circular assumption about the nature of mental phenomenon and the therapeutic process.
The Four Quadrant Model
From these Tomm created the four-quadrant model with one axis reflecting the therapist’s intention to change self or other and the second axis the degree of linearity or circularity underpinning the therapists thinking. This allowed a detailed categorization of all types of questions and the effect each type had on the practitioner, the client, and the therapeutic process.
In Conclusion
Tomm’s three interventive interviewing papers have stood the test of time and provide a clear explanation of the theoretical basis of questioning and the rationale behind the enquiry process. They provide a useful base for the development of a simpler process to effectively guide the practitioner in the session.
Tomm, K., Interventive interviewing: I. Strategizing as a fourth guideline for the therapist. Family Process, 26, 3-13, 1987. 5.
Tomm, K., Interventive interviewing: II. Reflexive questioning as a means to enable self-healing. Family Process, 26, 167-183, 1987
Tomm, K., Interventive interviewing: Part III. Intending to Ask Lineal, Circular, Strategic, or Reflexive Questions? Family Process 27, 1-15, 1988
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