The systemic and strategic approach, the Palo Alto method is also qualified as brief therapy.
It is strategic because it focuses on finding solutions and not old causes of difficulties; studies have shown that everything does not happen in a person's head) and systemic because it is not only interested in an individual but in the relational system in which he evolves, in the interactions of his environment.
Indeed, when a man or a woman, or even a teenager or a child, feels bad, whether in his family or professional environment in the case of adults, it is because he or she does not manage satisfactorily his relations with those around him: wife or husband, children, friends, colleagues, hierarchical superiors………. without getting any results.
The practitioners of Palo Alto will therefore endeavor to identify the difficulties encountered, the interactions between the person concerned and his entourage in the broad sense of the term and the sources of relational dysfunction, that is to say the attempts at solution which have been put implemented and which are clearly not suitable.
These attempted solutions are listed under the following terms:
- avoidance; the person tries to avoid all the obstacles in front of him and finds himself oddly drowned under the difficulties
- Control ; not knowing how to control naturally, she will do it excessively and paradoxically arrive at a result contrary to her expectations
- the beliefs ; I think that I am incompetent or that my colleagues are angry with me. I behave in such a way that the prophecy becomes self-fulfilling
The objective of Palo Alto practitioners is therefore, in summary, to help the people they care for to find appropriate solutions to manage interactions with their environment, whether personal or professional.
