Redundant Attempted Solutions: Operative Diagnoses and Strategic Interventions to Disrupt More of the Same

Abstract

Beginning with the Mental Research Institute (MRI) in Palo Alto, California, a meta-model has been described in which redundant attempted solutions (RASs) are seen to maintain the mental difficulties that they attempt to resolve. Giorgio Nardone and his colleagues at the Centro di Terapia Strategica in Arezzo, Italy, have developed this constructivist approach via a strategic dialogue method that renders an initial diagnostic interview a deliberate and collaborative therapeutic intervention. Using SYPRENE, a systemic practice research network (Vitry et al., 2020), this article presents a reading of persistent psychological problems in terms of the RASs of avoidance and/or control in which they are embedded, and then demonstrates with a clinical vignette how this grid can guide therapeutic prescriptions.