Strength-based therapy is a type of positive psychotherapy and counseling that focuses on your internal strengths and resourcefulness, rather than on your weaknesses, failures, and shortcomings. The tenet is that this focus sets up a positive mindset that helps you build on your best qualities, find your strengths, improve resilience, and change your worldview to one that is more positive. Practitioners believe the main reason to discuss a patient’s problems is to discover the inner strengths clients can tap into in order to build solutions.
The technique was developed in the 1950s and subsequently refined by professor and psychologist Donald Clifton. The American Psychological Association has called Clifton “the father of strength-based therapy and the grandfather of positive psychology.”
In the ensuing decades, strength-based therapy evolved from the work of people in various disciplines, including social work, counseling psychology, positive psychology, solution-focused therapy, and narrative therapy.
Strength-based therapy stands apart from other treatments in its use of client involvement. While practitioners should have a robust background in traditional theoretical models of treatment, practitioners of strength-based therapy believe that treatment should be individualized, with solutions coming from clients themselves, guided by a therapist’s expertise.
One criticism of strength-based therapy has been that it assumes people have everything they need within them to solve any problem. Proponents of the therapy would say that, while some problems are tremendously complex, therapists can and do still bring their own expertise to bear.
