honey and sting

I learned today that Steve de Shazer died yesterday. I am so sad about this. Though I hadn't seen Steve in some years, his mentorship and teachings were a profound influence on me. Watching Steve teach and work opened up a radical awareness of the incredible creativity and resourcefulness of people who come to see us, no matter how deeply they are in their "problem story." The man embodied a very profound kind of faith; I asked him once if he "took it as an assumption" that the client has the resources they need to solve their problems. He answered, "It isn't an assumption; it's absolute fact."

He could sit in silence like no one I know. It was a very rich silence, a way of waiting: "I know there is something really important that we are going to discover here -- and I'm really curious to see what it is!" But without any of those words. There was just this sense of expectancy...

I once said to him, after watching him interview a client, "It seems like you aren't afraid to look like you are asking a stupid question."

He said, "It's not about not *looking* stupid -- I'm not afraid to *be* stupid." By which he meant, it wasn't a strategy -- he was really, truly okay with asking a question that he had no idea what the answer was going to be. He didn't ask to push an agenda, or to show how smart he was -- he asked because there was something he knew he didn't know the answer to, and he was curious to find out what it was.

Steve said this in an interview once about John Weakland, who had been a close friend and mentor to him:

HN Tell me more about the ways in which John Weakland has influenced you.

SdeS Well, have you ever seen him work? I'm not sure what transcripts would show you. John does do very little in the interview. The client does most of the talking. So, in pacing .. somewhat in the way of formulating the questions .... It's just a general kind of family resemblance if you will. His way of doing therapy, certainly when I first saw it, is so strikingly different from any one else's, 25 years ago. It's just so economical of the therapist's energy.

JC If we read a transcript, we could judge the language, we couldn't judge the pacing. What else couldn't we judge ... what else could we miss?

SdeS Ooh, lots of things ... like of course, visual expressions etc etc. You could tell John was interested by his doing something. If you were watching, you could see the left eyebrow creep up. So ... very small things. John's left eyebrow moving is part of language.

Steve could have been talking about himself. He never wasted words, and he could be a bit curmudgeonly at times. But I always felt a connection, what someone else called his "gruff compassion." You can see it in the tapes of him working, too. Steve doesn't seem to say or do much, but the clients find such amazing things within themselves. They feel listened to, like someone really believes they are worth listening to, because something really interesting is about to be revealed. And often, it is.

There was a sweet thing Steve did when a client made a discovery, or realized something important about themselves, an achievement or a commitment they were making. He would shake their hand, a way of saying "congratulations." There was something very direct and innocent about this. So acknowledging.

Steve loved beer. I hope he's enjoying heaven's brew, with some really good jazz playing him in.