Eve Lipchik's Unique Contribution to the Development and Practice of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy

Solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) is often described as having been developed by Steve de Shazer, Insoo Kim Berg and their team at the Brief Family Therapy Center (BFTC) in Milwaukee. Much has been written about Steve and Insoo's contributions to solution-focused work, however, less is known about the influence of the other founding team members: Jim Derks, Marilyn LaCourt, Eve Lipchik, Don Norum, and Elam Nunnally. While Derks, LaCourt, Norum, and Nunnally were important figures in the early days of the BFTC project, the authors believe that Eve Lipchik's significant, unique, and decades-long contributions to the development and application of SFBT, have often been under-recognized and under-appreciated. Thus, this article will concentrate specifically on the influence of Eve Lipchik, both with respect to the original development of solution-focused brief therapy, as well as to her important role in the field over the course of her long and distinguished career.