The Strategic Dialogue: Rendering the Diagnostic Intreview a Real Therapeutic Intervention

The Strategic Dialogue is a strategy by which one can achieve maximum results with minimum effort. It was developed through a natural evolutionary process from previous treatments for particular pathologies, and is composed of therapeutic stratagems and specific sequences of ad hoc maneuvers constructed for different types of problems.

This book represents both the starting and finishing line of all of the research, clinical practice, and managerial consulting performed by professors Giorgio Nardone and Paul Watzlawick over a fifteen year period at the Centro di Terapia Strategica of Arezzo (Strategic Therapy Center). It is the result of the combined efforts and contributions of not only the authors of this book, but also of other colleagues, collaborators, scholars and patients from all over the world, many of whom were often unaware of the help they provided. This work can be referred to as the finishing line because the Strategic Dialogue, an advanced therapeutic method of conducting a therapy session and inducing radical changes rapidly in the patient, represents the culmination of all that has been achieved so far in the field.

While reading through the full transcriptions of the cases presented, the reader will immerse oneself fully in Giorgio Nardone’s style of work, to be fascinated by the articulate dialogue, carried out through the use of precise strategic plans that are adaptable both to the structure of the problem and also to the peculiar reality of the patient. Moreover the reader will be astonished to discover how, through the use of subtle communicative maneuvers and creative stratagems, patients are lead to rapid and effective therapeutic change.