Socrates was a Greek philosopher, the teacher of Plato, and the founder of what is often referred to as the ‘ethical tradition of thought’. We don’t know anything much about him directly since he never wrote down his teachings, but others have written about him and passed on his ideas. You might wonder what this has to do with therapy, but bear with me, because although he was a teacher, he had a very similar problem to many therapists and found a way to solve it that you can use too.
Socrates taught philosophy, which is not a topic that lends itself to absolute answers. He wanted his students to think for themselves but, like many students, they expected answers from him. ‘Mr Socrates,’ they would say, ‘What is the answer to life the Universe and everything?’ (Douglas Adams had not yet been born, so they were unaware it was ‘42’.[1] )
OK, I’m paraphrasing wildly here, but faced with this or a similar question once too often, he developed a way of questioning his students that encouraged them to look within themselves for answers.
Socratic questions in therapy
I discussed in a previous blog (read it here) whether and when it's a good idea for therapists to give advice and came to the conclusion that, in most cases, our job is to facilitate clients putting their own answers into place rather than providing an ‘off-the-shelf’ solution. But clients often want - or even expect - us to tell them what the answers are to the various issues they are dealing with.
By encouraging self-analysis and new points of view you can help your clients to identify for themselves where their thoughts are unhelpful or unrealistic and start the process of moving on to healthier, more positive ones without taking over control of their lives. This is where Socratic questions come in.
There are specific kinds of Socratic questions and, although you can plan some ideas in advance of your session, the approach is primarily conversational, following each idea as it comes to light. Broadly the conversation follows a pattern.
- Ask the client to clearly state their position or belief.
- Sum up their argument and state it back to them to ensure
you have understood it.
- Explore their position to uncover unhelpful thinking
patterns, beliefs, assumptions etc.
- Challenge those patterns by asking the client to provide
evidence that their perceptions are correct or reframe them to a more helpful
point of view.
- Start again with the next question or belief.
- Challenging assumptions – picking up on any presuppositions
or belief statements behind what the client has said, and asking them to
recognise that they are assumptions, for example, ‘Is that particular anxious
thought based on facts, or on your beliefs and feelings at that moment?’
- Using evidence and reasoning – asking the client to provide
evidence behind what they are saying, for example, ‘If that anxious thought is
based on facts, what are they?’ ‘Is there anything that might contradict that
thought?’ Are you looking at all the evidence or just the bits that support
your negative thoughts?’
- Encouraging alternative points of view – a further challenge
to unhelpful beliefs or reasoning to encourage reframing, for example, ‘Can you
think of other ways to view that situation?’ ‘Might someone else view it
differently?’ ‘If someone else had that thought, what would you tell them?’
- Exploring implications and consequences – asking the client
to take their reasoning further, for example ‘If that thought was true, what
would happen next?’ ‘How likely is that to happen?’
- Challenging the question – reflecting back any questions they ask you, for example, ‘Why do you think I asked that question?’ or ‘Why do you think that question is important?’ ‘How would you like me to answer that?’ (This approach, in my experience, is to be used with care as it can occasionally sound evasive or a bit pompous, but it has its place.)
When should therapists use Socratic questions?
Socratic questioning is most often associated with CBT (Clark and Egan, 2015, Beck and Dozois, 2011), but it can have useful applications no matter what your theoretical approach to helping clients because it uses focussed, open questions to encourage insight and bring to light ideas that were previously not in conscious awareness.
If you have read my book, Their Worlds, Your Words, Socratic questions fit particularly well into the History to Here and now section of the client interview and also begin to establish what needs to change, but it can also be used with clients who are in trance since the emphasis is on open, non-leading questions.
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates
https://positivepsychology.com/socratic-questioning /
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Author: Debbie Waller is an experienced hypnotherapist and hypnotherapy trainer. She is the author of The Hypnotherapist's Companion and Their Worlds, Your Words and a co-writer of the Hypnotherapy Handbook, all of which are available from Amazon.
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