Motivational Interviewing: Preparing People for Change

This book is a masterpiece.
With a basis in the teaching and counselling methods of Carl Rogers, taken further into the specialist field of addiction - It describes in such careful detail the most gentle, most understanding - most effective ways to communicate....so that you will learn the most helpful ways - to inspire change, & how to discover, and be supportive of the addicted person's smallest inclination to change.

It is not a book about fixing things - controlling anyone - or changing minds ... but about how best to support, encourage and inspire someone you care about - to develop their own decisions.. that may be life saving.

It is a book suitable for professional counsellors - but it is written in a lucid style which is equally comprehensible to any one with an interest in the topic.

Carefully chosen words of encouragement and support - given at the right time - to people whose own insecurity and self doubt may make them aggressive and defensive against all approaches that seem to be attempts to change or guide them.....
...may seem to you, as they did to me - to be impossible to find.

Read this book. It will help you to find them.


Short-term benefits   September 26, 2007
Lucien Pulitz (Cambridge, UK)
33 out of 35 found this review helpful

Miller and Rollnick have systematised a number of motivational enhancement techniques which have been used, intuitively, by therapists for several decades. In doing so, they have performed a valuable service.

As a therapist working with addicted individuals in Cambridge, I have been using the Rollnick-Miller synthesis of MI for some years now - in conjunction with 'stages of change' methodology. The following are my principal observations.

Through the use of these MI techniques, I have had some success in helping clients to move from the 'pre-contemplation' stage of the spiral of change to the stage of 'contemplation'. Sessions and strategies of Motivational Interviewing have also proved useful in expediting progress from contemplation, through preparation, to action.

I have found, however, that there are three main problems with Motivational Interviewing. Firstly, it has proved relatively ineffective unless repeatedly reinforced and combined with other therapeutic interventions. Secondly the benefits thus gained take a long period of time to become evident. Thirdly these benefits are often of short duration. In its application to addiction, MI does not seem to reduce significantly the incidence of relapse.

For these reasons, I now use MI only in the initial stages of therapy. Thereafter, in order to help clients to maintain recovery, I have reverted to the use of more prescriptive techniques - in particular, CBT and Twelve Step referral.

'Motivational Interviewing' is a very expensive book for the slender results that it yields. Borrow it from a public library, if you can. Then decide if you think it's worth buying.