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Presentation

EBTA, the European Brief Therapy Association is an organisation with the aim of supporting Brief Therapy. Since 1994 EBTA conferences have been arranged throughout cities in Europe. The conferences have turned out to be a source of inspiration to, in general, like-minded professionals. Bridging, sharing experiences, friendship and gather facts on Brief therapy research has been the main aim.
At the Finland meeting in year 2000 the EBTA Board decided to offer one yearly research grant to a suitable project carrying out research into solution-focused brief therapy and its applications.
By Becoming a member / supporter of EBTA, you make the grant and the conferences possible.
In the conference fee, the membership is included and lasts till next EBTA conference.
The easiest way to get information on EBTA is to bookmark and check out these pages regularly. Here you will find info on next conferences and all sorts of interesting stuff.


A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE E.B.T.A.
-by Luc Iseabart june 2011-

FOUNDATION AND THE FIRST YEARS
In 1993, the theme of the yearly conference organized by the Louisiana Association for Marriage and Family Therapy was : Honouring John Weakland on the occasion of his 80th birthday.
Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg called a meeting of all brief therapists who were present (of both the Solution- Focused and MRI models) and the International Brief Therapy Association or IBTA was founded.
The Europeans who were present decided to meet for breakfast on the next day and to found the European Brief Therapy Association, or EBTA.
These founding members were : Manfred Vogt and Wolfgang Eberling of the N.I.K. in Bremen ; Anders Claesson of the FKC in Stockholm ; Luc Isebaert and Marie-Christine Cabié of the Korzybski Institute in Bruges and Paris.
It was decided that the EBTA’s legal structure would be that of a charity incorporated in France ; Wolfgang Eberling was elected as a president, Anders Claesson as vice- president, Luc Isebaert as secretary and Marie-Christine Cabié as treasurer. Steve and Insoo accepted to be honorary members.
At a meeting in Paris a few months later, with Evan George of BRIEF (London) also present, this structure was formalized and the charity set up. In the spring of 1994, the first conference was held in Bruges.
Steve had proposed a somewhat peculiar format. No individuals could participate, only teams (or their representatives). There was no keynote address, only several 60 or 90 minute workshops with no presenter, only conversations : nobody could speak for more than 10 minutes on end.
About fifty people attended, ten or twelve of them MRI- model brief therapists.
Although Steve’s formula was stimulating, it proved unpractical. In particular the exclusion of individuals was hard to enforce, and it proved very hard to keep people to the ten-minute limit.
In the first four years, two conferences were held every year (see the list of the conferences elsewhere on this site).
By the time of the 1995 Bremen conference, the number of attendants had risen to 250. Since then, it has oscillated between that 250 and 350. By then also MRI- model therapists, who were a minority at the outset, had stopped coming.
As the IBTA never got off the ground, till 2002, when the SFBTA was founded, European and American SF therapists met at the EBTA conferences. At one point, Steve and Insoo even proposed to make the EBTA the global association. The Europeans however preferred to remain on their own.


MEMBERSHIP AND THE BOARD
Membership, on Steve and Insoo’s wishes, was defined as “all those who had attended the last conference”. This definition, although impractical in many aspects, still holds, perhaps because of the (very Shazerian) simplicity of it: you’re a member of a group if you’re there, you aren’t if you’re not. Time and again, other, more mainstream membership criteria were discussed, but were rejected, partly out of deference to Steve, who felt rather strongly on this point, and partly because other formulas had drawbacks of their own.
One problem with this of course is that, with such a fleeting membership, it is hard to see how a democratic election could be held. Steve’s view was that the board should be composed on the lines of the editorial board of a scientific journal, which is co-opted by existing members and seeks to represent the scientific community it serves.
So over the years, the board has strived to include prominent members of the SF community from the different European countries where SFBT has flourished. It now includes members from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Sweden, Finland, Spain, Bulgaria and Poland.
At the meeting in the spring of 2011, the board decided to define itself as a think tank that serves the European SFBT community.


AIMS, MEANS AND REALIZATIONS
The aim of the EBTA, as in similar associations, was, and is, to promote SFBT. This is realized by:
- Supporting the annual conferences
- Awarding grants for research in SFBT.
Details about these realizations can be found elsewhere on this site.
A member of the board, Alasdair Macdonald, has until last year taken upon him the enormous task of compiling and keeping up to date a list of publications about SFBT. This can be found on his website and here at the ebta-site.
Another channel could have been a scientific journal dedicated to SFBT. This was discussed several times over the years; the issue is still open.
On behalf of EBTA Mark Beyebach constructed a research manual for solution-focused therapy studies in 2000.  This has been used in some projects and was used in the construction of the SFBTA research manual.  EBTA designed a standard research protocol using this manual and standard instruments.  However, funding of projects now requires more rigorous study designs.
The Board has discussed the complexities of international certification on a number of occasions and will continue to do so.

CONTACTS WITH OTHERS

In 1995, the SFT-L e-mailing list was set up by Harry Korman and since then it has served as a very useful means of exchange between SF therapists and interested parties from all over the world. Because of the language barrier, de facto it serves the SF English- speaking community.
In view of recent comments, it may be noted that Steve never suggested that the members of the SFTL list should be considered members of the EBTA.
The creation of the SFBTA in 2002 had, for us Europeans, the sad result that now only very few Americans come to the EBTA conferences. Likewise, few Europeans attend the SFBTA conferences, thus greatly reducing the opportunities for contact between therapists on both sides of the Atlantic. Malmö in 2010 was billed as a joint EBTA- SFBTA conference; another joint conference is planned in America in 2015. There have been talks with the SFBTA about a joint journal, research lists and the creation of an international archive of psychotherapy videotapes, which might include the SFBTC archives which the SFBTA is now in charge of, along with other documents. No progress has been made as yet (spring 2011) on these topics.