Don’t Ask Questions: A Psychotherapeutic Strategy for Treatment of Involuntary Clients

This article puts forth the proposition that asking questions is detrimental to successful therapy with unwilling clients. The utility of three commonly used approaches is examined by asking:

Does continuing questioning impede therapy with involuntary clients?

Are therapists asking questions primarily as a means of coping personally with sullen and silent, or angry and abrasive client behavior?

Is it correct to assume that asking “why” is a particularly poor therapy intervention because it brings therapists and clients into a futile search for causation of behaviors?

It is recommended that statements, instead of questions, should be introduced as the preferred therapeutic modality with reluctant and unwilling clients.