And the rest is history as the saying goes.  Scott quit Puget Sound Hospital to devote full time to PSI in June 1983.  Kathy continued part time until 1989.  The rest of our story is about the evolution of PSI since those first days. 

PSI has always been about therapy, an attitude that has prevailed throughout.  In the end it had to become a business in order for us to keep doing therapy.  We have rigorously avoided doing things that we consider “non-therapeutic” even though possibly lucrative.  In the strange way that stories seem to unfold it was that attitude which shaped the directions PSI has taken. 

First came the “court problem”.  As part of his duties at Puget Sound Hospital Scott was required to do a lot of court testifying, mostly on mental health commitments but also occasionally in family and custody disputes.  Likewise, Kathy saw the effects of court involvement in many of the cases she was responsible for as director of the CRC (Crisis Residential Center, a temporary holding place for runaways and kids in dispute with their families).  Both of them were highly critical of most of the outcomes when the legal system inserted itself into family problems.  They were equally skeptical of court-ordered “counseling”.  Because of their previous connections a number of other professionals tried to refer these kinds of cases.  Kathy and Scott decided that they would simply not take any cases that had either the State or the courts involved. 

Then came the first “renaming” of the practice, otherwise known as the “John Bradshaw” problem.  Although in the early years of the practice Problem Solving Interventions’ claim to fame was the family work, things got weird in the mid-eighties with the popularity of John Bradshaw, the self-help guru.  If you don’t recognize the name, he’s the one who peppered the public consciousness with terms like “the shame that binds you”, “the inner child”, “co-dependency” and “dysfunctional family”.  He’s the one who single-handedly launched America’s shameful “victim” preoccupation.  His colorful dog and pony show was everywhere—TV, radio, magazines and books.  Like all the gurus who come along with revivalistic and simplistic answers for people’s problems Bradshaw caught on big with the general public.  Anyone remember TA (Transactional Analysis) with its “I’m OK You’re OK” messages? 

The “problem” for us was neither Bradshaw nor the public.  Family Therapy was a difficult to do and hard to learn form of therapy and very few therapists in Washington were using it.  But Bradshaw’s simplistic depiction of family dynamics and the public’s seduction by “It’s not your fault you’re the way you are!” message created a pool of potential clients and a no-brainer kind of therapy that anyone could use.  It was after all only Alcoholics Anonymous’ 12 step program (which has been around for decades) with a little Family Systems terminology sprinkled through it.  The upshot was that the three practices which advertised Family Therapy in 1983 increased to almost every practice by 1985.  And by 1986 no one except the most socially isolated dweeb would willingly submit to “Family Therapy”!  By word of mouth and media reporting the news was out—all “Family Therapy” does is blame the family!  The backlash was substantial and continues to this day. 

The effects that these developments had on us were ultimately quite profound.  First off, we initiated our call-in tape service, the Infoline, in 1986.  The original purpose was to provide the therapy shopper with some understanding of the considerable confusion that had emerged in the marketplace.  It was sort of a “who does what and what that means” kind of service.  It allowed us to at least try to demonstrate how very different family therapy was supposed to be from what the marketplace was offering.  It was a big hit, and in no time was generating over a hundred calls a month.  It had very little impact on the family therapy backlash but started generating quite a bit of couple and individual cases.  Two realizations came from all this:  First, we just wouldn’t be able to specialize in family work any longer.  The second was that “Problem Solving Interventions” conveyed a different meaning to couples and individuals than it did with families!  Basically, folks came in expecting us to tell them what to do and how to fix things!  This kind of “therapy” works about as well as borrowing money from relatives!  So we changed our handle to just “PSI”.