‘Impressions of a Next Steps in Solution Focused Practice Course – by an Independent Social Worker’ James Clossick, a former colleague of mine (we worked together in an adolescent psychiatric unit a quarter of a century ago – I was a lowly nursing assistant, he seemed grand as a social worker), turned up on my Next Steps training course last week. He told me that he is as much a writer as a social worker these days. I...

I was reading a review by Julian Baggini of Oliver Burkeman’s new book on the negative path to happiness. Fascinating stuff (sounds like well worth reading). Apparently, the positive psychology chap, Martin Seligman, has ‘pretty much abandoned’ happiness, or using the word at least. Instead he has turned to ‘flourishing’, which was seen as the highest human good by Aristotle. Happiness is simply a side-effect, albeit a frequent one, of...