Principals of Provocative Therapy Described by Nick Kemp

"Playing the Devils Advocate"

By playing the devil's advocate, the therapist would always point out the many benefits of maintaining the problem. This is a classic Provocative Therapy approach, where the therapist constantly forces the client to defend their own reasons for wanting to change. The result of this is that he client by defending the reason to change, has to shift their own perceptual position of "the problem".