Systemic · 1987

Interventive Interviewing

The therapeutic question does not merely gather information: it organises the relationship, guides observation and can open up new possibilities for action and meaning within the system.

Interventive Interviewing is a systemic model of the therapeutic interview developed by Karl Tomm out of a rigorous reflection on the effects that the therapist's questions produce in the consulting system and in the therapist themselves. Its central thesis is that asking is never a neutral act: every question presupposes an epistemology, positions the interviewer in relation to the problem and generates relational, cognitive and emotional effects. On this premise, Tomm distinguishes different types of question along two axes: whether they are guided by linear or circular assumptions, and whether their main intent is to orient the therapist towards understanding or to intervene in order to promote change. From that combination arise, in his classic formulation, linear, circular, strategic and reflexive questions. The model does not reduce the interview to a collection of data; it understands it as a performative clinical process in which the therapist's language actively participates in the co-construction of realities, differences, relational positions and alternatives for action. Although it originates in the field of systemic family therapy and is in close dialogue with the Milan tradition and second-order cybernetics, its value exceeds that context and offers a fine-grained theory of the clinical intentionality of asking, of the therapist's responsibility for the effects of their distinctions, and of how certain forms of interviewing can foster reflexive autonomy rather than interpersonal control.