Think Again

particular questions. The whole experience reeked of condescension. Marie-
Hélène felt as if she were being attacked, “as if she were accusing me of
wanting my kids to get sick. As if I were a bad mother.”
When tiny Tobie was finally cleared to leave after five months in the
hospital, he was still extremely vulnerable. The nurses knew it was their last
chance to have him vaccinated, so they called in a vaccine whisperer—a
local doctor with a radical approach for helping young parents rethink their
resistance to immunizations. He didn’t preach to parents or prosecute them.
He didn’t get political. He put on his scientist hat and interviewed them.
Calvin & Hobbes © 1993 Watterson. Reprinted with permission of 
ANDREWS
MCMEEL
SYNDICATION
. All rights reserved.
MOTIVATING THROUGH INTERVIEWING
In the early 1980s, a clinical psychologist named Bill Miller was troubled
by his field’s attitude toward people with addictions. It was common for
therapists and counselors to accuse their substance-abusing clients of being
pathological liars who were living in denial. That didn’t track with what
Miller was seeing up close in his own work treating people with alcohol
problems, where preaching and prosecuting typically boomeranged.
“People who drink too much are usually aware of it,” Miller told me. “If
you try to persuade them that they do drink too much or need to make a
change, you evoke resistance, and they are less likely to change.”

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Instead of attacking or demeaning his clients, Miller started asking
them questions and listening to their answers. Soon afterward, he published
a paper on his philosophy, which found its way into the hands of Stephen
Rollnick, a young nurse trainee working in addiction treatment. A few years
later, the two happened to meet in Australia and realized that what they
were exploring was much bigger than just a new approach to treatment. It
was an entirely different way of helping people change.
Together, they developed the core principles of a practice called
motivational interviewing. The central premise is that we can rarely
motivate someone else to change. We’re better off helping them find their
own motivation to change.
Let’s say you’re a student at Hogwarts, and you’re worried your uncle
is a fan of Voldemort. A motivational interview might go like this: