What is motivational dialogue?

This chapter begins by providing an introduction to the book. It then makes some terminological considerations. A brief and selective history of motivational interviewing is presented to highlight the simple, first and central principles of the approach, which have been elaborated over the years into a complex web of strategies, tactics, micro-skills, clinical principles, and numerous definitions of sub categories of each of these. The chapter then discusses the scope of the book. It also includes an account of the everyday use of motivational dialogue which illustrates our point about its utility in day-to-day interactions. An example is given by a primary care physician, who attended training in motivational interviewing and decided to see what would come of a little homework. She applied what she had learned to a domestic situation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)