Symptoms serve some purpose or function in the client's life. Clients are ambivalent at best or do not really want to change. Because real change takes time, brief interventions do not provide lasting change. The focus should be identifying and correcting deficits and pathology. O'Hanlon and Davis reject the assumptions of such a pathology-based model and offer new assumptions based on health rather than sickness.
Clients possess resources and strengths with which to resolve their problems.
Very often it becomes the role of the therapist to identify these strengths and resources and to remind the client of them. Change is constant and therefore inevitable. The therapist creates an expectation that change will occur and that, in fact, it is inevitable. He or she can accomplish this to a large extent by giving the impression that it would be surprising if the presenting complaint persisted. The therapist's primary job becomes one of identifying and amplifying change.