Insoo Kim Berg
| Insoo Kim Berg | |
|---|---|
Berg (right) with her spouse Steve de Shazer at the Krakow EBTA Conference
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| Born |
July 25, 1934 Korea |
| Died | January 10, 2007 (aged 72) Milwaukee, United States |
| Alma mater |
Ewha Womans University University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Family Institute of Chicago Menninger Foundation Mental Research Institute |
| Occupation | Psychotherapist |
| Spouse(s) | Charles H. Berg Steve de Shazer |
Insoo Kim Berg (25 July 1934 – 10 January 2007) was a Korean-born American psychotherapist who was a pioneer of solution focused brief therapy. She influenced the fields of psychotherapy, consulting, supervision and coaching with concepts such as resource-orientation and brief therapy. In 1978, with her husband Steve de Shazer, she co-founded the Brief Family Therapy Center (BFTC) in Milwaukee. She published ten books. Berg died 16 months after de Shazer in September 2005. The BFTC was closed in 2007 and the rights to BFTC’s training materials were transferred to the Solution Focused Brief Therapy Association.
Born in 1934, Berg was raised in Korea, and was a pharmacy major at Ewha Womans University in Seoul. The choice to study pharmacy was influenced by her family, who was in the pharmaceutical manufacturing business. In 1957, she came to the United States to continue her pharmacy studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Science, a Master of Science, and a social work (MSSW) degree. With her background in pharmacy and chemistry, she worked at the medical school and published on stomach cancer research.
After changing her interest to social work, she developed an interest in psychotherapy. She completed her post-graduate studies at the Family Institute of Chicago, the Menninger Foundation, and the Mental Research Institute (MRI) in Palo Alto, California, where John Weakland was her mentor. At the MRI she also met her future husband, Steve de Shazer.
At Milwaukee Family Services she started her second career. "Berg consulted to a widely diverse range of institutions and programs including, among others, human service agencies, social service and mental health centers, drug and alcohol abuse treatment facilities, foster homes, homeless shelters, battered women's shelters, correction departments, home based family services programs, primary and secondary schools, various universities, the State of Michigan, and professional business coaching organizations".
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