"Traditional talk therapies focus predominantly on why the client has the problem.

People sometimes spend literally months, even years, in therapy recounting seemingly endless stories of abuse, trauma and addiction. They discuss their feelings. They discuss what the feelings mean. They discuss why they have the feelings. They attempt to get at the root of why they feel like they do.
But exactly what is the point of discussing a client’s history to uncover the reasons for the problem? By definition, history is about the past. And it is just the nature of the past that it cannot be changed.
Cognitive psychology has demonstrated that the physiological response to remembering or discussing a dramatic event can be much the same as experiencing the event. It does not matter if the event is real or not. We go to the cinema precisely because it can produce a strong emotional response. This is one criterion by which we judge a film. The ability to produce emotional response is the source of the power of art. Perhaps paradoxically, cathartic experience notwithstanding, repeatedly talking about the sources of trauma can make matters worse. Furthermore, most of the time, the client’s stories are distorted by the anxiety, depression and addiction that led the client to seek therapy in the first place. 

Strategic Therapy instead focuses on how the client ‘does’ the problem. This is not to say that there is no point to any discussion of the problem’s genesis. An important part of how the client does the problem is how the client discusses the problem. What clients say provides the evidence for the cognitive patterns they are employing to support their conditions. However, it is important for therapists to avoid getting caught up in the details of a client’s story. Focus must be on how clients tell the story, and what that reveals about their cognitive patterns, not the events themselves. All the detail of the history is not necessary. Endless discussion (a.k.a. ‘rumination’) of the problem is frequently part of the problem! A therapist needs to listen to the client’s story long enough to get a clear picture of the underlying cognitive dysfunctions supporting the problem. Whilst the client’s history cannot be changed, their cognitive patterns can. These patterns are revealed by focusing on how rather than why.
Changing the cognitive patterns of dysfunctional behaviour is the aim of the strategic approach.