Solution-focused brief therapy, just as other constructivist psychotherapeutic approaches, involves no directive work with client emotions. There are no psychotherapeutic techniques for dealing with emotions, either. For this reason, one sometimes discusses the possibility of including interventions aimed directly at the client's emotions in solution-focused brief therapy in addition to interventions aimed at thought and behavior. We believe that such a discussion should not be simply limited to selecting new therapeutic tools and techniques for brief therapy, but should analyze the methodological foundations of this approach. In this article, we analyze the theoretical background of classical therapeutic approaches that call, from an analytical and structuralist standpoint, for special psychotherapeutic work with the client's emotions as important elements of the mind in their own right. We considered here the approaches of psychoanalysis, Gestalt therapy, humanistic psychotherapy and Emotion-focused therapy, which may be called a neoclassical therapeutic approach. We make a survey of theoretical concepts that emerged in the 20th and 21st centuries in philosophy, psychology, sociology, and cultural studies and that make us reconsider the traditional approach to emotions in academic psychology and classical psychotherapy. We describe the emergence of the new post-classical approach to working with emotions by considering the examples of cognitive psychotherapy, system psychotherapy, and the therapeutic work of M. Erickson.

We formulate the basic principles of the construction of psychotherapeutic interaction based on the theoretical assumptions of postclassical rationality and describe their key methodological differences from the classical approach. These assumptions show that special work with emotions is irrelevant to the constructivist approach.