The Dialogical Self in Psychotherapy

An Introduction

Hubert J.M. Hermans, Giancarlo Dimaggio, Hubert J.M. Hermans, Giancarlo Dimaggio

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• Print ISBN: 9781583918555
• eBook ISBN: 9781135446543
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

How can a theory of the self be used to understand the psychotherapeutic process?

The basic assumption of the 'dialogical self' is that there is no centralised 'headquarter' in the mind, but that the internal self is made up of a number of different 'characters'. Interpersonal relationships, from infancy onwards, become internalised - these internalised relationships then influence relationships during life.

The Dialogical Self in Psychotherapy is divided into four clear and accessible sections, which explore:

* theoretical and historical assumptions of the dialogical self from different angles: psychological, developmental and neurobiological
* the relationships between Dialogical Self Therapy and the authors' own theoretical perspectives
* treatment of clients suffering from severe disorders
* method and research.

The Dialogical Self in Psychotherapy gathers together psychotherapists from divergent origins to explore current thinking in the field: cognitive, constructivist, process-experiential, narrative, psychodynamic, psychodramatic, humanistic, and cognitive analytic. This innovative book brings together inter- and intra-subjective dialogue and clearly demonstrates how they are incorporated into the therapeutic process.

Part I
General theory

Chapter 1

The dialogical self

Between exchange and power

Hubert J.M. Hermans

The two concepts, self and dialogue, that are central in this chapter, have their own specific connotations, when considered separately. The self is easily associated with something that is located ‘within the skin’ or ‘deep down inside’. Dialogue, on the other hand, evokes the image of two or more people, involved in some kind of communication, typically a communication in which people are on common terms and understand each other quite well. As far as individuals are communicating with themselves, the term ‘monologue’ comes easily to mind, as suggested by the well-known term ‘monologue interieur’. As these connotations suggest, the self is often considered a ‘within’ concept and dialogue a ‘between’ concept.

The notion of the ‘dialogical self’ deviates from those associations and considers the self as a multiplicity of parts (voices, characters, positions) that have the potential of entertaining dialogical relationships with each other. Differences are as central to the dialogical self as they are to different partners in dialogue. Moreover, the different parts of the self are not only involved in communicative interchange, but also subjected to relative dominance, with some parts being more powerful or speaking with a louder voice than other parts. In other words, the dialogical self, as a ‘between’ concept, is based on the assumption that the processes that are taking place between the different parts of the self are also taking place in the relationship between the individual and him- or herself. The self functions as a society, being at the same time part of the broader society in which the self participates.

This chapter discusses the nature of the dialogical self in the context of classic and recent literatures. It starts with elaborating on an aspect that is crucial to the understanding of the present theoretical framework: the dialogue of the mind with itself. This will be followed by the notion of dominance or power as an intrinsic feature of dialogical relationships. After bringing together the components of ‘dialogue’ and ‘self’, I will discuss the implications of the dialogical self for psychotherapy.

Dialogue: the coexistence of exchange and power

The dialogical self can be seen as a theoretical effort to extend the self from a self-contained entity to a process that is extended to the other person and to society at large of which the self is a part. This widening of the theoretical ‘reach’ of the concept of self requires a discussion of two phenomena that are central to any society in which people live together: exchange and social power.

Internal dialogue and the imperfection of the mind

When we communicate with ourselves, the question can be posed whether ‘we’ are identical with ‘ourselves’ or not. When one part of the self communicates with another part, and the two parts would be exactly the same, both providing the same perspective on the world, and giving the same information to each other, not much progress in thinking and feeling could be expected. The human mind has the capacity to examine or interrogate itself, with one part addressing another part. When I ask myself a question, I would never be able to give any meaningful answer, as long as the part of the mind who poses the question, would be the same part as the one who is supposed to answer. The argument is that the mind is able to entertain a meaningful internal communication, only if the answering part is to some extent qualitatively different from the asking part.

In a thorough discussion of the dialogical nature of the human mind, the philosopher Blachowicz (1999) proposes the metaphor of the cooperation between a police artist and a witness for understanding the relationship of the mind with itself. Only from different perspectives they arrive, stepwise, at a final picture that may resemble the suspect:

I propose viewing the ‘dialogue of the soul with itself’ as a series of proposals and disposals similar in function to the exchange between the police artist and the witness in their collaboration. The two parties represent the independent interests of meaning [accessible to the witness] and articulation [the capacity of the police artist]. At one moment we may possess a meaning but fail to articulate it; at another moment we may possess just such an articulation, but find that its meaning fails to correspond with our intended one. We talk to ourselves when we think because only a dialogue where each side provides proposals and corrective disposals for the other can achieve a simultaneous satisfaction of these twin requirements.

(Blachowicz 1999: 182)

Dialogical self theory can be seen as an effort to extend the self from a self-contained entity to a process that is extended to the other person and to society at large. Along these lines we may understand that a person, faced with alternative actions, may ask herself ‘Do I want this?’ or ‘Does this fit with my interests?’ It may take some time before the person, after a process of proposals and disposals, arrives at a final answer to such a question.

Bakhtin (1929/1973), a source of inspiration to any student of dialogue, considered not only question and answer but also agreement and disagreement as basic dialogical forms. He uses the following example (see also Vasil’eva 1988). Take two phrases that are completely identical, ‘life is good’ and again ‘life is good’. When we consider these phrases from the perspective of Aristotelian logic, they are connected by a relationship of identity; they are, in fact, one and the same statement. From a dialogical perspective, however, they are different because they can be seen as two remarks coming from two spatially separated people in communication, who in this case entertain a relationship of agreement. Although two phrases are identical from a logical point of view, they are different as utterances: the first is a statement, the second a confirmation. The confirmation is not just a repetition of the first statement but it adds something that was not included in the initial statement. The initial utterance is not finalized in itself. Instead, it is dialogically expanded by the contribution of the interlocutor and, therefore, also its meaning has been widened.

Similarly, the statements ‘life is good’ and ‘life is not good’ can be discussed. In a logical sense, one is a negation of the other. However, when the two phrases are taken as utterances from two different speakers, a dialogical relation of disagreement exists. In Bakhtin’s view, the relationships of agreement and disagreement are, like question and answer, basic dialogical forms. In other words, dialogue can be understood only in terms of voices, characters or positions that are spatially located in actual, remembered or imagined relationships.

Although this example is applied to two different people in communication, it can also be applied to different positions or voices in the self. In dialogical self theory, question and answer, like agreement and disagreement, can take place in one and the same person who communicates with him- or herself. Plato was well aware of this when he described thinking in terms of a dialogical relationship of the mind with itself:

I have a notice that, when the mind is thinking, it is simply talking to itself, asking questions and answering them, and saying yes or no. When it reaches a decision – which may come slowly or in a sudden rush – when doubt is over and the two voices affirm the same thing, then we call that ‘its judgment’.

(Theaetetus 189e–190a; quoted by Blachowicz 1999: 184)

Apparently, the mind needs itself, that is, it requires contact with another part of the mind, in order to accomplish the act of thinking. This insight led philosopher Gadamer (1989) to speak of the ‘imperfection of the human mind’ referring to the impossibility of the mind to being completely present to itself:

Because our understanding does not comprehend what it knows in one single inclusive glance, it must always draw what it thinks out of itself, and present it to itself as if in an inner dialogue with itself. In this sense, all thought is speaking to oneself.

(Gadamer 1989: 422).

Power differences in the self

It would be a misunderstanding to conceive of dialogue as free from any social power. As Linell (1990) has argued, asymmetry exists in each individual act–response sequence. Speakers can communicate in meaningful ways only if they are able to take initiatives and display their views in turn. As part of a turn-taking process, the actors continually alternate the roles of ‘power holder’ and ‘power subject’ in the course of their conversation. For example, when one party talks, the other party remains silent, so that, during a particular turn, the speaking party is more influential in the conversation than the listening party. Or, one party may simply talk more than the other party, creating a relative dominance as a result of the amount of talk. Or, one of the parties introduces a new topic or a new perspective on a topic and has as such more influence on the direction that the conversation takes and on the resulting actions. As these examples suggest, power is an intrinsic feature of turntaking instead of something that is in contradiction with dialogue or alien to its nature. Verbal and even non-verbal dialogue (Fogel 1993) need some organization so that the partners in conversation are able to take their turns.

Apart from differences in dominance that are intrinsic to turn-taking processes, there are, moreover, institutional and societal factors that contribute to power differences in dialogue. For example, in a study of paediatric consultations, Aronsson and Rundström (1988) observed that parents routinely step in as the spokespersons for their children, even when the doctor addresses the child directly. Mothers spontaneously grasped their children’s turn, reinforcing what the children said and explaining what they meant, so that the children did not get the opportunity to express it properly themselves (Linell 1990: 162). A more extreme example of institutionalized asymmetry is the interrogation, in which one of the parties, the suspect, is forced in a yes-or-no answer frame and is hardly allowed to take initiatives. Certainly, there are situations in which power differences are strongly reduced, as we can see in an intimate conversation between friends. However, asymmetry or relative dominance never disappears entirely.

The influence of institutional and societal expectations and norms comprises not only dialogues between different individuals, but also dialogues within individuals. The desire to take a day off, may involve two parts of the self in negotiation or conflict, for example, the hard-working scientist and the enjoyer of life. In a society or institution in which hard working and competition is strongly encouraged, the enjoyer of life may be suppressed or ‘silenced’ by the ambitious part of the self. As this example suggests, disagreement between two parts of the self is not taking place in a ‘free internal space’. Instead, societal and cultural norms are reflected in the internal dialogue and, by implication, in the relative dominance of the conflicting or alternative voices. Groups, institutions, and cultures are represented in the self as ‘collective voices’ (Bakthin 1929/1973) that directly influence its balance of power.

Self as a multiplicity of I-positions

So far, I have discussed the dialogical self elaborating on the concept of dialogue. In this section I shall deal with the second term of the concept: the notion of self. It is my purpose to show that the dialogical self not only is dialogical, but also assumes the existence of a multiplicity of self-positions.

James’ view on the self translated into narrative terms

When people are involved in a process of interchange, they have stories to tell: stories they heard from others, stories they construct about their environment, and stories about their own experiences. Typically, people are motivated to tell stories that somewhere involve the self. Therefore, in my view, any narrative conception of the self should start with a treatment of James’ classic work on the subject. In James’ (1890) view, the I, the self-as-knower, is characterized by three features: continuity, distinctness and volition (see also Damon and Hart 1982). The continuity of the self-as-knower is reflected in a sense of personal identity and a sense of sameness across time. The feeling of distinctness from others, or the sense of individuality, also characterizes the subjective nature of the self-as-knower. A sense of personal volition is expressed by the continuous appropriation and rejection of thoughts by which the self-as-knower manifests itself as an active processor of experience.

In James’ view, the Me is identified as the self-as-known and is composed of the empirical elements considered as belonging to oneself. Talking about the Me, James formulated an insight that will be crucial for the elaboration of the dialogical self: the self as extended to the environment (see also Becker 1973; Rosenberg 1979, who both emphasized the extension of the self as one of its central features). James was well aware that there is a gradual transition between Me and Mine, and concluded that the empirical self is composed of all elements in the environment that the person can call his or her own,

not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account.

(James 1890: 291)

Drawing on James’ I–Me distinction, Sarbin (1986) supposed that people, in the process of self-reflection, order their experiences in a story-like fashion. The uttered pronoun, I, stands for the author, the Me for the actor or narrative figure. That is, the self as author, the I, can imaginatively construct a story in which the Me is the protagonist (and the Mine as antagonist). The self as author can imagine the future and reconstruct the past and describe himself or herself as an actor. Such a narrative construction, moreover, is a means for organizing episodes, actions, and the significance of the actions as a process in time and space (Bruner 1986; Sarbin 1986).

The narrative translation of James’ distinction between I and Me and the extension of the self to the environment has a significant theoretical advantage: it allows describing the self not only in temporal terms (the self in past, present and future), but also in spatial terms (the self as being composed of a variety of spatial positions and as related to the positions of other selves). This insight offers also a road to escape from a basic Cartesian assumption, that space (res extensa) is outside the self (res cogitans) (Hermans and Kempen 1993). One of the theorists who was well aware of the spatial dimension of the self, Jaynes (1976), described it as a mind-space. The I constructs an analogue space and metaphorically observes the Me moving in this space. Other people and objects are part of the spatial extension of the self. Narration is always spatialized and this is an essential characteristic of all of our activities. Seated where I am, Jaynes explains, I am writing a book, and this activity is embedded in the story of my life, ‘time being spatialized into a journey of my days and years’ (Jaynes 1976: 63). The self is, in Jaynes’ thinking, a spatial analogue of the world, and mental acts are analogues of bodily acts. (For an elaboration of the spatialized self in psychodrama, see Verhofstadt- Denève 2000.)

From Bakhtin’s polyphonic novel to the dialogical self

The conception of I as author and Me as actor can be pursued further by returning to Bakhtin’s dialogical approach. Bakhtin goes one step further than Sarbin. In his view, the self consists of more than one author or narrator.

In Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (1973), Bakhtin created a peculiar metaphor for expressing artistic thought, the polyphonic novel. He argued that in Dostoevsky’s works there is not a single author at work – Dostoevsky himself – but several authors or thinkers – who coincide with his characters, such as Raskolnikov, Myshkin, Stavrogin, Ivan Karamazov and the Grand Inquisitor. These heroes are depicted as ideologically authoritative and independent and as using their own voice to ventilate their own view and philosophy. There is not a multitude of characters and fates within a unified objective world, organized by an omniscient author (Dostoevsky’s), but a plurality of independent consciousnesses and worlds. In Bakhtin’s (1973: 4) terms, ‘The plurality of independent unmerged voices and consciousnesses and the genuine polyphony of full-valued voices are in fact...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Illustrations
• Notes on Contributors
• The dialogical self in psychotherapy
• Part I General Theory
• Part II Theory and clinical practice
• Part III Reconstructing dialogical processes in severely affected patients
• Part IV Methodological issues in the psychotherapeutic process