Psychologically Informed Mediation

Studies in Conflict and Resolution

Monica Hanaway

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367520014
• eBook ISBN: 9781000198515
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Psychologically Informed Mediation explores the understanding of conflict and the use of a psychologically informed mediation approach to help resolve it.

The book has two distinct parts; it starts with looking at our understanding of conflict, and challenges the more negative views, placing conflict as essential for dynamic development. It then describes the process of mediation and looks at several different models. The author draws on existential and phenomenological philosophy and psychology, and shows how they can enable a mediator to facilitate a meaningful resolution of conflict. The second part of the book offers eight dramatised case studies to illustrate the psychological and relational nature of conflict, giving detailed analysis of the mediation process using supportive theoretical material where relevant.

This book offers a unique approach to mediation, and is accessible to a broad audience.

Part I

Understanding conflict and the role of psychologically informed mediation

1 What is conflict?

2 What is mediation?

3 Different mediation styles

4 The mediation process

5 Co-mediation

6 The relevance of psychological, existential, and phenomenological thought to mediation practice

7 The psychological ebb and flow within the mediation process

1 What is conflict?

We all experience conflict, so a good place to start in considering what we understand by conflict is by reflecting on our individual response. Give a minute to consider your immediate reaction to the word ‘conflict’. It is likely that you will have an emotional response, for example, you may feel afraid, angry, excited. You may have an embodied reaction e.g. temperature change, ‘butterflies in the stomach’, etc. Few people have a neutral response to conflict. When reading this chapter, it is worth holding in mind what conflict means to you, what feelings the word evokes and indeed your immediate unreflective reaction to finding yourself in a conflict situation.

Let us start by looking briefly at how some people have written about ‘conflict’. In 2009 Encarta defined it as a

continued struggle or battle … open warfare between opposing forces; disagreement or clash between ideas, principles, people; a psychological state resulting from the often unconscious opposition between simultaneous but incompatible desires, needs, drives, or impulses; opposition between characters or forces in a literacy work

whilst Wikipedia offers a more political definition, describing it as an ‘ongoing state of hostility between two groups of people’ and separates this from individual conflict, ‘when two or more parties, with perceived incompatible goals, seek to undermine each other’s goal-seeking capability’. I am particularly drawn to this definition, as in speaking of ‘perceived incompatible goals’ it introduces the understanding that conflicts are not about facts but about perception. I shall write more of that later.

Some writers have drawn a critical distinction between short-term disputes and long-term conflicts. Shantz (1987:285) defined conflicts as, ‘“time-distributed social episodes” consisting of a series of discrete components that include issues, oppositions, resolutions, and outcomes’ and Burton (1990) distinguishes between conflict and dispute by time and by the issues involved. Interestingly, he characterises conflict and dispute differently, speaking of short-term disputes which he sees as relatively easy to resolve, and long-term conflicts which may contain seemingly resistant non-negotiable issues involving moral or value differences, vulnerability of ego state, and domination of one party, in addition to more concrete material matters.

People often remain in conflict for years. It can even get to the point where the original dispute is forgotten or no longer relevant, and yet the process, with the almost inevitable attacks on each party, fires the dispute further, so the primary objective moves from the original issue of contention of ‘facts’ and ‘rightness’ to the need to ‘beat’ the other person and be declared ‘the winner’.

Costantino and Merchant (1996) also agree with the separation of the terms conflict and dispute, defining conflict as fundamental disagreement between two parties, of which conciliation, conflict avoidance, capitulation, or dispute are possible outcomes. This supports Yarn’s statement (1999:115) that ‘a conflict can exist without a dispute, but a dispute cannot exist without a conflict’. Yarn saw conflict as a state, rather than a process, involving people with opposing values or needs being in a state of conflict, which may be latent or manifest, and may develop into a dispute.

It is this psychological approach, with its emphasis on unearthing the value systems, emotional language, and worldviews of disputants whilst seeking to preserve or enhance self-esteem through working with the fundamental human psychological needs for identity, security, and recognition, which Strasser and Randolph (2004:27) have developed in their approach to mediation. They see these elements as present in both disputes and conflicts: ‘One of the most important elements is the exploration of the covert reasons for the dispute, as well as the overt. The parties will have developed rigid belief systems as their overall strategy for survival in an uncertain world’. It is my belief that conflicts become entrenched for psychological reasons. If one believes that this is the case then there is little point in focusing on what each party insists are the ‘facts’ of the case, as they are only ever the perceptions of one individual.

Totton (2006:30) looks at conflict within a psychotherapeutic context, and suggests that the debate on conflict has focused on questions of aggression, asking, ‘Is aggression an innate human trait, or is it the product of specific conditions? Is aggression wholly negative, or does it have positive aspects and expressions? Can therapy contribute either to minimising aggression or to supporting its positive aspects?’ I would suggest that conflict is as much about self-defence as it may be about aggression. If we try to minimise aggression, or any emotion in trying to solve a conflict, we are missing the point. Some people will experience or demonstrate ‘aggression’ where others will define similar feelings as ‘passion’ and express them from that understanding. There is a danger that these two emotions may become confused, or misunderstood by a third party.

Freud (1930:111) believed aggression to be innate and dangerous:

men are not gentle creatures who want to be loved … they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments are to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness … In consequence of this primary mutual hostility of human beings, civilized society is perpetually threatened with disintegration

However, Reich (1973:186) disagreed, seeing human beings as essentially possessing ‘natural decency, spontaneous honesty, mute and complete feelings of love’, and seeing aggression as ‘the life expression of the musculature, or the system of movement’ (ibid). Suttie (1936) built on Reich’s work, claiming that hate and destructiveness were secondary reactions to threatened primal love, and Melanie Klein based her theoretical approach on an innate conflict between love and hate, which was dealt with by projecting one’s destructiveness into others and adopting the depressive position to address the task of reparation.

For many therapists, aggression and conflict are essential parts of our internal human nature. Samuels (1993:198) took a political stance, seeing aggression as lying at the heart of a pluralistic approach to politics, ‘often masking the deepest need for contact, dialogue, playback, affirmation’. Here we see a more positive approach, in which conflict is accepted as a precursor or even a necessary component to growth and change. This is reflected in the work of scholars such as Mindell (1995:241) with his clarion cry of, ‘Value trouble. Accept nature. Make peace with war’ and Totton’s (2006:36) clarification of therapy’s key contributions to this area: ‘affirm aggression, support conflict, speak up for competition – while also affirming, supporting and speaking up for the victims of alienated and destructive expressions of these qualities’.

When I initially read these statements, I felt uncomfortable, and had to consider what they were asking of me as a mediator. I came to understand that they called on me to respect an individual’s emotional response to their experience of a dispute. If I considered their reaction to be out of proportion in any way, then I was not understanding the client. To try to ‘calm things down’ or ask for politeness undermined their experience, demonstrated by lack of understanding, and/or my fear of emotional expression, and was therefore fundamentally disrespectful.

Given that we can never be without conflict, it is an essential element to our lives and to the development and survival of the species. If there is no conflict, there is little incentive to move from the status quo; conflict can bring challenge and creativity into the mix.

It is not surprising, therefore, that conflict provides a constant theme through much of literature and film. It is impossible to define the number of basic plots. However, Foster-Harris (1981:30) claims that all plots stem from conflict. He describes this in terms of what the main character feels: ‘I have an inner conflict of emotions, feelings … What, in any case, can I do to resolve the inner problems?’ This is also true of life. It is vital that a mediator acknowledges that conflict is focused on an internal emotional struggle more than it is on external ‘facts’. Foster-Harris argues that there are only three main plots, all based on conflict. These are generally identified as: ‘man against man’, which is an external conflict in which characters are set against each other, and which may be overt, as in a physical fight, or more subtle, involving the conflicting desires as found in a romance or family epic. There is also ‘man against nature’, where man is in conflict with the elements, such as the sea or a storm, or against an animal. Finally, there is ‘man against self’, comprising an internal conflict, in which a character overcomes his own nature or insecurities and self-doubt to make a choice between two or more paths – good and evil; logic and emotion.

As we can see from this, conflict is relational. It may focus on a relation with another person or group of people, on an intra-psychic relationship within a person, or even on our relationship with our environment or objects within it. This dynamic is central in approaching the resolution of conflict from a psychological understanding. The philosopher and writer Ayn Rand (2000) argued that man against nature is not a conflict, because nature has no free will, and thus cannot make choices. There may be truth in this, yet we have a psychological reaction in the way we relate to nature. We are experiencing this very clearly at this point in our history, with Extinction Rebellion and climate change deniers in opposition. The issue of free will and choice is important in any conflict, as we shall see.

It has also been suggested that there is a fourth basic conflict: ‘man against society’, where man stands against a man-made institution (such as slavery or bullying); ‘man against man’ conflict may shade into ‘man against society’. In such stories characters are forced to make moral choices, or are frustrated by social rules in meeting their own goals. My apologies for the gender based terminology in these lists, which reflects the time in which they were written; needless to say, all genders experience conflict.

We can find these plots in life, as well as in fiction, but it is important to remember that each conflict is unique to those involved in it and is experienced through the individual’s filters of context, culture, values, experience, and beliefs, and is always relational. By noting these elements, it immediately becomes clear that the resolution of conflict does not rely on logic. If disputes were logical, there would be no conflict, as there would be only one ‘logical’ solution, obvious to all. Conflicts become entrenched because they are not logical but emotional. People ‘hang on’ to a conflict and can become obsessed with it because it threatens something deep within them. It questions their perspective on themselves, life, and the cosmos, and so is deeply unsettling. It is of little use bringing a logic-led approach to resolving conflict if conflict is essentially emotional.

Before we can mediate effectively we need to understand our own intuitive and emotional reaction to conflict. People react differently to conflict situations. Some people enjoy it, liking the adrenaline buzz. Some may even provoke conflict, as it can make them feel powerful. Others fear it, go numb in the face of it, run from it, or try to ignore it. In the face of conflict, we are inclined to try to defend our self-esteem and to hold on to our beliefs without considering why they are not the beliefs of others. These are all psychological responses.

Conflict is always psychological. There would be no conflict if the event hadn’t distressed us in some way. If conflicts were logical, people would calmly sit down and agree a rational answer based on what would be considered the only logical outcome. The truth is, conflicts are never logical; they are emotionally driven, and accompanied by a need to protect our dignity and self-esteem. We want to be proved right, and we want our opponents to be told they are wrong. In truth, we all experience events differently, and so being proved ‘right’ is an idealised goal.

There may be no universal ‘right’ within the dispute; what we think we saw, heard, and experienced may differ, and so our reactions to shared events will differ too. It is not the event in itself which is conflictual, but our emotional and psychological response to it. Whatever happened happened. The narratives about what happened can never really be ‘the facts’, but can only ever be about different perceptions of the same event. Each person creates their own set of ‘facts’, which they are invested in believing are ‘the truth’. It does not benefit the mediator to spend a great deal of time trying to establish the ‘truth’ of the events, as they ‘exist’ only in the past. The past cannot be changed. All that can be changed are the resulting perceptions and attitudes. Understanding and exploring the nature and meaning of these perceptions is part of the mediation process and will enable the mediator to understand what will be important in any resolution.

In the next chapter I propose that psychologically informed mediation provides a way of incorporating all the above aspects in the conflict resolution process. So, mediation holds a greater chance of arriving at a resolution which is meaningful to each party, taking account of the individuals’ need for self-esteem and for potential solutions which remain in tune with their values. If the mediation succeeds in achieving such an agreement, it is more likely to be adhered to than a solution which is offered by a third party, and focuses on an evaluation of facts and logic, rather than on emotions and values. Firstly, we need to consider what mediation is and look at some of the different approaches to mediation that are currently in use.

2 What is mediation?

There are many excellent books which detail the process of mediation, including some which go into great discussion about important, but very detailed, parts of the process, such as how to seat people during the mediation. These aspects of mediation can indeed be important. Participants in mediations may read a lot into who the mediator speaks to first, where each party is invited to sit, whose hand is shaken for the longest time, and who appears to get most time in private sessions. These are all vital psychological factors that a mediator needs to be aware of, but for readers who may not be familiar with the process, and are wanting a more macro introductory view, I shall start be giving a brief, general overview of what mediation is understood to be.

Mediation is regarded as a form of ‘alternative dispute resolution’ through which a neutral third party assists those in dispute to work towards their own settlement. The process is becoming widely accepted as effective in a variety of disputes such as family, community, commercial, legal, diplomatic, and workplace. The success rate is high, with the CEDR’s (Centre of Effective Dispute Resolution) 2018–2019 survey reporting a success rate of 89%, with the majority of mediations completed within one day. It is much cheaper than legal alternatives, and in the workplace CEDR has estimated that mediation saves businesses around £3 billion in wasted management time, damaged relationships, lost productivity, and legal fees. Unlike court proceedings, it offers confidentiality; the only exceptions usually involve child abuse, actual or threatened criminal, violent, or dangerous acts, or concealment of proceeds of crimes. Mediation allows for a bespoke service based on an agreed framework, and encourages creative thinking, working towards a meaningful resolution tailored to the needs of those in dispute.

One of the main reasons people choose mediation over typical litigation is their concern to maintain an important relationship with the person on the other side. The process is more cooperative and collaborative, and so provides an excellent choice for those disputes where p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• PART I: Understanding conflict and the role of psychologically informed mediation
• PART II: Studies in conflict and resolution
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index