I assume that when people have a space and process for collaborative relationships and dialogic conversations, they begin to talk with themselves, each other, and others in a new way. Through these conversations newness develops and can express itself in an infinite variety of forms such as enhanced self-agency and freeing self-identities, different ways to understand themselves, their life events and the people in their lives as well as new options to respond to the challenges and dilemmas of the circumstances and situations in their lives.
I ask, “How can practitioners invite and facilitate the condition and the metaphorical space for dialogue?” I return to the philosophical stance.
The Philosophical Stance:
“. . . not to solve what had been seen as a problem, but to develop from our new reactions new socially intelligible ways forward, in which the old problems become irrelevant.”
Shotter
“Problems are not solved but dissolved in language.”
Anderson & Goolishian
The philosophical stance expresses the assumptions of collaborative practice. It has seven distinctive, interrelated, features that are guiding ideas for the therapist; together they inform how the therapist thinks about the relationship and the conversation with the client, and helps create and foster a metaphorical “space” for these. Despite guiding ideas Collaborative Therapy is not formulaic or recipe-like; the philosophical stance serves as a conceptual guide that allows a therapist to be creatively inventive and customize therapy for each client. In other words, though the stance has common identifiable features, their expression is unique to each therapist, each client, and each human system and to the circumstances and desires of each. It acts as a philosophy, as a conceptual guide not a formula.
1. Mutually Inquiring Conversational Partnership.
Attracting and engaging the other into a collaborative relationship and dialogic conversation entails inviting them through the therapist’s way of being, a way that communicates to the client, as mentioned above, that they and their situation hold a special importance for the therapist, that their views are respected, and that what they have to say is valued without judgment. This begins a partnership relationship and process characterized by a joint activity that I refer to as “shared” or mutual inquiry. It is an in-there-together process in which two or more people (one of whom can be your self) put their heads together to puzzle over and address something. In other words, the other is not an object of study, but a subject of study and so a subject-subject mutual study or inquiry.
The therapist invites the client into this mutual inquiry by taking a learning position through: a) making room for and giving the client the choice to tell their story in their own manner and at their own pace; b) being genuinely interested and curious about the client’s story; c) listening and responding attentively and carefully; d) responding to better understand the client’s perspective or sense-making map; e)trying to respond to what the client is saying (not what the therapist thinks they should be saying); f) noticing how the other person responds before continuing; g) paying attention to their words and their non-words; h) checking-out through comments, questions, and alternative words if you have heard what the other wants you to hear; i) pausing and allowing silences for listening and reflecting spaces; and j) allowing each person to choose to respond to what peaks his/her interest and in their own way. I use two metaphors with my students to help them learn how to invite another into collaborative relationships and dialogical conversations, and thus a mutual inquiry.
As Derrida (
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