Network for open dialogical practices

“For a human being there is nothing more terrible than a lack of response” – Mikhail Bakhtin

The Network of Dialogical Practices

• “For a human being there is nothing more terrible than a lack of response” – Maikhail Bakhtin

• While the Network for Dialogical Practices developed out of the family therapy field, its focus is much broader. The network focuses on promoting participative professional practices in different professional arenas, including the field of mental health, youth care, education, human resources management. The network is not an association, there is no board or committees. It is a gathering where people can participate in the dialogue around relevant topics. This website is the centre point of the network. All that are interested can subscribe for the newsletter. Everybody is invited to send information for the newsletter, or to open up a forum discussion.

• Building on existing good practices• We want to make progress by concentrating on already existing but unnoticed resources in

people’s current relationships and human connections. We want to work from within relationships with clients, to share with them, ‘there’, ‘in the moment’, the complexity, contingency, and simplicity of their lives. We do not want to control people, to solve their problems for them, or simply to alleviate their symptoms. We want to place ourselves WITHIN the communication with clients, to share ideas and feelings with them, to be present to them. In taking this ‘in the moment’ attitude, when we do not know where to go next, we take the open-ended path of the unknown – which a space of relational responsiveness in which everyone’s voice can be heard, and in which previously unavailable resources in and between people can emerge.

• “... authentic human life is the open- ended dialogue. Life by its very nature is dialogic. To live means to participate in dialogue: to ask questions, to heed, to respond, to agree, and so forth. In this dialogue a person participates wholly and throughout his whole life: with his eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit, with his whole body and deeds. He invests his entire self in discourse, and this discourse enters into the dialogic fabric of human life, into the world symposium.” (M. Bakhtin, 1984)

Italian school• "Tom had a touching and illuminating experience at a school in Italy in February 2012.

Schoolteachers are, of course, in charge of what happens in the school, but at the 2° Istituto Comprensivo di Brescia, the teachers followed what the pupils presented. Instead of making the pupils adjust to what the curriculum “demands” and teachers present, the teachers tried to adjust to the pupils. One of the guiding principles was that pupils do not learn well unless they feel safe and comfortable; if you fear, you don’t learn. Instead of rushing into the subject matter, the teachers gave the pupils time and space to tell about their experiences, asking what they did last night or during the weekend, and to discuss the experiences in peace. What the pupils presented, afforded important themes for further discussion – themes like joy, loneliness, togetherness, worries, respect, otherness, and so on – and the “school stuff” like learning to read, write, do calculations, etc., was built on these foundations. Whatever happened during the school day afforded points of departure for discussing life. Disturbances were discussed – and turned into resources. Wrong answers, the stumbling block of safe learning, where responded to as interesting hypotheses, made bona fide. “What makes you think so?” And as there was no criticism of wrong answers, let alone ridicule, but interested and interesting discussions, the pupils felt secure to express their thoughts. " (Seikkula & Arnkil, manuscript, 2013)

• More on the principles in books by the school’s supervisor professor Paolo Perticari. (See e.g. Perticari 2008)

Being in outside position

• “In this outside position, I and other find ourselves in a relationship of absolute mutual contradiction of an event; (…) at that point I from my own unique place in the event of being, affirm and validate the givenness of his being that he himself negates. What the other rightfully negates in himself, I rightfully affirm and preserve in him.” (M. Bakhtin 1924, p.129).

Dialogical practices – being inside the relationship?

No one can deny the voice of another – the only way to go on is to have dialogue between all the voices – M. Bakhtin

Is it?: To accept the other without any conditions in

our meetings