Acting Badly While Knowing the Good Copenhagen, 20-23 August 2009

1. Acting Badly While Knowing the GoodCopenhagen, 20-23 August 2009 Kenneth J. Gergen & Diego Romaioli

3. Assessing multi-being in psychotherapy • Metaphor of “multiple voices” • Client has many voices that are holding a dialogue • How can we work in therapy using this metaphor? • Re-read old strategies as a way to call into dialogue the various voices • Share the idea of multiplicity with the client • New concept of change • Psychological processes are rooted in ‘normality’ • General steps in psychotherapy …

4. Step 1. Expressing the voices • Explore the voices implicated in the story of client • Co-construction of new viable scenarios • Narrator (knows the good) – narrated Self (acts badly) • You can ask questions as: • What were the meanings related to the “symptoms” at that time? • Which are the contrasting points of view involved? • Which kind of reasons do you have for acting badly? • Which reasons are you following for blaming yourself? • Who is blaming you? • Which roles were you embodying the moment you felt uneasy?

5. Step 2. Connecting the voices in everyday life • Understand which voices are dominant and which are suppressed • The cultural and relational context constantly shapes our inner dialogue • Therapists could ask questions as: • What’s happened? • Where did it happened? • Where do you think these judgements come from? • In which kind of contexts these voices should be appropriated? • Which other voices have been silenced? Where? By whom? • Did you have the opportunity to listen to other ideas?

6. Step 3. Comprehending the voices • Reading client’s difficulty as a communication paying attention to its expressive core • Problem can acquire new unexpected meanings when related to the relational context • Questions are formulated in order to make explicit the pragmatic consequences of acting badly: • Who was present or who were you thinking about at the moment you ‘showed’ the problem? • What did/would they do before? What did/would they do next? • What was the situation and which are the others involved in that context? • What kind of reactions you provoked in those others using the “symptom” as a language?

7. Step. 4 Accepting the voices • In psychological problem you can observe that a voice is suppressed by another one. The suppressed voice is perceived as impersonal, intrusive and critical • There is a tendency to deny the voice and not to communicate with it • Two forms of interactions between the voices: • Subject – subject • Subject - object • If individuals cannot enter into dialogue with these forces, the possibility to find new adequate ways for satisfying the needs of the submersed voice is lost • Help to recognize the submersed voices, perceived as “something outside”, as a part of the repertoire • Examples of questions are: • If this ‘object’ was a part of you what would it say (using the symptoms as a languange)? • What is this voice trying to say to you? • If your anxiety talked to you, what could its message be? • Which could be the main requirements of the voice you are putting into silence? • To whom this communication would be directed to? • How can you listen to this voice? • How will you better respond to its needs?

8. Step. 5 Using negative voices • It is not a therapeutic aim to reduce the negative voices • Add voices at the repertoire of the client or to increment the dialogical interchange • Find an answer to the question “how could we make a good use of the undesirable voices”? • In order to explore the positive core of a voice we could ask: • In which kind of situation it would be appreciated hearing a voice like that one? • What kind of consequences would I expect if I follow this relational option? • When and where is it productive? Where not? In what ways? • In what sense do this voice make sense?

9. Step. 6 Recruiting positive voices • Facilitate the emersion of good voices that can give a positive answer to the negative ones • What is “good” in psychotherapy? • Clients don’t have only to listen to the voice but they have to embody it, to speak throughout it • Good voices can be evocated by: • Reminding clients to past good relations they had • Inviting clients in recounting new stories starting from the point of view of the positive voice • Giving to clients prescriptions or expedients in order to evocate the positive voice when it is required

10. Step 7. Constructing new voices • The construction of new voices may be made by acting • Encourage the client to explore new ways of acting and new relational styles • You can suggest to: • Draw up a list of what one could do if the problem would disappeare • Choose the easiest experience in order to perform it • Good voices can be created by: • Prescribing new interactions that imply the problem’s dissolution • Suggesting new frameworks and language games to describe the problem • Inviting voices into new transformative dialogues (restoring the sense of autorship)

11. Step. 8 Stabilizing new voices • Confirm and legitimate new voices during interactive processes in relationships • The new acquired languages need to be spoken in relationships • Stabilization of new voices may be reached: • Inviting clients to share new experiences and ways of being with meaningful others • Inviting clients to pay attention to other’s reactions to their new acquired patterns • Inciting clients to an appreciative inquiry within people around them: • In what ways do you think I changed? • Do you appreciate my new way of being? • What goes next with us now that my difficulty is locked into the past?