SERIES: SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTIONS AND AUTHORS IN RELATIONAL CONSTRUCTIONISM-SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM

Diego Tapia Figueroa, Ph.D. and Maritza Crespo Balderrama, M.A.

(December 2020)

“Praxis gives meaning to words.”

(Ludwig Wittgenstein)

Tom Andersen (I)

(December 11, 2020)

We continue with Tom Andersen, Ph.D. (Born May 2, 1936, in Oslo, Norway, died on May 15, 2007, in Norway).

Words are like hands with which we touch people’s faces.  And, at the same time, you can see people being touched by their own words.

• Do you know what is the most important thing that consultants are looking for in a therapeutic process? What do humans in our lives, therapists, and people in their contexts look for in every human interrelationship, what we need and value most, what we appreciate, and whether we say it and manifest it or not? GENTLENESS: Let them be spoken to with gentleness. May they be listened to with gentleness. Ask them gently. Let them be answered with gentleness. May they be treated with gentleness.
• I want to talk to people like they haven’t talked to themselves or each other… We do not speak to consultants; we talk to the consultants and do things with the consultants… How do I want to be with others? And how do I want them to be with me? Speaking differently means, among other things, listening differently. I want to understand, and I want to offer understanding.
• Culture is looking at the other. Respect is looking at the other once again.
• We can only contribute to helping if the conversation makes us curious. As in other matters of life, curiosity is the engine of evolution.
• Words form our meanings and these influence how we live… The language we use makes us who we are the moment we use it.
• You can borrow my eyes, but you can’t take them from me… The moment we utter a word, the instant we express ourselves, we are transformed.
• I’d rather be seen as an “invisible,” “inaudible” person, that is constantly looking for the bigger context. I am busy with how to rescue, and how to contribute to solving the economic dilemmas in people’s lives. My job is political.
• I want to talk about bifurcations because we all go through them and have to decide how to continue. Some decisions we spend without realizing it, others are very clear and the decision has more to do with what we “do not want to be”, than with what we want to leave behind. For me, the first bifurcation in the road appeared when I decided not to be indifferent, accept the “discomfort” and allow it to be my guide on the road. Everything I’ve done I’ve done to avoid discomfort.
• The second was to stop being “instructional” or “competitive,” when I started asking people what they think instead of trying to convince them to think in any way.
• The third appeared when I left “the closed room” and moved to the “open room” making thoughtful conversations with people and preparing them with them, listening to what they wanted to say, and talking about what they wanted to talk about, I left behind the prepared conversations. This led me to go out into the real world, to feel in the body and not in the laboratory or the library, and to privilege the framework or context of experiential reality. Experience in practice determines what I read or research, I avoid doing the opposite, reading first and then going out into the field of experience.
• The fourth bifurcation comes from my relationship with Harry Goolishian, he said “Reflect on what they said and not on what they did not say”, and that has led me to talk about what people have just said, to stay close to the spoken word, to follow the meaning of the words and if they affect the body. I don’t start with the body, I start with the word. In professional life, if there are no words I do not comment.
• I respond to the “expression” that is waiting, searching, or begging for an answer. I ask how they want to use the meeting. I don’t interrupt the flow of talk to ask. I ask about what they can talk about, and what ideas they can stick with. I take care of the words I use frequently, big or small. I look at them, contemplate them and choose them carefully.
• I listen to what they say. The conversation is the most important thing along the way to finding new ways to be involved. I am interested in the way the stories are made, I stay in the process, in the moment of “being formed” and not in the product. I don’t try to look for a story, the story is formed, and it finds itself.
• Talking about “things” is painful, physical therapy increases breathing (creating pain) then psychotherapy is painful for both the client and the therapist. I accompany the client in his fearful search, this is very painful, to see people suffer, to feel the pain, but it is necessary… I am very serious. I focus on “otherness.” The important one is the other, what he feels, what he thinks, what he wants, what he says…
• I like to privilege knowledge generated by experience, rather than evidence-centric knowledge. Evidence-centered focusing on what is seen, that of experience in what is seen and what is not seen.
• They force me to be a serious presenter, to look for good words, and to take the step to look for better words. The description is the most important thing, the way we choose the words… I believe that the way we talk to each other can lead us to create more supportive cultures.
• Warnings: The team has to stay free, positive, discreet, respectful, sensitive, imaginative, and creative.
• According to the team, the experience consisted of favoring the process already described by Bateson when he comments that “The difference that makes a difference” is the best way to enhance the transformation. What is the procedure that produces a “difference that creates a difference”? It is not an insight in the psychoanalytic sense, but a situation that allows us to find an unexpected way out of a usual context.
• First, something is different by being different from its environment, and second, a change is a difference over time caused by a difference… The questions that look for the differences that cause differences are those that focus on changes, for example: how can this be explained?
• More or less explicit interpretations and advice should be avoided: advice and interpretations can easily become alienating disturbances for the person. If it assimilates something for which it has no answer, there could be a disintegration. One way to prevent this from happening is to end the relationship.
• “Silence and listening” is the way to not generate tension and to facilitate an attentive and calm observation of the answers, giving in turn time and space so that the consultant can also observe their answers.
• Reflective team: 1. The team’s reflections should be based on something expressed during the conversation “when I heard… it occurred to me…”  2.  Team members when speaking publicly should try not to convey negative connotations. Instead of saying “I don’t understand why they don’t try this or that,” they say, “I wonder what would happen without trying to do this or that…”  3. When family and team are in the same room and the team is reflecting, these members are asked to look at each other, that is, not to look at those who listen (consultants), to allow listeners to feel free not to listen.
• Afterward, the conversation focuses on the family and the interviewer, and the opportunity is offered for the team’s talk to be discussed. Conversing, seeing conversations about what was discussed, and conversing again, opens up possibilities to see different perspectives of the same situation. The therapeutic conversation ultimately seeks new definitions of oneself, new descriptions, new nuances, and understandings that allow us to approach the problem differently.
• When the consultants listen to what the reflective team of therapists thinks about what they have said in the session: the activity of thought and reflection that is explicit in the session… the inversion of light and sound gives surprising freedom to the relationship between us and the family. We were no longer the responsible party, but only one of the two parts of the conversational process.
• The “expressions” are what form our lives and at the same time condition our thoughts. It is the words, it is the language that articulates our way of thinking, and not the other way around as always believed and that is why in them we must look for clues and answers.
• It is always possible to see and hear in words more than is perceived. For that, you have to go slowly. Pay particular attention to silences and body postures as part of what the person wants or can convey.
• · Every one of us should have the possibility of having our voice heard and respected. But it is also important to be the person who listens to others and this is a responsibility.
• When I’ve gotten to know people, to understand them, it’s impacted me. I don’t think anyone’s story is a repeat of anyone else’s. They are always different. People live very different lives, with very different opportunities.
• I’m not so much worried about whatever it is but about what could have been. What can you do now? Who can you meet? What can they talk about? How can you do things to try to find some new spaces in the future?
• An important bifurcation was to choose to have the practice permeate our eyes, and our hands and then reflect on it. Another bifurcation: learning to describe in a new way, you should not provide dead descriptions of living things.
• Stop doing what makes you uncomfortable. Discomfort is connected to what you feel in a situation. And we feel with our body. The body tells you, “this is not right,” listen to it. Learn to breathe, to exhale, to let go, to free oneself. “Don’t accept the pain.” “Let your breath in.” It’s like saying, “Let life come in.” “Have courage, let the breath begin by itself.”
• That’s what life is all about. Risk letting it happen on its own. It’s so easy to want to guide it, to send it. And that’s why I think it’s very important in talk therapy to let those who want to talk do it, and talk about what they want. Do not make plans or work towards any specific goal. That should be avoided.
• I have always been interested in seeing the issue in terms of justice-injustice, an issue that has always worried me… it has never seemed natural to me to go around oppressing people.
• I think my way of working has to do with an emotional way of seeing the world. But I also consider this perspective to be the product of my personal experiences, which led me to feel more comfortable when I started working like this.
• The word therapy is not a term that is to my liking. What is defined as therapy is for me first and foremost a type of relationship. This has to do with the ethics and also with the aesthetics, with art. For me, it is not a technical issue, since the techniques run the risk of quickly becoming something mechanical.
• Harry Goolishian said: “Listen to what they -the consultants- really say, and not what you think they really want to say.”
• The person describes what happens to him, describes a situation, and we see the effects of what he speaks in the same person. At the same time, what the person “sees and hears” that manifests about them will influence them in a certain way. Therefore, we not only have to be attentive to what he expresses but also to how and when he says it, to his pauses, the emphasis he places on words, what gestures and bodily issues are also present, and how what he is saying modifies it. Language is what conditions people’s thoughts, and not the other way around.
• My current focus of work is the result of many changes and movements in different directions. Ten years ago I looked to families for constellations, relationships, and patterns of daily life in a structural way. Then we talked too much about how to talk. I also tried to look for what was inside people and know what the feelings and motivations of the family were. Now instead, I focus on the conversation itself and the language used in it. I am much more interested in the role that the corporeal plays in the creation of meaning. So now I’ve been trying to question some of the Freudian premises that state there is an inner core, an inner self, or an internal structure, whether biological or psychological, from which we speak and act. No one has been able to verify that this structure actually exists. However, we have been so convinced that there must be something in there that we started talking and acting as if such a thing existed. That is why, recently, I concluded that such an internal structure that we had been talking about for so long, did not exist.
• My premise is that all we have is the body, physiology, and conversations. There is nothing to prove the existence of psychological constructs, such as the ego, the super-ego, the unconscious, etc. These constructions that we have talked about as much as if they really existed are a product of language, of a very practiced type of language. If you start talking too much about something, you end up believing that it exists.
• For me now everything is focused on the conversation and how the people who are part of it are transformed and changed by the conversation itself. Transformations are produced by being in conversation.
• What has really worried me enormously is giving people the ability to talk about the same things differently. By speaking in a different way, people can also start thinking differently and acting and living differently. All this means being able to be present in life in a different way.
• Communities regulate formulations (the language) of the stories (the meanings) of the differentiation (what one hears and sees) of the event (of the episode, of the moment, of the problem, etc.).
• I’ve been traveling so much lately that I have only a few cases I can follow. But I must say that the end of a therapy is a topic to discuss with the consultant. I ask him how it turns out for him to keep coming, if it’s still worth it, if it’s still an encounter from which he can win things, or if he feels he can do well without those debates or conversations. I think everything should be discussed in therapy. I can not know when the consultant no longer needs to go to the consultation. With this modality, I feel more comfortable when I work.
• What I do is try to talk to people, to get to know them, to work together with them… In short, what I do and prefer, is to talk to people about things that both they and I can talk about. In addition, I must also take myself into account. I shouldn’t talk about issues that I can’t talk about… Before I go in, I always try to remind myself that I must allow myself to say “I can’t do it” when this happens. It would be dangerous if I took the position of “I must, I will be able to do everything, I must be able to achieve it, and show them or show them how good I am.”
• We do not have a language, but we are in the language, we are surrounded by language. That’s why I want to explore more about language. Before I used to think that there were movements within us, but now I think that we are/ are in the movement, in the language and that we do not have the language inside us. We are/are in relationships, in nature.
• Ludwig Wittgenstein paid close attention to the question: how to continue? One of the most important goals of every human being is to answer this question so that I can say: now I know how I can continue! (…) What might be helpful to know? is the next question (…) The center of the person cannot be found within the person, but outside the person, that is, in conversations, relationships, language, and culture.

Tom Andersen (II)

(December 25, 2020)

• The new assumption is that the center of the person is outside of him, in the conversations he has with others. The center is on culture and language. Language is transmitted by our voices. For all of them: the internal and the external. On different occasions, we can resort to as many of them. Mikhail Bakhtin, a Russian literary critic, says that “we are the voices that inhabit us.”

1. I used to think that language grows and develops from within the person, as the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget states. Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky thought differently. He said that language is given to us from the outside.
2. Within the physical-natural sciences, there has been much talk that words are signs that represent what they describe as if there were some kind of connection between each word and what it refers to. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida thought differently. He argued that words only refer to other words in language. This means that if I hear a word, it refers to me to something I’ve seen and heard before. Language thus becomes very personal. Not private, but personal.
3. I used to think that we carried the language within us. The Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein led me to think otherwise. According to him, we do not have the language in us, but we are in the language like a fish is in the water. Here the assumption is that there is nothing behind or under the words, as Freud suggested, but that everything is in the words themselves. The Armenian-American Harry Goolishian always said, “Listen to what they really say, and not what you think they really mean.”
4. I used to think that words are passive, a tool to bring out the thought that is inside. Now, thanks to Wittgenstein and Bahktin, I have come to think differently. First, the words come, then the thought. We dig into words to find meanings. Goolishian used to say, “We need to talk to learn what we think,” and alluding to his hero, Richard Rorty, he added, “The most important thing is that the conversation continues.”
5. Most of us accept the definition according to which words are informative. We are not equally accustomed to thinking that words are also formative. They form our meanings, and these influence the way we live.

• The search for new meanings almost always involves the search for a new language… The so-called “therapeutic” conversation could be considered as a form of search, a search for new descriptions, new understandings, new meanings, new nuances of words; and ultimately new definitions of oneself.
• Observation and intuition are what tell the therapist what aspects are important to the person and what they are talking about. Intuition helps me find the question I will ask and the way I will ask it. To know what topic to ask about, intuition is what I trust the most. All questions have a common purpose which is to generate a new understanding of the situation. Not talking, not thinking, not seeing things the usual way.
• Several assumptions about language and its meanings:

1. When expressions, which are corporeal, take place in the presence of others, language becomes a social activity. Our expressions are social invitations to participate in the bond with others.
2. Expressions come first, then follow the meanings. Meanings are created. Harry Goolishian used to say, “We don’t know what we thought before we said it.”
3. Expressions are informative, that is, they tell something about ourselves to others and also to ourselves. Expressions are also formative, we become who we are when we express ourselves in the way we do it.
4. When you speak out loud, you say something both to others and to yourself. I now think that the most important person I speak to is myself. As mentioned, expressions are forming and also form our understanding. Ludwig Wittgenstein and George Henrick von Wright wrote that our language bewitches our understanding. We can be not haunted by our language. If this language employs the verbs to be and to have without simultaneously indicating context and tense, one can easily believe that human beings are static, as stated above. The different types of language, the language of competence, that of strategic direction, that of pathology, etc., all have consequences, both for those who are described with them and for those who describe.
5. If two or more people construct the same meaning, dialogue between them will easily make them repeat and confirm their meanings, contributing little or nothing to the resolution of the problem. If two or more people construct somewhat different meanings and are able to listen to each other, dialogue between them will easily create new and useful senses.

• The human being is connected with others with the help of various links. The latter include different types of expressions, for example, contacts, looks, or dialogues. Individuals participate in these through their own expressions. What one says is transmitted by a social voice. This voice longs to be received, and it must be received, answered, and returned. We think we have a lot of social voices to be employed with different people in different contexts. These social voices that develop early in life, are intimately related to all the inner voices that we possess and that participate in our personal dialogues. These internal voices, which develop from the social, external voices, are “born” later in life than the social ones and are constantly active in the internal dialogues. Internal dialogues in my opinion are the same as thinking.
• What will we select to start with? Usually, when everyone is present at the beginning, it is useful to ask them what use they want to give to the meeting. Everyone has the opportunity to respond, and all answers are remembered as faithfully as possible. When everyone has responded, one at a time, you turn to the person who responded for the first time and you´re allowed to talk about whatever you want to be heard about. Then you talk to the second person who answered, and so on. It is important to first find out with those present how we should collaborate before starting the collaboration. Thinking about the Other must come before thinking about who he is.
• Ask -possibilities- in the therapeutic process: What is the history of the idea of coming to this consultation? Is there anything you want to know about me? What is the topic that is most important to you to deal with today? How do you want to use this meeting? How should we continue? What should we talk about? Would you like to give me some information about what you have been working on? What is the progress, what do you need help with? Are there any topics you’d rather we focus on? Has my answer answered your question?
• I have an idea about what you´re saying in my head, would you like to hear it?… That’s my idea, what would this be like if I asked you for the meaning and didn’t give it to you?
• Before you ask or comment, you might think what’s going to happen to this person when they hear me? what will it be like for them?
• And if this pain found a voice: what would it say? Scream. Would it scream with or without words? Who would you like to hear it cry? What would you like me to answer?
• If his body spoke, what words would it say? When you exploded… were there words? What words were said? And when the hands were beating, what words would their hands say if they spoke? How could things be different?
• Of course, you have to go very slowly to do this kind of work. That is why I first say, ‘you just mentioned this word…’ and I see if the answer allows me to ask a new question. Then I ask what is the word that usually comes to mind when you are talking or thinking?
• These are all questions that pave the way for you to begin exploring within words. There is always more to see and hear in words than what is seen at the outset. I always prefer to stay for a while on what seems to be meaningful to people and then get inside.
• After this type of work, the consultants come out different, even in the eyes of others. And in this way, people also start listening differently.
• What do I need to be able to work with people and get the conversation flowing?
• My wish at this time is that we stop talking about therapy and research as human techniques and that we better talk about them as a human art: the art of participating in the bonds with others. If we started using the term human art, how could it connect our understanding and our lives? The most important thing has been to find a form of collaboration that protects the participants from producing a humiliation of their integrity and their being.
• There are different types of interventions: “the suitably unusual” ones are the ones that allow “something new” to come in. The too “usual” ones do not generate any change and the too unusual ones are not received, since they are too different.
• In each conversation, there are at least three conversations: what the speaker says “the external conversation”, what this generates in the speaker: “his internal conversation” and what it generates in who listens to him: “another internal conversation”. That is why there needs to be silence so that all conversations can be heard.
• Reflective: (…) we thought about the meaning of the word in French, which from what we understood, was close to replication. In French, the word reflection has the same meaning as the Norwegian ‘refleksjon’, that is: something that is heard, apprehended, and thought about before giving an answer. Reversing light and sound also gave us more freedom to think, and we began to wonder how the various concepts and rules we followed affected us.
• If those who listen are open to hearing and letting go, to being moved by the story, they realize that something is happening to them while they are listening. Thoughts and emotions arise, and these thoughts and emotions return to those who told their stories. These encounters become communal; everyone takes ownership and takes responsibility for them. Basically, these are moments of solidarity.
• The team or therapist fosters a situation that “impacts” the interlocutor, in the sense that it confers a new emotional potentiality to the facts or narratives that the consultants present in the session and that constitute their usual way of posing the problem.
• Some practical guidelines:

A. The person talking to the family may benefit from this. It is important that those who wish to speak can do so, but more importantly, those who do not wish to do so also have that possibility. It is important that those who wish to speak, talk about what they prefer, but it is much more important that they do not talk about what they do not want to talk about.

B. No one talks to anyone else, about any subject, at any time, in any way; each one carefully selects who he is talking to, what topic, in what way, and at what time.

C. It is important that those who wish to speak select a topic, and use the words and expressions they prefer and that they are given the necessary time to express it. It is also important that the speaker is not interrupted.

D. It is important for the speaker to say what they want to be heard, and not necessarily what the therapist or researcher wants to hear.

E. Those who only listen and who will reflect will only do so about what they heard.

• […] I understand that there are four kinds of knowledge on which we depend.

1) There is rational knowledge.  It is thinking, that is, memory and reasoning.

2) There is a practical knowledge, which encompasses the repertoire of everything that allows me to speak and act; for example, my language emits words and my hands can build houses.

3) There is a relational knowledge, which sensitizes us to how another person relates to words, movements, and emotions in time and space. This knowledge makes us learn when we should speak and when we should be silent. It also makes us learn how far we should keep from others. Different people have different times. There are different times to destroy and build. There are different times to cry and to laugh. There are different times to throw stones and to gather them in a heap.

4) Finally, there is bodily knowledge, which helps us to learn what our position is concerning others. In this, we are helped by the subtle alterations of our breathing; if we attend to them, we can know when we are too far away or too close when we stay too quiet or intrude too much. For example, there is a connection between the disappointment I can see on each other’s faces and the subtle changes in our breathing […]

• To hold a conversation, the person’s basic need must be respected: to preserve their integrity.  To allow ourselves to do this, we have to learn to be sensitive to their cues, which are often subtle indications that our contribution to the conversation was too unusual.
• We can also think that, although the meaning is not clear, the action continues. The body works without the mind noticing.
• With thoughtful processes offer something simple enough to be viable, creative enough to be useful, small enough to be transportable, and full of surprises that keep our curiosity alive.
• A fairly small proportion of contemporary psychotherapists, who are hesitant to call themselves therapists, have a postmodern view of the self, which is considered constituted through language and conversations (indeed, everything one comes to understand is, in a general way, a result of the language and conversations in which one participates). These therapists offer their presence and attention in the hope of creating, in this way, a new context. In this new context, the consultant will talk and think about what he is trying to understand differently and, thus, a new understanding of the facts will emerge. The client and the therapist talk together, in collaboration, these therapists, who are collaborators, all have their own experiences, collected over the years: they are not experts.
• When a person expresses himself, through voice, movements, and emotions, others (as well as the person himself) are informed of what the person is thinking. If that person who expresses himself is given the time and freedom he requires to express anything and in any way, an attentive listener will see and hear that the person seeks the best words (metaphors) to express himself, and will also recognize that that expression has a certain rhythm and a certain force, which change from one moment to another… That is, when a person introduces himself, in this presentation, he and others are being informed and simultaneously he is being formed.
• The other who listens must follow the person. This means that the Other listens carefully to what the person says and sees the way he expresses himself (that is, in what way he presents himself). If the Other observes carefully, he will see that something that is expressed is especially important to the person. Those words, movements, or emotions are probably the starting point for the next question the Other asks. The Other can only see, not hear when the person has finished expressing himself. People who are granted all the time they need will alternate between speaking to the Other, in an external dialogue and, for brief pauses, turning inward and speaking to themselves, in an internal dialogue… in the presence of Another interested party who does not disturb, but only hears, sees and allows the validation of the person.
• I don’t think therapists have an ethical responsibility to be results-oriented, but we do have other ethical responsibilities, such as not hurting people.
• One can also regard questions as something similar to eyes. To ask is also to see differently, in a way. That’s vital, we ask about what we don’t know.
• And questions and words can be considered as similar to hands… all movements are part of a meaningful process, all movements carry within them a meaning… stay in one place, without rushing… I only stick to what the consultants say, you have to respect that… you can tell the consultants: maybe it’s hard to talk about this now, maybe it’s possible in the future? What would it take? Do you think he will be able to do it one day? Are you going to be surprised or disappointed? If that day comes, would you talk about it more often or only once? Would you include anything else? Small questions like these are a kind of preparation and at the same time, they are also a reflection.
• Both researchers and therapists, like all human beings, must select all the impressions that come to them, otherwise it would be chaos. Therefore, they must concentrate on everything, focusing on relatively few elements, making distinctions, and leaving out the rest. However, therapists and researchers must remember that they, with the help of their questions, their connection, and their reflections, contribute to understanding and simplifying reality – in one way or another.

• SUGGESTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Andersen, T. (1994). The reflective team: Dialogues and dialogues about dialogues. Barcelona, Spain: Editorial Gedisa.

Andersen, T. (1996). Reflections on reflection with families. In Mc Namee, S. and Gergen, K. (Comps.). Therapy as a social construction (pp. 77-91). Barcelona, Spain: Paidós.

Andersen, T. (2005). “I used to think…” Retrieved from:

https://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/psicologia/9-47157-2005-02-12.html

Andersen, T. (2013). A prayer in five lines.  On the production of meanings from the perspective of relationship, prejudice and spelling.  In Deissler, K. & McNamee, S.  (Ed) Filo and Sofía in dialogue.  (pp. 76-83) Ohio, USA: Ed. Taos Institute Publication.

Notes from the Pre-Congress Seminar/Workshop (2003). “Language of post-crisis reconstruction. Narraciones, comprensiones, registros corporal”, dictated by Tom Andersen, Ph.D., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Crespo, M. (2020). The culture of peace in dialogue with diversity. Digital magazine Centro Cultural Benjamín Carrión. Quito, Ecuador.

LA CULTURA DE PAZ EN DIÁLOGO CON LA DIVERSIDAD – Maritza Crespo Balderrama

London, S. (2010), Entrevista De Sylvia London a Tom Andersen,

http://terapiasposmodernas.blogspot.com/2010/05/entrevista-de-sylvia-london-tom.html

Sesma, M. (2005). Beyond the reflection team: how therapists implement reflective processes in private practice. Master’s Thesis in Psychology. Universidad de las Américas, A.C. México, D. F.

Taos Institute page containing books and publications by Tom Andersen:

Tapia Figueroa, Diego, Thesis (2018) for the Ph.D. with the Free University of Brussels (VUB) and the TAOS INSTITUTE.

Tapia, D. (2020). Transformative social dialogues. Digital magazine Centro Cultural Benjamín Carrión. Quito, Ecuador.

Tom Andersen in an interview with photographer Eva Charlotte Nilsen

Tom Andersen in an interview with physiotherapist Berit Ianssen

Des Champs, C. (2013).  “A Democratic Form of Psychotherapy” (*) Interview with Tom Andersen (**). REMEMBERING TOM ANDERSEN | Family Therapy Newsletter (redrelates-boletin.org)

English translation of Bruno Tapia Naranjo.