(November 11, 2022)
Relational and Social Constructionist Consortium of Ecuador (IRYSE)
Diego Tapia Figueroa, Ph.D. and Maritza Crespo Balderrama, M.A.
“Every conversation that opens up to new spaces of meaning inevitably stimulates the imagination. But the imaginary still has another dimension: it is not about solving what is stable, but also about generating a discourse of dreams, a discourse that creates the image of a future, of a future full of hope, stimulating and captivating”.
Kenneth Gergen, (2011 p.181)
“We live, organize and give meaning to our lives through socially constructed narratives. Our stories are not formed in isolation but are relational. The meanings and interpretations we ascribe to the events and experiences of our lives—including our own identity—are created, experienced, and shared by individuals who are in relationship and dialogue with each other (Anderson, 2013, p. 61).”
Harlene Anderson, (1999, p. 77 y p. 114)
“Research also has the potential to invite transformative dialogue, if it is conceived as part of social poetry (…). Therefore, research is also itself a form of conversation, which is another form of dialogue, and with it –as in any activity committed to relationship– our worlds are described. We can represent the world only in language, in what we do together. Conceiving research as a poetic activity means focusing tension on research as dialogue, as a conversation that responds to specific relationships and situations, and can therefore broaden the spectrum of possibilities and ideas for other forms of social life.”
Sheila McNamee, (2013, p. 108)
“In this sense, it is decisive that this type of use of language does not lead us to concentrate on regularities but on novelties. In other words: it is about concentrating on new, unnoticed possibilities, to continue—possibilities that are achievable for us in our present social circumstances…”
John Shotter, (2013, p. 89).
We base ourselves for this series, on this thesis from which we extract -adapting them- the proposals and invitations to a different relational position for the construction of the process of transformative therapeutic dialogue.
How are social constructionism and collaborative and dialogic practices useful for the relational co-construction of space for therapeutic training and supervision? Tapia Figueroa, Diego, Thesis (2018) for the Ph.D. with the Free University of Brussels (VUB) and the TAOS INSTITUTE of the United States.
For relational research processes:
The premise that dialogue is generative (that transformation occurs in and through dialogue) is the foundation of this practice and the actions with co-investigators.
The questions posed seek to initiate a process of collaborative and generative dialogue, which will allow expanding the networks of relationships and begin to overcome conceptual and practical ignorance, deploying and expanding creative alternatives.
This is a journey looking for possibilities that can help promote new forms of relationship between people and, at the same time, facilitate the understanding of what social constructionism and collaborative and dialogic practices propose to those who work on social issues. In the course of the process, it can be seen that, what is important, are the questions that arise, the permanent curiosity and the creative predisposition to open and expand possibilities and new realities (rather than verifying the relational rigidity, positivist blindness, and ideological dogmatism of those who have power and privileges and make a modernist hierarchical use in workspaces).
Kenneth Gergen (2016) argues: “In important aspects, ‘the individual self is not a state of nature but of language.” (p. 70)
The objective of these relational research processes is to generate dialogues that have the potential to make differences, even if they are small; in working with children and adolescents, with families and communities in situations of social vulnerability.
Research is to connect, “to embrace complexity” as proposed by Sheila McNamee (in the Taos Institute Relational Research Network, online, March 15, 2016). The research method (dialogic relational research) becomes a resource that helps people to engage, participate, reflect and act in the directions they co-create together. Investigating will be a process in which we generate the conditions to relate to the new, the different.
As Jan Defehr (2008) explains in her thesis:
The method, in the practice of collaborative therapy, is always “on the way”, it is always a “premiere”, it is always used for “the first time” that arises from a particular historical dialogic situation (p. xvi).
The research method oriented from social constructionism allows us, precisely, the opening to the polyphony of the participating voices and the diversity of existing positions; it is not built previously, nor from the other, but as Harlene Anderson (2016) argues: it is a construction that we do with the other, in conversation.
According to Kenneth Gergen (2011), social constructionist research is mainly concerned with addressing the processes by which people come to describe, explain, or, in some way, account for the world (including themselves) in which they live. According to Gergen (2011, p. 16): “If, as I propose, meaning is born from the relational process, then it must be concluded that the concept of individual mind results essentially from the relationship.”
The method used in this research did not have previously established parameters, previously raised hypotheses, tools, or techniques planned and chosen from a menu of possibilities; because it was an investigation with the active participation of the actors of the local contexts, brought to the training space, based on the experience and opinion of the participants, who made their specific culture visible. We focus on research, as part of a different training process, with the commitment to contribute in a creative way to the construction of a future, with a criterion of relational responsibility, and interest in social results. Therefore, the method involved conceiving research as a form of social action aimed at the social transformation that families and communities needed according to the testimonies of the co-researchers.
Kenneth Gergen (n.p., 2014), in this segment of the article From Mirroring to World-Making: Research as Future Forming, proposes a possible new path:
But, may you ask, what if we suspend the metaphor of the mirror and its invitation to study what captures our gaze? Metaphorically speaking, what if we closed our eyes and began to imagine those worlds of our hopes? What if we replaced our constant rush to “establish the case” and started asking, “what kind of world can we build”? This would locate the values of the researcher at the beginning of all his activities. Instead of being a latent force in their choice of terminology or methodology, and in the vain hope that an absent audience in one way or another will be able to make use of one’s work, what if these visions full of purpose and passions fueled our inquiry initiation? In choosing to offer a vision focused on the possible, the challenge of research would be not to illuminate what is, but to create what has to be. This is the essence of research aimed at shaping futures.
The poetic, transformative, and generative definition of the type of relational research contained in Gergen’s invitation, challenges us about the need to dialogue, look, think, act and decide in innovative and creative ways the processes and contexts that we care to investigate; to ask ourselves ethical and political questions about the world we can and want to build, about the futures we need to design together.
Because what it is about, is incorporating the relational being in all contexts, inviting a collaborative and generative dialogue. Constantly and passionately seeking to open possibilities and sensibilities. Gergen, invites us to ask ourselves continuously: what is it that matters? what is valuable? From reflective pragmatism, ask ourselves: what do we want to create and that matters to others, has value for others?
Gergen explains that the important thing about the relational perspective is to create and elaborate a space of understanding, in which the importance focuses on the process of the relationship. Because what someone says will have value and meaning when the other receives it and does something different with it. Because, where the value lies in the well-being of the process. Do relational research to build the future; futures that matter to us.
The method that guided us in doing this, is what was happening among the co-researchers, not what dictates some manual, protocol, tool, technique, institution, or theory. It is a highly democratic, horizontal, non-discriminatory practice –all voices have a place, their place– and it is an investigative, collaborative, generative process because it is built without predetermined opinions and an ideal practice or theory. This perspective does not contradict the question: How to bring our resources to this dialogue that has a transformative purpose? because the position from which we choose to relate is committed to contributing to caring for dignity and integrity in all these relationships.
The research was a reflective practice in which investigating is asking questions to expand, process, and understand what is being done together. To learn from what we do and what we could do differently. What interested us in the process and interests us today is practical knowledge, which serves and is useful for all participants in their specific context of local culture.
The research sought that the people of the team feel active participants in the proposed process and that this conversational space becomes theirs. That they develop a sense of belonging to be able to think about their present differently and project themselves into the future, in a way that can generate well-being for all.
As Celiane Camargo-Borges explains (2014, p.347):
The dialogic epistemology of social constructionism is concerned with the creation of conversational practices that can build possible paths for people to stay together. It is interested in the use of a discourse that is not persuasive, but one that can be shared, so that the conversations are not closed, but where new inclusive possibilities are opened for these conversations.
It is to choose a different place for the creation of what is different, a dialogic position capable of generating conversational actions-practices in the construction of new paths oriented to the joint creation of well-being with others and to decide, responsibly, to continue with others, connected and in relationship. Continue together, in a discourse that is respectful of otherness, diversity, and multiplicity: polysemy; a discourse that engages with the other as a way of sharing what is meaningful, from curiosity and openness that initiates conversations instead of restricting them, that includes all voices in new transformative conversations.
It has been the team – constituted by research as a collaborative/generative learning community – that took the process to a different level than the one they started. Where they could not have arrived individually (poetic levels). Understanding that, from their contexts and with a curious attitude; coordinating diversities and multiplicities; By mobilizing resources with an innovative, flexible and forward-looking attitude, changes took place.
In the words of Marcelo Pakman (2011, pp. 37-38), an Argentine psychotherapist:
Affirming poetics as a central element -of the encounter- of psychotherapy is an attempt to make appear in language the dimension of human experience as a world of meaning that by definition is at the limit of speech as a process of meaning… The poetic indicates in its presence the need to make effective a singular dimension of the human beyond the political determinations that annul or marginalize it so that it is not another abstract formulation … It is an ethical and political adventure, which is born as spaces of indeterminacy that exceed individuals and unfolds in the sociocultural with the hopeful and fearsome forcefulness of an event or the hesitation of an improbable utopia.
The two areas that were worked on in this research were:
1. Training technical teams: recognizing their skills, experience, and knowledge, but above all, valuing their word and their feelings in situations that mobilize them. This contrasts with what traditional training processes and traditional psychology propose, which, in general, places the trainer (or the technician -whether psychologist, facilitator, or social worker-) in a different, separate, and hierarchically superior place than the participants of the formative processes or the families with which he “intervenes”. The intervention generally implies a well-being perspective focused on those who intervene and not on those who need support or assessment to overcome their daily problems.
2. Clinical supervision: it was not proposed as a way of teaching to do from the socialization or imposition of techniques, but focused on listening to the resonances that the topics and problems with which the professionals worked, generated in them. In other contexts, supervision is probably something common or necessary and arises from the need of professionals who accompany families in situations of extreme vulnerability, however, in the case of Ecuador, this is not a common practice, and the space articulated and proposed as a collaborative research process, was innovative.
These considerations, and the same way of investigating from social constructionism, made the research process raise questions rather than objectives, alternatives rather than hypotheses, and processes rather than techniques and tools. The research, carried out with the horizontal protagonism of both the researcher and the co-researchers, was developed and transformed over time, from the testimonies, proposals, silences, materials, stories, and contributions of the participants.
SUGGESTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anderson, H. (1999). Conversation, language and possibilities. A postmodern approach to therapy. Buenos Aires, Argentina Editorial Amorrortu.
Camargo-Borges, C. (2014). In search of an integral and expanded form: building collaborative practices for health care. En Social Constructionism: discourse. Practice and production of conohecimento, Carla Guanaes-Lorenzi, Moscheta, Corradi-Webster, Vilela and Souza (organizers) (pp.341 – 357). Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Ed. Instituto NOOS.
DeFehr, J. (2009). Dialogic Action Research: The Phenomenon of Democratic and Transformative Agency of Response Ability (Unpublished article). University of Winnipeg, USA.
Gergen, K (1996). Realities and relationships. Approaches to social construction. Barcelona, Spain. Editorial Paidós.
Gergen, J. (2011). Build reality. The future of psychotherapy. Barcelona, Spain: Editorial Paidós.
Gergen, K. & Gergen, M. (2011). Reflections on social construction. Barcelona Spain:Editorial Paidós.
Gergen, K (2014). From Mirroring to World-Making: Research as Future Forming, Recuperado de: https://taoslearning.ning.com/groups2/global-relational-research-network/virtual-symposium-2018
Gergen, K (2016). The Relational Self. Beyond the Self and the Community. Bilbao, Spain: Editorial Desclée de Brouwer, S.A.
IRYSE (2018) Blog of the Relational and Socioconstructionist Institute of Ecuador (IRYSE): https://iryse.org/
McNamee, S. (2013). The social poetry of research committed to relationship. Research as conversation. In Deissler, K. & McNamee, S. (Ed) Filo and Sofia in dialogue: the social poetry of therapeutic conversation (pp. 102-109). Ohio, USA: Ed. Taos Institute Publication.
Packman, M. (2011). Words that remain, words to come. Micropolitics and poetics in psychotherapy. Barcelona, Spain, Editorial Gedisa.
Shotter, J. (2013). Wittgenstein and the roots of social poetry in spontaneous bodily reactions: the field. In Deissler, K. & McNamee, S. (Ed) Filo and Sofia in dialogue: the social poetry of therapeutic conversation. (pp. 84-90) Ohio, USA: Ed. A Taos Insitute Publication.
Tapia Figueroa, Diego, Thesis (2018) for the Ph.D. with the Free University of Brussels (VUB) and the TAOS INSTITUTE of the USA.
English translation of Bruno Tapia Naranjo.
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