febrero 3, 2023
Relational and Social Constructionist Consortium of Ecuador (IRYSE)
Diego Tapia Figueroa, Ph.D. y Maritza Crespo Balderrama, M.A.
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.
What makes the self recognize itself as unique is because of its responsibility.”
(Emmanuel Levinas)
Processes focused on what happens “between” the co-investigators.
Sheila McNamee (2015) argues:
How do we create space, this dialogic space where relational ethics is really the dominant theme? We want to keep the conversation moving forward so that we have the possibility to create some new understanding together: how can we arrive at a new understanding? Not necessarily to an agreement. (Field diary, June 2015).
The challenge was, each time, the creation of a space for dialogue in which we can sustain the tension of difference; it involved creating a context for dialogue, making it easier for participants to connect and engage in new ways of talking. It is about knowing that people have options to decide in a relational context, inclusively with others. When relationships are restored, a responsibility emerges that makes the participants recognize that space as their own and commit themselves to transformative actions.
Relational care advances because there is a sense of sharing, inclusion, and participation; it is to offer the conditions (co-create them) to have the opportunity to choose between possibilities.
Of course, they are processes in which the people who participate are making their voices heard and choosing the topics on which they are going to talk and what they would like to happen with those conversations, as well as what each one could contribute to achieving what would interest them.
It was an invitation to speak from people´s perspectives and resources, releasing the usual practices of deficit, disqualification, judging, and criticism.
“(…) When we engage in this relational research, we end up creating the future.”
(Sheila McNamee, TAOS Relational Research Network, 2016)
Placing the relational in the center of the context leads us to focus on the dialogic that allows us to see and move the processes of interaction. Thus, we begin to do something different and to coordinate new possibilities with people, as a way to build alternatives -other perspectives- to be with others in the world. It is the collective and community exchange that allows us to understand the actions, discourses, and relationships on which they are based.
With this, we open a space for the multiple voices that are silenced and made invisible, to participate in the conversation and enrich this relational dialogue, so that they can contribute to expanding the possibilities and alternative practices that are consistent with their own needs.
How do we deal with the tension that arises with the ethical codes we have to respond to and the local relational contexts we work with? (…) By what standards do we consider this unfair? By what standards do we say this is wrong? (S. McNamee collected from her field journal, June 2015).
As constructionists, we care about knowing local histories and what we are co-building with people by participating in the relationships we have with them.
We want to assume a responsive attitude to position ourselves as capable of practicing a transformative dialogue with relational ethics, being open to the process of relating, looking at what we do together, what we are creating, and what kind of possibilities emerge.
There are multiple perspectives, allowing multiple meanings to emerge, which in turn will create multiple possibilities. Social construction suggests many ways of seeing things, which is why we talk about resources. The constructionist orientation invites us to strengthen, more and more, the relational; to weave binding processes, create the generative conditions to be present in relationships, and take responsibility for the outcomes of these relationships. We transform ourselves relationally, into dialogue, to become.
| What are we here for? Am I here, for…? It is interesting to know the particular reason why each one is here. | What would have to happen so that when this is over, you feel satisfied? | How can you contribute, in a meaningful way, so that what happens here, is what you expect, and what you would like? | How to propose a language with which we invite the other to feel involved? | How do we invite a person into a relationship? | How do you start this conversation to build something meaningful? |
| How do we look, listen, and respond? | What internal dialogues were you having while listening to me? | Can you think of a moment of learning, a different reflection, that you are going to take with you from this meeting? | From our initial questions: are they still there; have they been transformed; is there anything you want to pick for yourself? | How do you see a community in which we all feel understood and included? | Reflection on what you have experienced: What do you take away from here? |
How we bring these voices speaks of the position of curiosity, respect, and collaboration with which it is engaged, with the deep recognition that what may have been valid in those circumstances, in those moments, for those people, and in those contexts, not necessarily, will continue to be valid for other people and in other contexts.
In conversations with the co-researchers, questions are posed such as: what types of meanings arise in these forms of interrelation that we are constructing?
Thinking of dialogue as a way of relating, because transforming implies entering into a relationship and sharing a purpose. Other questions were added: how can we participate in what is new? Are we building something different together? Is it a constructive dialogue? Are we creating possibilities? How would we like to express ourselves in a way that allows us to tell others who we are? What resources do we identify that we have used in this meeting? What are the words we need to open up relational possibilities in this space? What use can collaborative dialogue and practice have in this particular context?
By collecting these questions, in our meetings we choose words that allow us to work with many possible worlds, deciding to participate vividly in the conversation, with a practical sense; that is, looking at what is useful and what is important in the life of each participant. It is a position, a way of life, and relating that allows others to have a place: does this work; is it useful to others?
We conceive our work not only as “being” with the other, but “being present” with the other. With an attentive attitude towards relational processes and with very high sensitivity for what we understand as positive, recognizing what part of the responsibility we have in the conflicts, crises, or dilemmas that afflict us and seeking, at the same time, how to contribute to generating alternatives in the face of those conflicts, crises or dilemmas.
As co-researchers, we understand the generation of knowledge within the process of social exchange. Social constructionism, as we understand it in this workspace, is a position that contextualizes the way of practicing therapy, of interrelating in different social contexts.
In the research, adding perspectives such as deconstruction was enormously enriching to expand the process of weaving. Deconstructing means maintaining an attitude of necessary and permanent doubt, a critical distance, and a relativization concerning cultural beliefs such as truth, hierarchies, and discourses, enabling the commitment to the search for new visions -others- to promote the encounter with the unexpected, in the permanent deconstruction of what is established by culture and society.
We are oriented towards the creation of spaces of possibilities connected to the meanings of life, from a shared learning language, generating options on how to contribute in innovative ways with communities, in the local culture and assuming that it is not only about choosing an effective path but in how we continue the joint reflection on that path.
We ask ourselves honestly: are we really working processes with social constructionist orientations and collaborative and dialogic practices? There was an evolution in the process of dialogue with the coinvestigators -which continues with the reflection involved in writing this research- by receiving feedback from the participants and by imagining the futures that we would like to build and share.
Promote an authentic and genuine ethical position in relationships.
Reflections in action and for action are guided by curiosity, by the ability to marvel, with a genuine and authentic human interest in learning, by knowing, and understanding; for understanding this process of weaving connections for a different life.
It is an aesthetic act because it expresses the way of relating to others. We can connect it with the responsibility of the intellectual, about accepting uncertainty and complexity and reflecting on what it means to question the dominant ideology (political acts), while locally coconstructing relational alternatives (ethical acts).
I dream of the intellectual who destroys evidence and universalism, the one who points out and indicates in the subjections of the present the weak points, the openings, the lines of force, the one who moves incessantly and does not know for sure where he will be or what will happen tomorrow, because he has all his attention focused on the present, the one who contributes wherever he happens to raise the question of whether the revolution is worthwhile (and what revolution and what effort is worth) taking into account that this question can only be answered by those who agree to risk their lives to ask it. (Foucault, 1977, p.163).
If we choose the position of an organic, critical intellectual who confronts positivism without concessions and, in doing so, recognizes the openings, aware of the movement that leads him to uncertainty, we can interpret this present in which we occupy the necessary place to ask the questions that, at the same time, embody the risks we accept, thus releasing the possibilities for which life is worth living. Every question arises in the present from the courageous recognition of contradictions and is fraught with what does not yet exist and yet could be.
New questions are capable of innovating conventions, which is what makes them profoundly revolutionary.
These perspectives are focused on what happens “between” people because that is where relational processes arise. It is in these dialogues that we focus on understanding differences in different ways. Collaborative and dialogic and generative practices are proposed as a way of living together in the world, aware that we can only be through dialogue.
In the words of Sheila McNamee during her participation in the meeting of the TAOS Network of relational research. (March 14, 2016):
It is asking questions that generate a relationship.
The ways in which our research processes transform the worlds we inhabit, as well as the worlds of those who participate in our research (…) when we engage in this relational research, we end up creating the future.
It is important to continue reflecting on the different possibilities of meaning that we can attribute to research and its connection with relational ethics -which means taking care of the process of relationship-, asking ourselves: how can we continue talking together? Being involved in the relational process and, at the same time, reflecting on the process, is relational research. Being aware of relational connections and describing, honestly, what is happening, and what is experienced over time.
From collaborative and dialogic and generative practices, the attitude with which issues are approached is what makes and builds the difference.
By asking ourselves: How to generate spaces for research to be relational? Several of our responses agreed on this: listening deeper to what comes from each participant’s context; we are doing this by facilitating a process of relational research that means we are in conversation and relationship. Research has always been oriented to emerge something different, to leave something that is useful, to create conversational spaces interested in the different, in the unusual, to create something new, and to understand that collaboration is establishing a non-hierarchical relationship.
When we enhanced resources and what they meant and generated in relationships, we were valuing the need for transformation in those relationships, while inviting a positioning to build with others, to generate social transformations. These new ways of seeing, of opening other perspectives, of constructing different meanings, generated openings and possibilities that the participants experienced in the formation and supervision, and that led to their relational practices with families and communities; transformative social practices that they integrated into their own lives.
Social constructionism guided the process of co-research carried out and proposed, to the co-researchers, a new perspective for one’s own life and to value the local culture that, with its resources, gives us the confidence to generate a meaningful and transformative process, showing new ways of living and being in the world with others.
SUGGESTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Foucault, M. (2010). Essential works. 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
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IRYSE (2018) Blog of the Relational and Socioconstructionist Institute of Ecuador (IRYSE): https://iryse.org/
Sheila McNamee, TAOS Relational Research Network, 2016.
S. McNamee, collected in my field diary June, 2015.
McNamee, S. (2012). Conversation at the University of Manizales, Colombia. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-HG1cvd9Rg
McNamee, S. and Hosking, D.M. (2012). Research and Social Change: A Relational Constructionist Approach. New York: Routledge.
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.
Tapia, D. (2007). Postmodern psychotherapies in the systemic field. Theoretical, practical and clinical materials from social constructionism. Quito, Ecuador: Editorial. Cif
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.
