(October 14, 2022)
Diego Tapia Figueroa Ph.D. and Maritza Crespo Balderrama, MA.
“… It is not about solving what is stable, but also about generating a discourse of dreams, a discourse that creates the image of a coming future, of a future full of hope, stimulating and captivating”.
(Kenneth Gergen)
Reflections -contingent- on a fragment of Mony Elkaïm’s interview with Kenneth Gergen (from the book Building reality. The future of psychotherapy. Editorial Paidós, 2011, Barcelona, pp. 32-33).
“The ideas I propose are resources that fuel our conversation, as they allow us to move forward together. But, at the end of the day, the degree of truth they may have matters far less than our common and individual well-being that the use of these resources can provide for humanity“.
• This posture of theoretical, epistemological humility accounts for openness to generate creative and innovative conversations. More than pretending to hold some kind of “truth”, they are an invitation to productive dialogues that build common well-being. This means, recognizing the co-responsibility of the participants in what they need to contribute differently in their communities. It is in the relational process that mutual transformation occurs, as social constructionism suggests.
• In the therapeutic field, as well as in other areas of life, a philosophical position is fundamental which -in the case of constructionism- implies the conviction that beyond judgment or preconceived ideas that could be classified as “truth”, pragmatic actions are proposed for the common well-being, the improvement of the quality of life of all, the openness to multiple voices and diversity and commitment to building, from the space chosen, consistent relationships sustained in respect, acceptance, trust, affection, recognition and relational ethics.
We come from many different local experiences that have been socially constructed and we will make them interact to develop new possibilities of meanings, thus learning new ways of being in this world.
The therapeutic process is based on the relationship; it fully trusts in dialogue and articulates possibilities in these exchanges, which seek the joint construction of meanings.
From this perspective it is understood that the relational is the basis of everything social and that it is from this point that the meanings that will allow the understanding of each other to develop new constructions for coordinated action, arise; by mobilizing all the resources that nourish the conversations, asking if there are other ways of conceiving the future, of generating alternatives that allow us to be together in a complex social world that becomes its own because it is transformed together.
How do we bring our resources to this dialogue, which has a transformative purpose? To be a generative operator means a way to participate vividly in the conversation. Someone capable of noticing what´s different, the possibilities in dialogue.
“According to constructionism, it is convenient not to approach the client with a set of assumptions or routine or pressing methods such as those that, too often, are associated with psychoanalytic, behaviorist, or cognitive theories; because we must not forget that the theories of therapists are in turn, constructions that can end up functioning as earmuffs and, in this sense, the orientation of Harry Goolishian and Harlene Anderson, who define therapy as a continuous “non-knowing”, seems to me very fruitful“.
• Social constructionism emphasizes conversations, since, through language and meaning, each human being enters into relationship with others, thus building their own identity or internal voice. Every idea and every concept is born of social exchange mediated by language. The attention of social constructionism focuses on the complex forms of relationships within a culture, a local cultural context.
The position of social-relational constructionism questions the modernist practices in psychotherapy that tend to privilege the enthronement of the theory converted into a dogma-funnel through which all people and their histories must pass, denying, in a reductionist way, complexity and uncertainty and building, from the fallacies of experts, straitjackets for practice (leaving in mediocrity and conformism the therapeutic processes), that prevent the transformation that is the meaning of therapeutic dialogue.
Social constructionism offers possibilities to consistently embody action with reflection and new action, generating and expanding the possibilities of building meaningful alternatives. In this way, unprecedented possibilities are opened for therapeutic practice, research, and social transformation; this has ethical and political significance.
• Starting from rigid, preconceived beliefs, recipes, and standardized protocols, turns the therapeutic encounter into sterile ground, in which they stop looking at the possibilities by freezing in the repetition of the deficit and in the blindness of the status quo, instead of having confidence in the process of dialogue and in the resources of the consultants.
They are relationally responsible by being in sync with the relationship itself.
With curiosity and respect, sustain the tension of difference, create a context for dialogue, and facilitate participants to connect and engage in new ways of conversing together.
“Second, therapists need to remember that, far from reflecting the true nature of a problem, the client’s narrative is only a contingent construct. They must strive to understand that language does not reflect a reality, whatever it may be, but rather constitutes a pragmatic device that is nothing more than a mode of relationship. When we are faced with a client who, for example, tells us about his despair, his helplessness, his depression, we will assume that his formulations do not describe a real depression or an atrocious problem, but denote a way of relating to others that produces certain effects – it could be said that the construction invites us to enter certain types of dances while refusing others”.
• Every description, story, narrative, and history, has a contingent, junctural character; It responds to a certain relational context – epochal. If we want to understand a person and the narration of his story, we can only do so if we understand him in his context of relationships with others, with his local culture, and with his social world. “Language constructs reality” does not reflect it; It serves pragmatically to be with others, and to establish different ways of relating to others. The responsibility of the words with which we choose to build relationships will tell about the quality of life we build. Language is a dance in space and time that metamorphoses into the rhythmic tune of that unique encounter that discovers us, with creativity and surprise, what we could be or would like to become.
• As therapists we understand that the meaning that the consultants give to their words when they tell their stories in the therapeutic space, is not the only one, although it is the one that matters most to understand what they live, think, or feel.
In the construction that is proposed in the space of the therapeutic relationship and with the transformative dialogue in which the consultants and professionals are protagonists, the door is opened for new understandings to emerge, and new possibilities, which could result in a different look at the situation and the stories with which the consultants arrive, views and possibilities that, in turn, build new meanings and types of relationships in their particular contexts outside of therapy, in their daily lives.
It is a dance: the dialectic between creativity and freedom, a deconstruction with irreverence and respect at the same time, mobilizing new own resources with questions that generate one’s dialogic relationship, thanks to the trust between all the participants involved.
Dialogue as the first option in the construction of relational ethics: Language is what allows us to be and builds us; It is in living dialogue that life speaks. By relating dialogically we build ourselves socially. Dialogue has a pragmatic dimension, dialogue is action in the world.
“Third, we try to avoid focusing on the subjectivity – emotions, thoughts, repressions, etc. – of the person in therapy. Instead of scrutinizing the interiority of the client, we focus on their relational contexts and try to explore the pragmatic meaning of their discourse within these contexts, we ask ourselves by whom and with whom that discourse makes sense and, if it is accepted in the framework of this or that other relationship, what follows both for those who sustain it and for those who are part of their environment”.
• The conscious choice to abandon intrapsychic archaeology and work from a position of curiosity about the relational contexts of the consultants, as well as their style of construction of meanings in those contexts, allows a respectful understanding of the concrete meaning of these meanings in relation to the significant others of their social-relational world. We are accompanying the evolution of this joint construction of new meanings that will allow the genesis of new relational practices that will create links and networks of connections capable of incorporating, creatively, coordinated languages that nourish and allow to expand what could be different.
• In therapeutic dialogue we ask questions (we dialogue through -with- the questions) so that, both consultant and therapist, we expand the understanding of the stories of the consultant, without denying their particular development linked to their personal history, focusing on the fact that these events and experiences were developing in relation to the other (parents, siblings, friends, partners, close or not-so-close people), rather than in an individual deficit, a personal anomaly or a specific defect; It means focusing on resources and possibilities, as well as on the “with”, that is, on the relational. Subjectivity is also the result of the coordination that has been established with other people, with the words used in the dialogues and the decisions they made in the particular relationship. We are beings in relationships, in a permanent metamorphosis of meaning, of being.
Relational ethics can be seen as this human sensitivity in relationships (being present with the other) to understand people in a committed dialogue, which makes us co-responsible for caring for them. Because it is in this dialogue that resides the interest in the construction of new fruitful ways of connection between those who converse differently, which has to do with relational ethics: what do we build together that means well-being? since this question explains how ethics is understood from socio-constructionist positions.
It is to choose a different place for the creation of the 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 respectful of otherness, diversity, and multiplicity, polysemy; A discourse that engages with the other as a way of sharing the meaningful, from curiosity and openness that initiates conversations instead of restricting them, that includes all voices in new transformative conversations. Relational means that it is a process to produce transformations in the relational contexts in which we participate.
“Conflicts, from this point of view, are considered concurrent constructions and not problems that can be measured with the fight-cock if this or that other universal criterion of truth or good; since meanings can only be coordinated based on negotiation. Constructionists, finally, attach great importance to the therapeutic transformation of the narratives that occur in therapy. But it is worth asking whether there are other means of understanding oneself and others, alternative modes of discourse that influence in a more effective way the range of existing or simply potential relationships“.
• If meaning arises from the relational process, contradictions and conflicts are not understood or explained from a supposed single, true, essential, and valid knowledge for all cultures at any historical moment; Hence, this heuristic openness enriches our practice and the consequences that arise from respectful coordination of meanings and results.
•From this position it is clear that this is how the therapeutic encounter is conceived: “that transformative dialogue called therapy”. With an openness to the co-creation and cogeneration of new meaningful senses of all participants in these other forms of conversation, agency alternative discourse capacities that contribute, are useful, and serve to build new relational lifestyles.
• We do not hide, silence, or make invisible the conflict, we talk about it in another way, looking for words that resignify it, placing ourselves (therapist and consultant) at a certain distance and with a certain height to understand it in its relational context, not as an isolated event, an anomaly or pathology but as part of the relationships that are established in the social world and, In this way, to be able to assume the part of the responsibility that each one has in its resolution, mutation, and innovation.
“At this point, multiple narratives intervene: it is not so much about replacing a stereotyped but deficient story with another equally stagnant mode of understanding as it is about helping the client maintain better relationships with his peers while making better use of the riches of language or the production of meaning.”
• The therapeutic space as a place in which the multiple voices present in the being with the other are welcomed, generates a difference compared to the homologation of an authoritarian and hierarchical discourse or knowledge and opens to the multi-directionality of the relational universe that surrounds us and removes the obligation of a supposed must-be that homogenizes, flattens and oppresses the right to specificity, difference, and otherness; to the construction of new stories with others.
• It is to commit to the care of relationships recognizing that there is no single voice and legitimizing other ways of speaking. It is a position that recognizes that what is considered real and good is the product of human relationships, of the coordination of languages to expand our dialogues and to enrich the ways of practicing therapy so that they occupy their place that generates transformation, because we work, intelligently, from a relational perspective.
The relational connection is probably one of the most fruitful contributions and achievements of this conversational space created with the consultants. It is done by integrating relational responsibility into their lifestyle, opening new possibilities that allow them to facilitate the coordination of actions and the development of a different sensitivity in the processes of relating to others, with other relational contexts, seeking co-responsibility and generating new ways of interrelating in those contexts. In the dialogue, the interest lies in the formation of fruitful forms of connection between the participants, a journey in which they share their local knowledge, the value of their own culture, and the reflections that give meaning to conversations that create constructive differences.
How new stories can be built together from a relational ethics, feeling protagonists and authors of generative processes, capable of creating with joy and imagination, other possibilities of transformative therapeutic processes and critical participation, ethics and politics is the question that also guides us.
SUGGESTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gergen, J. (2011). Build reality. The future of psychotherapy. Barcelona, Spain: Editorial Paidós.
IRYSE (2018) Blog del Instituto Relacional y Socioconstruccionista del Ecuador (IRYSE): https://iryse.org/
Tapia Figueroa, Diego, Tesis (2018) para el Ph.D. con la Universidad Libre de Bruselas (VUB) y el TAOS INSTITUTE de EEUU.
English translation of Bruno Tapia Naranjo