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Acting Badly
While Knowing the Good
Copenhagen, 20-23 August 2009
Kenneth J. Gergen
&
Diego Romaioli
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 …
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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
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)
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?