Collaborative Relationships and Dialogic Conversations: Ideas for a Relationally Responsive Practice

• Author: Harlene Anderson
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1545-5300.2012.01385.x
• Published date: 01 March 2012
• Date: 01 March 2012

Collaborative Relationships and Dialogic

Conversations: Ideas for a Relationally

Responsive Practice

HARLENE ANDERSON*

To read this article in Spanish, please see the article’s Supporting Information on Wiley Online

Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/famp).

The author presents a set of philosophical assumptions that provide a different lan-

guage for thinking about and responding to the persistent questions: “How can our

therapy practices have relevance for people’s everyday lives in our fast changing world,

what is this relevance, and who determines it?” “Why do some shapes of relationships

and forms of talk engage while others alienate? Why do some invite possibilities and

ways forward not imagined before and others imprison us?” The author then trans-

lates the assumptions to inform a therapist’s philosophical stance: a way of being.

Next, she discusses the distinguishing features of the stance and how it facilitates col-

laborative relationships and dialogic conversations that offer fertile means to creative

ends for therapists and their clients.

Keywords: Collaborative Relationships; Dialogic Conversations; Philosophical

Stance; Way of Being; Withness; Postmodern Therapy

Fam Proc 51:8–24, 2012

As predicted when Harry Goolishian and I concluded our 1988 article Human Sys-

tems as Linguistic Systems, what seemed plausible ideas then have evolved over

time. At that time we were immersed in exploring a language systems metaphor for

our work, and had left behind mechanical cybernetic systems metaphors. No longer

thinking of human systems as social systems defined by social organization, we

viewed them as language systems distinguished by respective linguistic and commu-

nicative markers. Since then the language systems metaphor, although important,

had faded into the background as I continued to explore other organizing metaphors

for my practice experiences.

This article is one response to the persistent questions noted in the abstract: aimed

toward becoming a more relationally responsive

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practitioner. It focuses on the notion

*Houston Galveston Institute, Houston, TX.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Harlene Anderson, Houston Galves-

ton Institute, 3316 Mount Vernon, Houston, TX 77006. E-mail: harleneanderson@earthlink.net

1

Drawing from Bakhtin, a term used by Katz & Shotter (Katz & Shotter, 1996; Shotter, 2008, 2010)

that refers to understanding dialogically and captures the kind of relationship and conversation

I want to have with a client.

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Family Process, Vol. 51, No. 1, 2012 ©FPI, Inc.

PROCESS

of how particular kinds of relationships and conversations are key features to fitting

our practices to the uniqueness of each person’s circumstances and are inherently

transforming.

We live and practice surrounded by fast-changing global and local landscapes that

reflect social, cultural, political, and economic transformations. Concomitantly, we

witness a forceful swelling plea from all corners of the world for democracy, social jus-

tice, and human rights. People want to participate, contribute, and share ownership.

They demand respectful listening, responsiveness to their expressed needs, and to

make the decisions regarding their lives. They refuse to be dismissed as numbers and

categories, or to have their humanity violently dishonored and freedom suppressed.

These demands force practitioners to reassess how we experience and understand the

world, our clients, ourselves, and our roles as practitioners.

In considering these demands and questions, I draw from the works of diverse critical

social thinkers within a movement that Shotter (2011) calls “practical philosophy” that

includes interconnected assumptions from postmodern and contemporary hermeneutic

philosophies and dialog, language, narrative, and social construction theories. These

thinkers substantially contributed alternatives for a linguistic and narrative analysis of

knowledge (e.g., truths, beliefs, and expertise) and knowledge systems, leading a move-

ment away from an inherited classical view of assumed often invisible traditions

of knowledge and related notions of language, understanding, interpretation, reality,

subject–object dualism, and core self (Bakhtin,1981, 1984, 1986; Bateson, 1972, 1979;

Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Derrida, 1978; Edwards, 2005; Foucault, 1972; Gadamer,

1975; Garfinkle, 1967; Gergen, 1985, 1999, 2009; Habermas, 1973; Hacking, 1999;

Heidegger, 1962; Lyotard, 1984; Maturana, 1978; Merleau-Ponty, 1962; Ricouer, 1988,

1991; Rorty, 1979; Shotter, 1984, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2010; Trevarthen, 2004; Vygotsky,

1986; Wittgenstein, 1953). Over the last three decades, a number of practitioner–schol-

ars within the psychotherapy disciplines—largely influenced by the above authors, clini-

cal experiences, and contextual circumstances—became increasingly uneasy with

psychotherapy practices based on these inherited traditions and began questioning their

ability to meet the contemporary challenges clients and therapists face. Drawing from

the alternative assumptions mentioned above, they developed practices referred to as

conversational, dialogical, discursive, collaborative, open-dialog, reflecting, narrative,

and solution-focused (Andersen, 1987, 1991; Anderson, 1997, 2007; Anderson & Gehart,

2007; Anderson & Goolishian, 1988; Anderson & Goolishian 1992; Anderson, Goolish-

ian, & Winderman, 1986; Anderson, Goolishian, Pulliam, & Winderman, 1986; Cromby

& Nightingale, 1999; Deissler, 1989; Freedman & Combs, 1996; Hoffman, 1981, 2002,

2007, 2008; Holzman, 1999; Katz & Shotter, 2004; McCarthy & Byrne, 1988; McDaniel,

1995; McNamee & Gergen, 1992; Neimeyer, 1998; Penn & Frankfurt, 1994; Roth, 2007;

Seikkula et al., 1995; Seikkula & Olson, 2003; Shawver, 2005; Shotter, 1984, 1993,

2010; Stern, 2003; Strong & Pare

´, 2004; White & Epston, 1990). Following, I briefly dis-

cuss six assumptions that combined provide a different language for thinking abo ut the

persistent questions and approaching my practices.

INTERCONNECTED PERSPECTIVE-ORIENTING ASSUMPTIONS

Meta-Narratives and Knowledge Are Not Fundamental and Definitive

We are born, live, and educated within all-inclusive, monopolizing, and mostly

invisible grand knowledge narratives, universal truths, and dominant discourses that

Fam. Proc., Vol. 51, March, 2012

ANDERSON

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