How to talk about and explain dialogical practices

Open Dialogue and dialogical practices represent a departure from mainstream ways of working, which prioritise therapists’ knowledge and skills in assessment, diagnosis and intervention. For mainstream clinicians, dialogical practices can be difficult to understand. At best dialogical practices can be misunderstood and at worst dismissed as something of little value or even irresponsible for not following usual practices. If dialogical practices are to gain wider acceptance in mainstream services, dialogical practitioners must be able to present dialogical practices in ways that are understandable and acceptable to clinicians, managers, and external services who operate from a different mindset.

As a dialogical practitioner, I am often asked “what is different?” about the approach, and why should people consider it as an alternative or complement to their usual ways of working. I have found that it can be difficult to describe dialogical practice in concrete terms that people can easily understand. My descriptions have included things such as “working with” people, involving all family members, generating new ideas, or having a more human approach. However, I do not feel that these descriptions accurately capture dialogical practice and I am often met with responses such as “we do that already” or “isn’t that just collaborative practice or family therapy?”

In this working group, we will together think about and discuss the essential elements that make dialogical approaches unique, some of the difficulties in explaining a dialogical approach, and how we may better describe and talk about the essential elements. My hope is that together we can come up with some ways of describing dialogical practices that clearly articulate the core elements and their importance, which can build interest and inspire other clinicians to learn more.

Before the first working group meeting I invite all participants to think about what they consider to be the central components of dialogical practices and how they have attempted to explain these to other clinicians in the past.

Each session will follow a similar structure with time for an initial group discussion of thoughts arising from the previous session where each participant will be invited to contribute if they wish. We will break into small groups at different points each session to provide more opportunities to contribute than in a larger group. All small group discussions will be followed by a larger group discussion so that ideas can be shared amongst all participants. I will facilitate the large group sessions and will invite all members to contribute if they wish.