The power of being

present in the moment

in polyphonic dialogues

Jaakko Seikkula

Seikkula, J. & Arnkil, TE (2014) Open dialogues and anticipations: Respecting

the Otherness in the present moment. Helsinki: THL

REFERENCES

.

Bakhtin, M. (1984) Problems of Dostojevskijs Poetics. Theory and History of Literature:

Vol. 8. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Bakhtin, M. (1990) Art and Answerability: Early Philosophical Essays of M. M. Bakhtin,

trans. Vadim Liapunov. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Bakhtin, M. (1993) Toward a Philosophy of the Act, trans. Vadim Liapunov. Austin:

University of Texas Press.

Brten, S. (2007). On bein g moved: From mirror neurons to empathy. Amsterdam: John Benjamins-

Iacoboni, M (2008) Mirroring People: The new science of how we connect with others. Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Carman, T. (2008). Merleau-Ponty. London:Routledge.

Hermans, H. & Dimaggio, A. (2005).Dialogical self in psychotherapy.

Stern, D.N. (2004). The present moment in psychotherapy and every day life. NY: Norton

Trevarthen, C. (1990) Signs before speech. In T. A. Seveok and J. Umiker Sebeok (eds), The Semiotic Web. Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter.

Whitaker, R. (2010). Anatomy of an epidemic. New York: Crown Publ..

... authentic human life is the open- ended dialogue. Life by its very nature is dialogic. To live means to participate

in dialogue: to ask questions, to heed, to respond, to

agree, and so forth. In this dialogue a person participates wholly and throughout his whole life:

with his eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit, with his whole

body and deeds. He invests his entire self in discourse,

and this discourse enters into the dialogic fabric of

human life, into the world symposium. (M. Bakhtin, 1984)

Dialogisuuden rytmisyys

Mary Catherin Bateson: Proto language

Stein Brten: virtuell other

Daniel Stern present moment

Colwyn Trevarthen dialogue in jazz like rhythmicity

Elizabet Fivaz-Depeursinge from dyadic to collaborative and relational intersubjectivity

Movement is the first language (Maxine Sheet- Johnstone 2010)

Moving in rhythm

From dyadic to collaborative intersubjectivity

Elisabet Fivaz- Depeursinge: 4 mo old baby

regulates behavior of two adults in triad

Sarah Hrdy: Whole village is needed to rise a child

Movement

Affects

Emotions

William James (1890): From looking at

patterns to sensing similarities

Our experiences are feelings of tendency, often so vague that we are unable to name them at all (p.254);

such feelings can function as signs of direction in thought of which we have an acutely discriminative sense, though no definite sensorial image

plays any part in it whatsoever (p.253).

Thus we can have an acutely discriminative sense of such feelings of

tendency, and it is our inner sensing of similarities rather than of our seeing of patterns out in the world that is basic to our making sense of

what is happening to us in our lives.

Basic assumptions of relational

life

We born into relations relations become our embodied being

We are intersubjective not one entity

Life is living in the polyphony of voices

Dialogue between voices is the basic human

experience

To intersubjectivity

Life is not psychology - it is (dialogic) music (Colwyn Trevarthen)

Virtual others - Stein Brten:)

I see myself in your eyes (M. Bakhtin)

Mirror neurons: I see myself in the other (M. Iacaboni, 2008)

I observe the reality through the others observing the same reality (E. Husserl)

We are now experiencing a revolution. The new view assumes that the mind is always embodied

in and made possible by the sensori-motor

activity of the body. () Mind is intersubjectively open, since it is partially constituted through its

interaction with other minds D. Stern, 2007, 36)

Psychotherapy?

All the time developing process of

intersubjectivity

Change through two incidents: (1) experience of

sympathy and (2) implicitely known, shared

presence of the other

Now moment and Moment of meeting

(D.Stern, 2007)

Psychotherapy?

Dialogical orientation:

1) Therapists refrain from editing the narratives

2) Therapists do not transform I You dialogue into I It conversation - (the Third)

3) Dialogue permits opening the moment of meeting present moment

S. Brten, 2007

Dialogues in meeting

Many voices present:

- those sitting in the circle

horizontal polyphony

- the voices in which we are living while speaking about specific subject

vertical polyphony

T2

T1

MikkoSinikka

Seppo

Liisa

female

Father death

spouse

motherfather

sonmale

teacher

memory of death

Vertical polyphony = inner voices

father

technician

sister

daughter

Family therapistmother

maspouse

Polyphonic self

Voices are the speaking personality, the speaking consciousness. (Bakhtin, 1984; Wertsch, 1990)

(Voices are traces and they are activated by new events that are similar or related to the original

event) (Stiles et al., 2004)

When the mind is thinking, it is simply talking to

itself, asking questions and answering them, and

saying yes or no. (Plato Theatetus 189e-190a)

Being on the boundary

We are subjects in the language only in a

physiological sense

The interlocutor becomes an active co-

author of the word not receiver (M. Bakhtin)

Being present at the moment

To be present in the once occurring participation in being (M.Bakhtin)

Neither nor (T. Andersen)

From explicit knowledge to implicit knowing (D.

Stern, 2004)

From narratives to telling

Two simultaneous histories

1. Embodied living in the present moment

- shared experience

- implicit knowing

- comments about the present experience

2. Narratives that we tell of the past incidents,

experiences and things

- meanings constructed

For the word (and, consequently, for a human being) there is nothing more terrible

than a lack of response

Being heard as such is already a dialogic relation (Bakhtin, 1975)

Being present generating new language

S: I have not been recognized

T1: You have not been recognized?

S: Throughout my life Ive been excluded from the family. At last I want to get rid of this symbiotic mess.

T1: You said that Throughout my life Ive been excluded from the family. Then you said that At last

I want to get rid of this symbiotic mess. It sounds like you are saying two things at the same time?

S: (10) yes... thats what I said. But so far I cannot say anything more about it

T1: (7) yeah

T2

T1

T3Sinikka

Seppo Liisa

mother loosing father

teacher

sistermale

brother

loosing my father

father

daughter

what is psychosis?

Vertical polyphony = inner voices Horizontal polyphony = people present

son

Patient

anxiety

Fathers death

family therapist

female

psychologist

Being not present

T1: I thought that it happened during the last two weeks, not before

T2: Was it a threat or even worse?

T1: Hitting, I thought that P hit his mother

T2: Was P drunk or did he have a hangover?

P: No, I was sober

T2: Sober

T1: I understood that P had tried to ask his mother something?

P: Well, it was last weekend; the police came to us. She was drunk. When she didnt say anything and started to make coffee in the middle of the night, and I asked . . .I went out and came into the kitchen, and she turned round and said that it wasnt allowed to speak about it. Then I slapped her. She ran out into the corridor and started screaming. I said that there is no need to scream, that why cant she say. . . . .And then I calmed down. At that point I got the feeling. . . . And the police came and the ambulance. But in some way I have a feeling, that it is, of course, it is not allowed to hit anyone. But there are, however, situations . . .

T1: Was that the point when you went into primary care?

P: Yes it happened just before that

T2: Why did she not say that the police came?

P: What?

T2: Why did she not say that police had been at your place the previous night?

P: It wasnt the previous night, it was last weekend. I was thinking, all the time I am thinking those strange things and I knew that they were not true. But when you think about them for a while, after that you have the feeling that things like that can really happen. It is too much. . . . .You are only thinking of all kinds of futile things.

T2: And it all started last weekend, this situation?

T1: Yes

Family therapy as rhytmic attunement to each other in the present moment

Example: Heart Rate Variaton in an emotional

group meeting

Family therapy as rhytmic

attunement

Implicit right brain to right brain

On the whole, patients respond more to how the

therapist says something than what the therapist

says. Patients attend primarily to (a) prosody pitch, and the rhythm and timbre of the voice and also to (b) body posture, (c) gesture, and (d)

facial expression. (Quilman, 2011)

The pitch of the voice becomes higher before a

re-formulation (Perkyl, 2013)

Studies so far Synchronization of body movements increase alliance and

good outcome (Ramseyer & Tschacher, 2011)

Facial affects follow each other in 15 sec to 2 min sequences

Smiling as affect regulation both in individual therapy (Rone et

al., 2008) and in couple therapist triad (Benecke, Bnninger- Huber et al., 2005)

Therapists disclosing can be related to ANS changes

Therapy training increases symphatetic orientation in EDA

(Kleinbub ym., 2013)

Relational Mind project

University of Jyvskyl with 5 other universities in Europe

First time to look at what happens in embodied interaction in

multiactor meetings

Precise videofilming of faces and ANS (heart rate, breathing,

skin conductance) of clients and therapists

Dialogues, inner dialogues, ANS as responsive

synchorinization and its meaaning for outcome

Simulation of therapy session with

measuring equipment

Anu Karvonen ja Virpi-Liisa Kykyri

Video recording in the therapy

session

Anu Karvonen ja Virpi-Liisa Kykyri

Split screen recording

(DVD)

Precise facial images

Jlkihaastattelu sisisest dialogista -FaceReader

Anu Karvonen ja Virpi-Liisa Kykyri

0100

200

300

400

500

600

10:07:15.00

10:08:11.00

10:09:07.00

10:10:03.00

10:10:59.00

10:11:55.00

10:12:51.00

10:13:47.00

10:14:43.00

10:15:39.00

10:16:35.00

10:17:31.00

10:18:27.00

10:19:23.00

10:20:19.00

10:21:15.00

10:22:11.00

10:23:07.00

10:24:03.00

10:24:59.00

10:25:55.00

10:26:51.00

10:27:47.00

10:28:43.00

10:29:39.00

10:30:35.00

10:31:31.00

10:32:27.00

10:33:23.00

10:34:19.00

10:35:15.00

10:36:11.00

10:37:07.00

10:38:03.00

10:38:59.00

10:39:55.00

10:40:51.00

10:41:47.00

10:42:43.00

10:43:39.00

10:44:35.00

10:45:31.00

10:46:27.00

10:47:23.00

10:48:19.00

10:49:15.00

Series1

Series2

Series3

Transcription of the highest stress vector of the

client during therapy session

C: mm (nodding, wiping tears from her cheek)

T1: earlier you did not notice it and well (.) this abuse it like then (.) was continued

C: yeah (wiping tears) it was continued

T1: mm

C: so that I must only le- no less amount be in touch ((with them)) so that I myself feel well (nodding)

T1: but is it so that now that you see it that you have been abused in your relationships, that you now get that bad feeling about how you have been mitigated and that you have not been respected (.) which was not (gestures with his hand away from the client) there earlier (.)or was it there even then

C: (wiping her tears) well that was the time of performing I was a performer then

T1: (coughs) yeah

CLIENTS ASV AT ITS HIGHEST, STARTS TO DECREASE

Anu Karvonen, Virpi-Liisa Kykyri and Jaakko

Seikkula

Therapists synchrony in breathing

Anu Karvonen ja Virpi-Liisa Kykyri

Couple therapy case:

ASV during the therapy session

Anu Karvonen ja Virpi-Liisa Kykyri

From top to bottom:

Female client Male client Psychologist Trainee in

psychotherapy

Very first notions

Reactions of ANS in relation to each other embodied emphatetic experience?

In a single episode not all in relation to each other

Most stressfull episodes may happen during the speech of

others in the meetings, even during the reflective talks sensitivity of saying

Most affect loaded situations may happen in non-rhythmic way: Perhaps in therapy it is the aim to have rhythmicity?

1:GUARANTEEING JOINT HISTORY

Everyone participates from the outset in the meeting

All things associated with analyzing the problems, planning the treatment and decision making are discussed openly and decided while everyone present

Neither themes nor form of dialogue are planned in advance

2: GENERATING NEW WORDS AND

LANGUAGE

The primary aim in the meetings is not an

intervention changing the family or the

patient

The aim is to build up a new joint language

for those experiences, which do not yet

have words

3: STRUCTURE BY THE CONTEXT

Meeting can be conducted by one therapist or

the entire team

Task for the facilitator(s) is to (1) open the

meeting with open ended questions; (2) to

guarantee voices becoming heard; (3) to build

up a place for among the professionals; (4) to

conclude the meeting with definition of the

meeting.

4: BECOMING TRANSPARENT

Professionals discuss openly of their own observations while the network is present

There is no specific reflective team, but the reflective conversation is taking place by changing positions from interviewing to having a dialogue

- look at your collegian not at clients - positive, resource orientated comments

- in form of a questions I wonder if - in the end ask clients comments

Reflections are for me to understand more not a therapeutic intervention

5: FOLLOWING WORDS NOT MEANINGS

In the conversation the team tries to follow

the words and language used by the

network members instead of finding

explanations behind the obvious behavior

SIMPLE GUIDES FOR THE DIALOGUE IN

PRESENT MOMENT

Prefer themes of the actual conversation instead of narratives of past - be realistic

Follow clients stories and be careful with your own openings repeat the said (and imitate movements)

Guarantee response to spoken utterances. Responses are embodied, comprehensive

Note different voices, both inner and horizontal

Listen to your own embodied responses

Take time for reflective talks with your collegues

Dialogical utterances, speak in first person

Proceed peacefully, silences are good for dialogue

Love is the life force, the soul, the idea. There is no dialogical

relation without love, just as there

is no love in isolation. Love is

dialogic.(Patterson, D. 1988) Literature and spirit: Essay

on Bakhtin and his contemporaries, 142)

Dialogical Methods for Investigations

in Happenins of Change

Jaakko Seikkula

Aarno Laitila

Peter Rober

Making Sense of Multi-Actor Dialogues in Family Therapy and Network Meetings. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy (2012)