|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
Interviews on Narrative Mediation
The following is a version of an interview conducted for the New Therapist E-interview by Dr. Tom Strong with Dr. Gerald Monk, who practices narrative mediation. Dr. Tom Strong is a psychologist and counselor educator at the University of Calgary. Dr. Monk is a mediator and professor at San Diego State University.
Tom: Mediation tends to be treated as profession distinct from the practice of therapy. Being a therapist and therapist educator what overlaps and distinctions do you see between them?
Gerald: In general, mediation tends to address peoples' concerns with a specific substantive conflictual issue, while therapy tends to focus on the relationships with self and others, emphasizing wider developmental issues pertaining to a variety of circumstances not necessarily formed around a specific conflict. However, narrative mediation is closer to the practice of a family therapist working with a family conflict. While the therapist might meet with members of the family separately at various points in the process to understand some of the issues in a one on one context, their primary goal is to help members of the family communicate directly with one another to help solve their conflicts and overcome the ways they have negatively affected their relationships. In this way, family therapy is similar to mediation.
Tom: Please share how you see narrative ideas helpful to mediation?
Gerald: I find the story metaphor enormously helpful in mediation. I like the idea of thinking about how we live our lives according to the stories that others tell about us and the stories that we develop of ourselves. I am also attracted to the notion that these stories are in a constant state of revision, adaption, re-creation and emergence. When we describe ourselves and our identity as produced within a constellation of narratives, we can see ourselves as being forever in a state of unfoldment, never being a finished or complete production, or a fixed stable entity.
So in mediation, I find it very powerful to think of the people in conflict not as fixed and rigid personalities who are unsusceptible to change but as individuals who are in this moment in the conflict positioned by particular narrative accounts of themselves and one another. As a narrative mediator, my task is to introduce alternative narrative descriptions of the conflict and of the parties perceptions of themselves and one another based upon the parties own lived experiences that lie outside of the conflict bound narratives. Conflicting parties undoubtedly have some positive history without stress and animosity. The mediator's role is to help the participants focus upon these moments of cooperation and collaborative motivations, and to use these moments to build an alternative, preferred story. These lived experiences that lie outside of the conflict are used to co-author a narrative of shared meaning. Not until the relationship is re-established with a sense of mutual respect can the problems be addressed in a productive way.
Tom: You're making me think of a term from John Shotter: "narrative entrapment" -- people caught up in bad stories, especially when they seem so compelling. Alongside tackling this challenge of storied life what else do narrative mediators do?
Gerald: Narrative mediation offers a whole range of resources to the mediator on how to help the parties disengage from the unyielding, rigid and narrow descriptions of the other parties participation in the conflict. One of the many ways they can do this is to work from the assumption that conflict occurs through the clash of storied accounts of the people in disagreement. The conflict story can be viewed as the problem rather than the person being viewed as the problem. The mediator can view the conflict as if it were an external object. For example, the mediator would not ask questions about how John and Mary were the cause of the dispute, but rather about how the dispute caused difficulties between John and Mary. The mediator would ask the participants to give the conflict a name, to describe its history, its point of origin, its evolution. Aspects of the conflict -- resentment, anger, hurt -- are spoken of in the same way as the conflict, as things that have entered the relationship, that have come between the parties and affected them. John might say "I felt resentful", and the mediator would rephrase with " so resentment entered the picture". Emotions are constructed as characters in the story, as opposed to an essential aspect of the person. The parties are able to move away from blame very quickly. Participants experience an abating of the heaviness of the problem.
Tom: So, you invite people to reflect on how the 'story' of any conflict can take on a life apart from (yet still directing) the people 'cast' in 'it'. What other avenues for intervention does the narrative metaphor open up for you?
Gerald: An other idea I am really attracted to is that individuals are not the sole authors of the stories, that narratives are produced within our socio-cultural context and our community and are never entirely of our own making. Narrative ideas help us break out of the individualistic psychological framework that has been dominant in mediation. Instead of understanding the conflict as being created by some unmet drive or psychological need located within the physical and psychological makeup of the individual, the conflict is viewed as an expression of a cultural discourse circulating in the community where the conflict is situated. I find this way of thinking about conflict as enormously liberating. Psychological notions impose significant constraints on the mediator if the psychological needs of the disputing partiers are too numerous to fulfill. Rather, focusing attention on the socio-cultural elements of the conflict, utilizing the narrative methodologies of deconstruction (i.e., locating a story's origin and common usage), the parties begin to view the conflict as more contextually created than single-handedly engineered by their opponent.
While specific cultural narratives that shape conflicts can impose very rigid and narrow perspectives held by disputing parties the mediation task is about locating, introducing and developing other cultural narratives into the previously held accounts of the individuals in conflict. This way of addressing the conflict opens up new and more creative possibilities to resolve the conflict. For example, blaming the other party always acts as a strong hindrance to moving forward in situations of conflict.
Tom: So, when people in conflict can see their ideas or story about a conflict, and each other, as coming from particular (and limiting) cultural discourses, this sounds like it frees them up to be better authors of their relationship's fate. It opens them to the possibility that they can turn to other discourses for their ideas, to develop stories they prefer for their relationship. But, this also gets them to challenge the ideas (not each other) they've been using to understand deal with any conflict?
Gerald: Yes, using narrative mediation techniques helps disputing parties view the conflict as being produced by the systemic effects of cultural practice that has real effects upon them as individuals. Using, for example, deconstructive questioning helps the parties gain new understandings about the negative effects of certain cultural practices. Their challenge is to find ways of repositioning themselves in solution-bound narratives embedded within favored cultural practices rather than problem bound ones.
Tom: How about giving us a glimpse of these ideas as you might practice them.
Gerald: I think about how particular cultural ideas produce particular entitlements for individuals. I have worked as a mediator in many disputes involving couples in dispute over custody and access of their children. There are many important cultural ideas that come into play around the custody of children. The father in the family believes he has the right to custody of the children after the separation. As the breadwinner in the family he has enabled the family to sustain its self materially so he would be in the best position to care for the children. The mother, on the other hand, who has often been the primary caregiver believes that she is the rightful caregiver of the children as she is more nurturing and able to provide important maternal care that the father cannot provide. The father and mother may have difficulty considering each other's point of view. The father's view may be dominated by cultural ideas of material wealth provides the best basis of the children and the mother's view could be dominated by the cultural ideas of the mother as maternally prepared to provide the best care. If the mediator sees the conflict of custody as shaped by such cultural assumptions rather than by character flaws in the individuals, they may have more opportunities to challenge the cultural assumptions of the parties. The father's and mother's positions can be deconstructed by exploring the cultural histories that have formed these viewpoints and review them in the light of an additional set of cultural assumptions about what might be in the best interests of the children. Deconstructing questions can shake up fixed positions.
Tom: So, Gerald, narrative mediation is about helping people not only get beyond the particulars of any conflict, it sounds like it invites people to see the way their views and behaviors are shaped by cultural assumptions to which they need not be limited. Some might consider this a western idea, that we occidentals can turn away from our cultural or religious traditions, to 'simply' embrace others. For some members of tightly woven cultures that might not seem an option, or it might see them shunned by those with whom they've been sharing a culture. How might narrative mediators work, for example, with people of such cultural groupings - religious fundamentalists for example?
Gerald: As narrative mediators we don't ask parties to a conflict to turn away from their religious and cultural traditions. Instead we hope to help parties understand their own and the others' position in a conflict and the effects this has had upon themselves and the people they are in conflict with - by historcizing the conflict, (i.e. understanding the cultural histories that underpin each of the parties way of engaging with the other). We invite parties to become curious about their own assumptions and where they lead them, and to consider how certain ideas open up possibilities for movement while others close down movement with respect to any conflict. At the end of the day the mediator has to establish that participants are entering the mediation process in good faith. As a mediator my goal is to help facilitate a process that invites parties to move towards understanding of the other while not necessarily agreeing with the other. From understanding I think we can make more progress in addressing the needs of a community. Understanding is more likely to promote respect for difference. It increases the likelihood that we can live with difference with the proviso that this doesn't diminish socially just ways of being.
Tom: Some conflicts seem emotionally charged with violence, or its potential. What stance do narrative mediators take in such circumstances?
Gerald: There are some conflicts that I would not be willing to mediate because one or more parties are at risk of being disrespected or diminished by a process that increases their vulnerability to harm. I generally prefer to meet with couples who are in serious conflict in individual interviews. I would usually meet with the female first and explore the extent to which she feels safe meeting with a partner or ex-partner, when the partner has been violent in the past. It is a difficult ethical decision to make deciding upon the extent to which the party who had experienced some violation feels completely "free" to make a decision to meet face to face with the person who was the perpetrator of some violation in the past. I don't think I could make a rule about that. Sometimes for the violated party, the benefits of resolving a conflict with a party face to face - particularly when it is a child custody/access dispute outweighs their fear of not doing so. Each scenario has to be considered on it's own merits. It's the mediator's ethical call and must be done with considerable knowledge of the effects of domestic violence on parties mediating their problems after violence has occurred.
Tom: How have these ideas been received by the professional community of mediators?
Gerald: I am astounded by the tremendous interest in narrative mediation by the academy, practitioners and students. I think many people feel that this is a very positive development and in some ways an advancement in mediation theory and practice from the problem-solving, interest-based and even transformative approaches that continue to be popular today. I think people understand the potency of narrative mediation theory, being also impressed by its effectiveness in the workplace, with families and with communities. I think people are most taken with how you can participate in very difficult conversations while diminishing the intensity of the blame and animosity that is so common between parties, in the early phase of the mediation. This is a very optimistic approach to building understanding and cooperation between peoples who were previously locked into a rigid set of perceptions about the other.
Tom: Where can people learn more about develop skill in practicing narrative mediation?
Gerald: Many conflict resolution programs offer a module on narrative mediation in their graduate course offerings. John Winslade and I are offering workshops on narrative mediation on a regular basis in North America and world-wide. We have conducted workshops in the UK, Canada, Austria, the USA, Australia, Iceland, Mexico, and New Zealand. What is most exciting for me is the development of a Program at San Diego State University in Conflict Resolution and Mediation utilizing a narrative mediation epistemology. This program begins in 2004.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
