Introduction of a special issue on the dialogical self

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Introduction of a special issue on the dialogical self in education, accepted for publication by the Journal of Constructivist Psychology, vol.26, no. 2, 2013, pp. 81-89.

The dialogical self in education: Introduction Hubert J.M. Hermans Radboud University, The Netherlands

Abstract. This is a special issue on the dialogical self in education. In this introduction, I summarize the main tenets and concepts of Dialogical Self Theory (DST) as a basis of the different articles of this issue. Then I introduce the different papers in the context of the Theory. The contributions give special attention to what happens in the minds of individuals—teachers, students, and training participants —when they participate in educational settings that affect and address the intimacies of their personal selves.

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This is the third special issue in this journal in which DST is applied to topics of central concern to constructivist psychology. The first one (2003, vol. 16, no. 2) focused mainly on psychotherapy, the second (2008, vol.21, no. 3) detailed the ways in which research is performed on the basis of the Theory. The present issue shows how self and society meet each other, cooperate or clash, when people become involved in educational institutions or settings. First, I will give a brief overview of the main ideas and concepts of the Theory. Building on this theoretical framework, I will introduce the different contributions.

The other as alter-ego

Hannah Arendt (1958) expressed a sharp insight in the human condition when she noticed that “If people were not different, they would have nothing to say to each other. And if they were not the same, they would not understand each other.” (p. 155). Apparently, we can easily understand each other, when we have experiences available which are highly similar to those of the other. However,

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when we are faced with the other who is different from us, we need a well-developed dialogical capacity which enables us to move beyond familiar, and even cherished, perspectives. Arendt’s insight fits very well with the Aristotelian notion of the other as alter ego, being the same and different from the self. This notion is also reflected in Dialogical Self Theory (DST) (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010) in which the other is introduced not as an ‘outside reality’ to which the self relates as a separate entity, but as an intrinsic feature of the self as extended to the social environment.

Self as extended to an independent other

In his highly prolific chapter on the self, William James (1890) was well aware that the other was part of the extension of the self, an idea that facilitated the emergence of DST. He made clear that the self is not located inside the skin or contained in itself, but that self-relevant parts of the environment belong to it. In defining the Me , or self-asknown, James (1890 ) proposed that there is a gradual transition between Me and Mine: “not only his body and his psychic powers, but

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his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account” (p. 291). The idea of the extended self is a great step forward as it went beyond the Cartesian dualistic conception in which the self (res cogitans) and the environment (res extensa), including the other person, were seen as separate entities. In contrast to the extended self, the Cartesian self came out, in Levin’s (1988) terms, as “a self of reason completely purged of body and feeling, a self without shadows, a self totally transparent to itself, totally knowing of itself, totally selfpossessed, totally certain of itself” (p. 15). James’s proposal of the extended self can be seen as a significant step beyond the Cartesian dualism between self and other.

Extension toward an independent other: The polyphony of the self

The idea of the extended self could be further pursued by considering Bakhtin’s (1973) metaphor of the ‘polyphonic novel,’ which he proposed after reading Dostoyewski’s works. The basic idea of this

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novel is that it is composed of a number of independent and mutually opposing perspectives embodied by characters involved in dialogical relationships. The characters are considered as "ideologically authoritative and independent," each with an own view of the world, rather than being an object of Dostoyevsky's all-encompassing artistic vision. The characters are not subordinated to the author’s view but have their own voice and tell their own story. The characters are not standing below their creator but beside him, disagreeing with the author, even rebelling against him. This development in the novelistic literature marks a revolution against the traditional idea of the ‘omniscient narrator’ (Spencer, 1971). In the metaphor of the polyphonic novel there are two elements which go beyond James’s conception of the extended self: the independence of the characters and the fact that they have a voice. In James’s view, the other figures are something which can be ‘appropriated’ or ‘owned’, and in this way are subordinated to a possessing I. It is perhaps revealing that in James’s view of the extended self, ‘my child’, ‘my friend’ or ‘my wife’ are mentioned in the same breath with ‘my yacht’ and ‘my bank-account’. Whereas in

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James’ view of the self, the other is owned as ‘mine’, the polyphonic metaphor recognizes the other as an independent entity. Moreover, the other is given a voice, so they have the opportunity to speak from their own independent point of view and become able to tell about their experiences in their own language. The idea of a self as dialogically extended to an independent other is particularly promising because it has the potential of extending the self to a broader societal and historical context.

The other-in-the-self: Between centralization and decentralization

In a discussion of the concept of identity, Hall (1992) contrasted a modern or ‘Enlightenment subject’ and a postmodern subject or decentered subject. In his view the Enlightenment subject was a fully centered, unified individual, endowed with the capacities of reason, consciousness and action, with a ‘center’ as an inner core. The decentered subject, on the other hand, was described as being composed of different parts that are highly contingent on the changes in the environment. The self consists of contradictory identities which

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pull us into different directions, so that our identifications are continually shifting. With a famous dictum of William B Yeats, “Things fall apart, the center cannot hold.” If we would feel that we have a unified identity from birth to death, Hall concludes, it is only because we are in need of a ‘comforting story’ about ourselves. On the interface of the modern (enlightened) and the postmodern self, DST proposes a partly decentralized conception of the self conceiving it as multi-voiced and dialogical. More specifically, the dialogical self is described in terms of a dynamic multiplicity of I positions or voices in the landscape of the mind, intertwined as this mind is with the minds of other people. In this conception the different, independent positions are related by a continuous I and brought into communication with each other via dialogical activities (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010).

The concept of I-position

The central notion of DST, I-position, acknowledges the multiplicity of the self, while preserving, at the same time, its coherence and unity.

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Subjected to changes in time and space, the self is intrinsically involved in a process of positioning and repositioning. As such it is distributed by a wide variety of existing, new, and possible positions (decentering movements). At the same time, the I appropriates or owns some of them and rejects or disowns others. In this way, the self is involved in a process of organizing them as parts of a structure (centering movements). The ‘appropriated’ (James, 1890) or ‘interiorized’ (Vygotzky, 1962) parts are experienced as “mine” and as belonging to the extended domain of the self. This organization and stabilization guarantees a certain degree of coherence and continuity in the self. By placing I-positions in a dialogical framework and processing them in ‘dialogical spaces,’ both within and between selves, they are ‘lifted up’ to the level of mutual enrichment and alterity. When the positions are allowed to express themselves from their own specific point of view, they are respected as dialogical partners in the ‘democracy’ of the self.

Internal and external positions in the self

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I-positions are not only ‘internal’ (e.g., I as a man, white, husband, ambitious) but also ‘external,’ belonging to the extended domain of the self (e.g., my wife, my children, my colleagues, my country, my opponent). The other is not just an object but can be considered, in terms of Bakhtin (1973), as ‘another I’. (For the extension of the self and the other-in-the-self, see also Aron et al., 2005 ; James, 1890; and Rosenberg, 1979.) Internal and external positions do not function in isolation from each other. They are often combined in flexible ways and reflect how the self relates to the environment (e.g., I as a mother of two children, I as friend of an African refugee, I as opposed to demagogic political leaders). Dialogues may take place between different positions in the self. Between internal ones, dialogues may sound like this: “I asked him for a favor but repeating it two or three times, I felt like a beggar; therefore, I stopped talking about it.” Here we see a conflict between ‘I as an advice seeker’ and ‘I as a beggar’, with the former appropriated and the latter rejected.

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A dialogical relationship can also emerge between internal and external positions in the self. For example, ‘In my imagination, I’m often talking to him as a good friend with whom I can share my disappointments. Although he is physically absent, he gives me a good advice and I feel his support. I often take his advice into consideration as a valuable suggestion.’ In this case ‘I as disappointed’ (internal position) is in touch with him as a ‘good friend’ (external position), which then leads to an answer in the extended self. Also between two external positions of the self a dialogue can emerge. For example, ‘Two colleagues in my department got involved in a serious conflict. However, they were able to solve it by discussing with each other what they saw as the origin of the clash. I learned a lot from that’. In that case, the two colleagues can be seen as external positions in the self involved in a dialogical process. In DST the other functions in two qualities. As far as others have their own independent life apart from myself (the ‘actual’ others), they are able to agree or disagree with me and have the potential to develop a point of view that I may, or may be not, able to change. However, as ‘external positions’ in the self, they are placed in a field of tension

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between the voices of the actual others as independent realities and the voices of the others as constructed or reconstructed on the basis of my imagination of the other and, moreover, under the influence of the needs of the internal positions in the self. In other words, the other has an existence as an outside reality but is also as part of my extended self in which I make something of him. In this field of tension, internal and external dialogues meet with the potential to correct, influence, and develop each other.

Self as a society of mind

The notion of dialogue forms a basic link between self and society, because it plays, as a significant potential, a constitutive role in both of them. They allow people, as members of a society, to learn from each other in productive exchanges and permit the individual to learn from him- or herself. In this way, the dialogical self functions as a ‘part-whole:’ as a ‘society of mind’ with tensions, conflicts, and oppositions as intrinsic features of a (healthy functioning) self and, at

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the same time, as participating in society at large, with similar tensions, conflicts, and oppositions.i The self-society bridge acknowledges the extension of the self to the local and global environment. The voices of other individuals, the collective voices of groups, and even the power games of societal institutions, enter the self-space of the individual and challenge the self to give an answer. Along these lines, a self emerges in which different voices agree or disagree with each other, lead to unification or opposition, and are involved in relations of power and counterpower. Along these lines, real, remembered, or imagined voices of friends, allies, strangers, or enemies figure as transient or more stabilized positions in and around the self that is able to open or close itself to the globalizing environment (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010).

Personal and social positions: Linking self and society

As Callero (2003) has convincingly argued, many of the concepts in mainstream

(social)

psychology

(e.g.,

self-consistency,

self-

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enhancement, self-verification, self-monitoring, self-efficacy, selfregulation,

self-presentation,

self-knowledge,

self-control,

self-

handicapping, and self-deception) are typically thought of as containers of individual minds, with the social environment and society as external, determining factors. Such concepts typically lack the multiplicity, multi-voiced capability, struggle and power-games that are essential for society, including the self as a society of mind. In fact, they are typical of the modern model of the self that, under the influence of Enlighenment, tends to consider the self as an entity or essence in itself and as something which can be defined in isolation of society. In the context of the discussion about the self-society connection, the distinction between two kinds of internal positions in the self, personal and social, becomes particularly salient. Whereas social positions reflect the way the self is subjected to social expectations and role-prescriptions (e.g., ‘I as a professional’, ‘I as a father’, ‘I as a leader’), personal positions leave room for the many ways in which the individual responds to such expectations from his own point of view and for the various ways in which the individual

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fashions, stylizes, and personalizes them (‘I as ‘a dominant leader’, ‘I as a sociable leader’). Combinations of social and personal positions, not only personalize social role behavior, but may also be a source of tension and conflict both in self and society (e.g. a pastor who publicly declares himself a homosexual priest or a psychotherapist having a sexual relationship with his patient). Certainly, it is possible that social and personal positions are combined productively. For example, motivation for a particular task or job, increases when the person is not only conforming to social role expectations, but does his work on the basis of personal desire, passion, conviction, or call. Particularly, in an era when professional work is increasingly fused with private and personal life circumstances, the coalition of social and personal positions becomes particularly salient to both persons and organizations.

Some basic concepts of Dialogical Self Theory

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In this section I summarize two of the main concepts that are central to DST and are used by several contributions in this issue: ‘third position,’ ‘meta-position’, and ‘promoter position’.ii

Third position

Two positions involved in a conflict can, under specific conditions, be reconciled in a third position in which the conflict between the original positions is lessened and mitigated. Rather than being a compromise between positions, where differences are settled by mutual concessions, a third position profits from the energies originating from the two positions and combines them in the service of its strengthening and further development. For example, A.U. Branco, A.L. Branco, and Madureira (2008) described the case of a catholic woman in Brazil who defined herself as lesbian. Her internal conflict followed from the opposition between the ‘I as catholic’ versus the ‘I as lesbian.’ The authors described how the client developed a third position as a missionary: Inspired by her values as a Christian, she decided to help forsaken and lost people, including

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many gays and lesbians, which were in similar circumstances as she herself had been. The missionary position provided her a way to reconcile her lesbian nature with traditional Christian values and beliefs and to move into the direction of a higher level of integration of the self.

Meta-position

A meta-position enables the self to move specific and specialized positions and to take a ‘helicopter-view.’ In order to clarify the nature of this position, I give the example of a tennis player. During the game, the best he can do is to be fully in the flow of the action. Any form of self-criticism or self-doubt would hinder the effectiveness of the performance. As long as he is fully engaged, he is just in the position of the player and ‘in the act.’ However, after the game, there is time for critical self-reflection which may lead him to decide to improve his skills. On this (first) level of self-reflection, he thinks of himself in the position of tennis-player only. However, he may move to a second and higher level of self-reflection, where he thinks of his

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position as tennis-player in the context of a broader variety of positions. He may start to reflect on his situation from a larger array of perspectives. Does he want to make a career? How will it be when his physical condition declines? At this level he examines his position as a tennis player by considering it in the context of other significant positions, for example, as father, husband or student gifted in mathematics. Along these lines, he may arrive at a well-balanced decision about where to go in his future. Sometimes described as an ‘observing ego’ or ‘meta-cognition,’ a meta-position permits a certain distance from one or more other internal and external positions, although it can be attracted, both cognitively and emotionally, toward some positions more than others (e.g., self-reflection can be critical, amused, or depressive). It provides an overarching view which allows one to consider different positions simultaneously including their relevant linkages. Rather than being a form of socially isolated introspection, a meta-position is, or at least can be, of a dialogical nature. Depending on the nature of the contact with others, a person can take different meta-positions. Having a long conversation with a good friend under

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the enjoyment of a glass of wine leads to a meta-position which is, qua affective quality and even content, different from talking for one hour in the treatment room of a psychotherapist. Even when being alone, the same person can be involved in very different relationships with himself at different moments (e.g., open, sad, superficial or deep). Meta-positions allow the person to delay immediate gratification and to postpone impulsive reactions. They permit and facilitate the organization of the self beyond the spur of the moment and allow a more encompassing view on self and world. They take a broader array of specific I-positions into account and have an important executive function in the process of decision making. As mediated by higher cortical brain activity, they are able to influence the lower emotional circuits of the brain so that long-term planning becomes possible.

Promoter position

Whereas meta-position is a spatial concept in DST, the notion of promoter position refers explicitly to the temporal nature of the process of positioning and repositioning. The basic consideration is

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this: When the self would function as a successive multiplicity of unrelated I-positions, each with their own specific development over time, the result would be a confusing cacophony of voices that would lack any coordination at the higher levels of organization of the self. A special concept, promoter position, is needed to avoid what James would describe as a ‘blooming, buzzing confusion’ of I-positions. While meta-positions facilitate the continuity, coherence and organization in the self from a spatial perspective, promoter positions do so from a temporal point of view. Due to their considerable openness towards the future of the self, promoter positions produce and organize a diverse range of more specialized but qualitatively different positions in the service of the development of the self as a whole (see also Valsiner & Cabell, 2012). Due to their broad bandwidth, they have the potential to synthesize a variety of new and existing positions in the self and organize them at a higher level of integration. Promoter positions are innovators of the self par excellence. Significant

others—real,

remembered,

anticipated

or

imaginary—may function as promoters in the temporal organization

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of the self. Typically, mothers, fathers, family members, or teachers, function as promoters (or as anti-promoters when they are experienced as impediments to one’s development). However, the range of possibilities is much broader. Inspiring figures in art, politics, science, novels, film, or music may have a promoter function as facilitating existing I-positions and generating new ones. Not only actual persons, but imagined figures also may function as promoter positions. Some people return, in a period of stress and pain, to an image or picture of a deceased family member from which they receive support and strength (Neimeyer, 2012). Others, with a religious or spiritual background, consult the image or statue of a Buddha, Christ, holy person, or a god, which has for them the meaning of an ‘ultimate promoter position’ (Rowan, 2012). Also in the internal domain of the self, promoters may emerge as generated or stimulated by positions in the external domain. Some people profit from a developmental impetus of I-positions like ‘I as a person who always goes on and never gives up’ or ‘I as looking at things in an artistic way,’ ‘or ‘my call in live.’ Such positions have the potential of helping people to find their way in a great diversity of

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situations and open new perspectives for future developments in the self. External and internal positions are often closely linked to each other when, for example, somebody says: ‘I’m a high achiever as a revenge against my father, who always expressed negative expectations about me’ or ‘I became a writer in order to compensate for the injustice done to my loved ones.’ The highly dynamic interconnections between external and internal positions, may account for the way the self responds to the variegated social and societal influences to which the self is subjected. In DST, promoter positions, like meta-positions, have significant functions in the dialogical development of the self.

The contributions to this special issue

Joanna Krotofil’s contribution to this special issue is focused on the Personal Position Repertoire (PPR) method (Hermans, 2001) as applied in a group people who participate in a marriage preparation course run by the catholic church for Polish migrants in Great Britain.

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The author uses a bi-clustering method, proposed by Kluger, Nir, and Kluger (2008) to analyze the structure of the columns and the rows simultaneously. This permits looking at the data from a bird’s eye perspective and facilitates the process of meta-positioning. Moreover, Krotofil combines the PPR method with focus group discussion, which enables to discuss important findings of their PPR investigation with the other participants. The combination of individual assessment and group brings internal and external dialogue together. In their research on professional identity, Leijen and Kullasepp are interested in the combination of professional and personal positions of students and beginning teachers. Using pedagogical dilemmas, they investigate how students respond to ambivalent situations and how they place themselves in professional positions, personal positions or combinations (coalitions) of the two. They describe a variety of developmental trajectories which their subjects use to arrive at solutions. Moreover, they focus on differences found between pedagogically experienced and inexperienced students. In their contribution to this issue, Annemie Winters and colleagues notice that, as a result of the process of individualization,

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young people are faced with the task to develop a personal career identity. Using some of the core concepts of DST, they analyze identity in terms of positioning, that is, as a development of Ipositions, meta-positions, and promoter positions. Drawing on conversations between student, teacher and/or workplace mentor they detail different strategies teachers and/or mentors are using in the contact with students: ignoring an I-position, re-positioning by talking on behalf of the student, broadening an I-position without conclusion, and dialogue resulting in the formulation of a promoter-position. In his paper, Fecho makes an argument for literacy practice as a means for dialogues with others and within the self. He studies meaning making in terms of Bakthin’s notion of heteroglossia— literally “different tongues”—with a focus on the tensions that centripetally pull language toward institutionally sanctioned stabilization and, at the same time, centrifugally tug it in the opposite direction toward individual interpretation and eventually towards verbal anarchy. Using heteroglossia in combination with DST, he explores the literacy practices of Isaac, a working class adolescent diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and his attempts to bring meaning to

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his life struggles. He argues that, particularly for those learners who are marginalized from the cultural center, reading and writing are valuable media through which they try to understand the chaos around them. In an extensive review article, James Day and Paulo Jesus compare the various similarities and differences between cognitivedevelopmental and socio-cultural models in the psychology of moral and religious development with special attention to the workings of the dialogical self. The authors argue that despite apparent differences, and even oppositions, between the cognitive-developmental paradigm and the narrative-dialogical paradigm, they show meaningful overlap. They further argue that, although DST literature objects against sequential and prescriptive developmental models, its outline of promoter positions strongly resembles the kinds of developmental endpoints, suggested by representatives from cognitive-developmental circles.

References

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Arendt, H. (1958). The human condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Aron, A., Mashek, D., McLaughlin-Volpe, T., Wright, S., Lewandowski, G., & Aron, E. (2005). Including close others in the cognitive structure of the self. In M. Baldwin (ed.), Interpersonal cognition (pp. 206–232). New York : Guilford Press Bakhtin , M. ( 1973 ). Problems of Dostoevsky’s poetics (2nd edn.; trans. R. W. Rotsel ). Ann Arbor, MI : Ardis . (Original work published 1929 as Problemy tvorchestva Dostoevskogo [Problems of Dostoevsky’s Art]). Branco, A. U., Branco, A. L. & Madureira, A. F. (2008). Selfdevelopment and the emergence of new I -positions: Emotions and self-dynamics. Studia Psychologica , 6, 23–39. Callero, P. L. (2003). The sociology of the self. Annual Review of Sociology , 29, 115–33. Hall, S. (1992). The question of cultural identity. In S. Hall , D. Held, & T. McGrew (Eds.), Modernity and its futures (pp. 273–316). Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

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Hermans, H.J.M. (2001). The construction of a personal position repertoire: Method and practice. Culture and Psychology , 7, 323365 . Hermans, H.J.M., & Hermans-Konopka (2010). Dialogical Self Theory: Positioning and counter-positioning in a globalizing society. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. James , W. (1890). The principles of psychology (vol. 1). London: Macmillan. Kluger, A., Nir, D., and Kluger, Y. (2008). Personal position repertoire (PPR) from a bird’s eye view. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 21, 223–38. Levin, D.M. (1988). The opening of vision: Nihilism and the postmodern situation. New York: Routledge. Neimeyer, R. (2012). Reconstructing the self in the wake of loss: A dialogical contribution. In: H.J.M. Hermans & T. Gieser (Eds.), Handbook of Dialogical Self Theory (pp. 374-389). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Rosenberg , M. (1979). Conceiving the self . New York: Basic Books.

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Rowan, J. (2012). The use of I-positions in psychotherapy. In: H.J.M. Hermans & T. Gieser (Eds.), Handbook of Dialogical Self Theory (pp. 341-355). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Sampson , E. (1985). The decentralization of identity: Toward a revised concept of personal and social order. American Psychologist , 11, 1203–1211 . Spencer, S. (1971). Space, time, and structure of the modern novel. New York: New York University Press. Valsiner, J., & Cabell, K.R. (2012). Self-making through synthesis: Extending dialogical self theory. In: H.J.M. Hermans & T. Gieser (Eds.), Handbook of Dialogical Self Theory (pp. 82-97). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Vygotsky , L. S. (1962 ). Thought and language: Studies in communication. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press.

Notes i

Computer scientist Minsky (1985) developed a model in which the mind is considered a hierarchically organized network of interconnected parts that together function as a "society." There is, however, a significant difference between Minsky’s conception and DST. While Minsky uses ‘society’ as a metaphor for the internal functioning of the mind in the context of artificial intelligence, DST is focused on the self as functioning as part of the society at large, as exemplified by the processes of globalization and localization. Moreover, DST sees the self

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as emerging from historical processes (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010, Chapters 1 and 2). ii For more details and broader theoretical context, see Hermans & Hermans-Konopka (2010).