Article
Dialogism and the
psyche: Bakhtin and
contemporary psychology
Culture & Psychology
17(4) 421–440
! The Author(s) 2011
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DOI: 10.1177/1354067X11418545
cap.sagepub.com
João Salgado
ISMAI-Unidep/CINEICC, Portugal
Joshua W. Clegg
CUNY, USA
Abstract
The authors argue that dialogical philosophy, and particularly the work of the Bakhtin
circle, offers psychology a way to conceptualize and study human experience such that
the notion of psyche is preserved and enriched. The authors first introduce the work of
the Bakhtin circle and then briefly outline some of the most influential theories of self
and psyche. The implications of dialogism for theories of the self are then discussed,
focusing on six basic principles of dialogical thought – namely, the principles of relationality, dynamism, semiotic mediation, alterity, dialogicality, and contextuality. Together,
these principles imply a notion of psyche that is neither an isolated homunculus nor a
disembodied discourse, but is, rather, a temporally unique, agentive enactment that is
sustained within, rather than against, the tensions between individual and social, material and psychological, multiple and unified, stable and dynamic. The authors also discuss
what this dialogical conception of psyche implies for research, arguing first that dynamic
relations, rather than static entities, are the proper unit of psychological study and,
second, that a dialogical research epistemology must conceive of truth as a multi-voiced
event, rather than as a singular representation of fact. Finally, the authors introduce this
special issue and outline the other contributions.
Keywords
alterity, contextuality, dialogicality, dynamism, epistemology, relationality, semiotic
mediation
Corresponding author:
João Salgado, ISMAI, Av. Carlos Oliveira Campos, 4475-690 S. Pedro Avioso, Portugal
Email: [email protected]
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Culture & Psychology 17(4)
Dialogism and the psyche: Bakhtin and contemporary
psychology
Bakhtin’s influence on the social sciences in general has become enormous. In
several fields of research and practice within Psychology, Bakhtinian theory has
become more and more popular since the late 1980s. For example, this tradition
lies at the core of the dialogical self theory (e.g., Hermans, 2002), in which the self is
conceived as a matter of dialogue between different I-positions. This theory has
been the object of several debates inside theoretical psychology (Dimaggio,
Hermans, & Lysaker, 2010; Raggatt, 2010; Stam, 2010); in social psychology,
dialogism has been a central idea in understanding the development and change
of social representations (Castro & Batel, 2008; Marková, 2003a) and in social
dynamics (Gillespie, 2005; Grossen, 2010; Jensen & Wagoner, 2009); to those in
cultural psychology, the richness of this tradition and its significance within the
Vygotskian heritage has been quite obvious (see Valsiner, 2007, 2009; Wertsch,
1991); and for those favouring a discursive or narrative perspective, Bakhtin has
also become an appealing figure (Shotter, 1993; Wortham, 2001), even when dealing with issues such as the unconscious (Burkitt, 2010).
Bakhtin’s conception of dialogue has been used directly or indirectly to study a
great variety of topics, such as memory (Brockmeier, 2010), symbolic resources
(Gillespie & Zittoun, 2010), self-identity (Guimarães, 2010), immigration (e.g.,
Cresswell, 2009; O’Sullivan-Lago & de Abreu, 2010), multiculturality (König,
2009), phenomenological experience (Cunha & Gonçalves, 2009), child development (Lyra, 2010), and narrative development (Cross, 2010). At the same time, this
tradition has also been influential among practitioners. Clinical psychologists have
found in Bakhtin not only a way of fostering the understanding of the change
process (Hermans, 2004; Dimaggio, Salvatore, Azzara, & Catania, 2003; Ribeiro,
Bento, Gonçalves, & Salgado, 2010; Ribeiro & Gonçalves, 2011; Stiles, 1999), but
also a way of fostering alternative practices (see Leiman, in press; Seikkula &
Olson, 2003). Educational psychology has also been exploring dialogical processes
involved in learning situations (e.g., Ligorio, 2010), and the connection between
Bakhtin and Vygotsky has been highlighted by different developmental psychologists (e.g., Lyra, 1999b).
In our view, the increasing Bakhtinian influence has to do with the possibilities it
opens of recovering for psychology the notion of psyche. Across our discipline’s
history there have been numerous and concerted efforts to separate psyche from
psychology – efforts that are both waning (behaviorism) and waxing (biological
materialism or constructionism) – but our fascination with the inner life has invariably overcome our scientistic dread of its opacity. There are, however, undoubted
and intractable conundrums inherent in the notion of psyche, or of the self, and
these plague modernist and postmodernist alike. The intent of this special issue is
to take up the most basic of these theoretical difficulties with an eye to their
re-conceptualization from a dialogical perspective.
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One of the essential contentions of the issue is that dialogism transforms the
manner that we conceive and investigate psyche in such a way that individual
identity, or self, become meaningful metaphors for the study of human life. This
reconceptualization of the psyche and of psychology from a Bakhtinian perspective
was the challenge extended to the researchers whose contributions you will find in
this issue. These authors were asked not simply to make explicit the influence of
Bakhtin in their work, but to explore and express how their Bakhtinian heritage
leads them to see psychology and the psyche in new ways. The contributions in this
special issue will also be discussed, in the form of commentaries, by researchers
whose work is, in some sense, related to the Bakhtinian approach, though not all of
our commentators consider themselves explicitly dialogical. This commentary
structure was designed with the intent of creating within this special issue a plurality of perspectives – bringing in some ‘‘exotopy’’ or ‘‘outsideness’’ to this discussion. We will begin, in this introductory article, by briefly presenting some of the
main ideas of Bakhtinian dialogism and moving then to our own perspective about
the transformative power these have for a theoretical and dialogical reconfiguration of our perspective on the human mind.
Introducing Bakhtin
Bakhtin and the Bakhtinian circle are central figures in this special issue. Most of
what will be elaborated throughout this number will be based on the contribution
of those brilliant Russian scholars – namely Bakhtin himself, Voloshinov,
Medvedev and others – who fought for, and opened the path towards, a conception
of meaning-making as a social and lived activity (for full and careful reviews, see
Brandist, 2004; or Holquist, 2002). These scholars stubbornly insisted on studying
language as a lived phenomenon, in opposition to the classic perspective of de
Saussure. What de Saussure saw as an impossibility – to study language activity
(i.e., ‘‘la parole,’’ referring to the lived act of uttering something) – these dialogical
thinkers claimed as the proper way of studying language and meaning-making:
‘‘speech can only exist in reality in the form of concrete utterances of individual
speaking people, speech subjects’’ (Bakhtin, 1979/1986, p. 71).
The messy world of utterances, then, was something that resembled an improper
object of study to de Saussure, but in the burgeoning dialogical paradigm it was
highlighted as the major concern. This focus on language as an actual event in the
world implies the importance of considering the social dimension of language.
Words, when spoken, become utterances, which are events in the world through
which the person engages in some form of social relation. Every sign, in order to
have meaning, implies social articulation between, at the very least, two different
social agents. Therefore, within dialogical thought, the social conditions of linguistic expression and meaning-making are paramount. In the process of developing
their understanding of language as a social activity – while putting it at the very
core of human psychology as well (see Voloshinov, 1973) – Bakhtin and his circle
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Culture & Psychology 17(4)
started to view utterances as semiotically mediated social responses. Every utterance, they argued, is always addressed to someone and so derives its meaning from
the social relation it implies. Thus, language production is always dialogic and this
is the core notion of a Bakhtinian approach. At each and every moment the person
is confronting the world using words coming from and directed to others, always in
a potentially polemic situation. If we were to portray the general human condition
under this perspective, we would all be pictured in an unfinished chain of responses,
through which every agent is united to others in a responsive dialogic relation.
Theories of the psyche
It is likely clear to the reader how distinct this way of conceiving self and social
relation is from the more traditional approach to self in American and Western
European psychological traditions. The notion that we have something that we
may call ‘‘self’’ – a kind of inner essence that commands and regulates human life,
or at least, that we have a personal sense of being a ‘‘subject’’ – has most often been
explored in such a way that we end up with an individual, isolated, rationalized,
and disembodied portrait of the mind. Such a conception of mind generally presupposes some kind of ‘‘ghost in the machine’’ (Ryle, 1949/2000) – a kind of
immaterial and overarching homunculus that governs personal organization.
Needless, to say, this image of psyche, or selfhood, creates so many perplexities
and difficulties that philosophers and social scientists have been questioning not
only its necessity, but also its viability. The recent interpretive turn in the social
sciences, while criticizing old epistemological forms, has also been creating an
alternative image of the self. Within this new framing, selfhood emerges as a
social, cultural, and historical construction. Self-identity becomes a matter of
socially situating oneself and negotiating with others one’s own identity – the
fixed self becomes fluid, socially constituted, and unstable. While this turn
toward a constructed self comes closer to solving (or dissolving) some of the old
riddles inherent in the modern conception of self, it also creates some suspicions
about the status of psychology. Some have argued that a socially constructed self
means the dissolution of notions that are vital to our view about human beings –
i.e., the view that all people have subjective lives and that there is a psychological
level of existence.
The tensions between these changing visions of self illuminate the difficulties
inherent in any theory of identity, and we will briefly outline them on the model
proposed by Richardson, Rogers, and McCarroll (1998), who distinguish three
global systems of thinking about the self: the traditional, the modern, and the
postmodern. The traditional or pre-modern notion of self portrays human beings
as parts or elements in a supra-individual meaningful cosmos. Underneath this
notion lies the idea that ordinary life is only a path that may lead to higher and
better forms of existence. Therefore, daily life is only a matter of following religious
and ethical recommendations in order to fulfil one’s own role in the cosmic and
divine order (Richardson et al., 1998). The question of self-identity is not a real
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intellectual problem, since the human soul is the permanent condition that warrants personal continuity throughout time (Taylor, 1989). We are subjects because
we have a soul, and this soul is part of a greater cosmological order.
The modern age, starting around the seventeenth century, was characterized by
a move away from such mystic or divine cosmologies (Rorty, 1989; Taylor, 1989).
Under this new metaphysical regime, it was assumed that every human being
should free her or himself from the power of religion and should confide in the
powers of one’s own rational mind to decide the best course of action. In the
received narrative of Western thought this removal of the individual from an
enchanted or mystical world paved the way for the rise of scientific research, a
development supported by the Enlightenment thinkers. In the modern world, the
basic ground of our existence becomes the human mind and not God (even if God
remains the ‘‘provider’’ of such a mind, as with Descartes) or any other transcendent metaphysic, and such a mind is portrayed as the locus of representations
(Taylor, 1991). As Marková (2003b) states, this Enlightenment narrative assumes
as its main objective ‘‘the search for truth, certainty, unchangeable universals and
indubitable principles, which are to be discovered by the mind of the individual’’
(Marková, 2003b, p. 255).
The notion of mind involved within this enlightenment framework – still highly
operative today in mainstream cognitive psychology (Marková, 2003b; Salgado &
Hermans, 2005) – is disembodied, extensionless, isolated, and rational, placing
consciousness at the centre of the human subject. In Taylor’s (1995) words, this
notion of mind corresponds to a punctual or atomistic self that is ‘‘ideally disengaged, that is, free and rational to the extent he has fully distinguished himself from
the natural and social worlds’’ (p. 7).
According to Taylor, this punctual self also corresponds to a movement towards
‘‘radical reflexivity’’ (Taylor, 1991). Taylor argues that in the modern age
the human mind turned to its own operations and thoughts in order to find answers
to a new question: how do we recognize ourselves as the same person throughout
the changes of life? In pre-modern times this question would have likely appeared
nonsensical, given the widespread acceptance of something like soul (Polkinghorne,
1988; Taylor, 1991). But the gradual retreat of divine metaphysics
from Enlightenment thinking left the human being alone with an unexplained
and increasingly alienated experience of identity across time. It is not surprising
that in this intellectual climate philosophers began to pose, and attempt to answer,
questions of persistent identity. Locke (1689/1975), for example, argued
that the ability to create a personal representation is what makes self-recognition
possible. Descartes also championed an identity rooted in a representation, or
self-consciousness.In the Enlightenment, then, the Self becomes a matter of representation, executed by a Cartesian and overarching conscious ego that reflects upon
itself. Consequently, the notion of self-identity becomes dependent on the continuity and permanence of an inner, omniscient, and self-observing ego. The homunculus, the ghost-in-the-machine, of course, lies at the heart of this notion of
subjectivity.
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As one of the authors has argued elsewhere (Salgado & Hermans, 2005), within
this modern notion of self there is no easy answer to the question ‘‘what counts as
self-knowledge?’’ The dichotomy between the self-as-subject (or ego) and the selfas-object (or the represented self) that is entrenched in the modern representational
identity draws a curtain of solipsism and uncertainty over any theory of consciousness. This ontological and epistemological darkness flows most essentially from the
way that the punctual self is embedded in ‘‘foundational epistemologies’’ (Taylor,
1995) or ‘‘representational epistemologies’’ (Rorty, 1989). These epistemologies
conceive of knowledge as a matter of representation and of truth as something
to be decided based on the correspondence between those representations and the
essential features of independent objects. Since such correspondence has been notoriously difficult to demonstrate, or even coherently conceive, this kind of representational epistemology has been problematic to every kind of knowledge. One
possible conclusion that could be drawn from this analysis is that we would do
better to give up the idea of the univocal (monological) and absolute description of
the world, and of the self, pursued by these foundational epistemologies – self, to be
coherent, must be re-conceived – and this is precisely the conclusions drawn by
most postmodern thinkers.
Many postmodern, poststructuralist and social constructionist theories have
begun to champion an alternative notion of the self, clearly situating self, identity,
or subjectivity as something produced within (and by) history, culture, and society
(e.g., Foucault, 1980; Gergen, 1994). In psychology, perhaps the most prominent of
these postmodern theories are those of the social constructionist variety. Though
there is a great deal of variety within social constructionist theories, all such theories abandon the foundational epistemologies of Enlightenment thought. Instead,
these theories tend to assume that: 1) reality is always a construction, resulting
from the social and relational agreements of discursive communities; and 2) narrative and discourse constitute the fundamental framework through which we
render ourselves and our worlds intelligible (Brockmeier & Harré, 1997). Under
these basic assumptions, descriptions of the self or of the world have no way of
being absolutely, objectively, or universally right or wrong, since they are always
dependent on a certain social context and praxis (e.g., Gergen, 1994). Following
Wittgenstein (1953), language or mind, instead of being matters of representation,
are conceived of as tools by which we act upon and within the world.
Consequently, truth and meaning become matters of social and pragmatic viability
(and not matters of correspondence).
From within this postmodern perspective, descriptions of self tend to focus on
the social and historical factors that create some specific forms of self-definition.
For the constructionist theorist, we are born into a pre-constituted social world
that is ruled by more or less specific contextual rules – something that Billig (1997)
calls local rationalities – and it is only within concrete acts of relating to other
human beings that we make ourselves intelligible to others (and to ourselves).
Therefore, there is no ontological warrant for asserting a more fundamental meaning or truth that lies beyond the social context or contexts within which we live.
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Meaning and truth are, in fact, conceived as by-products of our social articulation.
Meaning is always a matter of linguistic and social negotiation. In the social constructionist framework, then, the modern ‘‘self-contained individualism’’ characterized by ‘‘firmly drawn self–other boundaries and an emphasis on personal
control’’ (Sampson, 1988, p. 16) is only understandable as a social and historical
condition that served the specific purposes of a given age of humankind.
One may understandably wonder at the fate of selfhood within this kind of
approach. Within social constructionism, in fact, there is an almost total rejection
of the idea of an inner domain of selfhood (Gergen, 1994; Shotter, 1993). Self and
identity are constructed by cultural and linguistic tools through which we relate
with others and by which we render ourselves intelligible. Thus, the ‘‘inner world’’
is almost literally substituted by social relationships:
As self-constructions cease to have an object (a real self) to which they refer, and one
comes to see these constructions as means of getting on in the social world, one’s hold
on them is slowly relinquished. They slowly cease to be one’s private possessions. The
invitation for one construction as opposed to another is, after all, issued from the
social surrounds; and the fate of this construction is also determined by other persons.
One’s own role thus becomes that of participant in a social process that eclipses one’s
personal being. (Gergen, 1991, p. 156)
This ‘‘eclipse of one’s personal being’’ corresponds to a ‘‘decentred’’ view of the
self (Richardson et al., 1998), since self-identity will change according to the context or the relational game under use at any given moment. For the constructionist,
mind and identity are not treated as individually possessed, but rather as distributed within different sorts of relationships.
Under constructionism, then, the Cartesian dualism of self and society is pushed
away from the individualist pole of modernism and toward its opposition in the
social realm (Marková, 2000). The root of self thus becomes essentially impersonal:
According to these views, the only alternative to the sovereign or punctual self seems
to be a situation in which an impersonal language system or relations of power function anonymously beyond the control of speakers or actors. (Richardson et al., 1998, p.
503, our emphasis)
The self, or psyche, on this account becomes an extension, or accomplishment,
of social discourse. The social constructionist self, then, is certainly less punctual
and isolated than the modern self – it no longer requires impossible and incoherent
theoretical gymnastics to account for something as simple and fundamental as
relationship or communication – but this constructionist notion of self introduces
new and equally difficult problems in accounting for subjective or inner life. A
theoretically coherent and phenomenologically resonant account of human subjectivity is thus at least as problematic in constructionist accounts as it has been in
modernist ones. Both accounts rest on a fundamental dualism, or perhaps
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Culture & Psychology 17(4)
antagonism, between the individual and the plural that ultimately disallows psyche,
or self, as a meaningful notion.
Dialogism reconceptualizes the psyche
It has been our contention that the possibilities inherent in the modern–postmodern dialectic – that is, solipsism or relativism, angst, or anomie – leave us without
any tenable notion of self or psyche. In the brief review that follows, we argue that
dialogical approaches to self or identity provide some promising alternative conceptions that may lead us out of these intractable difficulties.
There is no consensual definition of dialogism but we outline 6 basic assumptions that seem to apply to most dialogical theorizing in psychology (Salgado &
Gonçalves, 2006; Salgado & Valsiner, 2010; see Linell, 2009, for a thorough and
general review of a dialogical perspective):
1.
2.
3.
4.
the primacy of relations over entities (relationality);
that relations are dynamic and developing processes (dynamism);
that human relations are mediated by signs (semiotic mediation);
that a relationship implies alterity, that is, a relationship between I and Other
(alterity);
5. that human relationships are dialogical, or negotiated, relationships
(dialogicality);
6. that dialogical relationships include and depend upon a socio-cultural context
(contextuality).
Among these principles, ‘‘relationality’’ is the basic axiom – i.e., instead of
classifying human experience in terms of substances or entities, dialogism focuses
our analysis on relations between elements in a system. Instead of an ontology of
substances, then, dialogism focuses on change and its regulation (including here the
constitution of ‘‘substances’’ or of things that we treat as substances). What we call
‘‘things,’’ or apparently immutable substances, are not substantial essences; they
are, rather, the final product of various change processes that maintain continuity.
Dynamic relation, then, is the essential constant in, and foundation for, existence
(dynamism). This does not imply, of course, that there are no substances or entities
– only that these are more or less stable forms of existence that are constantly
recreated by dynamic processes.
Of course, a relation is only a meaningful concept if there are non-identical, nonreducible ontological loci that are relatable to one another. Extending this to the
human context, and following Marková’s (2003b) terminology, existence implies a
relationship between an Ego and an Alter. Dialogism does not dissolve the person
into the social realm; it assumes, rather, that personal agency has a fundamental
role in determining human thought, action, and experience. In the human context,
then, ‘‘relationality’’ is expressed as a concrete relationship between human beings
(alterity).
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Just as dialogism conceives of human beings as beings-in-relation-with-others, it
conceptualizes ongoing experience in terms of the dynamic negotiations that constitute such relations. It is through (and by) communicative relation that meaning is
brought to being. In other words, the relationship between Ego and Alter by which
meaning is negotiated and brought to being is based on sign-exchanges, creating a
communicative, or dialogical relation (dialogicality). Therefore, the Ego is always
meeting the surrounding world, but this encounter is mediated by socially acquired
signs (semiotic mediation), through which the person is able to refer to specific
objects, but also to address real or virtual others. This means that the field of
dialogical negotiation is not limited to the Ego/Alter relationship. The negotiation
of meaning involves a vast array of voices brought to bear in concrete languages,
social norms, personal and social histories, and other forms of shared meaning.
Each Ego or Alter carries a community of voices – as Taylor (1991) has argued,
‘‘the agent understands and constitutes himself or herself integrally part of a ‘we’’’
(p. 311). This contextualized notion of self resonates with Bakhtin’s (1981) assertion that whenever we are using a word, this word is half given (because it is part of
our social heritage), and half created (because we are appropriating and using it in
an unrepeatable and personalized way that situates us in front of others). Of
course, some patterns of relationship are more enduring than others and therefore,
when we are born we face a previously constituted socio-cultural world that simultaneously enables and constrains the possibilities of meaningfully coordinated
actions with others. Thus, a dialogical perspective requires that we consider the
socio-cultural context in which a dialogical relation is situated (principle of contextuality). This contextualization does not dissolve the personal realm; on the
contrary, by employing the communication tools instituted in a given context,
each person creates personal meanings by positioning her or himself in that same
context.
Taken together, these basic principles allow us to construct an account of the
psyche that does not disintegrate under the weight of the subjective/objective
antimony. Dialogism makes the claim that the psyche and its relational, sociocultural context are inseparable (the principles of relationality and contextuality)
but non-identical (the principle of alterity). This assertion appears incoherent
from within both modernist and constructionist thought because these traditions
share a notion of identity as entity. They conceive of psyche, or self, as a
thing – an object in the world – and from the modernist perspective, this
means that the self can only relate to other objects in terms of physical causality. Knowledge of the other thus becomes an incoherent proposition because it
entails the apparent paradox of the knowing mind being ‘‘potentially identical in
character with its object without being the object’’ (Aristotle, 1963, p. 266), a
simple impossibility if self and object are both entities. The constructionist perspective recognizes this incoherence and so entirely rejects the notion of an
independent psyche. For the constructionist, there can be no such physical
entity called ‘‘self,’’ but only ephemeral social constructions of identity.
Identity in the traditional sense is thus replaced with a temporary, socially
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Culture & Psychology 17(4)
determined identity, one that is essentially fully reducible to its socio-cultural
context.
When self is a thing, then, we are left with either a modernist solipsism or a
constructionist relativism. But if identity is enacted, embodied (as a verb – i.e.,
‘‘bodied forth’’), a reclaiming or symbolically negotiated accomplishment (the principles of dynamism and dialogicality), then a psyche can be both ontologically
unique – a concrete act in time – and irreducibly relational and social – an act
that constructs itself out of the available linguistic and socio-cultural resources (the
principle of semiotic mediation). This active notion of psyche actually invokes
Aristotle’s original meaning of ‘‘psyche,’’ a word now usually translated as
‘‘soul.’’ For Aristotle, the psyche was not a thing that relates to other things,
was not an entity but the form or realization of an entity; entity was ‘‘the wax’’
and psyche was ‘‘the shape given to it by the stamp’’ (Aristotle, 1931, p. 412b). In a
dialogical framework, self is not an object: it is a vital principle, an organizing act,
an arrow through time that clothes itself, constructs itself, embodies itself, out of its
socio-cultural context and so is simultaneously a totally unique event and a deeply
relational manifestation of a shared world. Psyche and context are inseparable
because, just as the constructionists argue, identity can only be constructed from
whatever resources are available in a given context. But contrary to the constructionist account, dialogism argues that the social forces of one’s context are not the
agents driving the construction of identity; they are the matter rather than the form
of the self. Self is event, agency, and thus fundamentally unique as well as fundamentally embedded in a symbolic, material, socio-cultural world.
This dialogical way of construing psyche and society carries with it important
implications for how we conduct the social sciences. At the most basic level, a
dialogical notion of psyche refigures the kinds of metaphors by which we describe
and explain human life. In dialogism, the individual no longer possesses an independent ontological status. In Marková’s (2003a) terminology, I and Other are not
conceived as two separated existences, even if they interact with each other – no
longer can the social sciences treat them as two independent realms in interaction,
in terms of the influence that one has on the other. And, perhaps most importantly,
no longer can one be reduced exclusively to the terms of the other.
In dialogism, one conceives I and Other as two bounded elements, different but
mutually defining (Marková, 2003b). The question to be raised is not of the kind
‘‘how does society or culture influence the individual?’’ (or vice versa); the question
becomes ‘‘ how do the I and the Other relate with each other, creating mutuality
and difference simultaneously?’’ (Marková, 2003b; Salgado & Ferreira, 2005;
Salgado & Gonçalves, 2006; Salgado & Hermans, 2005). The fundamental unit
of analysis thus becomes the system of relationship, and every relationship
brings to being at least two contrasting and mutually defining elements.
Dialogical theories of human life, then, always include dual (or multiple) properties, each one irreducible to the other but unavoidably interdependent, and this system of relations and its dynamics constitutes the focus of dialogical analysis. The
traditional dualisms thus dissolve in mutually interdependent systems. The dualism
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of person and culture is transformed in the assertion that each of us works as a
‘‘personal culture’’ (Valsiner, 1998); mind and body become two bounded elements
in relation with the world, different but bounded in that constant relating.
Dialogism and the investigation of psyche
It is not only at this theoretical level that dialogism transforms social science.
Dialogism also forces us to reconceptualize the research practices by which we
attempt to illuminate the nature and functions of the psyche. Though dialogism
involves many possible implications for social science research, we will only consider two essential ones: the importance of analyzing psychological phenomena in
units of dynamic relation and the importance of developing research practices and
products that are multi-voiced.
First, if we take seriously the notion that, for all phenomena, the basic unit of
analysis is a relation between distinct (alterity) but mutually defining elements
(relationality) constituted through ongoing processes or events (dynamism), then
our research must re-constitute phenomena in such units of dynamic relation.
From a dialogical perspective, the traditional reductive analysis whereby we
draw inferences about a complex system on the basis of additive recombinations
of isolated measurements (e.g., mean differences) can only constitute a new phenomenon – the statistical group – while not necessarily telling us anything about
the phenomenon of interest. Any method that:
Begins with the decomposition of the complex mental whole into its elements . . . can
be compared with a chemical analysis of water in which water is decomposed into
hydrogen and oxygen. The essential feature of this form of analysis is that its products
are of a different nature than the whole from which they were derived. The elements
lack the characteristics inherent in the whole and they possess properties that it did not
possess. (Vygotsky, 1934/1987, p. 45)
From a dialogical perspective, this method by decomposition should be replaced
with a research situation that permits us to draw inferences from the developing
processes of a concrete system of relations – whether that system be a narrative, a
conversation, a marriage, or a neighborhood. Vygotsky (1934/1987) described an
attempt at this more holistic, relational kind of analysis: we attempted to replace
the method based on decomposition into elements with a method of analysis that
involves partitioning the complex unity of verbal thinking into units. In contrast to
elements, units are products of analysis that form the initial aspects, not of the
whole but of its concrete aspects and characteristics. Unlike elements, units do not
lose the characteristics inherent in the whole. The unit contains, in a simple, primitive form, the characteristics of the whole that is the object of analysis (p. 244).
The basic point of this kind of analysis is to constitute a system of relations as
the essential unit of analysis. A dialogical approach to the investigation of the
psyche, then, would concern not just an isolated ‘‘self-reporter’’ but would also
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concern the concrete, functional relations or events – e.g., conversations, caresses,
fantasies – through which that psyche is constituted. It is this relation with ‘‘surrounding objects’’ (be they material or purely products of imagination) that
matters.
A second major implication of dialogism is the importance of multi-voiced
research practices and products. The notion of multi-voiced research is perhaps
best understood in terms of a contrast at the heart of Bakhtinian philosophy –
namely, the distinction between the monological and the dialogical. For Bakhtin,
the monological is marked by the reduction of many voices to one voice: ‘‘within a
monological world contradictory accents collide in a single voice’’ (Bakhtin, 1973,
p. 67). The final goal of monological practice is the consolidation of multiple perspectives into a single coherent and fully integrative perspective. In a monological
account ‘‘all that has significance can be collected in a single consciousness and
subordinated to a unified accent; everything which is not amenable to such a
reduction is accidental and unessential’’ (p. 66). This unifying impulse undermines
the possibility for any genuine dialogue:
On the basis of philosophical monologism genuine interaction of consciousness is
impossible, and therefore genuine dialog is also impossible . . . he who knows and
possesses the truth instructs him who errs and is ignorant of it, i.e., the interaction of
teacher and pupil. Consequently only a pedagogical dialog is possible. (p. 66)
For Bakhtin, dialogue and monologue are fundamentally incompatible. In dialogical thought, ideas do not converge on a single theme because ideas belong,
inherently, to the many:
An idea does not live in one person’s isolated individual consciousness – if it remains
there it degenerates and dies. An idea begins to live, i.e., to take shape, to develop, to
find and renew its verbal expression, and to give birth to new ideas only when it enters
into genuine dialogical relationship with other, foreign, ideas. Human thought
becomes genuine thought, i.e., an idea, only under the conditions of a living contact
with another foreign thought, embodied in the voice of another person, that is, in the
consciousness of another person expressed in his word. (Bakhtin, 1973, p. 71, emphasis in original)
Dialogical conceptions of meaning, then, are fundamentally multi-voiced – that
is, they live in the plurality of multiple voices and not in the singularity of static
fact.
To make this argument more concretely, dialogism holds the dialogue as its
essential practice and product just as the monologue is the essential practice and
product of monologism. The practices of monologism involve the elaboration of
unitary accounts engaged in the competitive pursuit of a single orthodox account
(i.e., ‘‘the Truth’’). Such practices seek a single coherent voice and their ultimate, or
idealized, product is the authoritative account of any given phenomenon (or of all
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phenomena). Dialogical practice, however, is not founded in unitary accounts; it is
founded in the multiplicity of conversation:
The consciousness of others cannot be contemplated and analyzed and defined like
objects or things – one must relate dialogically to them. To think about them means to
converse with them; otherwise they immediately turn their objectivized side to us; they
fall silent and grow cold and retreat into their finalized objectivized images. (Bakhtin,
1973, p. 56, emphasis in original)
It is thus the living, multi-voiced conversation and not the single-voiced analysis
that is foundational to dialogical practice. Likewise, dialogue is also the fundamental product of dialogism. Dialogism produces a multi-voiced, reciprocally
negotiated meaning and not a unitary, fully integrative account.
This dialogic disavowal of the single-voiced, or monological, account should not
be mistaken for a disavowal of truth, or even of an essential kind of truth; it is only
a disavowal of a truth that can be expressed in the static singularity of independent
fact. For Bakhtin, a single essential truth is possible if truth is understood in a
fundamentally dialogical way:
It is completely possible to imagine and to assume that this one and only truth
requires a plurality of consciousnesses, and that it has, so to speak, the nature of
an event and is born in the point of contact of various consciousnesses. (Bakhtin, 1973,
p. 65, emphasis in original)
For Bakhtin, then, dialogic truth is possible only as a multi-voiced event and not
as a static proposition or set of propositions. A dialogic truth can only take a
dialogic form – i.e., a discursive event – and this multi-voiced truth becomes the
proper form for dialogic research and its products.
Unfortunately, the weight of scientific history swings against such a multi-voiced
conception of research. In the Western intellectual tradition, we have long constructed science as progressive and convergent, as an exercise in eliminating the
vagaries of multiple perspectives and thus establishing a single unassailable truth –
e.g., ‘‘the scientific method is the only known way to distinguish factual truths from
the mixture of truths, half-truths, and outright falsehoods that derive from clinical
experience or ‘common sense’’’ (Peterson, 2004, p. 197). This monologism lies at
the heart of the various social scientific orthodoxies (the IRB, APA style requirements, the DSM, the ‘‘p-value’’ exclusivity of mainstream publication, etc.), including some operative in the qualitative research traditions. Much qualitative research
still emphasizes strict logical categorization, or even quantification, through the use
of complicated coding procedures, a tendency that Giorgi (1994) suggests is ‘‘a
leftover concession to an objectivist criterion of ‘objectivity’’’ (p. 196).
There are, of course, elements of scientific practice that look more like the dialogical ideal of conversation and less like the authoritative pronouncements of
monologism. At least in principle, practices like the peer review process, the
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commentary and counter-commentary system, the development of open and testable theories, etc., all reflect the open, negotiated, and communitarian aspects of
science. There are also particular research traditions that explicitly value the complexities and ambiguities of conversation and reflect these in their practices and
products. Various participatory research traditions, for example, are ‘‘anchored by
the goals of understanding the experiences of others and working collaboratively
with them’’ (Tolman & Miller, 2001, p. 5) and thus engage ‘‘participants in the
collection, analysis, interpretation, and eventual evaluation of research’’
(Morawski, 2001, p. 68). Such research is carried out in conversations and the
resulting research reports bear the challenge and ambiguity inherent in multiple
voices. The same could be said of much research in other qualitative traditions
(narrative, phenomenological, etc.).
The essential point here is that this kind of multi-voiced research and reporting
is central to a dialogic conception of truth, even if (especially if) the resulting
research is rife with ambiguity and uncertainty. ‘‘The urge for certainty cannot
be satisfied in dialogue’’ (Shotter, 1992, p. 18), because dialogical truth lives in the
event of conversation and so is always awaiting the next word. There is no final
word because this would mean the end of conversation, and thus the end of any
possible (though fleeting) truth.
Conclusions and introduction to the special issue
This brief outline of a dialogical approach points to a psyche that is neither a
homunculus nor an epiphenomenal social construction but is, rather, the socioculturally embedded, but genuinely subjective, experience of responding meaningfully
to the concrete circumstances of life. This reconceptualization of psyche is, we
believe, the promise of a dialogical psychology – but can such an approach to
psychology be sustained? In this issue, three different articles, and their associated
commentaries, take up this challenge and try to move our discipline in a dialogical
direction.
In the first article, by Mikael Leiman (2011), we are presented with a very systematic analysis of how to extend the Bakhtinian heritage to psychotherapy
research. Though Leiman’s analysis focuses on the psychotherapeutic context,
we would claim that his arguments are mostly, if not entirely, applicable to psychology in general, since the scope of his reflections goes far beyond the psychotherapeutic setting. In order to accomplish the task of adapting Bakhtin to our
concerns as psychologists and researchers, Leiman follows Vygotsky’s suggestion
to distinguish and define the object of analysis, the explanatory principle, and the
unit of analysis. Building upon some of his previous work, Leiman reformulates his
previous views, stating that utterances are the main subject (object of analysis) of
psychology, semiotic mediation is the explanatory principle, while semiotic position
is regarded as the unit of analysis. With this argument, he sets a clear stage for the
use of a specific method of research: the Dialogical Sequence of Analysis (Leiman,
2004). In his commentary, Frank Richardson (2011) attempts to outline some
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additional implications not addressed in Leiman’s contribution, focusing particularly on the possibilities for transcending individualism and modernism inherent in
dialogical theory. Richardson argues that there are vestiges of individualism in
some contemporary dialogical theories and cautions against an over-emphasis on
autonomy at the expense of genuine relationality.
In the second article, James Cresswell (2011) presents a discussion of how social
constructionism imperils the notion of faithfulness to oneself. While revisiting
Gergen’s views on this subject, Cresswell uses Bakhtin as a way of reversing the
social constructionist case against faithfulness to oneself – it is precisely because we
are dialogical beings, Cresswell argues, that faithfulness to ourselves and to others
is always at stake. To make this argument, Cresswell uses Bakhtin as a resource to
integrate phenomenological experience with a social account of the human mind,
claiming that since every expression involves an experiential relation with a community, the human agent is not a boundless being without ties beyond the circumstantial ones. Faithfulness to others, then, is always at stake, and through these
others, so also is faithfulness to oneself.
While the first article bridges the notion of human phenomenological and
embodied experience with the notion of engaged social activity – i.e., every
social activity is a personal experience – in the third article, Grossen and
Salazar Orvig (2011) explore how a dialogical notion of the self implies alterity,
and therefore necessary participation in wider social structures. Inspired by the
basic triad of a dialogical approach (Ego, Alter, and Object; Marková, 2003a),
Grossen and Salazar Orvig elaborate the two latter concepts. According to
Grossen and Salazar Orvig, psychologically speaking, the Other appears as a
real interlocutor or as a virtual third party audience, while linguistically it is
possible to distinguish additional forms of dialogicality (internal, external, and
autodialogic), and these distinctions amount to the complexity of the lived situation. These two dimensions, psychological and linguistic, place the person in
interaction not only with interlocutors, but also with oneself and with a larger
social world. This world, for Grossen and Salazar-Orvig, is a transpersonal
realm that adds to the personal and interpersonal dimensions of psychological
experience. Therefore, at each moment, psychological experience is always
wrapped in these three simultaneous dimensions, and by virtue of this multidimensionality the objects of our concern also have a simultaneous institutional
life of their own. In this article, the authors point out that institutional independence is a forgotten dimension in accounts of the patterns of stability
involved in a dialogical perspective on the self. As Moore, Jasper, and
Gillespie (2011) point out in their dialogue with Grossen and Salazar-Orvig
(2011), this transpersonal dimension is a core process for explaining how the
self and its potential forms become anchored in institutionalized practices.
Taking this acknowledgement as a starting point, Moore, Jasper, and Gillespie
elaborate how Goffman’s concept of ‘‘frame’’ may be used as a way to bridge
institutional practices and the personal experience. However, the authors claim
that this transpersonal dimension is not, in itself, self-explanatory of stability,
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since at any given moment we may have competing frames that pull the person
into intense dialogical activities.
At the close of this special issue, we will again take up the basic issues raised here
and consider them in light of the contributions offered in this volume (Clegg &
Salgado, 2011). We ask ourselves and the reader whether there is, indeed, any place
for psyche in psychology and, even more, whether dialogism succeeds in making
such a place conceivable.
Funding
This research was supported by Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT),
Grant PTDC/PSI-PCL/103432/2008 (Decentering and change in psychotherapy).
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Author Biographies
João Salgado, Ph.D., is Professor and the Head of Department of Psychology and
Communication at ISMAI, Portugal. He is also a psychotherapist and the Director
of the Counseling Service of his university. His main research interests are associated with the theoretical and methodological developments of a dialogical perspective within psychology, and with the applications of this framework to the field
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of psychotherapy and clinical psychology. He is presently developing a research
project on the role of the decentering processes in psychotherapeutic change.
Joshua W. Clegg is an assistant professor of psychology at John Jay College of
Criminal Justice, CUNY. He earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Psychology from
Brigham Young University, where he was trained as a phenomenologist and theoretician and his Ph.D. in Psychology from Clark University, where he was trained
as a social psychologist. His published work focuses on empirical research in social
alienation and the social psychology of environmental sustainability and theoretical and historical work on research methodology and philosophy of science.
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