Dialogue Therapy for Couples and Real Dialogue for Opposing Sides

A clear, cogent, and comprehensive account of the rationale and methods of Dialogue Therapy and Real Dialogue, this volume introduces models of facilitated dialogue designed specifically to end polarization. This book offers a straightforward and comprehensive encounter with some of the most effective theories and methods to facilitate dialogue and disrupt deadening power struggles between life partners, grown children and parents, siblings, co-workers, and others whose conflicts have led to harmful polarizations. The book is based on ideas and relational models from mindfulness and psychoanalysis that have not been applied in this unique way before. This melding of mindfulness (containment, concentration, equanimity, maintaining a "mindful gap") with the psychoanalytic understanding of projection and projective identification (the "hijacking" of our subjective experiences) creates much more than light at the end of the tunnel. It engenders the acceptance of another that leads to love and insight, based on the recognition and acknowledgement of our autonomy and our common humanity in the midst of conflict. This book introduces a new, revolutionary model for couple therapists, life coaches, group facilitators, and leaders to open a mindful space that increases witnessing capacities in the midst of emotional conflict without imposing goals of agreement, reconciliation or compromise.

Jean Pieniadz, Ph.D., is a psychologist, psychoanalyst, and supervisor in private practice. She is a founding and current faculty and board member of the Vermont Institute for the Psychotherapies. Her publications are in the areas of developmental psychology, feminist ethics, and neuropsychology. Polly Young-Eisendrath, Ph.D., is a psychologist, writer, speaker, and Jungian analyst. She has published eighteen books (translated into twenty languages), including The Self-Esteem Trap and Love Between Equals. A lifelong Buddhist practitioner, she is also a mindfulness teacher. Her podcast is "Enemies: From War to Wisdom" (www.young-eisdendrath.com).

1. Dialogue therapy for marriage and other relationships in the 21st century 2. Increasing trust: accurate witnessing versus secure attachment 3. Projective identification as unconscious interaction 4. The "be-attitudes" for therapists and couples in dialogue therapy 5. Models (co-therapist and solo), screening, and pragmatics in practicing dialogue 6. Physical set-up and evaluation in co-therapist and solo models 7. Working on a conflict (woc) sessions in dialogue therapy 8. Unblocking: recognizing, investigating,and addressing projective identification 9. Role reversal, wrap-up, and six-month follow-up 10. Real dialogue for opposing sides: skill, method, and practice of facilitating difficult conversations outside of psychotherapy