The power of being

present in the moment

in polyphonic dialogues
Jaakko Seikkula

Seikkula, J. & Arnkil, TE (2014) Open

dialogues and anticipations: Respecting
the Otherness in the present moment.
Helsinki: THL

REFERENCES
.

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

Vol. 8. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Bakhtin, M. (1990) Art and Answerability: Early Philosophical Essays of M. M. Bakhtin,
trans. Vadim Liapunov. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Bakhtin, M. (1993) Toward a Philosophy of the Act, trans. Vadim Liapunov. Austin:
University of Texas Press.
Brten, S. (2007). On bein g moved: From mirror neurons to empathy. Amsterdam: John
BenjaminsIacoboni, M (2008) Mirroring People: The new science of how we connect with others. Farrar,
Straus and Giroux
Carman, T. (2008). Merleau-Ponty. London:Routledge.
Hermans, H. & Dimaggio, A. (2005).Dialogical self in psychotherapy.
Stern, D.N. (2004). The present moment in psychotherapy and every day life. NY: Norton
Trevarthen, C. (1990) Signs before speech. In T. A. Seveok and J. Umiker Sebeok (eds),
The Semiotic Web. Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter.
Whitaker, R. (2010). Anatomy of an epidemic. New York: Crown Publ..

... authentic human life is the open- ended dialogue. Life

by its very nature is dialogic. To live means to participate
in dialogue: to ask questions, to heed, to respond, to
agree, and so forth. In this dialogue a person
participates wholly and throughout his whole life:
with his eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit, with his whole
body and deeds. He invests his entire self in discourse,
and this discourse enters into the dialogic fabric of
human life, into the world symposium. (M. Bakhtin,
1984)

Dialogisuuden rytmisyys

Mary Catherin Bateson: Proto language

Stein Brten: virtuell other
Daniel Stern present moment
Colwyn Trevarthen dialogue in jazz like
rhythmicity
Elizabet Fivaz-Depeursinge from dyadic to
collaborative and relational intersubjectivity

Movement is the first language

(Maxine Sheet- Johnstone 2010)

Moving in rhythm
From dyadic to collaborative intersubjectivity
Elisabet Fivaz- Depeursinge: 4 mo old baby
regulates behavior of two adults in triad
Sarah Hrdy: Whole village is needed to rise a
child

Movement

Affects

Emotions

William James (1890): From looking at

patterns to sensing similarities

Our experiences are feelings of tendency, often so vague that we are

unable to name them at all (p.254);
such feelings can function as signs of direction in thought of which we
have an acutely discriminative sense, though no definite sensorial image
plays any part in it whatsoever (p.253).
Thus we can have an acutely discriminative sense of such feelings of
tendency, and it is our inner sensing of similarities rather than of our
seeing of patterns out in the world that is basic to our making sense of
what is happening to us in our lives .

Basic assumptions of relational

life

We born into relations relations become our

embodied being
We are intersubjective not one entity
Life is living in the polyphony of voices
Dialogue between voices is the basic human
experience

To intersubjectivity

Life is not psychology - it is (dialogic) music

(Colwyn Trevarthen)
Virtual others - Stein Brten:)
I see myself in your eyes (M. Bakhtin)
Mirror neurons: I see myself in the other (M.
Iacaboni, 2008)

I observe the reality through the others

observing the same reality (E. Husserl)

We are now experiencing a revolution. The new

view assumes that the mind is always embodied
in and made possible by the sensori-motor
activity of the body. () Mind is intersubjectively
open, since it is partially constituted through its
interaction with other minds D. Stern, 2007, 36)

Psychotherapy?

All the time developing process of

intersubjectivity
Change through two incidents: (1) experience of
sympathy and (2) implicitely known, shared
presence of the other
Now moment and Moment of meeting
(D.Stern, 2007)

Psychotherapy?
Dialogical orientation:
1) Therapists refrain from editing the narratives
2) Therapists do not transform I You dialogue
into I It conversation - (the Third)
3) Dialogue permits opening the moment of
meeting present moment
S. Brten, 2007

Dialogues in meeting

Many voices present:

- those sitting in the circle
horizontal polyphony
- the voices in which we are living while
speaking about specific subject
vertical polyphony

Mikko
Sinikka

T2

Seppo
T1

Family therapist
father mother
male

female

Liisa
technician
father

memory of deathspouse
ma

Vertical polyphony = inner voices

teacher
mother

spouse
daughter
Father death sister
son

Polyphonic self

Voices are the speaking personality, the

speaking consciousness. (Bakhtin, 1984;
Wertsch, 1990)
(Voices are traces and they are activated by new
events that are similar or related to the original
event) (Stiles et al., 2004)
When the mind is thinking, it is simply talking to
itself, asking questions and answering them, and
saying yes or no. (Plato Theatetus 189e-190a)

Being on the boundary

We are subjects in the language only in a
physiological sense
The interlocutor becomes an active coauthor of the word not receiver (M.
Bakhtin)

Being present at the moment

To be present in the once occurring participation

in being (M.Bakhtin)
Neither nor (T. Andersen)
From explicit knowledge to implicit knowing (D.
Stern, 2004)
From narratives to telling

Two simultaneous histories

1. Embodied living in the present moment
- shared experience
- implicit knowing
- comments about the present experience
2. Narratives that we tell of the past incidents,
experiences and things
- meanings constructed

For the word (and, consequently, for a

human being) there is nothing more terrible
than a lack of response
Being heard as such is already a dialogic
relation (Bakhtin, 1975)

Being present generating new

language
S:
T1:
S:

T1:
I
S:
T1:

I have not been recognized

You have not been recognized?
Throughout my life Ive been excluded from the
family. At last I want to get rid of this symbiotic mess.
You said that Throughout my life Ive been
excluded from the family. Then you said that At last
want to get rid of this symbiotic mess. It sounds like
you are saying two things at the same time?
(10) yes... thats what I said. But so far I cannot
say anything more about it
(7) yeah

Sinikka
T3
T2
Seppo

T1

daughter

family therapist
psychologist
male
what is psychosis?
father
female
loosing my father
mother

Liisa

Patient
son
brother
loosing father

Vertical polyphony = inner voices

Horizontal polyphony = people present

sister
teacher
Fathers death
anxiety

Being not present

T1: I thought that it happened during the last two
weeks, not before
T2: Was it a threat or even worse?
T1: Hitting, I thought that P hit his mother
T2: Was P drunk or did he have a hangover?
P:
No, I was sober
T2: Sober
T1: I understood that P had tried to ask his mother
something?

P: Well, it was last weekend; the police came to us. She was
drunk. When she didnt say anything and started to make
coffee in the middle of the night, and I asked . . .I went out
and came into the kitchen, and she turned round and said that
it wasnt allowed to speak about it. Then I slapped her. She
ran out into the corridor and started screaming. I said that
there is no need to scream, that why cant she say. . . . .And
then I calmed down. At that point I got the feeling. . . . And the
police came and the ambulance. But in some way I have a
feeling, that it is, of course, it is not allowed to hit anyone. But
there are, however, situations . . .
T1:
Was that the point when you went into primary care?

P:
Yes it happened just before that
T2: Why did she not say that the police came?
P:
What?
T2: Why did she not say that police had been at
your place the previous night?
P:
It wasnt the previous night, it was last
weekend. I was thinking, all the time I am thinking
those strange things and I knew that they were not
true. But when you think about them for a while,
after that you have the feeling that things like that
can really happen. It is too much. . . . .You are only
thinking of all kinds of futile things.
T2: And it all started last weekend, this situation?
T1: Yes

Family therapy as rhytmic attunement to each

other in the present moment

Example: Heart Rate Variaton in an emotional

group meeting

Family therapy as rhytmic

attunement

Implicit right brain to right brain

On the whole, patients respond more to how the
therapist says something than what the therapist
says. Patients attend primarily to (a) prosody
pitch, and the rhythm and timbre of the voice
and also to (b) body posture, (c) gesture, and (d)
facial expression. (Quilman, 2011)
The pitch of the voice becomes higher before a
re-formulation (Perkyl, 2013)

Studies so far

Synchronization of body movements increase alliance and

good outcome (Ramseyer & Tschacher, 2011)
Facial affects follow each other in 15 sec to 2 min sequences
Smiling as affect regulation both in individual therapy (Rone et
al., 2008) and in couple therapist triad (Benecke,
Bnninger- Huber et al., 2005)
Therapists disclosing can be related to ANS changes
Therapy training increases symphatetic orientation in EDA
(Kleinbub ym., 2013)

Relational Mind project

University of Jyvskyl with 5 other universities in Europe

First time to look at what happens in embodied interaction in
multiactor meetings
Precise videofilming of faces and ANS (heart rate, breathing,
skin conductance) of clients and therapists
Dialogues, inner dialogues, ANS as responsive
synchorinization and its meaaning for outcome

Simulation of therapy session with

measuring equipment

Anu Karvonen ja Virpi-Liisa Kykyri

Video recording in the therapy

session
Split screen recording
(DVD)

Precise facial images

Anu Karvonen ja Virpi-Liisa Kykyri

Jlkihaastattelu sisisest dialogista -FaceReader

Anu Karvonen ja Virpi-Liisa Kykyri

10:07:15.00
10:08:11.00
10:09:07.00
10:10:03.00
10:10:59.00
10:11:55.00
10:12:51.00
10:13:47.00
10:14:43.00
10:15:39.00
10:16:35.00
10:17:31.00
10:18:27.00
10:19:23.00
10:20:19.00
10:21:15.00
10:22:11.00
10:23:07.00
10:24:03.00
10:24:59.00
10:25:55.00
10:26:51.00
10:27:47.00
10:28:43.00
10:29:39.00
10:30:35.00
10:31:31.00
10:32:27.00
10:33:23.00
10:34:19.00
10:35:15.00
10:36:11.00
10:37:07.00
10:38:03.00
10:38:59.00
10:39:55.00
10:40:51.00
10:41:47.00
10:42:43.00
10:43:39.00
10:44:35.00
10:45:31.00
10:46:27.00
10:47:23.00
10:48:19.00
10:49:15.00

600

500

400

300
Series1

Series2

200
Series3

100

Transcription of the highest stress vector of the

client during therapy session
C:
mm (nodding, wiping tears from her cheek)
T1:
earlier you did not notice it and well (.) this abuse it like then (.) was continued
C:
yeah (wiping tears) it was continued
T1:
mm
C:
so that I must only le- no less amount be in touch ((with them)) so that I
myself feel well (nodding)
T1:
but is it so that now that you see it that you have been abused in your
relationships,
that you now get that bad feeling about how you have been mitigated
and that you
have not been respected (.) which was not (gestures
with his
hand away from the client)
there earlier (.)or was it there even then
C:
(wiping her tears) well that was the time of performing I was a performer then
T1:
(coughs) yeah
CLIENTS ASV AT ITS HIGHEST, STARTS TO DECREASE

Anu Karvonen, Virpi-Liisa Kykyri and Jaakko

Seikkula

Therapists synchrony in breathing

Anu Karvonen ja Virpi-Liisa Kykyri

Couple therapy case:

ASV during the therapy session
From top to bottom:
Female client
Male client
Psychologist
Trainee in
psychotherapy

Anu Karvonen ja Virpi-Liisa Kykyri

Very first notions

Reactions of ANS in relation to each other embodied

emphatetic experience?
In a single episode not all in relation to each other
Most stressfull episodes may happen during the speech of
others in the meetings, even during the reflective talks
sensitivity of saying
Most affect loaded situations may happen in non-rhythmic
way: Perhaps in therapy it is the aim to have rhythmicity?

1:GUARANTEEING JOINT HISTORY

Everyone participates from the outset in the
meeting
All things associated with analyzing the
problems, planning the treatment and
decision making are discussed openly and
decided while everyone present
Neither themes nor form of dialogue are
planned in advance

2: GENERATING NEW WORDS AND

LANGUAGE
The primary aim in the meetings is not an
intervention changing the family or the
patient
The aim is to build up a new joint language
for those experiences, which do not yet
have words

3: STRUCTURE BY THE CONTEXT

Meeting can be conducted by one therapist or

the entire team
Task for the facilitator(s) is to (1) open the
meeting with open ended questions; (2) to
guarantee voices becoming heard; (3) to build
up a place for among the professionals; (4) to
conclude the meeting with definition of the
meeting.

4: BECOMING TRANSPARENT

Professionals discuss openly of their own

observations while the network is present
There is no specific reflective team, but the reflective
conversation is taking place by changing positions
from interviewing to having a dialogue
- look at your collegian not at clients
- positive, resource orientated comments
- in form of a questions I wonder if
- in the end ask clients comments
Reflections are for me to understand more not a
therapeutic intervention

5: FOLLOWING WORDS NOT

MEANINGS

In the conversation the team tries to follow

the words and language used by the
network members instead of finding
explanations behind the obvious behavior

SIMPLE GUIDES FOR THE DIALOGUE IN

PRESENT MOMENT

Prefer themes of the actual conversation instead of

narratives of past - be realistic
Follow clients stories and be careful with your own
openings repeat the said (and imitate movements)
Guarantee response to spoken utterances.
Responses are embodied, comprehensive
Note different voices, both inner and horizontal
Listen to your own embodied responses
Take time for reflective talks with your collegues
Dialogical utterances, speak in first person
Proceed peacefully, silences are good for dialogue

Love is the life force, the soul, the

idea. There is no dialogical
relation without love, just as there
is no love in isolation. Love is
dialogic.
(Patterson, D. 1988) Literature and spirit: Essay
on Bakhtin and his contemporaries, 142)

Dialogical Methods for Investigations

in Happenins of Change
Jaakko Seikkula
Aarno Laitila
Peter Rober
Making Sense of Multi-Actor Dialogues in Family
Therapy and Network Meetings. Journal of
Marital and Family Therapy (2012)