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12th International Conference on the Dialogical Self    4 - 7 June 2024 . Tallinn University . Estonia Dear Members, We are thrilled to announce that the submissions for the 12th International Conference on the Dialogical Self, hosted in the enchanting city of Tallinn, Estonia, will open on September 1st! This is your golden opportunity to contribute your insights and ideas to a global dialogue. From September 1st to November 30th, we invite you to submit your proposals for symposia, papers, posters, and workshops. Your valuable contributions are what make our conferences so enriching and thought-provoking. As a token of appreciation for your membership, ISDS members who have paid their 2023 dues will receive an exclusive discount of 50 euros on the conference fee. Don't miss out on this fantastic benefit! For more details and to submit your proposals, please visit the official conference website: https://konverentsikeskus.tlu.ee/en/12th-international-conference-dialogical-self We look forward to welcoming you to Tallinn for a stimulating and engaging conference that promises to push the boundaries of the dialogical self. Warm regards, International Society for Dialogical Science

Dear Colleagues, 

Recently, ISDS president Henk Stam, past-president Hubert Hermans, and the chair of the board of the ISDS foundation, Frans Wijsen, agreed on the formulation of a proposal for  the by-laws of the ISDS. 

This proposal will be discussed at the business meeting of the ISDS at the upcoming (digital) International Conference on the Dialogical Self, June 8, 19.15-20.15, organized by our Barcelona colleagues.  Not only ISDS members are welcome at this meeting, any colleague interested in potential membership is welcome too. Henk Stam is willing to chair the meeting. 

For your information, the whole proposal of the by-laws is presented below. 

Looking forward to meeting you at the conference, 

Henk Stam and Hubert Hermans. 

By-laws of the International Society for Dialogical Science

I Title

The full name of the society is the International Society for Dialogical Science, herein after referred to as the Society.  It was formally constituted under Dutch law in 2002 and the Board of the International Society for Dialogical Science Foundation (hereafter ‘Foundation’) legally operates the ISDS.

The Executive Committee of the ISDS runs the day-to-day affairs of the Society.  The Executive Committee is elected by the membership however the Board of the Foundation must approve the elected Committee members.

II Aim and Objectives: 

1. The stimulation and facilitation of interaction between researchers and practitioners who are interested in the facilitation of dialogical processes in the self, in society and between cultures in a globalizing world.

2. The construction and further development of Dialogical Self Theory and other theories which deal directly with the relationship between self and dialogue.

3. The development of scientific methods for assessment, promotion, and evaluation of dialogical processes in connection with the development of the self.

4. Bringing together theories, methods, research and practice from different psychological subdisciplines and related disciplines which deal with the topics mentioned under 1, 2 and 3. The following subdisciplines and disciplines are considered to be particularly relevant to this goal: personality psychology, social psychology, developmental psychology, psychogerontology, psychology of culture & religion, clinical psychology, psychotherapy, personnel psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, brain sciences, humanities, social anthropology, sociology, philosophy, history, theology, and art.

5. International cooperation in the areas as described under 1, 2 and 3 and between representatives from the subdisciplines and disciplines mentioned under 4.

6. Communication about information concerning planned and current research and practice.  In the service of these objectives the Society organizes regular conferences, symposia, and workshops, distributes newsletters, and publishes articles in the section Dialogical Self Theory of the Journal of Constructivist Psychology.

7.  The Society will define dialogical science very broadly: It comprises at least the study of the self as social in origin and dialogical in its potential. The Society also studies the historical development and background of dialogism.

III Membership

1. Membership of the ISDS is open for all persons with an academic degree in any of the social sciences and to others to whom the aim of the ISDS is academically, professionally or practically relevant.

2. The Executive Committee decides on the admission of a member, a decision normally delegated to the Treasurer, upon payment of the required fees.

3. Membership is terminated by death, the member’s voluntary withdrawal, or a decision taken by the ISDS Executive Committee.

4. Termination of membership, whether by the member or the ISDS Executive Committee, requires a written announcement, at least four weeks before the end of the financial year. When the withdrawal is too late, the membership continues until the end of the following financial year.

5. When the membership ends in the course of a financial year, the member will receive no refund on their membership fees.

IV Executive Committee

1. The Committee includes 2 at-large members, including one student representative, in addition to the President, the Past President, the President-Elect, and the Secretary-Treasurer. 

Members-at-large are elected by the membership for two-year terms, renewable once, with the possibility of a second renewal in some cases.  Membership is staggered so as to ensure both continuity and renewal. 

2.  The President-elect shall be elected from a slate determined by the Executive Committee. Once elected that person will assume the Presidency after two years and the President will become the Past-President.

3. The Executive Committee will be nominated at the ISDS Business Meeting held at the biennial conference. No member can serve on the Committee for more than six consecutive years (as per 1, above, unless the Executive Committee agrees to a renewal beyond this).  Half of the Executive Committee will be chosen at each biennial meeting of the ISDS.  Half will remain on. 

4. Following the election of the Executive Committee, the Foundation will receive the names for approval.

V Meeting

1. The ISDS Business Meeting will be held during the international conference held every two years. The annual meeting for the yearly reports will be held by teleconference in-between biennial conferences. Committee Meetings will receive written notice of the meeting and an agenda at least seven days before the date of the meeting.

2. The meetings will be chaired by the President or, if not present, by the Past-President or the member serving the longest term.

VI Alteration

The ISDS by-laws may be changed at the ISDS Business Meeting with a vote in favour from two-thirds of those members present.  Notice of a vote for a change in the by-laws must be presented prior to the Business Meeting.  The Board must also approve any changes.

In order to take into account the specific interests of the members, we have distinguished five interest groups: Education & Development, Culture & Social Community, Clinic & Health, Work & Organization, and Theory & Methodology.

We are happy that the following colleagues are willing to serve as representatives of the interest groups: Bob Fecho for Education & Development, Luca Tateo for Culture & Social Community, Eugenie Georgaca for Clinic & Health, Rens van Loon for Work & Organization, and Tom Brinthaupt for Theory & Methodology.

The representative will become involved in stimulating the contact and cooperation among the members of the interest groups, to encourage members to exchange ideas and interests, and to organize webinars that will be accessible to all members of the Society.

Hubert Hermans - Honorary President

Education & Development - Bob Fecho

I’m looking forward to facilitating dialogue on the general topics of Education and Development as they relate to DST. In 2020, I will have taught for 24 years in secondary schools and 24 in the academy, so I have been involved in education all of my adult life. Having attended my first ICDS in 2008, I have presented at every conference since then, as well as published articles, chapters, and books that draw on DST particularly as it relates to literacy and teacher education. 

If we accept Jerome Bruner’s idea that the self is our greatest work of art, then the ways that dialogue, story, and DST transact within schools and other education settings are integral to the ongoing being, doing, and becoming of learners. The complex dialogue across I-positions, the sense of self within other and other within self, the role of emotions in learning, and the factors that facilitate dialogue that leads to learning are essential to both what occurs in schools and to the implementation of DST.

Over the last 12 years, I’ve seen educational researchers, education psychologists, and teacher educators play a larger role at the biennial conferences. I think of this forum as an opportunity both sustain and enlarge that participation. Our overarching question is this: What does it mean for educators to embrace DST as a pathway for understanding what occurs among educational stakeholders and within educational settings? Issues of identity construction and teaching approaches as they relate to DST will be central to our initial discussions. However, I also invite participants to share any interests and concerns about DST, education, and development that they wish to explore.

Culture & Social Community - Luca Tateo

Dear valuable members

I have been invited to act as animator and facilitator to promote discussions within the scope of the ISDS research topic Culture & Social Community. I have accepted with great pleasure and joy, and I will begin by briefly introducing myself and my personal interests. My name is Luca Tateo and  I am Associate Professor at the Department of Special Needs Education, University of Oslo. I am also visiting Associate Professor at the Federal University of Bahia and Associate Professor (15%) at Aalborg University. I am editor in chief of the journal Human Arenas, together with Pina Marsico, and editor in chief of the book series Innovations in Qualitative Research, by IAP. I am happily roaming between the oasis of psychology and human sciences, cultivating different interests and learning from different ages. I work on questions of epistemology, history and methodology of psychology, but also on controversial features of human experience, such as imagination, ambivalence, dilemmas, epistemic injustice, human development, tension or grief. 

One of the distinctive features of the people gravitating in the field of dialogical science is the common concern for the relevant social questions that affect the life of everyone. At the same time, by assuming dialogicality as both a dimension of deep personal experience and the link between individual and collective phenomena, we are interested in both the society in the self and the self in the society. Many occurrences are nowadays calling for a stronger commitment of all of us around problems that affect mankind not only as such, but as part of the whole planetary living system. On the one hand, no single relevant problem - such as environmental crisis, migrations, regional conflict for resources, digital network regulations, etc. - can be solved by a nation alone. On the other hand, a general "atmos-fear" is growing, a diffused sense of uncertainty and undetermined threat, resulting in a general claim of closed identities, border-makings and new monological ideologies. New forms of social, environmental and psychological injustice are emerging, side by side to new forms of circular economy, community initiatives and environmental awareness. How can dialogical sciences grasp such complexity and, at the same time, develop the theory and practice of tomorrow? We need a bit of visionaries in social and human sciences, who can look at the past, present and future of human collective activity with a new gaze.

Within the possibilities of ISDS resources, we would like to nourish free discussion, dialogue and collaboration between members on the contemporary and future challenges. We will animate the members' forum, but also organize webinars inviting ISDS members to prepare 30 minutes presentations on a topic they consider relevant, followed by a short question time. Webinars will be recorded and posted on the forum to continue the discussion afterwards. Another space for discussion will be the "book corner", where members can post a short video-review (a couple of minutes) of a book (but also a conference, a software, etc.) they consider relevant. A special role should be played by students and early-stage researchers. We expect them to be the promoter of emerging novelty, In this sense, the  Culture & Social Community will be a safe space, where they can dare to experiment new pathways outside the restrictive mechanisms of academic socialization.

Clinical and Health - Eugenie Georgaca

I am very pleased and honoured to act as domain representative for the Clinical & Health domain of the ISDS. 

I am Associate Professor in Clinical Psychology at the School of Psychology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. I teach, research and publish in clinical psychology, psychotherapy and mental health, especially qualitative methodology, community mental health and critical perspectives on psychopathology. In the field of mental health, I am interested in using dialogical, deconstructive, discursive and biographical narrative ideas in order to examine the construction, experience and management of mental distress, especially its severe end. In the field of psychotherapy, I have combined discursive, narrative and dialogical approaches to understanding and analyzing the process of psychotherapy as a culturally defined, interactional process of meaning making and identity construction. I served as associate editor of the International Journal of Dialogical Science from 2012 until 2018.

I have been working on dialogical psychotherapy research for many years, trying to develop dialogically oriented ways of understanding the process of psychotherapy. In the course of this, I have had fruitful collaborations and exchanges of ideas with colleagues all over the world working on dialogical approaches to psychotherapy. I have also followed the very interesting work on dialogical approaches to psychopathology, especially in the case of psychosis, that has been developed. I am not familiar, and would like to hear more, about applications of dialogical self theory on the field of health. 

I see this forum as a space for fruitful discussions, exchange of ideas, requesting and receiving information, finding out about new developments. I would like to encourage you all to a) share information about new publications, events and projects, b) post news about your ongoing research and/or practice, c) request information about topics you are currently working on, e) share your concerns and start discussions on topics of interest.

I hope this forum serves its intended role as a hub for lively collegial exchanges that enrich our growing dialogical community.

Work & Organization - Rens van Loon

My name is Rens van Loon. I am a professor of Dialogical Leadership at the School of Humanities and Digital Sciences, Tilburg University. I have been working as a scientist and consultant for more than 30 years in leadership. I extend the concepts of Dialogical Self Theory to the leadership of organizations, drawing on social constructionism and leadership frameworks. I am a member of the Scientific Committee of the International Society for Dialogical Science (ISDS). I love to write, my main book is Creating Organizational Value through Dialogical Leadership. Boiling Rice in Still Water (Springer, 2017). 

For those who are interested, some more books and articles:

Van Loon, E. (Rens) & A. Buster (2019). The Future of Leadership: The Courage to be Both Leader and Follower. Journal of Leadership Studies, volume 13, number 1. 1-2.

Koonce, R. & Van Loon, E. (Rens) (eds) (2019). The Dialogical Challenge of Leadership Development. Information Age Publishing (IAP).

Van Loon, E. (Rens) & A. Buster (2019). Dialogical Leadership – Leading yourself across boundaries of self and culture. In: Alma, H. & I. Ter Avest (eds). Moral and Spiritual Leadership in an Age of Plural Moralities. Routledge.

DST is important for W&O because of its applicability. Once you understand the concept of Dialogical Self you can apply it without much effort on people’s functioning within work and organizations. Think about transitions such as: ‘I as a professional/entrepreneur’ to ‘I as a leader of professionals’ to ‘I as a leader of the organization’ and ‘I as a member of a supervisory board of the organization’. DST is very helpful in describing these transitions and analyzing what this means for effective, authentic and ethical leadership development within career and organization. We will discuss study and publish on these topics. Feel free to contribute with idea for research and development within this fascinating domain.    

Theory & Methodology - Tom Brinthaupt

Tom Brinthaupt is Professor of Psychology at Middle Tennessee State University (US). His research focuses on studying self-talk as an individual difference variable, examining how self-talk relates to internal dialogues, and exploring ways to assess and validate the varieties of intrapersonal communication. 

Dialogical Self Theory (DST) has shown extensive development and application as a theory of identity and society. There is a large DST research literature, as well as a biennial international conference devoted to the theory and its many extensions. The theory is very popular and have been applied to multiple fields and disciplines. Despite this progress, there is a need for greater measurement and methodological precision with respect to key DST concepts and constructs. In order to move DST forward, researchers and theorists would benefit from considering the “nomological network” associated with the theory. The nomological net refers to efforts to increase the clarity of and support for theoretical constructs. This process entails the use of observations and inferences that test and support the underlying constructs, clarity of operational definitions, and the need for agreement among those who are using and testing those constructs. In this forum, we highlight some of the ways that researchers can develop construct validation and support the nomological net for DST principles.

In this forum, participants are invited to post new research studies and discuss research and methodological ideas that contribute to efforts at strengthening the nomological net for Dialogical Self Theory. Please let us know if you have ideas or projects that will help us to further this goal.

The Radboud University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands, has officially decided to establish a professorial chair titled "Foundations of Dialogical Self Theory (DST)." It is a so-called "special chair'' for one day a week.The chair will be located in the Faculty of Philosophy, Theology, and Religious Studies of the Radboud University.

The purpose of this chair is to stimulate research guided by the Theory and to teach its philosophical foundations and implications. 

The initiative to propose the chair to the Radboud University was taken by the International Society for Dialogical Science as a legal entity under Dutch law. 

Culture & Psychology 2019, Vol. 25(4) 429–469

In this paper, Jaan Valsiner looks back at 25 years of Cultural Psychology and the place of Dialogical Self Theory in this branch of Psychology.

Abstract

In this article, I review main directions in innovative ideas that have been presented on the pages of Culture & Psychology over its 25 year history. The field of cultural psychology has become established and gains increasing prominence over the years covered—yet its future depends on careful development of the specific theoretical ideas catalyzed by the use of the hyper-term culture in the different arenas of concrete human psychology. Potential future ideas for cultural psychology include a move from acculturation to proculturation, modulation of psychological distance by signs, building models of dialogical relationships in socially asymmetric role relations, and of the affective textures of everyday living. These are all processes of higher-order complexity that require new ways of conceptualizing methodology in psychology—one that prioritizes theoretically based methods construction over those of consensually established “tool boxes.” Cultural psychology has the advantage over other areas of psychology to consider both the real and not (yet) real human conditions within the same scheme, thus allowing for conceptualization of highest forms of human creativity in ordinary human lives.

Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1354067X19872358

In the Handbook of Dialogical Self Theory and Psychotherapy: Bridging Psychotherapeutic and Cultural Traditions, the editors bring together a wide variety of therapeutic approaches in order to demonstrate how Dialogical Self Theory functions as a bridging framework crossing boundaries between countries and cultures.

The basic message is to facilitate a theory-informed dialogue between different perspectives: cognitive therapy, psychoanalytic therapy, gestalt therapy, emotion-focused therapy, Eastern, Indian-American and transpersonal approaches. The chapters present the theoretical notions, qualitative methods, and practical implications of the presented projects with attention to their common dialogical foundation.

With its bridging approach and interdisciplinary aims, the Handbook of Dialogical Self Theory and Psychotherapy will be essential reading for psychotherapists and counsellors in practice and training and for those who are interested in the common factors underlying a wide variety of psychotherapeutic schools and traditions.

Instead of considering society as a social environment, Society in the Self begins from the assumption that society works in the deepest regions of self and identity, as expressed in phenomena like self-sabotage, self-radicalization, self-cure, self-government, self-nationalization, and self-internationalization. This leads to the central thesis that a democratic society can only function properly if it is populated by participants with a democratically organized self. In this book, an integrative model is presented that is inspired by three versions of democracy: cosmopolitan, deliberative, and agonistic democracy, with the latter focusing on the role of social power and emotions.

Drawing on these democratic views, three levels of inclusiveness are distinguished in the self: personal (I as an individual), social (I as a member of a group), and global (I as a human being). A democratic self requires the flexibility of moving up and down across these levels of inclusiveness and has to find its way in fields of tension between the self and the other, and between dialogue and social power. As author Hubert Hermans explains, this theory has far reaching consequences for such divergent topics as leadership in the self, cultural diversity in the self, the relationship between reason and emotion, self-empathy, cooperation and competition between self-parts, and the role of social power in prejudice, enemy image construction, and scapegoating.

The central message of this book is reflected in Mahatma Gandhi's dictum: "Be the change you want to see in the world."