The Dialogical View of Psychotherapy: Some Theoretical Considerations and Critical Remarks (commentary)

Dialogical theory is a helpful frame of reference for psychotherapy research, which provides a perspective for the study of psychotherapy process in terms of meaning construction and exchange. This paper will firstly review the basic features of the dialogical approach to the theory of Self and of the process of psychotherapy, as taken into account in the papers by Avdi (2012), Gonçalves and Ribeiro (2012), Martínez, Tomicic and Medina (2012), and Leiman (2012). On the whole, the authors use the term “dialogical” with reference to a general theory of therapeutic change. The implications of such an use of the dialogical concept will be discussed, with special focus on how the relationship between intrapsychic and intersubjective dimensions are taken into account, both at the levels of theory and methodology of analysis of the psychotherapy process. With the presentation of different dialogical approaches to the study of psychotherapy, some theoretical considerations can be proposed concerning the common ground shared by the papers of Avdi (2012), Gonçalves and Ribeiro (2012), Martínez, Tomicic and Medina (2012), and Leiman (2012), included in this special issue. On the whole, the authors use the term “dialogical” with reference to a general theory of therapeutic change. More specifically, two levels of analysis may be identified: the first level concerns the dialogical perspective as a contribution to the theory of the therapeutic factors which are responsible for the patient’s change in psychotherapy; the second level concerns the formulation of a dialogical model of psychotherapy process, referred to as a “meta-model” of psychotherapy. The implications of such two perspectives about the dialogical approach will be discussed, particularly by focusing on the development of a meta-model of psychotherapy, which Leiman (2012) describes as “an arduous challenge for researchers”. A special focus on the theoretical dimension is needed given the implicit contradiction within the dialogical paradigm – that is, its tendency towards considering the internal dialogues as individual constructions, by sidestepping the wider interactional and intersubjective context where the Self is shaped and construed. Such a AUTHORS’ NOTE. Please address all correspondence regarding this article to Andrea F. Auletta, Universitá del Salento, via Stampacchia, 18, 73100 Lecce, Italy. Email: [email protected]