From Monologue to Dialogue

Bakhtin distinguishes monologue from dialogue as an attempt to provide another way of talking about and critiquing the long-celebrated objectivist (i.e., modernist) tradition. Bakhtin introduces the term "dialogic" as a way of identifying social processes as central to any understanding of our worlds. As Sampson (1993) summarizes Bakhtin's position, "Neither meaning nor self is a precondition for social interaction; rather, these emerge from and are sustained by conversations occurring between people" (p. 98-9).

Bakhtin's insistence that meaning emerges in dialogue is contrasted to a monologic view of meaning construction. In short,

. . . monologism denies that there exists outside of it another consciousness, with the same rights, and capable of responding on an equal footing, another and equal I (thou). For a monologic outlook (in its extreme or pure form) the other remains entirely and only an object of consciousness, and cannot constitute another consciousness. No response capable of altering everything in the world of my consciousness, is expected of this other. The monologue is accomplished and deaf to the other's response; it does not await it and does not grant it any decisive force. Monologue makes do without the other; that is why to some extent it objectivizes all reality. Monologue pretends to be the last word. (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 318)

The inevitable conclusion of monologue is for the speaker to assume the position of objective observer, evaluator, and an intentional agent/actor whose actions have certain effects on their objects. Even a "silent" therapist (i.e., one who spends most of his or her time listening) could be cast as an intentional agent and thus as illustrative of Bakhtin's monologism. To many therapists, there is purpose, evaluation, and objectivity in their silence. These features characterize Bakhtin's monologism. Action emerging from an implied notion of agency, individuality, objectivity, and consequently evaluation assume that monologic voice rather than the dialogic voice of relationship. Thus it is important to point out that it is not necessarily the case that a therapist who adheres to a monologic epistemology or ontology will actually do things differently from a therapist who adheres to the dialogic principle. Yet the interplay of the therapist's and client's actions will be qualitatively different in both cases with the dialogic therapeutic context serving as an illustration of attentiveness to relational processes (i.e., processes of social construction).

Another way of discerning monologism from dialogism is to recognize that a monologue locates our investigation within the person. To that end, any attempt to discover, assess or adjust identity is directed toward an investigation of a self-contained individual (Sampson, 1977; 1993). Dialogism, on the other hand, locates our investigations in relational patterns. We enter into our conversations, our investigations, our therapeutic contexts privileging processes rather than individuals. Such an emphasis means that "people's lives are characterized by the ongoing conversations and dialogues they carry out in the course of their everyday activities, and therefore that the most important thing about people is not what is contained within them, but what transpires between them" (Sampson, 1993, p. 20, original emphasis). Consequently, the conversational practices that engage therapists and clients become the focus of dialogic therapy whereas studying what are assumed to be features of the client become the focus of monologic therapy. In the later, there is little or no consideration given to the relational creation of identity that emerges in (1) the therapeutic relationship and in (2) the client's telling of his or her story. The telling of a story is always constrained and potentiated, as are its meanings, by the relationship (real and imagined) in which the telling occurs. Consequently, a story told to one's therapist might construct a different identity than the same situation storied in another relational context.

Psychotherapy, because it is considered the "talking cure," could all too quickly be identified as dialogic. Conversation is already a central component of psychotherapy. It is easy to deduce from this realization that, by its very nature, therapy is dialogic. However, a return to the distinction between dialogue and monologue illustrates that despite it's largely conversational nature, most forms of psychotherapy are, as illustrated above, monologic.

Monologue implies or suggests that a therapist can evaluate another through his or her ability to objectively determine and intervene in the other's life and this can be and often is a therapist's stance even when/if she or he proclaims a "process" orientation. For example, a therapist who attends to interpersonal processes in families but claims that the family has diffuse boundaries and is therefore enmeshed does not speak as one engaged in relational construction but as one who is the objective observer of complex family patterns. On the other hand, a therapist who "plays" with the idea of boundaries, who invites clients to "try on" this discourse as a way of talking about the current problem situation, is engaging in dialogic interplay. In other words, the dialogic therapist does not levy a diagnosis or evaluation on his or her clients. Rather, the therapist suggests a way of talking about the client's situation which draws on that therapist's array of conversational resources (i.e., ways of talking). The limits and constraints of these resources, to the postmodern therapist, are always featured.

Bakhtin, M.M. (1984). Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Edited and trans. by Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.