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Psychiatry - General & Miscellaneous, Pragmatics & Discourse Analysis, Mental Health Services & Personnel, Psychotherapy, Reference - Psychology
Dialogical Meetings in Social Networks by Jaakko Seikkula — book cover

Dialogical Meetings in Social Networks

by Jaakko Seikkula, Tom Erik Arnkil
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Overview

Dialogic practices have been described and analyzed to a certain extent in the fields of therapy and other psychosocial work—and so have approaches based on network encounters and multi-professional work. But these two, networks and dialogues, have seldom been placed in the same framework. Yet dialogic encounters between private and professional networks have great potentials in dissolving problems.

The book describes and analyzes two dialogic network practices, Open Dialogues and Anticipation Dialogues. Both are the result of development and research during almost two decades. They both bring professional and private networks into dialogue and strive at combining resources. Open Dialogues were developed for psychiatric crisis situations, whereas Anticipation Dialogues are at home in less acute situations, in multi-agency muddles where the helper systems are stuck.

The book gives an account detailed enough for practitioners who want to apply the approaches. It also delves into theory. The authors analyze Open and Anticipation Dialogues and enter paradigmatic discussion about encounters in therapy and psychosocial work in general. The book is meant for professionals in the fields of psychosocial work—from therapists to day care personnel, from social workers to school teachers—as well as researchers and academics. This volume speaks to policymakers about organizing services, and as it touches upon dialogues with and within private networks, it reaches out to clients, too.

Synopsis

Dialogic practices have been described and analyzed to a certain extent in the fields of therapy and other psychosocial work—and so have approaches based on network encounters and multi-professional work. But these two, networks and dialogues, have seldom been placed in the same framework. Yet dialogic encounters between private and professional networks have great potentials in dissolving problems.

The book describes and analyzes two dialogic network practices, Open Dialogues and Anticipation Dialogues. Both are the result of development and research during almost two decades. They both bring professional and private networks into dialogue and strive at combining resources. Open Dialogues were developed for psychiatric crisis situations, whereas Anticipation Dialogues are at home in less acute situations, in multi-agency muddles where the helper systems are stuck.

The book gives an account detailed enough for practitioners who want to apply the approaches. It also delves into theory. The authors analyze Open and Anticipation Dialogues and enter paradigmatic discussion about encounters in therapy and psychosocial work in general. The book is meant for professionals in the fields of psychosocial work—from therapists to day care personnel, from social workers to school teachers—as well as researchers and academics. This volume speaks to policymakers about organizing services, and as it touches upon dialogues with and within private networks, it reaches out to clients, too.

About the Author, Jaakko Seikkula

Jaakko Seikkula , Ph.D. is clinical psychologist and family therapy trainer. A Senior Assistant in the Department of Psychology at the University of Jyväskylä, he is a Professor in two universities in Norway. For more than twenty years he has been involved in developing, studying and implementing the Open Dialogue approach for the most severe psychiatric and other crisis.

Tom Erik Arnkil , Ph.D., is a research professor at Stakes (Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health, Helsinki, Finland) and an associate professor of social policy at the University of Helsinki. For two decades he and his team have studied "multi-problem" — or "multi-agency" — situations where multiple helpers may get stuck, and sought to develop means for enhancing co-operation between professionals and with the clients and their personal networks. Arnkil has authored and co-authored numerous articles and seventeen books.

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Editorials

From the Publisher

"The book carefully explains the theoretical basis for dialogical communication, drawing heavily on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, but its great strength is the way these principles have been transformed into a practice of community meetings. Because the authors are drawing on years of experience as well as outcome research studies, they present a framework for a model that is proven and they describe the techniques that make it work. For example, there are helpful sections that spell out what questions to ask a psychotic patient, how to respond to delusions and how to approach other professionals when the network is becoming stuck in its task.

Although the book describes their model in detail, many practitioners find that their ideas about dialogic communication can be applied across a wide range of clinial settings, such as family therapy, but they are particularly useful when multi-disciplinary or multi-agency teams meet to devise treatment for patients...This Finnish team is widely recognized for the work they are doing, as shown by their writings and presentations at conferences. It is a major step in bringing their work to the attention of the English speaking community."

"What I particularly appreciated in reading this work is that we are introduced in both Open Dialogues and Anticipation Dialogues to imprtant elements of Bakhtin's dialogical theory, together with fresh ideas about networks talking with networks...On a smaller scale, this book feels to me like a trumpet blast, not just in accouncing the achievement of a more contextualized approach to human dilemmas, but in offering some solid proof of its efficacy."

Book Details

Published
August 1, 2006
Publisher
Karnac Books
Pages
224
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9781855754102

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