Seikkula, J.; Trimble, D. (2005) Healing elements of therapeutic conversation: Dialogue as an embodiment of love. Family Process 44(4): 461–475
http://apopendialogue.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/seikkula-HealingElementsofTherapeuticConver.pdf
From our Bakhtinian perspective, understanding requires an active process of talking and listening. Dialogue is a precondition for positive change in any form of therapy. Using the perspectives of dialogism and neurobiological development, we analyze the basic elements of dialogue, seeking to understand why dialogue becomes a healing experience in a network meeting. From the perspective of therapist as dialogical partner, we examine actions that support dialogue in conversation, shared emotional experience, creation of community, and creation of new shared language. We describe how feelings of love, manifesting powerful mutual emotional attunement in the conversation, signal moments of therapeutic change.

Seikkula J, Laitila A, Rober P. (2012) Making sense of multi-actor dialogues in family therapy and network meetings. J Marital Fam Ther. 38(4):667-87.
http://www.fundacioninterfas.org/capacitacion/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Seikkula-Makingsense.pdf
In this article, we propose some preliminary ideas concerning qualitative investigations of multi-actor dialogues. Our aim is to work toward an integration of Bakhtin’s theoretical concepts with good practices in qualitative research (e.g., dialogical tools and concepts of a narrative processes coding system) in order to make sense of family therapy dialogues. A specific method that we have called Dialogical Methods for Investigations of Happening of Change is described. This method allows for a general categorization of the qualities of responsive dialogues in a single session, and also for a detailed focus on particular sequences through a microanalysis of specific topical episodes. The particular focus is on the voices present in the utterances, the positioning of each speaker, and the addressees of the utterances. The method is illustrated via an analysis of a couple therapy session with a depressed woman and her husband.

Shotter, J., Katz, A. (1998) ‘Living Moments in Dialogical Exchanges’. Human Systems 9(2), 81- 93
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/238767356_’Living_moments’_in_dialogical_exchanges/link/5523cdcc0cf2c815e0732685/download
This article explores Tom Andersen’s emphasis on the significance of particular “arresting,” “moving,” “living,” or “poetic moments” that arise within therapeutic dialogues. The authors interpret his work as an example of what John Shotter and Aron Katz have described as a practice of social poetics. Rather than aiming to produce a universal, purely cognitive explanation of such moments—one that claims to uncover their essential nature—social poetics encourages a different orientation. It invites us to engage more attentively with the unfolding, dynamic “play” of unique events as they occur in real conversations, and to participate in them rather than stand outside them as detached observers.
From this perspective, meaning is not fixed or pre-given but emerges through the ongoing creation of connections between events within the interaction itself. It is through this continuous linking, in practice, that participants in a dialogue come to reveal both themselves and their lived worlds to one another. These fleeting yet vital moments of interaction open up space for genuinely new possibilities. In such “living moments,” people do not simply analyze or intellectually solve their problems; instead, they begin to enact and experience solutions within the flow of their interactions—solutions that could not be reached through abstract reflection alone.
To deepen this exploration, the article draws on the philosophical contributions of Gaston Bachelard, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose ideas help illuminate the fluid, relational, and emergent nature of meaning in human encounters. As Andersen himself suggests, the kind of life therapists are most concerned with consists of meanings and feelings that are constantly shifting—present for a brief moment and gone the next—highlighting the importance of attending to these transient yet transformative instances within therapeutic practice.

Shotter, J. (2003) Cartesian change, chiasmic change: The power of living expression. Janus Head 6, 6–29
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/253661331_Cartesian_Change_Chiasmic_Change_The_Power_of_Living_Expression/link/5523cdcc0cf24f1609437864/download
Thus, rather than merely gaining a sense of that reality over there from a set of pictures that we might view in an art gallery without ever going out into the actual world at large, the nonvisual dynamical patterns that we can come to embody, in following Wittgenstein’s methods, can help us in actual fact to come to be more ‘at home’ in our own human world.

Lidbom PA, Bøe TD, Kristoffersen K, et al (2015): How participants’ inner dialogues contribute to significant and meaningful moments in network therapy with adolescents. Contemporary Family Therapy 37:122–129
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10591-015-9331-0
Abstract As a part of a larger research project, this qualitative study explores the interplay between an outer dialogue and participants’ inner dialogues in network therapy with adolescents in the mental  healthcare system for children and adolescents. The aim of this study is to explore how the participants’ inner dialogues contribute to significant and meaningful moments in the therapeutic meeting. A multiperspective methodology is used that combines video recordings of network therapy sessions and participants’ interviews with text analysis. Our research found that the participants’ inner dialogues are essential in the development of significant and meaningful moments during a therapeutic conversation. We also found that one of the main reasons that inner dialogues are essential in the emergence of such moments is that they contain many different movements, both in time and between positions

Bøe TD, Kristoffersen K, Lidbom PA, et al (2013): Change is an ongoing ethical event: Levinas, Bakhtin and the dialogical dynamics of  becoming. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy 34:18–31
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264606303_Change_is_an_Ongoing_Ethical_Event_Levinas_Bakhtin_and_the_Dialogical_Dynamics_of_Becoming/link/5a4995f4458515f6b058cb20/download
In this article, we use the intersubjective ethics of Bakhtin and Levinas and a case illustration to explore change in therapy as an ethical phenomenon. We follow Lakoff and Johnson in their emphasis on the way our conceptions of change seem permeated by metaphors. Bakhtin and Levinas both suggest through a language in which metaphors play a crucial role, that human existence—the consciousness and the subject—emerge within the dialogue of the encounter. They both describe the dynamics of human existence as ethical in their origin. Following this, we argue that change may be seen as an ongoing ethical event and that the dynamics of change are found in the ways we constantly become in this event. We investigate the ethical dynamics of this ongoing event through three themes illuminating the contributions of both Bakhtin and Levinas: (1) we become as responsible, (2) we become in speaking, (3) we become in answering the unknown. We explore these themes through a case illustration. Finally, we briefly point out some possible implications for mental health practice.

Bøe TD, Kristoffersen K, Lidbom PA, et al (2014): “She offered me a place and a future”: change is an event of becoming through movement in ethical time and space. Contemporary Family Therapy 36: 474–484
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10591-014-9317-3#citeas
The aim of this study was to explore the social dynamics of change related to adolescents in psychosocial crises. From the perspective of lived experience the study focused changes related to the adolescents’ ways of existing in various social arenas. Data from qualitative interviews with adolescents receiving help from a mental health service, persons in their social network, and the practitioners involved were explored through a dialogical phenomenological–hermeneutical process. Two co-researchers, on the basis of their own experience with mental health problems, participated throughout the research process. Concepts from the thinking of Mikhail Bakhtin, Françoise Dastur, and John Shotter were used as interpretative help. Main theme: change is the event of becoming through movement in Ethical Time and Space. Two dimensions, conceptualized as Ethical Space and Ethical Time, were identified: (1) “A place for me” or “No place for me” (Ethical Space), and (2) Before-Event of anticipation—Event of movement—After-Event of experience (Ethical Time). Four aspects within these dimensions emerged: (1) an opening Before-Event: offering space for my movement; (2) a closing Before-Event: not offering space for my movement; (3) a life-giving After-Event: the experience of being valued; and (4) a life-deteriorating After-Event: the experience of being devalued. The results are discussed in relation to other studies investigating how bodily responsiveness is at the core of human becoming.

Bøe TD, Kristoffersen K, Lidbom PA, et al (2015): “Through speaking, he finds himself… a bit”: dialogues open for moving and living through inviting attentiveness, expressive vitality and new meaning. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy 36: 167–187
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273672950_’Through_speaking_he_finds_himself_a_bit’_Dialogues_Open_for_Moving_and_Living_through_Inviting_Attentiveness_Expressive_Vitality_and_New_Meaning
The present study is part of a series of qualitative studies from southern Norway, exploring dialogical practices and change from the perspective of lived experience and in relationship with network meetings. Two co-researchers, who themselves had experienced mental health difficulties, were part of the research team. Material from qualitative interviews was analysed through a dialogical hermeneutical process where ideas from Emmanuel Levinas and Mikhail Bakhtin were used as analytical lenses. Six interdependent dimensions emerged from our interpretative analysis, comprising three temporal dimensions (1. Dialogues open the moment, 2. Dialogues open the past, and 3. Dialogues open the future) and three dimensions of speaking, which operated across the three temporal dimensions (4. Ethical: Dialogues open through inviting attentiveness and valuing, 5. Expressive: Dialogues open for new vitality, and 6. Hermeneutical: Dialogues open for new meaning). These dimensions were incorporated into one main theme: Dialogues – beginning by others being invitingly attentive – open for moving and living. The way the findings point to change events as an opening for movement – ‚moving in‘ as if from the outside, and ‚moving on‘ as opposed to being stuck – are discussed in relation to other studies. We conclude by suggesting that the salient point of change-generating conversations is in the ethics of being invitingly attentive, and such conversations should take into account multidimensionality, that relates to the past and the future.

Holmesland A-L, Seikkula J, Hopfenbeck M (2014): Inter-agency work in Open Dialogue: the significance of listening and authenticity. Journal of Interprofessional Care 28:433–439, 2014
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261325469_Interagency_work_in_Open_Dialogue_the_significance_of_listening_and_authenticity
The article explores what professionals regard as important skills and attitudes for generating inter-agency network meetings involving intra- and interprofessonal work. More specifically, we will examine what they understand as promoting or impeding dialogue and how this is related to their professional backgrounds. The professionals participated in a project using an open dialogue approach in order to increase the use of inter-agency network meetings with young people suffering from mental health problems. In this explorative case study, empirical data was collected through interviews conducted with two focus groups, the first comprising healthcare professionals and the second professionals from the social and educational sectors. Content analysis was used, where the main category that emerged was dialogue. To illustrate the findings achieved in the focus groups, observations of inter-agency network meetings are included. The findings describe the significance and challenges of listening and authenticity in the professionals‘ reflections. The healthcare workers expressed worries concerning their capacities for open and transparent dialogues, while the other professionals‘ emphasized the usefulness of particular techniques. Inter-agency network meetings may be improved if more awareness is placed on the significance of meeting atmosphere, dwelling on specific topics, dealing with silence and understanding how authentic self-disclosure in reflections can promote the personal growth of the participants.

Piippo J, Aaltonen J (2008): Mental health care: trust and mistrust in different caring contexts. Journal of Clinical Nursing 17: 2867–2874
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1365-2702.2007.02270.x
Results: Three categories creating trust were found in the Integrated Network and Family Model and two in the Traditional context. Acceptance of the patient’s expertise concerning his/her life situation, openness and joint discussions concerning knowledge are important. Trust is closely connected to autonomy and power: patients feel that trust increases as their experience of autonomy increases and in such situations power is not owned by any one person.
Conclusions: Trust between psychiatric patients and personnel can be created in both the Integrated Network and Family Model and traditional context, but in different ways. Relevance to clinical practice. Clinical workers and nursing personnel can use our findings in their practical work with psychiatric patients. Our findings support theoretical considerations concerning trust and can be used as guidelines for nursing personnel in their work.

Piippo J, Aaltonen J (2004): Mental health: integrated network and family-oriented model for co-operation between mental health patients, adult mental health services and social services. Journal of Clinical Nursing 13:876–885
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1365-2702.2004.00958.x
Results: The findings indicate the importance of the participation of patients and their social networks in psychiatric care or the treatment process. Meetings should be characterized by open and reflexive discussions with all participants’ points of view being included, so that fruitful co-operation is possible. However, some negative experiences were also reported, all of which were connected with the professionals’ behaviour.
Conclusions: Trust and honesty are essential elements in relations between professionals and psychiatric patients, but it cannot be assumed that they will develop naturally. It is the professionals’ responsibility to adjust their behaviour so that these elements can be created in a mutual process between patients and professionals. Multidisciplinary teams are a necessity in family-oriented co-operation between psychiatry and social services, and in a satisfactory caring process. Relevance to clinical practice. Nurses’ work is often individually oriented and nurses are ruled by routines in their work. The mental health caring process should be seen as a shared process between the patient, his/her human environment and professionals for which nurses need skills to their interaction with patients and their social network.

Marlowe NI (2015) Open Dialogue with RD Laing. Psychosis 7:272–275
https://macquariestreetpsychology.com.au/open-dialogue-and-the-divided-self/
Conclusions: Notwithstanding the methodological challenges, when the theoretical interfaces between the works of Seikkula and Laing are examined, a programme of research emerges with the potential to generate synergistic effects on both sides. Moreover, the therapeutic structure of OD appears well suited to the empirical task that Laing was unable to undertake: The exploration of the inter-relations between ontological insecurity, invalidating interpersonal contexts, psychosis, dialogue, validating therapeutic relationships and recovery. It is anticipated that research in the directions indicated may contribute to the further development of a comprehensive psychological theory of psychosis, grounded in the lived experience of the individual, as well as to the emergence of more innovative and effective methods of psychotherapy.