Two people talk in a room that is otherwise quiet. Their voices rise with urgency; at other times, they seem relaxed, comfortable with the play of dialogue between them. They are talking about a problem that ostensibly belongs to one of them alone, yet both appear to understand that the problem must become mutual if they are to make any headway. They consult their relationship for clues about how to proceed. Each knows that if they are successful, they will understand the problem in a new way. Each expects to change and be changed by their encounter.
Are we listening in on a psychoanalytic session? For an increasing number of dispute resolution professionals, the relationship depicted above describes contemporary forms of negotiation and mediation called “transformative mediation” or “second-generation dispute resolution practices.”
Negotiation has traditionally been assumed to be either a zero-sum game in which the winner takes all or an undertaking that results in compromises unsatisfactory to all. Until recently, most models of negotiation have been based on theories of economic rationality. Now, however, many negotiators and mediators view conflict as a social process in which people in a dispute shape the nature of the problem by how they talk about it as well as by how they relate to one another. Successful negotiations require joint problem-solving where the interests of all parties may be creatively represented. Responsible outcomes exist in the context of effective relationships. The goal of transforming conflict often transforms the individuals involved in it.
My interest in negotiation developed from the base of clinical research, teaching, and practice as a psychologist. As a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Michigan Psychological Clinic, I was able to study mutual influence between therapist and client. This project was part of a larger investigation of therapeutic alliance directed by Robert Hatcher and his research team. The opportunity to work with colleagues on a large sample of audiotaped psychotherapy data was an invaluable part of my training. From our close listening to these therapies, we began to think of clinical exchanges as a form of negotiation.
In the last ten years, a number of psychoanalysts have turned to the concept of “negotiation” as a way to describe the intersubjective and interactive aspects of a psychoanalytic process. Negotiators and mediators are beginning to deploy clinical and relational vocabularies to better capture the dynamic process of how people go about addressing their grievances. Can clinicians, negotiators, and mediators learn from one another about interactive relationship building? How might they see each other's practices and understand each other's problems?
I've had a chance to facilitate just such a dialogue as a visiting scholar in the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School (PON). For the last two years, I have visited PON for two or three days each month, traveling from Ann Arbor, Mich., to participate in a range of teaching and research activities. This was made possible by the generosity of Jamie Feldman and Henry Friedman, who opened their Cambridge home to me during my monthly visits.
At PON I have had the privilege of coordinating a faculty working group on clinical and negotiation process. The working group is an interdisciplinary collaboration involving clinicians, negotiators, and mediators. The psychoanalysts in the group are members of the American Psychoanalytic Association and affiliated with Division 39: Jay Abel-Horowitz, James Hansell, Robert Hatcher, Jane Kite, Jonathan Kolb, Melissa Nelken, Barbara Pizer, Stuart Pizer, Robert Pyles, Owen Renik, Carol Rubin, Mal Slavin, Harry Smith, and Stuart Twemlow. The negotiators and mediators in our group are drawn from the Harvard Negotiation Project and the faculties of Harvard Business School, Harvard Law School, Simmons College of Management, and the Tuck School at Dartmouth College.
As a group, we are practitioners and educators, psychologists and psychoanalysts, mediators and negotiators, all intrigued by the process of personal change that people go through as they negotiate, when they undergo treatment, and as they teach and learn.
Despite the differences in our disciplines, our professional lives intersect in our commitment to developing relationships that make a difference.
The working group has met for four all-day seminars. We are now at work on a book that we hope will contribute to dialogue among our professions. We plan to address questions like these: What do therapists and analysts need to know about negotiation? What do mediators and negotiators need to understand about the psychology of those engaged in the resolution of disputes? What is required when clinicians and legal professionals are working together (for example, in custody disputes)?
We are interested in the process of negotiation that occurs between analysts and therapists and their patients in treatment relationships as they work together to create the relational climate most conducive to helping the patient with his or her problems. We will also attend to the clinical process of negotiation and mediation settings in which emotions, repetitive relationship patterns, and habitual modes of psychological self-protection can complicate the effort to settle a difference. We hope that the outcome of our efforts will allow us to develop a set of insights into the interpersonal exchanges that define the leading edges of practice in both fields.
The Clinical and Negotiation Process Working Group at PON has been paralleled by other collaborative endeavors. Stuart Pizer presented a colloquium to PON faculty and students on the negotiation of paradox. Vamik Volkan spent two weeks at PON discussing psychoanalytic models of intervention in ethnic conflict.
During this past year, Michael Wheeler, a professor of management at Harvard Business School, and I have written a paper, “Crossing the Threshold: First Impressions in Therapy and Negotiation.” We presented this paper in Stuart Twemlow's discussion group “The Development of a Curriculum for Psychoanalytic Institutes to Teach Applied Psychoanalysis” at the spring meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association in New Orleans.
The opportunity to be a part of this interdisciplinary community has enriched my identity as a psychoanalytic candidate and clinician. As psychoanalysts, we bring to partnerships with academics and other practitioners an articulated understanding of the strengths and vulnerabilities of human beings. Dispute resolution professionals have welcomed psychoanalytic perspectives as another voice in a range of conversations about the problems of humans in need. As a member of this working group, I have had the chance to see first-hand the imaginative possibilities and new relationships that can accrue when psychoanalytic clinicians extend themselves beyond the borders of the consulting room.
Kimberlyn Leary, Ph.D., is associate director at the university of Michigan Psychological Clinic, an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Michigan's Psychology Department, and an advanced candidate at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute.