Conference Agenda

Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM) is a health condition that requires careful management of food intake to prevent health crises and complications. Previous research has primarily focused on clinical indicators and treatment adherence, leaving family dynamics largely unexplored. Drawing on the intersection between Cultural Psychology and Dialogical Self Theory (DST), this study seeks to understand how meanings about food management are configured within the family of an adolescent diagnosed with T1DM. Our main contribution to this symposium is oriented to highlight the methodological approach adopted in this research (idiographic, qualitative, and in-depth case analysis) with the use of diverse sources of information, and is strongly linked to the theoretical assumptions of Cultural Psychology and DST. Fieldwork combined: 1. Semi-structured situated task based on everyday activities of purchasing, preparing, and consuming food; 2. Semi-structured task between siblings, and 3. Individual semi-structured interviews. Findings indicate that family meanings about food management are configured as a semiotic, dialogical, and affective field, sustained by the continuous negotiation among family voices; by collective affective regulation, by the displacement from family to intimate bodily dialogue, and by the reorganization of I-positionings involving continuity, change, and conflict. The family can be understood as a semiotic–dialogical field of voices that configure meanings, affects, and positionings around shared life. It is not the sum of individual Selves but a dynamic network in which voices mutually constitute and transform one another. These results may extend DST by showing how the voices that constitute the experience of the Self can emerge from the body, affectively shaping both the family and personal experience of food management in T1DM. Practical implications for interventions that integrate the patient’s family are discussed.

This work discusses the creative methods deployed during the Stories that Matter research project, which consisted of a series of art-based workshops about asylum seeking. Inspired by therapeutic documents used in Narrative Therapy, each session was structured around the transformation of a device grounded in the lived experience of the participants. These objects, functioning as blank canvases, enabled the participants to trace their journeys through materials such as a map, a suitcase, fictitious passports, letters, and postcards. Creative methods allowed for the renegotiation of researcher-participant roles, giving participants control over how to represent their experience, offering them time to think and make decisions about what they wish to reveal. Moreover, the creative tasks encouraged unconventional thinking and helped bring sensitive topics into the light. We propose that these types of instruments provide an opportunity to add complexity and analytical depth to the results generated. In this project, the instruments discussed enabled us to explore the ambiguity and uncertainty that characterize asylum seeking in two ways: First, we explored how different strategies served to make sense of painful experiences related to grief. By constructing the meaning of their loss through creating artistic objects, the participants engaged in a process of self-negotiation, taking different social positions and constructing presence despite the physical and psychological distance. Second, drawing on specific conflictive experiences that can cause a feeling of stagnation or paralysis, we find points of tension that may serve as anchors for initiating processes of transformation in which new I-positions emerge, going beyond contradictions.

The Avatar Project (AP) was designed as a research-driven model aimed at facilitating pedagogical interventions for students undergoing significant life transitions within various cultural contexts and social systems. The term avatar, which originated from Sanskrit, symbolizes transformation and metamorphosis. Rooted in a dialogical understanding of human cultural development, the AP is a creative prototyping-based method that encompasses a series of joint activities, including crafting avatars for oneself and bringing them to life by creating a biography, coordinating shared narratives, discussing relevant topics of interest, and summarizing key concepts learned. This approach allows participants, particularly young children, to engage in meaningful social interactions, develop expressive resources, make sense of their emotional experiences, cultivate their sense of self and otherness, and reflect on their identities and life stories. Ultimately, the avatar serves as a medium for the development of psychological functions and expands possibilities of self positioning as participants experiment with a variety of voices in imagined social life circumstances. An empirical fragment from a study of children’s transition to primary school will illustrate how the analysis of the dialogical self can benefit from the dialogues promoted by the AP. In the Dialogical Self Theory, the self is defined through dialogue with social others, which can include real individuals or internalized voices from past experiences. Continuity in the self emerges from meaningful relationships—family, peers, and caregivers—whereas discontinuity occurs through conflicts among these voices. The dialogical self is formed by contextual relationships and is characterized by shifting self-positioning in time and space. Overall, the study highlights how social interactions and internal dialogues contribute to shaping not only children’s meaning-making on gender, but also supporting them in navigating differences, tensions, and contradictions of gender social cannons, reflecting their own self positioning, cultural understanding, while allowing them to explore possibilities.

The role of imagination in self-development cannot be overestimated. Most methodological procedures aimed at investigating the Dialogical Self are based on the individual’s memory as they narrate their life stories. In this presentation, I will elaborate on how imagination plays a fundamental role in people’s trajectories, therefore self-development, as it typically reconstructs the past and anticipates the future as each individual lives in various cultural contexts. The use of an alternative methodological perspective named Trajectory Equifinality Approach, or TEA (Sato et al. 2016; Valsiner & Zittoun, 2016), offers an excellent opportunity for examining the ontogenesis of significant changes in I-Positions, or Dynamic Self Positionings, along the person’s developmental trajectory. The approach consists of a longitudinal methodology that enables identifying moments of rupture, turning points, and significant transitions over life experience, allowing for an ample and deep analysis of how particularly meaningful events, experiences, and expectations contribute to the development of the Dialogical Self. The role of imagination will be specially addressed in this presentation, which will be illustrated by research data drawn from two empirical investigations. The first was carried out with three obese women with totally different backgrounds, and the equifinality point was defined as a bariatric surgery. In their case, it was noteworthy to find how each woman developed different coping strategies to deal with the experience of continuous prejudice and discrimination, and how they followed a completely different trajectory after the surgery, configuring significant changes in their I-Positions: the emergence, development, and fading way of self-positionings along the irreversible time. The other research I bring to discuss is the development of the Dialogical Self of a man who ends up becoming a musician, after life experiences characterized by ruptures, turning points, and transitions. In both cases, the role of imagination is evident, therefore in need of further exploration.