Conference Agenda

Dialogical Self-Theory (DST) and Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) have developed as parallel approaches that emphasize the multiplicity and relational nature of the self. Despite these shared assumptions, they have largely evolved in distinct ways. This presentation explores both the tensions and the commonalities between these approaches in order to find potential benefits of their cross-fertilization. Self-criticism will be used as a focal phenomenon for this analytic effort. In EFT, self-criticism, when involved in clinical problems, is typically conceptualized as a maladaptive internal process implicated in major clinical difficulties and addressed through two-chair interventions. Within DST, self-criticism can be understood as a tension between dialogical self-positions. Through the comparison of brief clinical excerpts illustrating two-chair work, the presentation will identify convergences and divergences between the two approaches. Finally, implications for theory development and clinical practice in both approaches will be outlined.

This experiential workshop uses Dialogical Self Theory to explore internal voices that participants perceive as challenging in their current life phase. It activates three core positions of our internal dialogue: the agent (the active speaker), the addressee (the listener receiving the message), and the inner audience (the witnessing observer).

Through a structured sequence of writing internal dialogues, storytelling, and embodied enactment in triads, participants externalize and perform these voices.

They also map their inner world in space, using materials (e.g., coloured cardboard) to visualize the proximity, distance, and hierarchical boundaries between different I-positions. Bringing inner thoughts into physical space makes hidden conflicts and power dynamics easier to see. A photographer documents this process, capturing two specific snapshots for each enactment. These images function as photographic mirrors that preserve the emotional tone and body language of the moment. The written texts, spatial movements, and photographs serve as combined tools for self-observation. In the reflective phase, participants use these images as visual references that capture the non-verbal emotional tone and somatic markers of the dialogue, allowing them to step back and examine their internal dialogical activity.

This process helps transform rigid internal tensions into a more fluid and integrated self-regulation. Designed for mental health professionals, art therapists, and students, the workshop offers a structured, arts-based method for counselling and therapeutic practice, facilitating self-awareness and self-reorganization.

Traveler, you open the road by walking it.

The city is crossed by flows: vehicles, goods, images, inhabitants—human and non-human—monuments, apartment buildings and streets. In the city, voices intersect, touch, pass by, move together and apart, dance, sleep, fall silent.

In this workshop, we will pause the constant back-and-forth of urban speed and walk. We will go slowly. We will fully inhabit the present moment with our bodies and search for the voices of the past among cracks, tree trunks, in the soil. Because some of these voices are buried and hidden. What purpose might this serve? What values do these voices carry? What values guide our path? What needs do they meet? How do we approach what is buried, and how does it converse with the surface?

In this workshop, we wish to listen closely to the voices of the city—hidden, visible, external, internal—and invite them into dialogue so we may reconnect with them.

Inspired by the dialogical self, we move toward the dialogical city, toward the dialogues that emerge with our environment, its history, present, and future. We invite you on a non-linear journey where “our trails entangle and the knots are places” (Tim Ingold).

This study investigates how Brazilian women educators construct meanings about body, femininity, and identity through dialogical processes shaped by colonial histories and racialized structures. Grounded in Dialogical Self Theory and informed by decolonial, feminist, and cultural-historical perspectives, the research adopts collective image-reading as a methodological strategy to access embodied and culturally mediated I-positions. The approach assumes that the body is not a neutral site but a locus where coloniality, gender norms, and racial hierarchies are inscribed and reproduced, making it impossible to dissociate the dialogical self from Brazil’s history of structural racism. Methodologically, the study draws on conversation circles in which participants interpreted visual artworks depicting female figures. These collective readings functioned as dialogical spaces where voices confronted, complemented, and reconfigured one another. The method integrates Bakhtinian concepts of dialogism and exotopy, emphasizing how participants complete the artwork from their situated perspectives, and aligns with decolonial methodologies that privilege embodied knowledge, relationality, and the disruption of white-centric epistemic frames. The use of visual artifacts as mediators allowed participants to externalize internal dialogues, activate cultural models, and articulate tensions between imposed femininities and lived bodily experiences. Theoretically, the study bridges Dialogical Self Theory with decolonial thought by demonstrating that self-formation is inseparable from histories of racialization, gendered violence, and social inequality. The dialogical self emerges as a dynamic configuration of voices shaped by cultural repertoires, emotional socialization, and embodied memories that carry the marks of coloniality. The results show that collective image-reading elicited I-positions related to suffering, resistance, fragmentation, and agency. Participants connected the artworks to experiences of gendered and racialized violence, revealing how cultural artifacts reorganize the self and make visible the entanglement of identity, history, and power. The method proved effective in generating transformative dialogical spaces where embodied selves could be recognized, negotiated, and reimagined.

This paper advances dialogicality as a praxis of decolonisation by bringing Dialogical Self Theory (DST) into critical conversation with Social Representations Theory (SRT). Rather than treating dialogue as a methodological tool or communicative ideal, the paper conceptualizes dialogicality as an epistemic, ethical, and political practice through which colonial forms of knowledge, subjectivity, and legitimacy are contested and reworked. Drawing on SRT, it argues that coloniality persists through dominant social representations that stabilise binaries, hierarchies, and norms of intelligibility, shaping both institutional knowledge and the internal organisation of the self. Building on the framework of a previous study titled, "Acts from the cracks: Representations and positions of the decolonial in the geopolitical (de)construction of power-entangled knowledge" (Ali et al., 2025) the paper conceptualises the “crack” as a dialogical space where hegemonic representations lose coherence and alternative meanings can emerge. These cracks are not external to representation but internal to representational systems themselves, arising through contradiction, ambivalence, and lived dissonance. Through a dialogical lens, such moments are understood as sites where multiple I-positions engage with, resist, and rearticulate dominant social representations, revealing the unfinished and contested nature of meaning-making. Decolonisation is thus framed not as a clean epistemic fissure, but as an ongoing dialogical struggle within and against inherited representational fields. The paper demonstrates how dialogicality enables subjects to inhabit tension without premature resolution, allowing marginalized, ancestral, and embodied knowledges to enter dialogue with dominant epistemologies without being assimilated or erased. In this sense, dialogical praxis operates simultaneously at the intrapersonal level (through negotiations among I-positions), the intersubjective level (through contested representations), and the institutional level (through challenges to epistemic authority). Ultimately, the paper positions dialogicality as a decolonial praxis that transforms both the conditions of knowledge production and the subjectivities through which knowledge is lived.

In Dialogic Self Theory (DST), interactional multiplicity manifests itself in dynamics of space and time, in which the self is understood as a dynamic process of internalization and externalization of collective meanings (Berteau, 2012). When we study the self in education and other spaces, the idea of territory as a passive setting, a mere backdrop for human action, still persists. However, we need to understand spaces as pulsating territories of meanings that channel, as alterities, the relational experience of subjects, delimiting their agency and projections for the future. According to Hermans (2015, p. 94), “the spatialization of dialogical relations allows for the treatment of a particular idea in the context of both interior and exterior dialogues, creating ever changing perspectives.” The objective of this work is to investigate how the multivocality of the self is experienced and negotiated by students in their developmental trajectories. The discussion is based on the theory of the Dialogical Self and is illustrated by two case studies: the first, based on narratives from a quilombola student on academic mobility abroad, and the second, which presents data from a culture circle composed of girls from a rural school. The analyses demonstrate how different voices and positions of self emerge in response to tensions caused by spatial scenarios and are renegotiated in the encounter of stories. By integrating spatiality into the TSD approach, this work expands the theoretical rigor of the field and provides a basis for a decolonial scientific perspective. The relevance of the work lies in valuing the role of territorial diversity in the constitution of the dialogical self, ensuring that human development is understood in its situated and relational complexity.

My dissertation inquiries into Palestinian-American high school students’ perceptions of self. I wanted to capture how they expressed their vibrancy, complexities, and nuance, Yet, I encountered a methodological problem as I couldn’t adequately contextualize their cultural, social, and even religious backgrounds, “many scholars often struggle to conceptualize or articulate that problem and complexity” (Tesar, 2020, p. 224). Present methodologies, I found, didn’t capture the complexities weaving throughout and in-between the spatial, temporal, physical, and emotional contexts between their global and local connections.

The wobble spurred by this problem nudged me. Wobble “is a calling to attention, a provocation of response” (Fecho, 2011, p. 70). This impulse can “lead to creative insights or activities” (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010, p. 122). I believed I could expand narrative methodologies, but I felt I was flying to close to the sun. My ambition to create conflicted with my ability to execute. As Hackett et al., (2018) claim, “good academic research should push boundaries, and experiment with ways of thinking that have not been thought” (p. 486). My initiation to create qissas as a methodology responds to the invitation for “scholars to create their own unique, creative paths based on the issue at hand, in relationship with ourselves and others, interanimated with dialogic thought” (White & Janfada, 2025, p. 45).

I will present how qissas invokes a Bakhtinian dialogical philosophy of an ‘ideological becoming’ that explores the multiplicities and diversities of Arab-American individuals. This dialogic impulse also extends, diversifies, and adds range to research on Arab Americans that has so often portrayed them through narrow perspectives. Furthermore, as a narrative methodology, qissas implores critical researchers to examine how Arab individuals are continuously shaped, reshaped by the social world and other context they live in through its storytelling function.

Much has been written about identity development and its significance for self-navigation, mental health and wellbeing. Most of this work is rooted in the writings by Erik Erikson and focuses on the development of one integrated identity through a potentially recursive but linear process of exploration and commitment. However, in Eriksons writings, identity synthesis results from the interplay between three types of identity. Their complex dynamic may be more accurately captured in the framework of the Dialogical Self than through a linear process of exploration and commitment.

Erikson distinguished between group identifications comparable to social identities, a personal identity, and something referred to as ego-identity. Ego identity goes beyond identification with groups or personal values in that it involves understanding of, and identification with, the self-as-agent. Fostering resilience of the self-as-agent is of particular importance in the long run because of its effect on the experience of intimacy, generativity and ego integrity.

Conceptualizing identity development from the framework of Hermans’ Dialogical Self Theory furthers present understanding of the writings by Erikson in two ways. First, the framework of a dynamic society of selves provides room for dialogue among a chorus of external I-positions or social identifications, as well as the emergence of a personal identity as a promotor position all simultaneously. This leads to important nuances in the conceptualisation of what develops when and how. Second, understanding the self-as-agent as a society of I-positions helps to elaborate on a vital aspect of identity development that in the Eriksonian tradition is mainly addressed by example. Considering the ego as a dynamic society of I-positions allows for both the exploration and integration of an effective and resilient ego-identity.

I will discuss how voices from the Eriksonian tradition and Hermans’ Dialogical Self Theory will add to a complementary understanding of identity development.

Mental health of students in Higher Education is worrisome. Many of these mental complaints classify as age-specific side-effects of identity development. Problems in identity development are related to multiplicity and deficits in terms of authenticity and direction in particular. Project UrU was funded to develop a digital platform to support students in these challenges.

Pilot research showed that students crave an overview of the challenges they might encounter as well as an indication of their whereabouts in this field. They would like a navigation map of potential challenges in order to understand what to confront rather than avoid in order to keep growing.

Problematic was that, since every user comes from a different perspective, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for a roadmap. Moreover, aspects of self-understanding constitute a field of tensions in which striving for one implies harming something else. The Dialogical Self Theory meets these challenges, making it a useful framework for a map for identity development in emerging adulthood.

To design this map, we used the axes mood and self-other focus from the Self-Confrontation Method for cardinal directions. This provided us with an area of agency and strength, relatedness and warmth, loneliness and isolation, and agitation and stress. We further divided each of these area’s by implementing the degrees of internalisation provided by the Self Determination Theory, and some area-specific themes and challenges.

To navigate the map, we designed four tools. The first assists in finding an idiosyncratic promotor position as a personal compass. A second helps solving conflicts between I-positions. The third helps differentiating between I-positions, reflecting upon and embracing their strengths and weaknesses as an agent. The fourth invites tracing where each I-position typically brings one in the mental map.

We suggest that this DST navigation-set provides both the insight and means to travel emerging adulthood.

This study examines early dialogicality in preschool children (aged 4–5) within the school context, focusing on school-conceptualised I-positions grounded in Dialogical Self Theory. Using a multiple case study design, three case studies were analysed based on teacher’s reflective journals gathered across two interrelated phases: (1) initial mapping of children’s I-positions and (2) implementation of the IMAP-C method through a narrative problem situation. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Within-case analyses identified convergent patterns: the structural presence of early dialogicality, its functional mobilisation in response to context-related tensions, and developmental differentiation among I-positions. Cross-case comparison indicated that, despite these shared patterns, children differed in the organisation, relationships, and use of their I-positions. Findings underscore the school environment as a dynamic setting for the emergence of early dialogicality and suggest a developmental boundary at this age in the meta-reflective organisation of the self. Overall, early dialogicality in preschoolers appears as a dynamic, polyphonic system that is activated and reshaped through school-meaningful experiences and dialogical practices. The study advances theoretical and methodological understanding of the dialogical self in early childhood education and highlights the potential for pedagogical cultivation and developmental mapping of dialogicality within school settings.

In line with phenomenology, a narrative and dialogical perspective conceptualizes dreams as stories embedded within a wider self-narrative in which different aspects or voices of the self are expressed aiming to make sense of experiences.

The present narrative study involved the analysis of a childhood dream from twenty clients, with each dream being compared to three corresponding autobiographical memories. At least one common theme ran across each client’s self-narratives. More specifically, the findings showed similarities in narrative and dialogical characteristics such as settings (e.g. main characters) and plots (e.g. basic omissions), clients’ voices but also emotions. A sense of agency varied especially when the childhood dream was recurrent. Case illustrations are used to exemplify findings. Themes and theme development are discussed as ways to organize experience over the life span. Working with childhood dreams and early memories can help therapists explore parental/family issues, whereas several techniques can promote clients’ sense of agency.

In professional domains where multidisciplinary team collaboration is indispensable, the ability to engage with diverse perspectives constitutes one of the most essential values for effective practice. However, in real-world settings, communication with others who hold different backgrounds. Such encounters can generate emotional tension, frustration, and breakdowns in cooperation, particularly when the perspectives of others cannot be readily understood or integrated.

Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism offers a conceptual foundation for addressing this challenge. According to Bakhtin, cultivating rich and productive relations with others requires the development of a self-capable of internally engaging with multiple voices—not only those of like-minded colleagues but also those of unfamiliar or even conflictual professional orientations. Such “dialogical self” (Hermans and Kempen, 1993) allows practitioners to tolerate ambiguity during communications with others and transform emotional discomfort into reflexive understanding.

This symposium examines how professionals working on the front lines of healthcare and social welfare—where multidisciplinary team collaboration is unavoidable—cultivate such a dialogic self in practice. Bringing together empirical investigations and theoretical analyses, the presentations explore how physicians, nurses, social workers, and other practitioners sustain relationships with heterogeneous others while maintaining professional identity and emotional integrity. Across different fields, the presenters illuminate how dialogic inner work supports joint decision-making, interdisciplinary learning, and ethical care for individuals with diverse life histories, vulnerabilities, and cultural backgrounds.

The aim of this symposium is to clarify how professionals expand and refine the dialogic voices of the self to provide high-quality services for beneficiaries situated in increasingly complex social conditions.

Migration can be conceived as a rupture in everyday experience that creates a discontinuity in people’s lives (Hale & de Abreu, 2010). In this sense, migrants face numerous obstacles, including administrative barriers, economic difficulties, xenophobia, and racism, among others. Such challenges pose serious threats to migrants’ health and well-being and hinder their inclusion in host societies as full-rights citizens. Ultimately, these challenges may threaten the integrity of the self.

To cope with the challenges, migrants draw on a range of resources, both personal (e.g., tenacity, religious faith) and social (e.g., support from family, friends, and the community), facilitating the construction of identity narratives that navigate between continuity and discontinuity (de la Mata et al., 2024).

Dialogical Self Theory (DST) offers conceptual and methodological tools to understand processes of identity change in the context of migration. Concepts such as I-positions, we-positions, voices, and proculturation allow us to understand how self is reconstructed in response to migratory challenges.

In this symposium, we present four qualitative studies in which participants face the challenge of reconstructing the self in the context of migration.

De la Mata and Español analyze how members of a Venezuelan family living in Spain face the challenges of migration by developing a sense of “we-ness,” both as a family and as Venezuelans.

Del Villar-Toribio focuses on the centrality of caregiving in the identity reconstruction of a group of Senegalese women in the Andalusian diaspora.

Integrating concepts from DST and semiotic cultural psychology, Märtsin the complex dynamics of providing and receiving care across borders in the case of an Estonian educational migrant in the UK

Finally, Gamsakhurdia proposes the need to extend the concept of proculturation to account not only for the reorganization of prior I-positions, but also for the consolidation of existing dialogical configurations.

As a scholar in education and technology, the connection to identity change did not seem to me at all relevant at the beginning of my career. As a good educational psychologist, I thought identity was a topic for clinical or dynamic psychology. I was interested in how students learn and how research could support this magical process of deep and lasting learning. Sometime later, almost 30 years ago, I was fortunate enough to coordinate a wonderful international project called Euroland, funded by the EU community. Students of various ages, from Italy and the Netherlands, were tasked with designing and building Europe in a virtual desktop environment. Students, teachers, and researchers connected in an initially empty virtual space that was gradually filled with houses, flowers, trees, fountains, and many other digital objects. The project was great but there was something escaped the cognitive and socio-cultural interpretative lens I had at that time. Anyone connecting to Euroland spent a lot of time carefully choosing their Avatars, and one of the questions I was most frequently asked by students was "How do I look with this Avatar?" or "What impression will others have of me with this Avatar on?" Questions I not only didn't know the answer to, but I could not understand why were so frequent.

At the time, I worked in Nijmegen, the same as Prof. Hermans, but we did not know each other. By chance, one day, I stumbled upon the poster for the Dialogical Self Conference. Instinctively, I thought that poster could answer the questions I was asking myself about Euroland. I asked Professor Hermans for an appointment. A long, intense meeting ensued, an epiphany for me: students in the virtual world were testing various “positionings”!

From then on, the question of I-position became crucial to my research. Since then, I have conducted many projects inspired by DST, both in virtual worlds (I-city; Diversity City), in text-based discussion forums, as well as through pen-and-paper writing activities. Recently, I adopted DST as framework to analyze written survey produced by prisoners who decide to undertake university studies. DST offers interpretative lenses that not only help understand the identity implications of learning but it could also inspire research and offer useful implications for education.

In my talk, I will report in more detail these projects attempting to show how the interconnection between identity and learning is much deeper than one might initially think. Through these projects, I understood that learning implies change not only under the cognitive point of view but in a deeper way, without necessarily involving the past – as clinical psychology does - but rather looking at the future, at what one person could be and not at what she or he is or was. Identity is a set of complex functions, as Vygotsky already argued, and that the task of education is to offer new opportunities for innovative, original positioning trajectories that may be unthinkable without educational experience.

This 1-hour open forum is meant to stimulate the participants’ search for new avenues and new research methods in the Dialogical Self Theory. The discussion is started by the 7 participants around the table, but oriented to the wide audience who is curious to see and hear what is happening. Our goal is to bring them into productive discussion. For that, each of the 7 (a) introduces one’s starting point for approaching DST and (b) raises unanswered but intriguing questions for the audience (total time for each 3 minutes). The Moderator facilitates the participation of the audience, and the Summarizer in the end gives his instant reflection on what the Panel achieved

Masayoshi Morioka (Ritsumeikan University, Japan)

...intends to focus on the clinical semiotic approach, particularly the relationship between the linguistic form of inner speech and free association. Masayoshi has decades-long experience in leading Japanese clinical psychology with DST perspective

Julie Bo Lindgren (Tallinn University, Estonia, and Denmark) has

interest in the dialogical self of early career psychologists in their adaptation to the challenges of their profession and clinical practices inside and outside professional settings. Her research focuses on the spaces and accelerations in navigating not just emergence of a role but also the processes of its maintenance. Julie is leading clinical psychologist and supervisor in systemic family treatment centre in Denmark.

Simone Indius (Tallinn University, Estonia, and Denmark) plans to bring to the discussion issues of understanding intentionality and meta-intentionality in the dialogical relations of I-positions. I-positions can include meta-level reflexivity about the voices of other I-positions as well as resistance to them. Simone is working in practice of psychotherapy in a Danish psychiatric unit.

Jennifer Sigurddatter (Tallinn University, Estonia, and Germany) intends to focus on dialogical self processes in psychotherapy, especially how self-positions shift and reorganize through therapeutic interaction, and how these movements support emotion regulation, integration of earlier relational patterns, and compassionate self-relations over time.

- Anna Gabinska, (SWPS University, Poland): intends to bring to the discussion an empirically grounded, intervention-focused perspective. Drawing on the technique of DDS rooted in Dialogical Self Theory, her work conceptualizes clients’ current life problems as dilemmas between competing I-positions associated with significant others. Through the guided enactment of an inner dialogue between them, clients are supported in articulating divergent perspectives and arriving at an autonomous, integrative decision.

- Maria Viou (“Logo Psychis-Training and Research Institute for Systemic Psychotherapy, Greece) intends to discuss the complex and intriguing ways in which clients’ voices become internalized in group psychotherapy. This process of acquiring and internalizing others’ voices, illustrates how the voices of actual others become inner voices of the self, highlighting the social nature of the self and the importance of developing compassionate voices in the process of therapeutic change.

Georgia Gkantona (University of Ioannina, Greece) has advanced Dialogical Self counselling and therapy by developing the Internal Multi-Actor Performance (IMAP) method, which maps clients’ inner worlds as a “theatre of voices,” and its child adaptation (IMAP-C). She has also promoted DST in Greece through editorial and translation work on a foundational DST book. In 2025, she organized a Summer School on DST applications in counselling and psychotherapy. Her recent research applies Positioning Microanalysis to professional identity construction.

SUMMARIZER: Hubert Hermans (International Society of Dialogical Science)

The Dialogical Self Theory provided psychology with a fundamental new perspective on the Self. The systemic, dialogical, and dynamic nature of the I-Me-Self represents a paradigm shift in the field of psychological science, in tune with the most recent epistemological advances. In this presentation, my aim is to offer fresh elaborations on the topic, inspired by a cultural semiotic perspective I have been developing through my academic and research activities. While elaborating on the topic of the dialogical self, grounded on Hermans’ DST, I realized that drawing on the concept of hypergeneralized affective-semiotic fields proposed by Valsiner this could provide an interesting addition to make sense of the development of the self along human trajectories, expanding DST towards investing in the power of human values in organizing or configuring the development of the Dialogical Self. My contributions are elaborated along the four following lines: (1) conceptualization of the dialogical self as a Dialogical Self System-DSS, as Hermans has particularly implied in his recent works; (2) introduction of a subjectification intermediate layer between actual significant social others and those ‘I-Positions’ which are created by how the subject sees or internalizes these social others; (3) presentation of arguments on how Hypergeneralized Affective-Semiotic Fields—such as values and prejudices—grounds the emergence of I-Positions; and (4) proposal of the existence of different degrees of an irradiating power to each I-Position (Dynamic Self Positionings), what could better explain why some positionings, as race, gender, etc, fundamentally affect all other positionings in the Dialogical Self. The concept of ‘Degree of Irradiating Power-DIP’ of an I-Position is proposed here to account for the fact that some I-Positions play a central, dominant role in the Dialogical Self System of the person, to the point that they are often referred to as identitarian indexes. This theoretical proposal, therefore, may serve as a fruitful venue for addressing the complex issue of ‘identity’ grounded in the theoretical fundamentals of Dialogical Self Theory and Cultural Psychology.

In 2018 Reinekke lost her spouse Frans Meijers to cancer. In the year that followed she wrote a book about the loss that revealed many dimensions of her experience. In DST terms: there was an angry self, a sad self, a determined self, and even a sexual self. As she wrote her story, an academic I-position arose that helped her study the grief literature applying it to herself. There was also an I-as-poet position which expressed the meaningful ways in which she remained connected to Frans. Additional I-positions of loss were revealed in a theatrical like dialogue that allowed her to revisit their unfinished family business and feel heard.

This paper, inspired by her book “Writing the Self in Bereavement: a story of love, spousal loss, and resilience” (Routledge, 2021) discusses shifting identity positions in the face of loss. This invited paper explains the use of Dialogical Self Theory to explore the contradictions and taboos in bereavement using therapeutic writing. Poetry, story, dialogue, and autoethnographic research were part of her process.

French philosopher and sociologist Edgar Morin developed in his ‘La méthode’ a comprehensive version of complexity theory, which might inform DST to a significant extent. He never published much in English, hence his work has remained largely unknown in the Anglo-Saxon world. This presentation aims to introduce a few interesting concepts of his thinking and suggests ways to make use of them in DST.

There’s a striking similarity between Morin and DST: it further corroborates DST’s conceptual framework. But more than that: both Morin and DST offer, emphatically, bridging theories.

In an era of global changes and mental health challenges, practitioners and researchers strive to reflect the emerging realities in their areas of practice and inquiry. In my doctoral research, I used the concept of relational space, which includes human and non-human elements, verbal and non-verbal interactions, emotions, embodied responses... and more. As a systemic practitioner, I explore the intricate interplay of the relational space that emerges in the conversation between client and therapist and the relational space of the dialogical self of the therapist, the different voices that emerge within the therapist. Through the use of reflexive writing, I focus on the relational conversation between my client and myself, as well as my inner dialogue and thoughts and feelings. The collaborative dialogue between these relational spaces creates relational ripples, which in turn open up possibilities and generate transformative and unexpected practices in the psychotherapy process.

In this workshop, participants will have the opportunity to engage in experiential exercises to explore the relational space in therapy, both the relational space between client and therapist and within the therapist. They will experiment with ways of using reflexive writing as a methodological tool, applicable and useful to practitioners who need to respond to current mental health challenges. Through the use of reflexive writing and collaborative discussion, participants will deepen their understanding on the impact of their own dialogical self in the therapeutic encounter and how the interconnectedness of relational space between client and therapist and within the therapist encourages collaboration and dialogue in the therapy room. In the end of the workshop, participants will produce a collective writing, which will reflect the joint efforts of the team to create relational ripples and will showcase the interconnectedness of our relational spaces.

The self represents a multifactorial entity made up of several interrelated constructs. It is suggested that self-talk orchestrates interactions between most self-processes—especially those entailing self-reflection. A review of the literature is performed, specifically looking for representative studies (n = 12) presenting correlations between self-report measures of self-talk and self-reflective processes. Self-talk questionnaires include the Self-Talk Scale, the Varieties of Inner Speech Questionnaire, the General Inner Speech Questionnaire, and the Inner Speech Scale. The main self-reflection measures are the Rumination and Reflection Questionnaire, the Self-Consciousness Scale, and the Philadelphia Mindfulness Scale. Most measures comprise subscales which are also discussed. Findings include: (1) positive significant correlations between self-talk used for self-management/assessment and self-reflection, arguably because the latter entails self-regulation, which itself relies on self-directed speech; (2) positive significant correlations between critical self-talk and self-rumination, as both may recruit negative, repetitive, and uncontrollable self-thoughts; (3) negative associations between self-talk and the self-acceptance aspect of mindfulness, likely because thinking about oneself in the present in a non-judgmental way is best achieved by repressing one’s inner voice. Limitations are discussed, including the selective nature of the reported correlations. Experimentally manipulating self-talk would make it possible to further explore causal associations with self-processes.

There is an abundance of research on the purposes of gestures when communicating with other people. This research indicates that gesturing while speaking can benefit comprehension by listeners as well as aid the speaker in formulating thoughts and emotions and communicating more effectively. Surprisingly, there is very little research on people’s use and awareness of gestures when they engage in internal dialogues and self-talk. In some ways, gesturing while talking to oneself may seem contradictory, since the recipient of the message is the same person as the sender and other people are typically not the direct targets of one’s self-talk. In this research, we examined whether talking to oneself was related to people’s perceptions and production of gestures. Participants (N = 291) completed standardized measures of internal dialogues (IDAS-R), self-talk (Self-Talk Scale), and gestures (Brief Assessment of Gestures) and rated questions about their awareness of gesturing across a variety of self-talk situations. Results showed that total gesture and gesture production scores were significantly and positively related to identity, social, supportive, and spontaneous internal dialogues. Total gesture scores were also significantly and positively related to total, self-reinforcing, and self-managing self-talk scores. Internal dialogue and self-talk scores were more strongly related to gesture production than perception. Participants also reported that they tended to use gestures less frequently when having imaginary or replaying conversations with others but more frequently when they were trying to figure out what to do. We will also report on the results of an experimental study of gestures and intrapersonal communication (currently in progress). We will discuss the implications of these results for the embodiment of intrapersonal communication.

This study examines how professional reflexivity is dialogically organized through an analysis of I-positions in a researcher–practitioner, drawing on Dialogical Self Theory (DST) as its theoretical framework. Rather than treating reflexivity as a stable quality, the study approaches it as a dynamic process shaped by perceived differences between self and others.

The first author (K), a clinical psychologist, researcher, and volunteer swimming instructor for individuals with disabilities (IWDs), narrated her life story to the second author (S) as interviewer in two interviews (total 6 hours), focusing particularly on experiences related to disability and interactions with IWDs. The study adopted a collaborative autoethnographic design. A thematic analysis informed by DST was conducted to identify I-positions and examine their relations and tensions. Some positions were recognized during the interviews, others were identified through post-interview engagement with the transcripts, and still others were pointed out by S, indicating that reflexive self-understanding was co-constructed within the dialogical process.

Five main I-positions were identified and closely connected: I-as-curious observer; I-as-outsider seeking recognition from insiders; I-as-ethical self-examiner acknowledging prejudice; I-as-discriminator with guilt; and I-as-apprehensive-of-discriminating. Guilt strengthened the wish to be recognized by insiders as someone not engaging in discrimination. Attempts to deny one’s own prejudice were experienced as reproducing discrimination, while openly acknowledging prejudice sometimes functioned as a presentation of moral awareness. Efforts to act ethically paradoxically intensified outsiderhood. Guilt-driven reflexivity reorganized the self around the very difference sought to be overcome, thereby reinforcing the boundary between outsider and insider.

By emphasizing outsiderhood as a structuring feature of the dialogical self, the study contributes to discussions of I-position exploration as an ongoing negotiation of difference rather than its resolution. At the same time, it suggests that examining one’s I-positions can foster ethical reflection in researcher–practitioners and serve as a valuable component of professional training.

A number of factors crucial for experiencing high sexual satisfaction have already been identified, people's mindset being one of them. The goal of this research was to investigate further how women’s mental attitude towards sex refers to their sexual satisfaction. Two different theoretical approaches were applied for this aim: a) the well-established cognitive model and the notion of self-schemas; b) the phenomenological dialogical self theory and the concept of I-positions. It was hypothesized that: 1) sexual I-positions predict sexual satisfaction stronger than sexual self-schemas; 2) there are concrete sexual I-positions, such as “I-as-guilty” or “I-as-wild” which explain sexual satisfaction the most. The study was conducted online on a group of 228 heterosexual Turkish women with at least 1-year lasting relationship. They completed The New Sexual Satisfaction Scale, Sexual I-Position Profiles and Women’s Sexual Self-Schema Scale. Analyses showed that I-positions predict sexual satisfaction much better than self-schemas. Sexual I-positions explained 48.8% of the variance. It was observed that positive I-positions explain sexual satisfaction much better than negative ones. The following I-positions were the most important for sexual satisfaction, “I-as-his-lover”, “I-as-wild”, “I-as-sexy”, “I-as-not interested”, “I-as-princess” and “I-as-blessed”. Results for sexual schemas showed that only romantic-passionate schema is significant for sexual satisfaction when analyzed together with I-positions. Obtained findings suggest that the phenomenological concept of sexual I-positions provides a more robust explanation for women’s sexual satisfaction than traditional, stable cognitive sexual self-schemas.

Narratives, which comprise nearly two-thirds of the Qur'an, represent profound textual sites illustrating the perennial struggle between truth and falsehood. Beyond their theological significance, these Qur'anic narratives—when examined through the lens of Dialogical Self Theory (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010) —function as pedagogical frameworks. They instruct individuals navigating the "uncertainty" of a globalised society, where a multiplicity of conflicting I-positions often collide, on how to "re-position" the self while maintaining self-integrity.

The Prophets, as central figures in these narratives, are portrayed not as monolithic entities but as multi-voiced selves engaged in continuous dialogue between diverse internal and external "I-positions" (Hermans, 2012). Conversely, the "oppressive" or "antagonistic" figures within these accounts exemplify the DST concept of "monological self-structures," characterised by the systematic silencing of alternative voices. At the core of each narrative lies a robust act of "counter-positioning" against these dominant monological forces. The transformative agency of the Prophets depicted in these stories stems from their capacity to achieve "repositioning," thereby transcending monological constraints through an intensified internal dialogicality.

The scope of this research examines Qur'anic narratives through the fundamental conceptual lens of DST: "I-positions," "counter-positioning," and "repositioning." The analysis focuses specifically on the stories of Abraham, Joseph, and Moses, where dialogical conflicts and transformations of the self are most manifest. Furthermore, the study highlights the pedagogical value of the "repositioning" strategies offered by Qur'anic narratives for individuals facing identity and selfhood crises in contemporary society.

Utilising document analysis, a qualitative research method, this study scrutinises the mechanisms of "self-positioning," "positioning," "counter-positioning," and "repositioning." These core DST concepts are analysed through a systematic textual examination of the selected prophetic narratives.

Within the ongoing process of the inheritance and development of academic knowledge, individual scholars construct their own thought by drawing on the ideas of predecessors and engaging in “dialogue” with them through texts. This activity is commonly understood as a process in which a monolithic self reads and interprets external literature and thinks about it. From the author’s experience, however, this understanding does not fully capture what actually occurs.

When engaging deeply with particular works, one may respond not only to what scholars explicitly wrote, but also to what they did not write, as if their “voices” were present and actively participating in one’s thinking. In such moments, beyond mere interpretation, scholars’ ideas and standpoints appear to be alive and operative within the self. This paper argues that such experiences can be re-described using the conceptual framework of Dialogical Self Theory.

Scholars encountered through literature come to be formed within the self as distinct scholar I-positions, each carrying specific perspectives and ways of thinking. One’s thought is constituted through ongoing internal dialogue among these I-positions. For example, in the author’s case, repeated close reading of the works of Christopher Alexander, Niklas Luhmann, and Edmund Husserl has led to the internalization of their perspectives as central I-positions supporting the author’s thinking, alongside many other influential scholars The unique configuration and dialogical relations among these scholarly positions—assembled in this particular way only within an individual self—contribute to the distinctive character of a scholar’s thought.

From this perspective, the paper suggests that in educating the next generation of scholars, it is not sufficient merely to understand the content of texts; rather, literature must be engaged with deeply enough for scholarly perspectives to be internalized as I-positions, and present how to read in ways that enable such internalization.

This presentation explores how Dialogical Self Theory (DST) can serve as a foundational framework for addressing radicalization among youth through pedagogical interventions. While radicalization is often treated as a sociopolitical or security issue, this study reframes it as a developmental crisis within the dialogical self—where one dominant I-position suppresses internal diversity, leading to identity foreclosure and dogmatic rigidity.

We introduce the ZELVI/FLOW model (Quest for an Own Life Orientation amidst a Multitude of Interpretations) as a DST-informed educational approach that reactivates the dialogical self through structured play, religious literacy, and dialogical engagement. By encouraging adolescents to experiment with multiple I-positions—such as “I as a believer,” “I as a citizen,” and “I as a critical thinker”—ZELVI/FLOW fosters identity flexibility and resilience.

Drawing on case studies from youth care and secondary education, we demonstrate how DST enables a nuanced understanding of identity formation and offers practical tools for educators and counselors. This proposal aligns with the conference’s interdisciplinary mission by bridging DST with pedagogical theory, educational psychology, and youth development practice.

The Imported Self Theory (IST) extends my original Triadic Self Theory (TST, 2022, published 2025), which conceptualized identity as an oscillation among three internally authored structures: the Ideal Self (aspirational and metaphysical), the Fluid Self (adaptive and exploratory), and the Disposable Self (a crisis‑state enabling reconstruction). IST argues that artificial intelligence fundamentally alters the function of these three selves by introducing an externally generated layer of identity: the Imported Self. Through predictive modeling, aesthetic optimization, and algorithmic recommendation, AI increasingly assumes the role of a proxy author of aspiration, taste, and narrative self‑description. In this process, the Ideal Self becomes algorithmically templated, the Fluid Self becomes hyper‑responsive to feedback loops, and the Disposable Self becomes the default mode of identity iteration. IST describes this transformation as a form of computational Selfrupcy, in which aspiration is extracted, recomposed, and returned as externally authored identity content. The result is a structural collapse of self‑authorship and a crisis of authenticity in AI‑mediated identity formation.

Links:

Stanciulescu, G.-D. (2025). Triadic Self Theory: Identity as Oscillation, Strategy and Social Extraction. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18329345

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In contemporary society shaped by the Fourth Industrial Revolution and accordingly increasing diversity in everyday life, graduate education works an important role to develop working skill and identity in order to create society based on scientific technology. This is because graduate school educate working adults as a scientist from the zero level to the elementary level like an implementation of science (Master), and then advanced level like a creator of science (Doctorate). This educational process, referred to as the “scientification” of knowledge, involves explaining lived experiences using academic theories and translating them into practical knowledge for addressing social issues. From the perspective of Dialogical Self Theory (DS theory), this process can be understood as a dialogical interaction between multiple I-positions, including professional, everyday, and academic selves. Key competence in this process is the ability to adjust levels of abstraction, defined as the capacity to move flexibly between abstract scientific language and concrete everyday language. This ability enables individuals to mediate between the perspectives of scientists and general members of society and plays a central role in integrating academic knowledge with professional practice. In this symposium, presenters will show case studies of the process as a transformative dialogical-self through graduate education as a tool of becoming professionals in the organization, and show a theoretical framework named “Triple-loop learning” to explain the transformation. Triple-loop learning theory involves empirical, implemented, and scientific knowledge, and explain the relationship the three according to the level of abstraction.

This symposium brings together four qualitative studies grounded in Dialogical Self Theory (DST), exploring how the self is constructed, negotiated, and transformed through dialogical processes across time, contexts, and relational positions. Together, the presentations trace a developmental and experiential arc of the dialogical self within psychotherapy and related life transitions.

The first presentation introduces a methodologically innovative use of retrospective Interpersonal Process Recall, where clients revisit early therapy sessions and enter dialogue with their past selves, illuminating the evolution of self-reflexivity. The second presentation focuses on therapist training, examining therapeutic identity as a work in progress shaped by shifting I-positions, uncertainty, and professional maturation. The third presentation explores the transition to motherhood, conceptualized as a dialogical space where past attachment experiences, present maternal positions, and imagined future selves interact. The fourth presentation examines the completion of long-term group psychotherapy, focusing on how clients articulate self-understanding, emotional change, and relational compassion at the moment of farewell.

Across all four studies, identity emerges not as a fixed structure but as a dynamic, relational, and dialogical process. The symposium highlights how dialogical movements—between past, present, and future selves; between critical and compassionate voices; and between self and others—support enduring psychological change. Collectively, the presentations contribute to dialogical understandings of psychotherapy, professional development, and human transition.