Conference Agenda

Indigenous philosophies of mind and self converge deeply with dialogical self theory (DST) while also extending it beyond its usual psychological frame. From an Indigenous perspective, the mind is not an interior container located in the head but a relational, collective process that emerges between people, land, and more‑than‑human beings. Selfhood likewise arises “between our bodies” in webs of kinship, story, and ceremony rather than as a bounded, private individual. DST resonates with this view by rejecting a singular, essential self and instead portraying persons as a multiplicity of I‑positions in dialogue, including internal, interpersonal, and collective voices. Indigenous thought shows that many of these positions are inherently communal and transpersonal: ancestors, spirits, places, and community roles all “speak” through people’s stories and actions. Where Western psychology often treats such experiences as intrapsychic or pathological, Indigenous frameworks grant ontological status to these voices and see health as restoring balance among them. Indigenous relational mind offers a critical corrective to DST’s lingering individualism by insisting that healing never occurs outside community and shared narrative. Story becomes the bridge: people are “storied into” existence, and therapeutic change involves re‑storying within circles where others witness and endorse emerging identities. This aligns with DST’s emphasis on narrative reorganization of I‑positions but situates that reorganization in ceremony, ritual, and collective responsibility rather than the consulting room alone. Using a Two‑Eyed Seeing approach, DST can serve as a contemporary European‑language parallel to Indigenous self‑theory, enabling explanatory pluralism without subordinating Indigenous knowledge. Indigenous philosophies radicalize DST by pushing it to fully include land, ancestors, spirits, and community as co‑authors of mind, while DST offers conceptual tools for describing these polyphonic processes in ways legible to mainstream psychology and neuroscience.

Talking circles can be conceptualized as living laboratories of community mind in which dialogical processes give rise to a shared field of meaning that both holds and transforms individual experience. Building on work with Indigenous-derived talking circles in mental health and community settings, this presentation recognizes dialogical self theory (DST) as a generative lens for understanding how such circles cultivate a communal mind composed of multiple, interacting I-positions. DST understands the self as a dynamic multiplicity of relatively autonomous I-positions engaged in ongoing internal and external dialogue, blurring rigid boundaries between "inner" and "outer" voices. Within a talking circle, participants speak in turn from personally situated I-positions (for example, clinician, carer, survivor, community member) that are simultaneously shaped by collective narratives, cultural traditions, and spiritual frames carried by the circle itself. Through practices of intentional speaking, deep listening, and non-interruption central to many First Nations- and Native American–inspired circle models, these positions are invited into open, polyphonic dialogue rather than silenced by dominant voices or problem-saturated stories. Over time, the circle functions as a microsociety in which individual and shared positions continually co-create a communal mind—an emergent, relational configuration of meaning that no single participant owns, yet each helps author. Drawing on applied work with talking circles in the field of moral injury, a condition which drives the neglect of certain I-positions in favour of others, this presentation explores how communal mind processes may reduce isolation, enhance mutual recognition, and support more "psychodiverse" and democratic inner worlds. It is argued that framing each participant as an I-position within a larger dialogical community offers a theoretically robust and clinically useful account of how talking circles can enhance wellbeing, foster belonging, and gently shift dominant mental health paradigms toward more relational, community-anchored understandings of distress and healing.

Drama therapy, the six-part story process, narrative and community therapies, and dialogical self theory (DST) converge around a shared commitment to embodied story as the primary medium of healing and transformation. These approaches all work by externalizing and reshaping the polyphony of voices that constitute people’s lives, allowing new I‑positions and plots to emerge in relationship with others. Drama therapy and creative arts methods bring stories into movement, gesture, image, and role, making visible the often‑implicit characters and conflicts that organize subjective experience. The six-part story process provides a simple but powerful narrative scaffold—character, task, obstacle, helpers, climax, and resolution—through which clients can project and experiment with preferred identities. Puppets, roles, and enacted scenes function as “safe distance” containers for intense affect and for stigmatized or disowned voices. Within a DST frame, these characters can be understood as I‑positions in a dialogical self, whose shifting relationships can be observed, questioned, and reconfigured through dramatic play and guided reflection. Narrative and community therapies extend this work by locating stories within wider social, cultural, and historical conversations and by recruiting audiences who can witness and sustain alternative plots. Community groups, circles, and group medical visits become stages where personal and collective stories interanimate, creating richer repertoires of possible positions and futures. This collective dimension is essential: healing is less about insight into a solitary interior and more about co‑authoring new stories in community that the body can inhabit and enact. DST and dialogical therapies offer conceptual language and structure for what drama and narrative practitioners already do intuitively: fostering polyphony, promoting meta‑positions, and supporting more flexible, compassionate internal dialogue. Integrating DST with drama, six‑part story, and community‑based narrative practices yields a theoretically grounded, culturally sensitive, and neurologically plausible approach to psychotherapy that honors art, relationship, and story as central to human change.