Conference Agenda

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.