Conference Agenda

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)