Moving Toward a Theory of Difference
The mental health field has never been a major player in addressing symptoms and conflicts on the world stage. When the world chooses problematic leaders, leaps to war, and remains toxically polarized, these problems are psychodynamic in origin. In mainstream and social media, we often attempt to use the language of mental health to describe polarization. We routinely ask, which side is more aggressive? Narcissistic? Traumatized? Defensive? Psychopathic? These labels may or may not have elements of truth, but they’re useless to communicate or transform. The public weaponizes that language and attacks each other with it.
The Waging Dialogue model approaches sociopolitical conflict using the tools of psychology but from a different frame of reference. Ours is a model of difference rather than disorder.
The world desperately needs this new perspective. Political, scientific, and moral arguments don’t work. Debates don’t work. Calling out and canceling doesn’t work. Demanding empathy doesn’t work. We prejudge each other and quickly find others who agree with our distortions. Each political collective has become so blind to the communications of the other that leaders are massively compromised by the time they arrive at the top of parties driven by large group dynamics.
The Waging Dialogue Model presents a theoretical and methodological pathway that will work.
Two directions, one internal and the other external, will be needed.
In the outside world, a movement needs to begin – a large-scale social movement to stop mocking, accusing, blocking, canceling, and unfriending people who see the world differently from the way that we do; a movement to find new ways to communicate effectively across vast human divides. Psychological differences can be understood through story-telling, analogies, and strategic social networking.
Certain kinds of differences threaten our hard-won identities. If we stop thinking, those people are stupid, crazy, and bad, where do we go from there?
The way we behave is not a moral failing, in fact it makes scientific sense. Our cognitive structures and our identities arise organically from our genetics, family dynamics, education, and culture. They organize us and give us meaning and purpose. Our physiological stress response leads us to fight, flee, or freeze in the face of threats to those identities. In recent years, these behaviors have been magnified by the emergence of internet technology. If your differences threaten me, I can demonize you on social media, or I can pretend you no longer exist by pushing a button, making you go away, and bonding instantly with people who agree with me. It may be gratifying to behave this way, but our species won’t survive if we keep it up. Robots may already be more psychologically intuitive than we are.
Here’s an example of a potentially effective use of psychoanalytic concepts. This kind of statement could be presented to the masses, in memes and articles, in a way that’s empathic, accurate, and not weaponized: Approaches we presently use to fight ideological differences don’t work. If we yell at someone to stop thinking what they’re thinking, if we label and try to cancel them, they’re not going to go away or stop thinking those thoughts. They’re going to think them more, fueled by rage that our side believes it’s superior and is trying to stop them. It’s human nature to behave this way and band together in groups that support our points of view. This approach may work for personal self-regulation, but it’s ineffective and harmful when done on a large scale.
Psychoanalysts call this a “defense interpretation.” It is an example of a way that mental health techniques can be used to coax people to think in new ways and over time, slowly shift their default position. If interpretations are presented in the right ways at the right times, motivation to change will emerge on a substantial scale, fueled by shared insight, peer pressure, curiosity, and excitement about new possibilities.
But we can’t advocate for this yet. Something else must happen simultaneously or we will be leading society toward another dead end.
The second direction focuses internally, on each of us as individuals. What happens when people try to stop fighting and talk? Dialogue and diplomacy efforts exist in many arenas with minimal success. Active listening, agreeing to disagree, and searching for middle ground are typical “nice” solutions, but they don’t adequately address intergroup conflicts that reach the core of our being. When our identities are threatened, empathy, dialogue, and compromise will not be enough. A complex methodology leading to structural change in our thinking and our ways of relating to one another will be necessary.
Building bridges across vast bodies of water requires educated and creative architects and hard work over long periods. Building bridges across vast human divides will require the same effort.
Genuine dialogue necessitates entering and tolerating uncharted, unsafe territories and remaining there for long periods. Containers for these adventures can be erected on existing theories, rituals, and techniques. The mental health field creates safe spaces to address struggles within individuals. Analogous spaces can be erected to address problems of difference. “Waging Dialogue” means building alliances with people who are very different, staying in the arena when the going gets rough, fighting “wars” in words, and surviving the experience until new insights and creative solutions have time to emerge.
Because we’re quick to pathologize one another, we have not been able to make sense of the differences between liberals and conservatives, God-fearing people and atheists, supporters of Israel and supporters of the Palestinians, people who embrace or reject racial and transgender dynamics, abortion, and models of equity vs equality. When faced with sociopolitical problems, “What’s wrong with them?!” is the way we typically pose the question. We need to reframe the problem as, “How did we each come to believe what we believe? What are the differences in our lived experiences and our ways of thinking? How do their psychological differences impact me, my people, and our world, and how do my psychological differences impact them? Is there a creative, forward-moving solution for this moment in time?” If I dislike, fear, and maybe hate you, if I sometimes wish you would disappear off the face of the earth, I need to be able to speak those words, and you need to be able to tolerate hearing them, before true dialogue can begin.
Here is how the Waging Dialogue model works for individuals.
Dyads – two people who come from different ideological centers – co-create a structure for ongoing dialogue. They agree to meet, talk, and write, in a rhythmic way. That structure allows a working alliance to emerge and creates a safe space for the inevitable conflicts to surface and be tolerated. Specific containers can be different, but they should be agreed upon and adhered to.
Each dyad will be different because each individual is different. But as more people try it, universal themes will emerge that can be studied and developed into theories and technical approaches that can be passed on to others. Our model uses metadialogues, groups of dyads that meet regularly to discuss shared dynamics and consider underlying theories and potential technical approaches.
Those who are familiar with the history of psychoanalysis know that the field transitioned from a Freudian one-person model to a relational two-person model. Waging Dialogue is the beginning of a movement toward a three-dimensional model, a model of difference that includes forces emerging from our sociopolitical world. It’s no longer just our individual histories that matter; it’s the history of our people and the way we engage with people who come from different racial, cultural, religious, and socioeconomic centers.
Here is an example of the way the psychoanalytic model can be used to co-create bridges of imagination – in this case, a discussion about the “rigged election.”
When people on the Left challenge people on the Right, they tend to argue that they’re wrong, crazy, or bad to insist that the last presidential election was rigged. That is experienced as offensive and is a setup for counterattack and alienation. If they responded with something like this, it might open a pathway for continued dialogue: The Left may have wished we could, but I don’t think we’re smart enough to rig an election of that magnitude without getting caught by others or by our own conscience. This suggests that both sides are partially right and partially wrong and it creates a space for continued conversation.
These kinds of ideas don’t have to be factually accurate at first; they’re the product of insight and imagination. Truth and creative solutions will emerge closer to the end of the process.
Won’t personal dynamics interfere? Absolutely, but they’re as much a fuel as an interference once we learn to recognize and respect thinking style differences – e.g. some of us are more literal and others more abstract – and personal defenses, blind spots, traumas, and triggers. To what extent do the dynamics of an individual represent the dynamics of their large group? For theory development, it’s necessary to begin with multiple dyads attempting the same process. Each pair will be different, but similar themes will emerge that can be understood at a different level of abstraction. An overarching theory can be developed by studying individual dyads and/or allowing small groups to study themselves.
Is it possible to alleviate toxic polarization? Yes, it is, if we develop a theory of difference and a methodology to address it, invite the world to look in new directions and excite them about new possibilities and new hope for the future. We have it in our power to do it.