Dialogical self
Inspired by the original ideas of William James and Mikhail Bakhtin, Hubert Hermans, Harry Kempen and Rens van Loon wrote the first psychological publication on the "dialogical self" in which they conceptualized the self in terms of a dynamic multiplicity of relatively autonomous "I"-positions in the (extended) landscape of the mind. In this conception, the "I" has the possibility to move from one spatial position to another in accordance with changes in situation and time. The "I" fluctuates among different and even opposed positions, and has the capacity to imaginatively endow each position with a voice so that dialogical relations between positions can be established. The voices function like interacting characters in a story, involved in processes of question and answer, agreement and disagreement. Each of them have a story to tell about their own experiences from their own stance. As different voices, these characters exchange information about their respective Me's and mines, resulting in a complex, narratively structured self.
Polly Young-Eisendrath
Polly Young-Eisendrath (born 1947) is a psychologist, feminist, author, teacher, speaker, Jungian analyst, Zen Buddhist, and the founder of Enlightening Conversations: Buddhism and Psychoanalysis Meeting in Person. She has been a featured speaker at the Aspen Ideas Festival, TED-X, and is the recipient of the Otto Weininger Award for Lifetime Achievement in Psychoanalysis. Polly Young-Eisendrath is the originator of Dialogue Therapy—designed to help couples and others transform chronic conflict into greater closeness and development. In 1983, Polly and her late husband, Ed Epstein, designed Dialogue Therapy as a new form of couples therapy that combined psychoanalysis, Jungian theory, psychodrama, and gender theory. Polly published two books on Dialogue Therapy (1984 and 1993), detailing its theory and methods for clinicians and the general public. She has now re-visioned and updated Dialogue Therapy to include the unique combination of psychodrama, Object Relations, and Mindfulness. In 2018, Shambhala Publications will release "True Love Ways: Relationship as Psycho-Spiritual Development" that offers her vision of personal love as a spiritual path and draws on her experience of 30 years as a Dialogue Therapist and Jungian psychoanalyst. Polly maintains a clinical practice of Jungian psychoanalytic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in Vermont, U.S.A.