Over 50 years ago, Carl Rogers wrote of his personal struggles with two conflicting self-voices, one striving to be empathically “with” another person, and the other seeking abstract, theoretical insights “about” the person. In more recent times, these two voices have come to represent seemingly entrenched, opposing camps within the domain of interpretive inquiry, an impasse which some suggest can only be resolved within a dialogical framework. However, there are important differences between dialogical perspectives in their potential for serving as such a framework. In this article, I take up the question of why a relational dialogism is required to organize and coordinate “with and about the other” and associated dualities. During the course of this discussion, I address meanings that reinforce the division and how these might be re-envisioned and then offer examples of interpretive research that is based in a relational dialogism with an emphasis on theoretical innovation.
BellN. J. (2009). Making connections: Considering the dynamics of narrative stability from a relational approach. Narrative Inquiry, 19, 280–306.
2.
BellN. J. (2013a). Dialogical processes of self-transformation: The sample case of eating disorder recovery. Identity, 13, 46–72.
3.
BellN. J. (2013b). Rhythm and semiotic structures of long-term ambivalence in the dialogical self: Eating disorder and recovery voices. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 26(4), 280–292.
4.
BellN. J.DasA. (2011). Emergent organization in the dialogical self: Evolution of a “both” ethnic identity position. Culture & Psychology, 17, 263–277.
5.
BochnerA. P. (2001). Narrative’s virtues. Qualitative Inquiry, 7, 131–157.
6.
BrunerJ. (1987). Life as narrative. Social Research, 54, 11–32.
7.
CapaldiE. J.ProctorR. W. (2008). Are theories to be evaluated in isolation or relative to alternatives? An abductive view. American Journal of Psychology, 121, 617–641.
8.
CarrD. (1986). Time, narrative and history. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
9.
CastoreG. F. (1956). Comments on Rogers’ “Persons or science.”American Psychologist, 11, 154–155.
10.
CheyneJ. A.TarulliD. (1999). Dialogue, difference and voice in the zone of proximal development. Theory & Psychology, 9, 5–28. doi:10.1177/0959354399091001
11.
CunhaC.GonçalvesM. M.ValsinerJ.MendesI.RibeiroA. P. (2012). Rehearsing renewal of identity: Reconceptualization on the move. In BertauM-C.GonçalvesM. M.RaggattP. T. F. (Eds.), Dialogic formations: Investigations into the origins and development of the dialogical self (pp. 205–233). Charlotte, NC: Information Age.
12.
DemorestA. (2005). Psychology’s grand theorists: How personal experiences shaped professional ideas. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
13.
DenzinN. K.LincolnY. S. (1994). Handbook of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
14.
EngleD. E.ArkowitzH. (2006). Ambivalence in psychotherapy: Facilitating readiness to change. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
15.
FrankA. W. (1995). The wounded storyteller: Body, illness, and ethics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
16.
FrankA. W. (2005). What is dialogical research, and why should we do it?Qualitative Health Research, 15, 964–974.
17.
FrankA. W. (2010). Letting stories breathe: A socio-narratology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
18.
FreemanM. (2003). Identity and difference in narrative inquiry: A commentary on the articles by Erica Burman, Michelle Crossley, Ian Parker, and Shelley Sclater. Narrative Inquiry, 13, 331–346.
19.
FreemanM. (2004). The matter of the text. Narrative Inquiry, 14, 29–43.
20.
FreemanM. (2007). Psychoanalysis, narrative psychology, and the meaning of “science.”Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 27, 583–601.
21.
GergenK. J.GergenM. M. (2011). Narrative tensions: Perilous and productive. Narrative Inquiry, 21, 374–381.
22.
GillespieA. (2007). Becoming other: From social interaction to self-reflection. Greenwich, CT: Information Age.
23.
GonçalvesM. M.RibeiroA. (2012). Narrative processes of innovation and stability within the dialogical self. In HermansH. J. M.GieserT. (Eds.), Handbook of dialogical self theory (pp. 301–318). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
24.
HaigB. D. (2008). Scientific method, abduction, and clinical reasoning. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 64, 1013–1018.
25.
HansonN. R. (1958). Patterns of discovery. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
26.
HarmanG. (1965). The inference to the best explanation. Philosophical Review, 74, 88–95.
27.
HarréR. (1986). Varieties of realism. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
HermansH. J. M. (2001). The dialogical self: Toward a theory of personal and cultural positioning. Culture & Psychology, 7, 243–281.
30.
HermansH. J. M. (2003). The construction and reconstruction of a dialogical self. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 16, 89–130.
31.
HermansH. J. M.Hermans-KonopkaA. (2010). Dialogical self theory: Positioning and counter-positioning in a globalizing society. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
32.
HermansH. J. M.KempenH. J. G. (1993). The dialogical self: Meaning as movement. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
33.
JosselsonR. (2004). The hermeneutics of faith and the hermeneutics of suspicion. Narrative Inquiry, 14, 1–28.
34.
JosselsonR. (2006). Narrative research and the challenge of accumulating knowledge. Narrative Inquiry, 16, 3–10.
35.
KirschenbaumH. (2009). The life and work of Carl Rogers. Alexandria, VA: American Counseling Association.
36.
LakeR.A. (1956). Comments on Rogers’ “Persons or science.”American Psychologist, 11, 155.
37.
LakinM. (1998). Carl Rogers and the culture of psychotherapy. In KimbleG. A.WertheimerM. (Eds.), Portraits of pioneers in psychology (Vol. 3, pp. 245–258). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
38.
LinellP. (2009). Rethinking language, mind, and world dialogically: Interactional and contextual theories of human sense making. In ValsinerJ. (Series Ed.), Advances in cultural psychology: Constructing human development. Charlotte, NC: Information Age.
39.
MacFarlaneA.O’Reilly-de BrúnM. (2012). Using a theory-driven conceptual framework in qualitative health research. Qualitative Health Research, 22, 607–618.
40.
McMullinE. (1992). The inference that makes science. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press.
41.
MorawskiJ. (2011). Our debates: Finding, fixing, and enacting reality. Theory & Psychology, 21, 260–274. doi:10.1177/0959354310394475
42.
MorsonG.EmersonC. (1990). Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a prosaics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
43.
OvertonW. F. (2006). Developmental psychology: Philosophy, concepts, methodology. In LernerR. M.DamonW. (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 1. Theoretical models of human development (6th ed., pp. 18–88). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
44.
PaavolaS. (2004). Abduction as a logic and methodology of discovery: The importance of strategies. Foundation of Science, 9, 267–283.
45.
PinnegarS.DaynesJ. G. (2007). Locating narrative inquiry historically. In ClandininD. J. (Ed.), Handbook of narrative inquiry: Mapping a methodology (pp. 3–34). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
46.
PolkinghorneD. E. (1988). Narrative knowing and the human sciences. Albany: State University of New York Press.
47.
RicoeurP. (1970). Freud and philosophy: An essay on interpretation (SavageD., Trans.). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
48.
RicoeurP. (1981). Hermeneutics and the human sciences (ThompsonJ. B., Ed. & Trans.). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
49.
RogersC. R. (1951). Client-centered therapy: Its current practice, implications, and theory. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
50.
RogersC. R. (1955). Persons or science? A philosophical question. American Psychologist, 10, 267–278.
51.
RogersC. R.DymondR. F. (Eds.). (1954). Psychotherapy and personality change. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
52.
RosenC. (2006). The self-portrait of a scientist. The New Atlantic, 13, 37–46.
53.
RussellM. H. (2010). Women’s counter narratives of redemption (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Texas Tech University, Lubbock.
54.
SalvatoreS.ValsinerJ. (2010). Between the general and the unique: Overcoming the nomothetic versus idiographic opposition. Theory & Psychology, 20, 817–833. doi:10.1177/0959354310381156
55.
SarbinT. R. (Ed.). (1986). Narrative psychology: The storied nature of human conduct. New York, NY: Praeger.
56.
SaukkoP. (2000). Between voice and discourse: Quilting interviews on anorexia. Qualitative Inquiry, 6, 299–317.
57.
SaukkoP. (2003). Doing research in cultural studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
58.
SaukkoP. (2008). The anorexic self. Albany: State University of New York Press.
59.
SchurzG. (2008). Patterns of abduction. Synthese, 164, 201–234.
60.
ShankG. (1998). The extraordinary ordinary powers of abductive reasoning. Theory & Psychology, 8, 841–860. doi:10.1177/0959354398086007
61.
SmithB. (2007). The state of the art in narrative inquiry: Some reflections. Narrative Inquiry, 17, 391–398.
62.
SmithB.SparkesA. C. (2006). Narrative inquiry in psychology: Exploring the tensions within. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3, 169–192.
63.
SmithB.SparkesA. C. (2009). Narrative inquiry in sport and exercise psychology: What can it mean, and why might we do it?Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 10, 1–11.
64.
SullivanP.McCarthyJ. (2005). A dialogical approach to experience-based inquiry. Theory & Psychology, 15, 621–638. doi:10.1177/0959354305057266
65.
ThagardP. (2002). The passionate scientist: Emotion in scientific cognition. In CarruthersP.StickS.SiegalM. (Eds.), The cognitive basis of science (pp. 235–250). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
66.
ThomasC. (2010). Negotiating the contested terrain of narrative methods in illness contexts. Sociology of Health and Illness, 32, 647–660.
67.
ToveyP.MansonN. (2004). Story teller or story analyst? How useful is the storied narrative for a critical sociology of CAM and nursing?Journal of Health Organization and Management, 18, 226–239.
68.
ValsinerJ. (1998). The guided mind: A sociogenetic approach to personality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
69.
ValsinerJ. (2001). Process structure of semiotic mediation in human development. Human Development, 44, 84–97.
70.
ValsinerJ. (2005). Scaffolding within the structure of dialogical self: Hierarchical dynamics of semiotic mediation. New Ideas in Psychology, 23, 197–206.
71.
ValsinerJ. (2006). Developmental epistemology and implications for methodology. In LernerR. M.DamonW. (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 1. Theoretical models of human development (6th ed., pp. 166–209). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
72.
ValsinerJ. (2007). Culture in minds and societies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
73.
WatsonJ. D. (1968). The double helix: Personal account of the discovery of the structure of DNA. New York, NY: New American Library.
74.
YoshimotoM. (2008). Second language learning and identity. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press.
75.
ZittounT. (2006). Transitions: Development through symbolic resources. Greenwich, CT: Information Age.
76.
ZittounT.GillespieA.CornishF.AvelingE-L. (2008). Using social knowledge: A case study of a diarist’s meaning making during World War II. In SugimanT.GerganK. J.WagnerW.YamadaY. (Eds.), Meaning in action: Constructions, narratives, and representations (pp. 163–179). New York, NY: Springer.
