Thoughts on Living
Dialectics
Marian Naidoo
January 2004
As part of the process
of developing my own theory/thesis of my life/learning, I have been focusing on
the development of my own living dialectic in relation to the account of
dialectics and complex responsive processes described in Ralph Stacey's latest
book, Complexity and Group Processes: A Radically Social Understanding of
Individuals. Ralph D.
Stacey. London. 2003
Ralph Stacey is a
member of the Institute of Group Analysis in London and works as a group
therapist in the NHS. He is also
Professor of Management and Director of the Complexity and Management Centre at
the Business School of the University of Hertfordshire. He is co-editor, along with Douglas
Griffin and Patricia Shaw, of the Routledge series Complexity Emergence
in Organisations and
author of Complex Responsive Processes in Organizations: Learning and Knowledge Creation.
The Department at
Hertfordshire is recognised as being at the forefront of the relationship
between complexity science and human organisations and it has been important
for me and the work and research I am involved in to develop and maintain an
understanding of their thinking. I approached the reading of this book with
great excitement and anticipation about the possibility of learning from the
work Stacey has been involved in in the development of a theory of complex
responsive process.
In this work Stacey
presents his fullest account to date of his theory of complex processes of
relating. He describes this as a
human-centred, complexity inspired perspective on life in groups and
organisations. In the forward to
this book he identifies the key questions it is addressing as:
I found this list of
questions were very similar to the paradigm I am using and developing in my
thesis – A living theory of responsive practice, as shown below:-
The questions “who am
I” and “How have I come to be who I am?” are represented in my diagram by the
box “Identity”. In the work I have been engaged in these questions have been
addressed by myself about myself through a process of developing an
understanding of my embodied values and in what way I am able to live these
values in my practice. As I have
been looking at my own learning in order to improve my practice these values
have been able to influence the standards by which I am able to judge my
practice. This process has been informed by encouraging the individuals I have
been working with to engage in a similar process. This process has been enabled by the use of a methodology
rooted in Theatre for Development as together we engage in a relationship focusing
on the sense-making of life in healthcare organisations. The relational nature of this process
for me is crucial. Stacey has
placed emphasis on the importance of relating in his second question “How have
we become to be who we are?” He addresses this question through his theory of
complex responsive processes.
Stacey places the development of complex responsive process for the
reader in the historical perspective of two contrasting streams of Western thought,
these are:-
Firstly that of Descartes, Kant,
Leibniz, Freud and modern psychoanalysis all of whom claim that the mind is
inside a person and the social system is outside.
Secondly and in
contrast, Mead, Hegel and Elias who hold the view that both mind and society
are essentially identical patterning activities of humans - two aspects of the
same process.
Stacey’s theory of
complex responsive processes has been developed from his insight into the
resonance between the second school of thought and of complexity science. He argues that the separation of the
mind from society forms the basis of the systems theory developed by Kant which
then became the foundation of systems thinking. With all systems theory there
remains an element of control and predictability. Complexity science on the other hand has developed from the
study of more complex systems that have chaos and unpredictability in
common.
The work on complexity
science began in the Santa Fe Institute in America and is now widespread.
Examples of complex adaptive systems are often given as the immune system, a
colony of termites or the weather.
What these systems have in common is that they are comprised of a large
number of individual agents who interact locally. They also have the ability to be both chaotic and stable at
the same time and can demonstrate novelty and emergence. The science of complex adaptive systems
is now being used widely as an analogy for understanding complex organisations
– like the health service. I have
found the analogies from the complexity sciences useful in my work and my
learning but have also been very aware that these analogies have their
limitations. For Stacey the
usefulness is in the understanding that agents can interact and that this
interaction can pattern itself without intervention or control. He also, in his introduction, makes a
plea for practitioners to describe their practice. “If we are not doing what we are writing, the scope
for confusion is immense. I
suggest that we need to write about what we are doing” (Stacey. p14. 2003).
This is what I did not
find in this book, Stacey does not write about what he is doing. What he does do in the book is to
theorise and to demonstrate the thinking behind the development of the theory
of complex responsive processes which has been influenced by the thinking of
Elias and Mead.
“The theory of
complex responsive processes draws together Elias’ process sociology and Mead’s
symbolic interactionism as ways of translating analogies from the complexity
sciences into a theory of human action.” (Stacey. p.17. 2003)
I have also found
Stacey’s insights into the work of Mead very useful and have found Meads work
to have many similarities with the work I have been engaged in when focusing on
“relationship”. Mead is well known
for his work which focused on demonstrating how mind and society have evolved
together. Much of this is
explained by what he calls gesture-response, here meaning is not communicated
from one individual to another but it is in the interaction that meaning
happens.
“Here meaning is
emerging in the action of the living present in which the immediate future
(response) acts back on the past (gesture) to change its meaning. Meaning is
not simply located in the past (gesture) or the future (response) but in the
circular interaction between the two in the living present.” (Stacey p.61. 2003)
This can be explored
further with improvisation. I have
found improvisation to be a crucial part of developing an understanding of “I”
and “I” in relation to/with “you”.
It is also through the process of facilitating this exploration that I
have also been able to learn and develop my own practice. If you consider a very simple
improvisation that I have used which involves 4 people. The room is arranged to resemble a
sitting room, using whatever is available. The four people are asked to enter the space and the brief
is that 3 are always to exclude 1.
What happens in this exercise is very interesting as each individual
will enter the space already forming their own agenda, trying to direct the
conversation in order to not be the person to be excluded by the others. The participants will very quickly
experience how unpredictable their relationships are and how they are meaning
making in the action of the living present. Knowledge, I believe, is created in this way, through our
conversation, interacting with each other. This creates a constant moving forward of ideas, of
understanding, creating knowledge in relationship with each other in a truly
emergent and authentic way. In
this example in the unfolding scenario of the improvisation but also just as
importantly in the improvisational nature of the facilitator, in this case me,
bringing forth my embodied knowledge which I respond with, which in turn is
being created in the moment. This
I believe to be a living dialect, living in the sense that the theory of my
practice is continually emerging in the pedagogical and paradoxical
relationships I/we form are forming in this joint action of improving practice.
So in what way does
this differ from the dialectic offered in this book? Stacey describes how the dialectic of Kant differs from that
of Hegel in that Kant calls for a synthesis of opposites while Hegel’s
dialectic is one of paradox.
“For Kant the
dialectic is the hypothesizing of the autonomous individual about an
object…….Hegel’s dialectic, in purely technical terms, is a way of thinking, a
particular kind of logic to do with the paradoxical movement of thought. It is
a logic in which there is the unity of opposites in their dissolution and
transition, that is, Aufhebung means negating opposites and preserving them, so
raising or transforming them, all at the same time. In this paradoxical movement a unity of thought emerges. The new unity of thought not only
preserves the opposites but also abolishes them because while they are
preserved, their original meanings are modified and the distinctions between
them are negated.”
(Stacey. P212. 2003)
Stacey is also clear
that he is a follower of the dialectics of Hegel. For me as a reader I cannot find within the chapters of this
book the evidence to support this in his practice. Although he does give some examples of group sessions they
give the reader no insight into his learning and in what way the people he is
working with in groups where he uses complex responsive processes of relating
are influencing his practice. This
is where I believe the difference lies between my own thesis in that I am
demonstrating, by showing my practice how my practice is influenced by those I
am working with in a
facilitator role in a
continuous spiral of emerging knowledge/practice.