WEBVTT 1 00:00:08.817 --> 00:00:10.353 - Good evening everyone. 2 00:00:10.353 --> 00:00:12.833 We're gonna get started. 3 00:00:13.276 --> 00:00:17.500 As you all know, I'm Marianne Yoshioka, 4 00:00:17.500 --> 00:00:20.352 the new dean of the School for Social Work. 5 00:00:20.497 --> 00:00:21.813 Yay! 6 00:00:22.075 --> 00:00:25.670 I could not, I have had the most amazing first week 7 00:00:25.670 --> 00:00:27.498 on the job, and 8 00:00:27.899 --> 00:00:31.707 it is in no small part because of the incredible pleasure 9 00:00:31.707 --> 00:00:34.448 I have gotten from meeting many of you. 10 00:00:34.448 --> 00:00:37.445 I've not met all of you yet, but it really truly is 11 00:00:37.445 --> 00:00:40.858 my personal goal to meet each and every one of you. 12 00:00:40.858 --> 00:00:45.455 An amazing time because of this extraordinary event today. 13 00:00:45.455 --> 00:00:48.548 And having the opportunity to meet our partners 14 00:00:48.548 --> 00:00:52.580 in field education, for whom we are very very grateful 15 00:00:52.580 --> 00:00:54.233 for all that we have done. 16 00:00:54.233 --> 00:00:56.932 And so much of the importance of this clinical training 17 00:00:56.932 --> 00:01:01.060 that you are receiving is in part because of the work 18 00:01:01.060 --> 00:01:03.427 and dedication of those individuals 19 00:01:03.427 --> 00:01:07.470 at our many field partner agencies and organizations 20 00:01:07.470 --> 00:01:08.750 around the country. 21 00:01:08.750 --> 00:01:12.120 So thank you again to everyone in field education. 22 00:01:12.120 --> 00:01:14.627 And in particular, thank you to our field work 23 00:01:14.627 --> 00:01:16.835 education department here at Smith, 24 00:01:16.835 --> 00:01:19.480 who does pretty well an amazing job. 25 00:01:23.112 --> 00:01:25.531 To Carolyn and Kaitlyn, and Maria, 26 00:01:25.531 --> 00:01:27.622 a big heartfelt thank you. 27 00:01:27.622 --> 00:01:32.027 I could not be more delighted to preside over tonight 28 00:01:32.027 --> 00:01:36.304 and to welcome you all to this important event. 29 00:01:36.304 --> 00:01:40.805 It's important to celebrate the amazing work 30 00:01:40.805 --> 00:01:44.805 and the great opportunities we have here at Smith College. 31 00:01:44.805 --> 00:01:48.004 And it's important to celebrate it and to take moments 32 00:01:48.004 --> 00:01:52.559 to acknowledge both what this experience here 33 00:01:52.559 --> 00:01:54.340 in the School of Social Work has given people, 34 00:01:54.340 --> 00:01:57.369 and the many many ways that people give back. 35 00:01:57.369 --> 00:01:59.481 Not only to the School of Social Work, 36 00:01:59.481 --> 00:02:02.062 but really to our profession and the advancement 37 00:02:02.062 --> 00:02:03.758 of clinical practice. 38 00:02:03.758 --> 00:02:06.126 And it's important to take this moment, 39 00:02:06.126 --> 00:02:09.518 and I am happy to welcome our new provost 40 00:02:09.518 --> 00:02:14.474 for the university, as well, to our proceedings tonight. 41 00:02:15.454 --> 00:02:19.278 And I will be welcoming her to the podium in a moment. 42 00:02:19.278 --> 00:02:23.363 And then Carolyn du Bois will be coming back 43 00:02:23.363 --> 00:02:26.797 to the podium to help us through our program 44 00:02:26.797 --> 00:02:28.669 for the evening. 45 00:02:29.187 --> 00:02:33.645 Provost Katherine Rowe has also started 46 00:02:33.645 --> 00:02:36.898 her position here at the college 47 00:02:36.898 --> 00:02:39.447 along the same lines as I have, 48 00:02:39.447 --> 00:02:43.308 so it's been a marvelous chance for me to get to know her, 49 00:02:43.308 --> 00:02:45.303 and I am greatly looking forward 50 00:02:45.303 --> 00:02:50.129 to a productive relationship as we move forward. 51 00:02:50.508 --> 00:02:52.684 Provost Rowe holds degrees in English 52 00:02:52.684 --> 00:02:56.150 and American Literature from Carleton College 53 00:02:56.150 --> 00:02:58.859 at the Bachelor's level, and from Harvard University 54 00:02:58.859 --> 00:03:01.483 at the Master's and PhD levels. 55 00:03:01.483 --> 00:03:04.342 She is well-regarded and well-known nationally 56 00:03:04.342 --> 00:03:08.310 and around the world as a scholar of Shakespeare. 57 00:03:08.310 --> 00:03:12.192 And over recent years has studied the role and impact 58 00:03:12.192 --> 00:03:15.620 of digital media on the transformation of literature. 59 00:03:15.882 --> 00:03:19.221 She comes to us from Bryn Mawr where she was the co-founder 60 00:03:19.221 --> 00:03:22.591 of Luminary Digital Media, which is a reading platform 61 00:03:22.591 --> 00:03:26.414 that brings the works of Shakespeare to our mobile devices. 62 00:03:26.698 --> 00:03:29.812 She brings a wealth of experience in faculty development, 63 00:03:29.812 --> 00:03:33.151 academic priorities, institutional governance, 64 00:03:33.151 --> 00:03:37.865 international initiatives, and the effect of pedagogy 65 00:03:37.865 --> 00:03:40.862 for non-native English speakers. 66 00:03:40.862 --> 00:03:42.398 In addition, she's contributed 67 00:03:42.398 --> 00:03:45.577 to the college's visibility and positions initiative, 68 00:03:45.577 --> 00:03:49.816 a depth of experience that can only do us well. 69 00:03:50.131 --> 00:03:52.680 I think that many of you may have heard, as well, 70 00:03:52.680 --> 00:03:55.283 that she brings another very unique skill set 71 00:03:55.283 --> 00:03:58.461 that she probably does not promote nearly as much, 72 00:03:58.461 --> 00:04:02.855 but she is a skilled ultimate frisbee competitor and coach. 73 00:04:02.855 --> 00:04:06.401 I'm thinking there's ultimate frisbee in our future. 74 00:04:07.122 --> 00:04:09.938 So without further ado, I'd like to welcome Provost Rowe 75 00:04:09.938 --> 00:04:11.372 to the podium. 76 00:04:11.580 --> 00:04:14.475 (applause) 77 00:04:19.484 --> 00:04:21.532 - Thank you so much Dean Yoshioka, 78 00:04:21.532 --> 00:04:24.603 for that lovely, lovely introduction. 79 00:04:24.603 --> 00:04:27.707 I'm so thrilled to be here tonight. 80 00:04:27.707 --> 00:04:31.611 This is my first ceremonial duty at Smith, 81 00:04:31.611 --> 00:04:36.005 and it's very special that it's one that celebrates, 82 00:04:36.005 --> 00:04:38.203 as this important event tonight does, 83 00:04:38.203 --> 00:04:42.405 Smith's long history of commitment to service 84 00:04:42.405 --> 00:04:44.916 and excellence in service. 85 00:04:46.266 --> 00:04:49.466 I'm gonna begin by welcoming to the stage 86 00:04:49.466 --> 00:04:52.484 each of our awardees, and then I'm gonna give them a moment 87 00:04:52.484 --> 00:04:54.554 to say a few words of their own. 88 00:04:54.554 --> 00:04:56.804 And I hope you will hold your applause, 89 00:04:56.804 --> 00:04:59.108 well you can do it at the beginning, 90 00:04:59.108 --> 00:05:00.431 but I hope you will give them a moment 91 00:05:00.431 --> 00:05:02.244 to stand up and collect themselves to speak to you, 92 00:05:02.244 --> 00:05:04.371 'cause we really want to hear from them. 93 00:05:04.889 --> 00:05:07.886 It is my honor to welcome to the stage tonight 94 00:05:07.886 --> 00:05:10.344 Josephine Tervalon. 95 00:05:10.745 --> 00:05:13.224 (applause) 96 00:05:27.607 --> 00:05:30.449 (laughter) 97 00:05:35.820 --> 00:05:38.044 I had that impression. 98 00:05:39.255 --> 00:05:43.110 I'll take a moment to be serious in this honor, though. 99 00:05:43.884 --> 00:05:47.478 As an MSW graduate of Smith College School for Social Work, 100 00:05:47.478 --> 00:05:50.539 an esteemed clinical social work professional, 101 00:05:50.539 --> 00:05:53.808 you are a source of great pride for the school. 102 00:05:54.230 --> 00:05:57.552 You are a gifted clinician, teacher, and consultant. 103 00:05:57.718 --> 00:06:00.576 In a career that spans 50 years, you have made significant 104 00:06:00.576 --> 00:06:03.851 contributions to the field of social work practice 105 00:06:03.851 --> 00:06:06.447 and clinical social work education. 106 00:06:07.520 --> 00:06:11.487 You graduated with honors from Tuskegee University in 1961 107 00:06:11.487 --> 00:06:14.271 and headed north to continue your education here 108 00:06:14.271 --> 00:06:16.596 at Smith College School of Social Work, 109 00:06:16.596 --> 00:06:20.580 earning your MSW in 1963. 110 00:06:21.471 --> 00:06:23.860 In the years that followed, you worked in private practice 111 00:06:23.860 --> 00:06:26.185 both overseas in Italy and Texas, 112 00:06:26.185 --> 00:06:28.734 providing clinical services to individuals, 113 00:06:28.734 --> 00:06:30.520 families, and groups. 114 00:06:30.804 --> 00:06:32.990 A consumate teacher and mentor, 115 00:06:32.990 --> 00:06:36.329 you have provided astute social work supervision 116 00:06:36.329 --> 00:06:39.368 to generations of MSW students, 117 00:06:39.368 --> 00:06:41.459 and have served as a member of the clinical 118 00:06:41.459 --> 00:06:44.253 and adjunct faculties at Baylor College of Medicine, 119 00:06:44.253 --> 00:06:47.155 the University of Texas School of Social Work at Austin, 120 00:06:47.155 --> 00:06:51.080 the Washington School of Psychiatry in Washington DC, 121 00:06:51.080 --> 00:06:52.679 and here at your alma mater 122 00:06:52.679 --> 00:06:55.436 Smith College School for Social Work. 123 00:06:56.722 --> 00:06:58.994 Smith College is particularly grateful to you 124 00:06:58.994 --> 00:07:01.799 for your work as a faculty field advisor for students 125 00:07:01.799 --> 00:07:06.326 in the Texas area from 1985 to 2007. 126 00:07:07.004 --> 00:07:10.001 Over the course of those 22 years, 127 00:07:10.001 --> 00:07:12.390 you provided students with an outstanding level 128 00:07:12.390 --> 00:07:14.875 of educational support that advisees 129 00:07:14.875 --> 00:07:17.216 have described as a gift. 130 00:07:17.702 --> 00:07:21.371 You are known, respected, and loved for your clear, 131 00:07:21.371 --> 00:07:24.997 concise feedback, your guidance around complex 132 00:07:24.997 --> 00:07:28.112 clinical issues, and your unwavering support 133 00:07:28.112 --> 00:07:30.597 of the educational and professional development 134 00:07:30.597 --> 00:07:32.703 of your students and advisees. 135 00:07:33.029 --> 00:07:35.695 In addition, you've provided skilled consultation 136 00:07:35.695 --> 00:07:39.002 to agency-based supervisors and have been a valued member 137 00:07:39.002 --> 00:07:42.671 of the field faculty, providing wise and often witty 138 00:07:42.671 --> 00:07:46.084 counsel to your fellow FFAs around the joys 139 00:07:46.084 --> 00:07:50.281 and the challenges of clinical social work education. 140 00:07:50.841 --> 00:07:54.990 You are a role model, mentor, teacher, supervisor, 141 00:07:54.990 --> 00:07:57.215 and leader who has inspired the development 142 00:07:57.215 --> 00:08:00.298 of many colleagues, particularly women in the practice 143 00:08:00.298 --> 00:08:02.463 of group psychotherapy. 144 00:08:02.463 --> 00:08:04.553 You've contributed to the social work profession 145 00:08:04.553 --> 00:08:08.105 in so many ways, including, but not limited to, 146 00:08:08.105 --> 00:08:11.092 your contributions as a longstanding member and leader 147 00:08:11.092 --> 00:08:13.929 in the National Association of Social Workers, 148 00:08:13.929 --> 00:08:17.161 Texas Society for Clinical Social Work, 149 00:08:17.161 --> 00:08:20.147 American Group Psychotherapy Society, 150 00:08:20.147 --> 00:08:23.704 and Houston Group Psychotherapy Society. 151 00:08:24.008 --> 00:08:26.867 You were nominated by the YMCA of Houston Texas 152 00:08:26.867 --> 00:08:30.871 as one of the outstanding women in the mental health field. 153 00:08:32.669 --> 00:08:34.433 In addition to your clinical practice, 154 00:08:34.433 --> 00:08:36.249 teaching, and supervisory work, 155 00:08:36.249 --> 00:08:38.574 you've conducted research, written papers, 156 00:08:38.574 --> 00:08:41.176 and presented extensively on mothers and daughters 157 00:08:41.176 --> 00:08:43.474 and women in the profession. 158 00:08:44.056 --> 00:08:46.797 Josephine Tervalon, throughout the course 159 00:08:46.797 --> 00:08:49.677 of your extraordinary career, you've contributed deeply 160 00:08:49.677 --> 00:08:53.485 to the lives of many, just has Smith College has, 161 00:08:53.485 --> 00:08:57.957 in the words of Sophia Smith, become a perennial blessing 162 00:08:57.957 --> 00:09:00.794 for the world, so too have your good works 163 00:09:00.794 --> 00:09:03.066 become a perennial blessing for Smith College 164 00:09:03.066 --> 00:09:05.572 School for Social Work and the profession. 165 00:09:05.572 --> 00:09:07.919 It is with great pride that we present to you 166 00:09:07.919 --> 00:09:09.939 the Day-Garrett Award. 167 00:09:10.361 --> 00:09:12.772 I'd love to welcome you to the podium here 168 00:09:12.772 --> 00:09:14.280 for a few words. 169 00:09:14.681 --> 00:09:17.832 (applause) 170 00:09:33.976 --> 00:09:35.431 (sighs) 171 00:09:42.284 --> 00:09:44.369 - Provost Rowe. 172 00:09:45.719 --> 00:09:49.990 Dean Yoshioka. 173 00:09:53.612 --> 00:09:55.398 Carolyn du Bois. 174 00:09:56.726 --> 00:09:59.579 And Josh Miller. 175 00:10:00.395 --> 00:10:02.529 I have to recognize all of these people 176 00:10:02.529 --> 00:10:07.360 for not only their positions, but what it means for me today 177 00:10:07.360 --> 00:10:09.722 to be standing here before you. 178 00:10:13.045 --> 00:10:15.882 I was going to write a few words, 179 00:10:15.882 --> 00:10:18.709 and then I did write a few and I didn't write any more. 180 00:10:18.709 --> 00:10:21.941 So I'd like to share a bit of what this means to me. 181 00:10:21.941 --> 00:10:24.143 It is awesome. 182 00:10:25.311 --> 00:10:26.975 Overwhelming. 183 00:10:26.975 --> 00:10:28.996 A joy. 184 00:10:29.929 --> 00:10:33.635 To have your peers honor you in this way. 185 00:10:34.313 --> 00:10:36.056 There is nothing better. 186 00:10:36.521 --> 00:10:38.942 What's difficult is sitting in the chair 187 00:10:38.942 --> 00:10:42.296 while they're talking about you. 188 00:10:43.742 --> 00:10:48.696 I think there's more anxiety in being seated there 189 00:10:49.462 --> 00:10:53.537 than if you're looking to get the Oscar 190 00:10:53.537 --> 00:10:56.870 and don't know if your name is going to be called. 191 00:10:59.105 --> 00:11:01.611 To hear part of your life being 192 00:11:01.611 --> 00:11:06.283 repeated back to you and how others have seen it 193 00:11:06.283 --> 00:11:07.947 and appreciated it. 194 00:11:07.947 --> 00:11:10.902 When I received the call from Josh in March, 195 00:11:10.902 --> 00:11:14.496 I was in the kitchen with my husband cooking soup 196 00:11:14.496 --> 00:11:16.213 for a small dinner party. 197 00:11:16.213 --> 00:11:19.882 And having a ball, heard Josh's voice and I said, 198 00:11:19.882 --> 00:11:23.018 oh Josh, it's wonderful to hear your voice. 199 00:11:23.018 --> 00:11:24.362 What's up? 200 00:11:24.362 --> 00:11:27.039 And he says, well, I have some news for you. 201 00:11:27.039 --> 00:11:29.684 And he said that, I thought, oh, maybe you guys 202 00:11:29.684 --> 00:11:30.663 want me to come up 203 00:11:30.663 --> 00:11:32.968 and do a little workshop or something, right? 204 00:11:32.968 --> 00:11:34.311 In my head. 205 00:11:34.311 --> 00:11:36.657 And then when he told me, you have been one 206 00:11:36.657 --> 00:11:41.657 of the selected nominees, one of the selected people 207 00:11:41.670 --> 00:11:43.857 for the Day-Garrett Award this year 208 00:11:43.857 --> 00:11:45.478 and I said, What? 209 00:11:45.478 --> 00:11:46.854 Oh my God. 210 00:11:46.854 --> 00:11:48.358 Are you serious? 211 00:11:48.358 --> 00:11:51.146 He said, of course I'm serious. 212 00:11:51.152 --> 00:11:52.891 And then Albert stops what he was doing 213 00:11:52.891 --> 00:11:54.538 when I said oh my God. 214 00:11:55.952 --> 00:11:59.717 It is such an honor to know that you see my work 215 00:11:59.717 --> 00:12:02.480 and know me in that way. 216 00:12:02.480 --> 00:12:03.962 It's been a blessing. 217 00:12:03.962 --> 00:12:06.469 This is also a significant year for me in many other ways 218 00:12:06.469 --> 00:12:10.804 because you heard how many years I've been graduated. 219 00:12:11.695 --> 00:12:14.671 And Smith gave me many gifts before this. 220 00:12:14.671 --> 00:12:19.385 This is the ultimate, but the first one was the classmates 221 00:12:19.385 --> 00:12:22.233 and people that have been in my life 222 00:12:22.233 --> 00:12:23.705 since I came to Smith. 223 00:12:23.705 --> 00:12:25.838 And the fact that I came on a scholarship. 224 00:12:25.838 --> 00:12:28.206 I was ready to tell them, I can't come because I only have 225 00:12:28.206 --> 00:12:30.137 $1000, which was a gift 226 00:12:30.137 --> 00:12:32.622 when I graduated undergraduate school. 227 00:12:32.622 --> 00:12:36.327 And they said, come, we'll take care of the rest. 228 00:12:36.771 --> 00:12:40.178 In those days, that was truly a blessing and I was here. 229 00:12:40.483 --> 00:12:43.458 I met a dear friend who is here. 230 00:12:43.458 --> 00:12:48.007 When I got the call, I thought, how do I tell my friends? 231 00:12:48.503 --> 00:12:51.473 And who do I tell first that I want to hear it from me? 232 00:12:51.618 --> 00:12:53.698 One is Zora Lusick, who's here with me 233 00:12:53.698 --> 00:12:54.999 and was my classmate. 234 00:12:54.999 --> 00:12:57.281 We have been friends all these years. 235 00:12:57.281 --> 00:12:59.340 In fact, we have many things alike. 236 00:12:59.340 --> 00:13:02.358 Like sons born on the same day a year apart. 237 00:13:02.358 --> 00:13:03.436 That kind of thing. 238 00:13:03.436 --> 00:13:05.100 Cats that are named the same. 239 00:13:05.950 --> 00:13:07.021 Okay? 240 00:13:07.603 --> 00:13:10.419 I also met dear friends and made dear friends 241 00:13:10.419 --> 00:13:12.392 in my second year placement, 242 00:13:12.392 --> 00:13:17.303 met a woman in Detroit who has become a sister. 243 00:13:17.448 --> 00:13:19.655 She is here tonight from Detroit, 244 00:13:19.655 --> 00:13:23.479 and she was in social work and in early child development. 245 00:13:23.996 --> 00:13:25.436 And her husband. 246 00:13:25.436 --> 00:13:28.764 And all my family, that not all of them are here 247 00:13:28.764 --> 00:13:30.759 because they're seven grandkids 248 00:13:30.759 --> 00:13:35.281 and we're an abundant family and there are lots of things 249 00:13:35.281 --> 00:13:38.236 always going on and they all split between the coasts, 250 00:13:38.236 --> 00:13:40.992 but they are here in the front row. 251 00:13:41.201 --> 00:13:43.643 Our first granddaughter, who is wonderful 252 00:13:43.643 --> 00:13:47.216 and had to, had to practice 253 00:13:47.216 --> 00:13:49.051 because she does theater and is well known 254 00:13:49.051 --> 00:13:51.669 in Melrose, Massachusetts. 255 00:13:51.813 --> 00:13:54.043 But these are the people, 256 00:13:54.043 --> 00:13:58.175 and I have, oh, Shiva, okay? 257 00:13:58.597 --> 00:14:02.074 And my other daughter that I, 258 00:14:02.074 --> 00:14:06.191 who adopted me, and my other two granddaughters, 259 00:14:06.191 --> 00:14:09.135 whom I'm very dear to are here, 260 00:14:09.135 --> 00:14:10.548 Helen Chung. 261 00:14:10.874 --> 00:14:13.039 And I've known her for years. 262 00:14:13.039 --> 00:14:16.548 And for your family, for your friends 263 00:14:16.548 --> 00:14:20.494 to be in awe with you when you tell them what's happening, 264 00:14:20.494 --> 00:14:23.086 and immediately say, I'm coming, 265 00:14:23.086 --> 00:14:25.363 I'm going to be there. 266 00:14:25.550 --> 00:14:28.562 It doesn't get any better than that in life. 267 00:14:28.664 --> 00:14:32.216 I truly love you all, I'm so appreciative of this award. 268 00:14:32.216 --> 00:14:36.653 I'm so appreciative of the school maintaining this award 269 00:14:36.653 --> 00:14:39.789 and honoring those of us who have worked 270 00:14:39.789 --> 00:14:42.296 not because we looked for an award, 271 00:14:42.296 --> 00:14:45.015 but because we truly believe in the work 272 00:14:45.015 --> 00:14:48.465 and give it our best, and it's been my life work. 273 00:14:48.781 --> 00:14:52.604 Thank you so much for this and keeping it going. 274 00:14:52.983 --> 00:14:55.782 (applause) 275 00:15:40.233 --> 00:15:43.171 (laughter) 276 00:15:47.593 --> 00:15:51.123 - It's my great honor to invite to the stage now 277 00:15:51.123 --> 00:15:54.413 our second recipient of the Day-Garrett Award, 278 00:15:54.462 --> 00:15:57.666 Chester Villalba, please join me. 279 00:15:57.832 --> 00:16:00.706 (applause) 280 00:16:14.450 --> 00:16:16.908 (laughter) 281 00:16:18.780 --> 00:16:22.221 This award was established in 1967 282 00:16:22.221 --> 00:16:24.962 to honor Florence Day and Annette Garrett, 283 00:16:24.962 --> 00:16:27.810 exceptional educators, who personified 284 00:16:27.810 --> 00:16:31.394 in their personal lives and service to their communities 285 00:16:31.394 --> 00:16:33.879 the high purpose of professional service 286 00:16:33.879 --> 00:16:36.290 that has long distinguished the Smith College 287 00:16:36.290 --> 00:16:38.001 School for Social Work. 288 00:16:38.775 --> 00:16:41.815 As a graduate of Smith College School for Social Work 289 00:16:41.815 --> 00:16:45.111 and a distinguished social work professional with 40 plus 290 00:16:45.111 --> 00:16:49.228 years of experience as a clinician, scholar, 291 00:16:49.228 --> 00:16:53.494 educator, and leader in the field of clinical social work, 292 00:16:53.494 --> 00:16:56.528 you are a source of great pride to this school. 293 00:16:57.579 --> 00:17:00.790 Chester Villalba, you have a Master's degree 294 00:17:00.790 --> 00:17:02.763 from Smith College School for Social Work 295 00:17:02.763 --> 00:17:04.736 and an honorary doctorate degree 296 00:17:04.736 --> 00:17:07.300 from the Sanville Institute. 297 00:17:07.328 --> 00:17:09.952 You are a member emeritus of the National Academy 298 00:17:09.952 --> 00:17:12.671 of Practice in Washington DC, 299 00:17:12.671 --> 00:17:14.997 and for more than 30 years, you have participated 300 00:17:14.997 --> 00:17:17.546 as a peer reviewer for the Council of Accreditation 301 00:17:17.546 --> 00:17:21.034 for Social Service and Mental Health Centers, 302 00:17:21.034 --> 00:17:23.700 and served as commissioner to the National Council 303 00:17:23.700 --> 00:17:26.969 of Accreditation of Children and Family Services. 304 00:17:27.465 --> 00:17:30.462 You have distinguished yourself through your dedicated 305 00:17:30.462 --> 00:17:33.289 service to children and families in the Bay area, 306 00:17:33.289 --> 00:17:35.731 working for 20 years as the CEO 307 00:17:35.731 --> 00:17:38.531 of Family Service Mid-Peninsula. 308 00:17:38.654 --> 00:17:42.206 Over those 20 years, you expanded family services programs 309 00:17:42.206 --> 00:17:46.344 to include group therapy, counseling for older adults, 310 00:17:46.344 --> 00:17:49.501 crisis hotlines for parents and teens, 311 00:17:49.501 --> 00:17:52.210 and public education workshops while maintaining 312 00:17:52.210 --> 00:17:55.180 a private practice in Los Altos. 313 00:17:56.135 --> 00:17:58.674 You are a longstanding and honored member 314 00:17:58.674 --> 00:18:01.223 of the Board of Trustees at the Sanville Institute, 315 00:18:01.223 --> 00:18:04.498 as well as chairman of the Acknowledge Alliance, 316 00:18:04.498 --> 00:18:08.993 formerly the Cleo Eulau Center, Board of Directors. 317 00:18:09.863 --> 00:18:12.209 At Acknowledge Alliance, you have promoted the well-being 318 00:18:12.209 --> 00:18:15.878 and education of children by helping to promote, 319 00:18:15.878 --> 00:18:18.598 support, and provide validation for teachers 320 00:18:18.598 --> 00:18:19.995 and their good work. 321 00:18:19.995 --> 00:18:22.662 Your work with the agency has helped to build more resilient 322 00:18:22.662 --> 00:18:26.389 and connected youth educators, and school communities. 323 00:18:27.141 --> 00:18:30.736 You are co-founder of the Palo Alto-based Adolescent 324 00:18:30.736 --> 00:18:33.498 Counseling Services, an agency that provides 325 00:18:33.498 --> 00:18:35.472 three main counseling programs 326 00:18:35.472 --> 00:18:38.697 in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. 327 00:18:39.375 --> 00:18:41.313 The bilingual On-site Individual 328 00:18:41.313 --> 00:18:43.105 and Family Counseling Program 329 00:18:43.105 --> 00:18:45.707 at eight public middle and high schools, 330 00:18:45.707 --> 00:18:49.099 the Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment Program, 331 00:18:49.099 --> 00:18:52.555 and the Affordable After School Counseling Program, 332 00:18:52.555 --> 00:18:55.178 which offers assessment, treatment, and education 333 00:18:55.178 --> 00:18:56.986 for the entire community. 334 00:18:58.080 --> 00:19:00.586 In addition, we are so grateful 335 00:19:00.586 --> 00:19:03.786 for your service at Smith College School for Social Work. 336 00:19:03.786 --> 00:19:06.250 You served as an agency-based supervisor 337 00:19:06.250 --> 00:19:09.049 and then as a field advisor for many years. 338 00:19:09.087 --> 00:19:12.820 Students described you as clinically knowledgable, 339 00:19:12.820 --> 00:19:15.790 respectful, and understanding. 340 00:19:15.913 --> 00:19:18.206 A strong advocate for students' learning 341 00:19:18.206 --> 00:19:23.011 and "an enthusiastic and spirited faculty field advisor." 342 00:19:24.499 --> 00:19:26.131 Furthermore, your work in our field office 343 00:19:26.131 --> 00:19:28.286 was instrumental in the development of an expansion 344 00:19:28.286 --> 00:19:31.042 of our network of field agencies in the Bay Area. 345 00:19:31.933 --> 00:19:34.205 Through your direct service and leadership, 346 00:19:34.205 --> 00:19:36.211 you've touched the lives of tens of thousands 347 00:19:36.211 --> 00:19:39.314 of teens and their families, helping them find a way through 348 00:19:39.314 --> 00:19:42.450 and beyond the challenging adolescent years. 349 00:19:42.450 --> 00:19:45.085 You've made exceptional contributions to Smith, 350 00:19:45.085 --> 00:19:47.548 to the field of social work practice, 351 00:19:47.548 --> 00:19:50.119 and to the high purpose of professional service, 352 00:19:50.119 --> 00:19:52.071 to which this school, 353 00:19:52.071 --> 00:19:54.646 for which this school is renowned. 354 00:19:54.951 --> 00:19:57.617 You are a blessing to the school and the profession. 355 00:19:57.617 --> 00:19:59.900 It is with great pleasure that we bestow upon you 356 00:19:59.900 --> 00:20:01.558 the Day-Garrett Award. 357 00:20:01.617 --> 00:20:02.918 Please come join me. 358 00:20:02.918 --> 00:20:05.856 (applause) 359 00:20:12.667 --> 00:20:15.063 - She knew more about myself than I do. 360 00:20:15.063 --> 00:20:17.084 (laughter) 361 00:20:18.113 --> 00:20:21.548 I really am in awe, as Josh phoned, 362 00:20:21.548 --> 00:20:23.126 when he phoned me, 363 00:20:23.126 --> 00:20:25.612 I said, there may be a mistake here. 364 00:20:27.137 --> 00:20:30.049 But I tell you, I'm just so grateful 365 00:20:30.049 --> 00:20:33.914 and honored to receive this award, 366 00:20:34.176 --> 00:20:37.590 particularly because two of my mentors 367 00:20:37.590 --> 00:20:40.725 in my professional life received this award 368 00:20:40.725 --> 00:20:44.539 and they were Jean Sanville, 369 00:20:44.539 --> 00:20:46.949 who created her own school 370 00:20:46.949 --> 00:20:50.420 for doctoral MSWs 371 00:20:50.420 --> 00:20:52.889 in Berkeley, California, 372 00:20:52.889 --> 00:20:56.382 and Cleo Eulau was my mentor in Palo Alto, 373 00:20:56.382 --> 00:21:00.322 and she received this award some years ago. 374 00:21:00.723 --> 00:21:04.072 To be in that company, I tell you, 375 00:21:04.072 --> 00:21:06.359 it fills my heart. 376 00:21:08.232 --> 00:21:11.080 I would like to tell you a story about 377 00:21:11.080 --> 00:21:15.276 my son, who graduated from Smith. 378 00:21:15.677 --> 00:21:19.026 But first, it's a story of how social work 379 00:21:19.026 --> 00:21:22.038 is in our family's DNA. 380 00:21:22.759 --> 00:21:25.729 My wife was a social worker when I met her, 381 00:21:26.055 --> 00:21:30.769 and when I came to Smith, I was placed in Rochester, 382 00:21:30.769 --> 00:21:35.238 and then, there we got pregnant and we came back 383 00:21:35.238 --> 00:21:37.211 for the summer. 384 00:21:37.211 --> 00:21:39.242 Our son Greg was born. 385 00:21:39.579 --> 00:21:42.128 And one day he phoned me and said, 386 00:21:42.128 --> 00:21:45.051 Dad, you know, I'm not, I don't wanna be 387 00:21:45.051 --> 00:21:47.333 in political science anymore. 388 00:21:47.333 --> 00:21:49.424 And I've been doing some community work 389 00:21:49.424 --> 00:21:53.253 with Joan Baez Center for Humanitas, 390 00:21:53.253 --> 00:21:56.826 and I've been a case worker for Tom Lantos, 391 00:21:56.826 --> 00:21:59.914 who is, was a congressman 392 00:21:59.914 --> 00:22:03.160 from San Mateo county district 393 00:22:03.160 --> 00:22:06.548 and was in Washington, and Greg did an intern there. 394 00:22:06.548 --> 00:22:10.111 And he said, but I was a migrant case worker 395 00:22:10.111 --> 00:22:12.703 for that office in San Mateo, 396 00:22:12.703 --> 00:22:15.209 and I really like talking to people. 397 00:22:15.209 --> 00:22:18.516 And, you know, I said, he says over the phone, 398 00:22:18.516 --> 00:22:21.556 Dad, I said I might think about getting a PhD 399 00:22:21.556 --> 00:22:26.039 in psychology, but you know, I did send for the catalogue 400 00:22:26.039 --> 00:22:29.182 for the Smith School for Social Work for where you went. 401 00:22:29.182 --> 00:22:31.016 For social work where you went. 402 00:22:31.016 --> 00:22:35.149 I'm thinking of becoming a social worker. 403 00:22:35.645 --> 00:22:38.610 And he said, but Dad, I have a question to ask you. 404 00:22:38.610 --> 00:22:39.709 This was over the phone. 405 00:22:39.709 --> 00:22:41.202 And I said, sure, Greg. 406 00:22:41.202 --> 00:22:44.189 I said, that's wonderful that you'd consider that. 407 00:22:44.189 --> 00:22:47.698 I'm really pleased, if that's your decision. 408 00:22:47.698 --> 00:22:49.586 He said, but Dad, I wanna ask you, 409 00:22:49.586 --> 00:22:51.990 why did you complain so much? 410 00:22:53.180 --> 00:22:55.585 Did you like social work? 411 00:22:56.689 --> 00:22:59.260 And I said, I complained? 412 00:22:59.260 --> 00:23:01.510 I can't believe I would complain. 413 00:23:01.510 --> 00:23:02.865 I love this field. 414 00:23:02.865 --> 00:23:05.809 You know, social work is so amazing 415 00:23:05.809 --> 00:23:08.134 in that you can be a counselor, 416 00:23:08.134 --> 00:23:10.150 you can be a psychotherapist, you can be 417 00:23:10.150 --> 00:23:12.006 a community organizer. 418 00:23:12.006 --> 00:23:15.114 You can even be a CEO of an agency, 419 00:23:15.472 --> 00:23:19.317 and you can, like I was, or you can have a private practice. 420 00:23:19.536 --> 00:23:21.765 And you can do anything you want and you can move 421 00:23:21.765 --> 00:23:25.456 from medical social work to group social work, 422 00:23:25.456 --> 00:23:29.146 and it's a field that you can do so many different things 423 00:23:29.146 --> 00:23:32.158 and be a professional social worker. 424 00:23:32.399 --> 00:23:35.759 And I said, but I don't, can't imagine complaining. 425 00:23:35.759 --> 00:23:38.948 And I said, but I'll think about it and let you know. 426 00:23:38.948 --> 00:23:40.550 So I thought about it and I thought, 427 00:23:40.550 --> 00:23:43.013 I never complain, I love this field. 428 00:23:43.013 --> 00:23:46.523 It really, you really feel like you're making a contribution 429 00:23:46.523 --> 00:23:49.266 and to work with people and groups 430 00:23:49.266 --> 00:23:52.721 on a one to one basis and see communities change. 431 00:23:52.721 --> 00:23:56.764 I mean, it's a, it just does something to the spirit 432 00:23:56.764 --> 00:23:58.481 and makes you feel whole. 433 00:23:58.481 --> 00:24:00.081 So I didn't understand it, 434 00:24:00.081 --> 00:24:03.787 and then I thought, ah, I know what I was complaining about. 435 00:24:03.889 --> 00:24:05.627 So I phoned him up and I said, Greg, 436 00:24:05.627 --> 00:24:07.739 I never complained about the field. 437 00:24:07.739 --> 00:24:10.043 The only thing that I complained about 438 00:24:10.043 --> 00:24:11.344 was the money. 439 00:24:11.344 --> 00:24:13.477 There wasn't much money in it. 440 00:24:13.477 --> 00:24:15.451 But that didn't stop him. 441 00:24:15.451 --> 00:24:16.731 He came to Smith. 442 00:24:16.731 --> 00:24:20.741 In fact, he was born, as I said, Carla was pregnant 443 00:24:20.741 --> 00:24:23.578 when we were in placement, and I think he was 444 00:24:23.578 --> 00:24:27.792 the first baby on campus in 1968, 445 00:24:27.792 --> 00:24:32.751 and he's been a social worker ever since his birth. 446 00:24:32.751 --> 00:24:35.339 Thank you very much for the award. 447 00:24:35.339 --> 00:24:37.216 It's really, I'm honored. 448 00:24:37.216 --> 00:24:40.015 (applause) 449 00:25:07.139 --> 00:25:08.702 - I feel like Vanna. 450 00:25:08.702 --> 00:25:11.795 So it's wonderful wonderful to see you all here, 451 00:25:11.795 --> 00:25:15.134 and to welcome you to this lecture 452 00:25:15.134 --> 00:25:16.968 and to the annual conference. 453 00:25:16.968 --> 00:25:19.891 I want to thank, add my thanks 454 00:25:19.891 --> 00:25:21.704 to those that Marianne shared, 455 00:25:21.704 --> 00:25:24.264 as did the Provost, to all of our field affiliates 456 00:25:24.264 --> 00:25:27.485 who are here, supervisors, directors of training, 457 00:25:27.485 --> 00:25:29.736 faculty field advisors. 458 00:25:29.736 --> 00:25:32.530 I say it every single year, I mean it every single year. 459 00:25:32.530 --> 00:25:35.116 We could not do this work without you. 460 00:25:35.965 --> 00:25:38.866 I also wanna add my thanks to my field team, 461 00:25:38.866 --> 00:25:42.086 my administrative support, and my very able 462 00:25:42.086 --> 00:25:44.071 associate and assistant directors of field, 463 00:25:44.071 --> 00:25:46.929 Katelin Lewis-Kulin and Maria Del Mar Farina. 464 00:25:46.929 --> 00:25:49.725 I'm also incredibly touched to see 465 00:25:49.725 --> 00:25:54.152 two of our long-time field faculty receive this award. 466 00:25:54.152 --> 00:25:57.708 I think it's very fitting and it's a great pleasure. 467 00:25:58.749 --> 00:26:01.447 It's also my pleasure to introduce to you tonight 468 00:26:01.447 --> 00:26:05.857 Mary Olson, who is our keynote speaker for this evening. 469 00:26:06.161 --> 00:26:10.582 Dr. Olson received her B.A. from Wellesley College, 470 00:26:10.865 --> 00:26:15.089 an M.S., a Master's Degree in English and Comp. Lit. 471 00:26:15.089 --> 00:26:18.502 from Columbia, then came here and did 472 00:26:18.502 --> 00:26:20.817 an MSW degree at the School for Social Work 473 00:26:20.817 --> 00:26:24.123 and then got a PhD from the Department of Communication 474 00:26:24.123 --> 00:26:26.534 at UMass in Amherst. 475 00:26:26.534 --> 00:26:29.829 She's a gifted clinician who has over 30 years 476 00:26:29.829 --> 00:26:34.282 of clinical experience with children, adults, and families. 477 00:26:34.981 --> 00:26:36.656 She maintains a private practice, 478 00:26:36.656 --> 00:26:39.141 and currently serves as the executive director 479 00:26:39.141 --> 00:26:42.234 of the Institute for Dialogic Practice, 480 00:26:42.234 --> 00:26:44.250 which is work that we're gonna have the privilege 481 00:26:44.250 --> 00:26:47.188 of hearing much more about this evening. 482 00:26:47.876 --> 00:26:50.841 She's wonderfully gifted teacher. 483 00:26:50.841 --> 00:26:54.276 She's taught clinical practice, theory, and research 484 00:26:54.276 --> 00:26:57.177 at a number of institutions, including Smith College 485 00:26:57.177 --> 00:27:00.334 School for Social Work, the UMass School of Medicine 486 00:27:00.334 --> 00:27:02.472 and the Department of Psychiatry, 487 00:27:03.075 --> 00:27:05.379 the Family Institute of Cambridge, 488 00:27:05.379 --> 00:27:07.448 the University of Helsinki, 489 00:27:07.448 --> 00:27:11.453 and Jyväskylä, did I, I didn't say it right, did I? 490 00:27:12.045 --> 00:27:13.411 Did I nail it? 491 00:27:13.411 --> 00:27:16.248 Jyväskylä University in Finland, 492 00:27:16.248 --> 00:27:18.594 where she served as a Fulbright Professor 493 00:27:18.594 --> 00:27:21.020 in the Department of Psychology. 494 00:27:21.047 --> 00:27:23.394 She's currently the co-principal investigator 495 00:27:23.394 --> 00:27:25.922 for a project funded by the Foundation for Excellence 496 00:27:25.922 --> 00:27:28.599 in Mental Health Care on adapting 497 00:27:28.599 --> 00:27:30.988 the Open Dialogue model in the US. 498 00:27:30.988 --> 00:27:33.868 And has served as co-principal investigator 499 00:27:33.868 --> 00:27:36.566 on a number of other major grant-funded projects 500 00:27:36.566 --> 00:27:39.788 including one from the National Science Foundation 501 00:27:39.788 --> 00:27:41.814 on empowerment for the elderly 502 00:27:41.814 --> 00:27:44.197 through assisted technology. 503 00:27:44.918 --> 00:27:48.288 She's the author of numerous articles and book chapters 504 00:27:48.288 --> 00:27:52.288 on family therapy, anorexia, feminist practice, 505 00:27:52.288 --> 00:27:55.599 managed care, and of course Open Dialogue. 506 00:27:56.053 --> 00:27:58.165 She's a highly sought after speaker, 507 00:27:58.165 --> 00:28:00.277 both here in the States and internationally, 508 00:28:00.277 --> 00:28:03.018 and we're delighted that she's joining us here this evening. 509 00:28:03.018 --> 00:28:05.935 So please join me in welcoming Dr. Mary Olson. 510 00:28:06.101 --> 00:28:08.559 (applause) 511 00:28:18.111 --> 00:28:21.385 - Well, it's a great honor and privilege to be here. 512 00:28:21.385 --> 00:28:22.782 Can you hear me? 513 00:28:22.782 --> 00:28:24.563 Oh, I gotta stay by the mic, okay. 514 00:28:24.563 --> 00:28:26.494 It's a great honor and privilege to be here, 515 00:28:26.494 --> 00:28:30.088 and I'm really delighted to be able to talk to you tonight 516 00:28:30.088 --> 00:28:33.694 about Open Dialogue and my experience in Finland. 517 00:28:33.694 --> 00:28:37.715 I really appreciate the invitation from the faculty 518 00:28:37.715 --> 00:28:39.053 to do so. 519 00:28:39.688 --> 00:28:43.656 I graduated from this program many years ago 520 00:28:43.656 --> 00:28:47.559 and it has provided a wonderful foundation, 521 00:28:48.879 --> 00:28:52.924 which it continues to do as I am able to wtiness, 522 00:28:52.924 --> 00:28:56.067 with my current students and also graduates 523 00:28:56.067 --> 00:28:58.296 of this program who I continue to work with 524 00:28:58.296 --> 00:28:59.474 in the field. 525 00:29:00.131 --> 00:29:01.287 So. 526 00:29:02.008 --> 00:29:05.538 Let me start by asking how many of you 527 00:29:05.538 --> 00:29:07.938 know something about Open Dialogue, 528 00:29:07.938 --> 00:29:09.596 are familiar with it. 529 00:29:10.018 --> 00:29:11.597 Okay, that's quite a bit. 530 00:29:11.597 --> 00:29:12.695 All right. 531 00:29:12.695 --> 00:29:16.732 Okay, Open Dialogue is an innovative, 532 00:29:17.410 --> 00:29:19.923 social network approach to 533 00:29:20.504 --> 00:29:23.384 the most severe psychiatric crises 534 00:29:23.384 --> 00:29:25.053 and conditions. 535 00:29:25.635 --> 00:29:30.232 It was developed by a team led by Jaakko Seikkula, 536 00:29:30.232 --> 00:29:34.008 Birgittu Alakare, and Uka Altenin, 537 00:29:34.008 --> 00:29:37.933 at Keropudas Hospital in Tornio, Finland, 538 00:29:37.933 --> 00:29:39.991 which is in western Lapland, 539 00:29:39.991 --> 00:29:43.244 which is in the northwest corner of Finland. 540 00:29:43.244 --> 00:29:46.679 It's a province of about 70,000 people 541 00:29:46.679 --> 00:29:49.019 on the Swedish border. 542 00:29:50.348 --> 00:29:53.420 Open Dialogue is both a system, 543 00:29:53.420 --> 00:29:56.129 a way of organizing a treatment system, 544 00:29:56.129 --> 00:29:59.632 and it's a form of therapy in that system. 545 00:30:00.961 --> 00:30:03.723 It has garnered international attention 546 00:30:03.723 --> 00:30:07.152 for its outcomes for first-time psychosis. 547 00:30:07.510 --> 00:30:10.112 There were two five-year studies, 548 00:30:10.112 --> 00:30:13.898 and 80% of Open Dialogue patients 549 00:30:13.898 --> 00:30:17.333 were working, studying, or looking for a job 550 00:30:17.333 --> 00:30:19.931 at the five year marker. 551 00:30:21.046 --> 00:30:25.110 Integrating key insights from psychoanalytic 552 00:30:25.110 --> 00:30:29.963 and psychodynamic approaches to trauma and psychosis, 553 00:30:29.963 --> 00:30:34.720 Open Dialogue is rooted in, nevertheless, 554 00:30:34.720 --> 00:30:37.515 in the systemic family therapy tradition 555 00:30:37.515 --> 00:30:41.344 that descended from the work of Gregory Bateson 556 00:30:41.344 --> 00:30:45.028 and made language and communication central. 557 00:30:46.496 --> 00:30:50.677 It also benefits from the influence on this tradition 558 00:30:50.677 --> 00:30:54.922 of the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin, 559 00:30:54.922 --> 00:30:59.913 who is mostly an incomprehensible Russian philosopher, 560 00:30:59.913 --> 00:31:01.774 but nevertheless. 561 00:31:02.217 --> 00:31:05.790 But particularly his concept of dialogue 562 00:31:05.790 --> 00:31:08.920 as a model of the living world. 563 00:31:09.189 --> 00:31:11.589 Open Dialogue pioneer Jaakko Seikkula 564 00:31:11.589 --> 00:31:15.834 was the first to conceptualize therapeutic conversation 565 00:31:15.834 --> 00:31:19.759 as dialogic in Bakhtin's sense. 566 00:31:19.759 --> 00:31:21.856 And we'll be, I'll be trying to clarify 567 00:31:21.856 --> 00:31:23.471 what that means. 568 00:31:24.085 --> 00:31:26.677 The unique geography of Finland, 569 00:31:26.677 --> 00:31:29.702 its position between Russia 570 00:31:29.702 --> 00:31:33.510 and the West has allowed for this 571 00:31:33.510 --> 00:31:36.549 idiosyncratic cross-fertilization 572 00:31:36.549 --> 00:31:40.752 of ideas and practices from Russia, Europe, 573 00:31:40.752 --> 00:31:42.772 and the United States. 574 00:31:44.890 --> 00:31:47.077 So, here's a map. 575 00:31:47.077 --> 00:31:50.767 You can see that Tornio is right beneath 576 00:31:50.767 --> 00:31:52.681 the Arctic Circle. 577 00:31:53.018 --> 00:31:57.028 And there's been a lot of cross-fertilization 578 00:31:57.028 --> 00:31:58.811 between the group in Tornio 579 00:31:58.811 --> 00:32:01.291 and one in Tromso, 580 00:32:01.291 --> 00:32:03.994 which is the northern rim of Norway. 581 00:32:04.994 --> 00:32:07.584 And the work of a person named Tom Andersen 582 00:32:07.584 --> 00:32:11.392 who invented something called the reflecting team 583 00:32:11.392 --> 00:32:14.437 and reflecting process work. 584 00:32:16.362 --> 00:32:19.588 But I'm really gonna start, 585 00:32:19.797 --> 00:32:21.749 the first part of this talk, 586 00:32:21.749 --> 00:32:26.158 by describing my own connection to this work. 587 00:32:29.078 --> 00:32:33.369 As Gregory Bateson said, epistemology, or, 588 00:32:34.164 --> 00:32:36.020 which is a fancy work for the way 589 00:32:36.020 --> 00:32:39.843 that we think, our style of thinking, 590 00:32:40.030 --> 00:32:41.837 our rules for thinking, 591 00:32:42.238 --> 00:32:44.440 is always personal. 592 00:32:44.937 --> 00:32:48.350 The point of the probe is always in the heart 593 00:32:48.350 --> 00:32:50.760 of the explorer. 594 00:32:50.771 --> 00:32:54.365 So I'm gonna tell how I discovered Open Dialogue 595 00:32:54.365 --> 00:32:58.877 and the ways in which I think it altered my practice 596 00:32:58.877 --> 00:33:01.260 starting 15 years ago 597 00:33:01.800 --> 00:33:05.053 when I encountered this radically different 598 00:33:05.053 --> 00:33:06.828 kind of work. 599 00:33:07.069 --> 00:33:08.860 And then I'm gonna go on, the second part 600 00:33:08.860 --> 00:33:11.687 of the talk, I'm gonna talk about why now. 601 00:33:11.687 --> 00:33:15.964 Why is there a growing interest in the United States 602 00:33:15.964 --> 00:33:17.697 in Open Dialogue. 603 00:33:19.121 --> 00:33:23.995 Project directors at Samsa and NIMH, 604 00:33:23.995 --> 00:33:28.358 these are the two major federal funding agencies 605 00:33:28.358 --> 00:33:32.262 in the United States, have expressed great interest 606 00:33:32.262 --> 00:33:36.048 in supporting an Open Dialogue initiative, 607 00:33:36.048 --> 00:33:38.299 hopefully they're gonna support ours, 608 00:33:38.299 --> 00:33:40.645 at UMass Medical School. 609 00:33:40.645 --> 00:33:43.941 I co-lead a research project there 610 00:33:43.941 --> 00:33:48.767 on the adaptation of Open Dialogue to the US. 611 00:33:49.647 --> 00:33:53.647 But the question is why now is there this keen interest, 612 00:33:53.647 --> 00:33:56.953 whereas several years ago, we were told 613 00:33:56.953 --> 00:33:59.791 that our work was just too different 614 00:33:59.791 --> 00:34:02.430 and that we would never get funding for it. 615 00:34:03.940 --> 00:34:06.841 So, talking about this growing interest 616 00:34:06.841 --> 00:34:10.371 is gonna require my sketching 617 00:34:10.371 --> 00:34:12.814 the historical and cultural forces 618 00:34:12.814 --> 00:34:16.579 that are shaping the introduction of Open Dialogue 619 00:34:16.579 --> 00:34:18.610 into the United States. 620 00:34:19.683 --> 00:34:22.424 Just briefly, let me say that, 621 00:34:22.424 --> 00:34:24.333 as you may well know, 622 00:34:24.333 --> 00:34:28.045 in the last two decades, 623 00:34:29.625 --> 00:34:32.013 the dominant discourse of psychiatry 624 00:34:32.013 --> 00:34:36.172 has been something called biological determinism. 625 00:34:36.172 --> 00:34:41.172 That sees symptoms as biochemical processes 626 00:34:41.177 --> 00:34:45.121 to be treated primarily with medication. 627 00:34:46.129 --> 00:34:49.003 In contrast to this perspective, 628 00:34:49.468 --> 00:34:53.467 Open Dialogue believes in responding 629 00:34:53.467 --> 00:34:56.064 to the whole person in a context. 630 00:34:56.859 --> 00:34:59.600 Now what's happening at the various highest levels 631 00:34:59.600 --> 00:35:04.101 of academic research is that there is recognition 632 00:35:04.101 --> 00:35:09.101 that biological determinism, that this linear, 633 00:35:09.147 --> 00:35:13.988 decontextualized, simplified view 634 00:35:13.988 --> 00:35:17.118 of the brain as a thing 635 00:35:18.244 --> 00:35:20.910 has very many, 636 00:35:20.910 --> 00:35:23.667 has a great variety of problems. 637 00:35:24.654 --> 00:35:28.995 And what I'm sensing is that there's a paradigm shift 638 00:35:28.995 --> 00:35:30.375 underway. 639 00:35:30.616 --> 00:35:34.599 And the interest in Open Dialogue is reflecting that. 640 00:35:35.288 --> 00:35:37.581 I think that there is a shift toward 641 00:35:37.581 --> 00:35:41.410 reestablishing psycho-social care 642 00:35:41.410 --> 00:35:45.847 in the treatment of the most severely troubled 643 00:35:45.847 --> 00:35:49.137 and distressed and disenfranchised people. 644 00:35:52.471 --> 00:35:53.787 So. 645 00:35:54.999 --> 00:35:57.942 And thirdly, at the same time that I wanna describe 646 00:35:57.942 --> 00:36:00.502 this approach and why I'm interested in it, 647 00:36:00.502 --> 00:36:04.214 I also want to state 648 00:36:04.214 --> 00:36:07.088 that there is a need for caution 649 00:36:07.232 --> 00:36:11.531 in bringing a method and a system from another place, 650 00:36:11.531 --> 00:36:16.128 and that for this to really be viable in the United States, 651 00:36:16.128 --> 00:36:20.090 there has to be extensive adaptation. 652 00:36:20.725 --> 00:36:25.551 Particularly because of our diversity of population. 653 00:36:27.893 --> 00:36:30.489 So let me start with my own history. 654 00:36:35.700 --> 00:36:39.273 My discovery of Open Dialogue was serendipitous. 655 00:36:39.273 --> 00:36:42.014 Now, people who know me know that I love language 656 00:36:42.014 --> 00:36:43.668 and I love words, so, 657 00:36:43.668 --> 00:36:47.373 in preparation for this talk I looked up serendipity, 658 00:36:47.795 --> 00:36:52.795 and Wikipedia says that serendipity is the accident 659 00:36:52.904 --> 00:36:55.432 of finding something good and useful 660 00:36:55.432 --> 00:36:59.031 without specifically searching for it. 661 00:36:59.752 --> 00:37:04.232 It was coined by an art historian named Horace Walpole 662 00:37:04.232 --> 00:37:06.647 who in 1754 663 00:37:07.389 --> 00:37:11.015 wrote a letter using this word for the first time, 664 00:37:11.015 --> 00:37:13.842 basing it on a Persian fairy tale, 665 00:37:13.842 --> 00:37:16.561 the Three Princes of Serendip, 666 00:37:16.561 --> 00:37:20.625 whose heroes, he said, were always making discoveries 667 00:37:20.625 --> 00:37:23.484 by accident or sagacity, 668 00:37:23.484 --> 00:37:26.102 of things they were not in quest of. 669 00:37:27.985 --> 00:37:32.144 Serendipity is based on the Sanskrit serendip, 670 00:37:32.144 --> 00:37:34.645 which means golden island. 671 00:37:35.110 --> 00:37:37.456 Now, I think what I wanna make clear 672 00:37:37.456 --> 00:37:39.941 is not only was my discovery of Open Dialogue 673 00:37:39.941 --> 00:37:43.866 marked by serendipity, but Open Dialogue itself, 674 00:37:43.866 --> 00:37:46.960 by fostering a context for listening, 675 00:37:46.960 --> 00:37:50.970 emphasizes a more collaborative, open-ended, 676 00:37:50.970 --> 00:37:54.692 and yes, serendipitous conversation, 677 00:37:54.692 --> 00:37:59.631 in which the aim is to generate a common language, 678 00:37:59.631 --> 00:38:03.721 or dialogical dialogue, 679 00:38:04.441 --> 00:38:07.953 in contrast to trying to 680 00:38:07.953 --> 00:38:11.277 simply immediately eradicate 681 00:38:11.277 --> 00:38:14.447 symptoms based on an expert-driven 682 00:38:14.447 --> 00:38:18.921 or "monological" discourse. 683 00:38:20.175 --> 00:38:22.660 It was Foucault who best 684 00:38:24.810 --> 00:38:29.810 identified the political nature of not having 685 00:38:29.956 --> 00:38:33.224 a common language in psychiatry. 686 00:38:34.073 --> 00:38:37.326 Foucault said that the absence of a common language 687 00:38:37.326 --> 00:38:39.231 in psychiatry, in other words, 688 00:38:39.231 --> 00:38:41.140 a shared language, 689 00:38:41.140 --> 00:38:45.177 is a formula of social exclusion. 690 00:38:46.964 --> 00:38:49.145 He also said, 691 00:38:49.780 --> 00:38:52.440 and he wrote in Madness and Civilization, 692 00:38:53.193 --> 00:38:54.689 as for a common language, 693 00:38:54.689 --> 00:38:57.541 now he's talking about in psychiatry, 694 00:38:58.155 --> 00:39:01.211 there is no such thing any longer. 695 00:39:01.963 --> 00:39:05.323 The constitution of madness as mental illness 696 00:39:05.323 --> 00:39:07.947 at the end of the 18th century 697 00:39:07.947 --> 00:39:11.546 affords evidence of a broken dialogue. 698 00:39:12.778 --> 00:39:15.584 The language of psychiatry, which is a monologue 699 00:39:15.584 --> 00:39:19.231 of reason about madness, has been established 700 00:39:19.231 --> 00:39:23.054 only on the basis of such silence, 701 00:39:23.231 --> 00:39:27.295 meaning the silence of the voice of madness, 702 00:39:27.295 --> 00:39:30.452 the silencing of the voice of suffering 703 00:39:30.452 --> 00:39:34.851 from the perspective of the person suffering. 704 00:39:38.249 --> 00:39:39.587 So. 705 00:39:40.595 --> 00:39:43.219 And by common language, I wanna add something else, 706 00:39:43.219 --> 00:39:47.202 which is that we don't just mean words. 707 00:39:48.232 --> 00:39:50.792 I was really delighted to 708 00:39:50.792 --> 00:39:54.504 be and to hear the panel on Monday night 709 00:39:54.504 --> 00:39:56.200 talking about their work, 710 00:39:56.200 --> 00:39:59.197 and I thought to myself when I heard about hip hop therapy, 711 00:39:59.197 --> 00:40:04.157 which uses rap music to engage urban youth 712 00:40:04.157 --> 00:40:06.834 who are turned off by talk therapy, 713 00:40:07.084 --> 00:40:11.958 as an example of a very creative dialogic practice. 714 00:40:13.536 --> 00:40:15.904 So dialogue and engaging dialogue 715 00:40:15.904 --> 00:40:18.191 can take many many forms. 716 00:40:20.565 --> 00:40:22.965 So, my journey into Open Dialogue 717 00:40:22.965 --> 00:40:24.960 was through an unlikely door. 718 00:40:26.450 --> 00:40:28.778 About 15 years ago, I was invited 719 00:40:28.778 --> 00:40:31.252 by the then dean for social work 720 00:40:31.252 --> 00:40:33.482 at Smith College, Anita Lightburn, 721 00:40:33.482 --> 00:40:36.063 to participate in a research study 722 00:40:36.063 --> 00:40:37.897 on the effects of managed care 723 00:40:37.897 --> 00:40:40.238 on children and families. 724 00:40:40.916 --> 00:40:45.022 I was part of a group that included Phoebe Sessions 725 00:40:45.022 --> 00:40:48.435 and Allen Coffee Pulleyblank, 726 00:40:48.435 --> 00:40:51.987 and I was interested in this because of what 727 00:40:51.987 --> 00:40:55.192 I was experiencing professionally at the time. 728 00:40:55.987 --> 00:40:59.069 In the mid-90s, in the Pioneer Valley, 729 00:41:00.409 --> 00:41:03.506 there was a sea change when managed care 730 00:41:03.506 --> 00:41:07.479 started to come in and shape the mental health field. 731 00:41:08.551 --> 00:41:11.495 Up until that point, family therapy had flourished 732 00:41:11.495 --> 00:41:15.378 and there had been family therapy teams 733 00:41:15.378 --> 00:41:18.273 and family therapy training programs. 734 00:41:20.177 --> 00:41:22.460 After the arrival of managed care, 735 00:41:22.460 --> 00:41:24.518 family therapy teams started disappearing 736 00:41:24.518 --> 00:41:26.961 from ordinary clinics and agencies, 737 00:41:26.961 --> 00:41:29.307 and family therapy training programs 738 00:41:29.307 --> 00:41:31.317 started to shut down. 739 00:41:31.419 --> 00:41:33.670 The program that I had spent five years building 740 00:41:33.670 --> 00:41:35.206 at Berkshire Medical Center 741 00:41:35.206 --> 00:41:38.544 was dismantled in five weeks when we merged 742 00:41:38.544 --> 00:41:41.584 with another agency under the new, 743 00:41:41.584 --> 00:41:45.087 restrictive economic context. 744 00:41:45.530 --> 00:41:48.666 So, at that point I thought that family therapy 745 00:41:48.666 --> 00:41:50.671 was facing extinction and I was wondering, 746 00:41:50.671 --> 00:41:52.154 are these just bad ideas? 747 00:41:52.154 --> 00:41:53.477 We were just mistaken? 748 00:41:53.477 --> 00:41:56.670 They don't make any sense, you know? 749 00:41:57.956 --> 00:42:01.839 What had drawn me to family therapy in the first place 750 00:42:01.839 --> 00:42:05.199 with the idea of trying to understand an individual 751 00:42:05.199 --> 00:42:06.963 in a context. 752 00:42:08.110 --> 00:42:13.006 So when Anita Lightburn invited me to join this study, 753 00:42:13.006 --> 00:42:15.587 I leaped at the chance, 754 00:42:15.587 --> 00:42:19.672 and what I found was that it began to shape an answer 755 00:42:19.672 --> 00:42:23.715 to what was happening and why systemic practices 756 00:42:23.715 --> 00:42:26.770 were disappearing from public settings. 757 00:42:28.141 --> 00:42:31.352 We interviewed stakeholders 758 00:42:31.352 --> 00:42:33.788 in the northeast and 759 00:42:34.925 --> 00:42:37.133 we interviewed people in community mental health, 760 00:42:37.133 --> 00:42:40.450 we interviewed administrators, front line people, 761 00:42:40.450 --> 00:42:43.479 psychologists, social workers, 762 00:42:43.479 --> 00:42:46.513 insurance companies. 763 00:42:47.148 --> 00:42:50.928 And what we found was a virtual consensus. 764 00:42:51.606 --> 00:42:55.510 At that point, there was an ascendancy 765 00:42:55.510 --> 00:42:57.622 of psycho-pharmacology, 766 00:42:57.622 --> 00:43:01.771 and a downplaying of all relational therapies, 767 00:43:01.771 --> 00:43:03.930 including family therapy. 768 00:43:04.448 --> 00:43:05.909 And in looking back, 769 00:43:05.909 --> 00:43:08.961 what we discovered was a very important trend, 770 00:43:10.361 --> 00:43:13.408 which is that the insurance practices 771 00:43:13.408 --> 00:43:18.271 were the way that the new biological determinism 772 00:43:18.431 --> 00:43:22.890 was established and became routine 773 00:43:22.890 --> 00:43:25.998 in ordinary clinics and practices. 774 00:43:26.442 --> 00:43:28.419 So not only was, 775 00:43:28.447 --> 00:43:30.281 were the insurance companies 776 00:43:30.281 --> 00:43:32.670 shaping reimbursement structures, 777 00:43:32.670 --> 00:43:36.334 they were shaping clinical practice itself. 778 00:43:41.214 --> 00:43:43.368 The subtrends that we found. 779 00:43:43.368 --> 00:43:47.230 Now I also wanna say that the managed care initiative 780 00:43:48.940 --> 00:43:52.296 was propelled by very legitimate aims 781 00:43:52.296 --> 00:43:55.080 and managed care is not a monolith 782 00:43:55.080 --> 00:43:59.948 and there were better managed care companies than others. 783 00:44:00.071 --> 00:44:04.705 But in general, this was the effect on public settings. 784 00:44:05.159 --> 00:44:07.431 Now the reason I'm gonna go over these trends 785 00:44:07.431 --> 00:44:09.031 a little bit more is because 786 00:44:09.031 --> 00:44:12.182 they remain highly relevant today. 787 00:44:12.423 --> 00:44:15.761 There's a new book by a woman, Sandra Bloom, 788 00:44:15.761 --> 00:44:20.411 called, a relatively new book called Destroying Sanctuary 789 00:44:20.411 --> 00:44:24.913 in which she documents that not only do these trends 790 00:44:24.913 --> 00:44:28.853 still operate, they've become amplified. 791 00:44:30.651 --> 00:44:34.591 So, what we found in addition were these subtrends. 792 00:44:35.547 --> 00:44:38.485 There was an erosion of clinical practices 793 00:44:38.485 --> 00:44:42.185 and an emphasis instead on productivity and procedures. 794 00:44:43.375 --> 00:44:46.234 There was the idea that medication is really 795 00:44:46.234 --> 00:44:48.958 the only real thing that you can do. 796 00:44:50.458 --> 00:44:52.591 There is an emphasis on the individual 797 00:44:52.591 --> 00:44:56.025 and reinscribing the individual as the locus of pathology 798 00:44:56.025 --> 00:44:58.995 even if that individual is a child. 799 00:45:00.932 --> 00:45:04.430 There was increased professional isolation 800 00:45:04.430 --> 00:45:07.758 and an absence of collaborative arrangements. 801 00:45:07.758 --> 00:45:12.398 A flattening out of opportunities 802 00:45:12.398 --> 00:45:14.877 for training and supervision. 803 00:45:15.811 --> 00:45:19.682 And so there were reduced contexts for creativity 804 00:45:19.682 --> 00:45:21.308 and innovation. 805 00:45:22.200 --> 00:45:24.631 And finally, the most important trend, 806 00:45:24.631 --> 00:45:27.330 which is kind of a trend about all the other trends, 807 00:45:27.330 --> 00:45:31.708 is that there was a loss of language of the living world. 808 00:45:32.247 --> 00:45:36.721 Dialogue, stories, metaphor, ambiguity, mystery. 809 00:45:38.532 --> 00:45:39.980 Did I say dialogue? 810 00:45:39.980 --> 00:45:42.512 History, stories. 811 00:45:43.958 --> 00:45:48.438 Instead, there was this idea that all human suffering 812 00:45:48.438 --> 00:45:50.294 could be comprehensively, 813 00:45:50.294 --> 00:45:52.715 there was an increasing disposition 814 00:45:52.715 --> 00:45:56.495 to see all human suffering as comprehensively 815 00:45:58.475 --> 00:46:00.719 explained by 816 00:46:01.418 --> 00:46:03.428 a chemical imbalance. 817 00:46:05.013 --> 00:46:07.471 So this was pretty discouraging. 818 00:46:10.645 --> 00:46:13.599 I also wanna say that even though 819 00:46:13.599 --> 00:46:16.874 there were these trends, there were and continue to be 820 00:46:16.874 --> 00:46:21.055 many people, many social workers, particularly, 821 00:46:21.055 --> 00:46:24.393 doing wonderful wonderful work 822 00:46:24.393 --> 00:46:26.718 and helping people despite these 823 00:46:26.718 --> 00:46:29.517 less than optimal circumstances. 824 00:46:31.689 --> 00:46:34.547 Around this time when we were doing this study, 825 00:46:34.547 --> 00:46:38.120 I happened to go hear Carlos Sluzki talk 826 00:46:38.120 --> 00:46:40.296 at the American Family Therapy Academy. 827 00:46:40.296 --> 00:46:43.223 He'd also been my boss for about seven years. 828 00:46:43.763 --> 00:46:46.546 But he was one of the few psychiatrists 829 00:46:46.546 --> 00:46:48.477 and family therapists at the time 830 00:46:48.477 --> 00:46:52.769 who began to speak out about what was happening. 831 00:46:53.255 --> 00:46:57.415 And he talked about the powerful economic 832 00:46:57.485 --> 00:47:02.485 and political interests that were embedded in the decade 833 00:47:02.524 --> 00:47:04.043 of the brain. 834 00:47:04.423 --> 00:47:06.627 The interests of the pharmaceutical companies 835 00:47:06.627 --> 00:47:08.739 and the insurance companies. 836 00:47:08.739 --> 00:47:11.363 And he also pointed out that the idea 837 00:47:12.833 --> 00:47:15.980 of reducing symptoms to biochemical events 838 00:47:15.980 --> 00:47:20.909 allows for the selective inattention to inequality, 839 00:47:20.909 --> 00:47:25.102 poverty, racism, social injustices, 840 00:47:25.102 --> 00:47:27.531 as we look for 841 00:47:27.750 --> 00:47:31.105 the universal brain causes 842 00:47:31.105 --> 00:47:34.709 rather than looking at social and political contexts. 843 00:47:35.110 --> 00:47:38.773 Now, I also wanna say that I am not anti-medication. 844 00:47:39.035 --> 00:47:41.909 Medication is sometimes essential. 845 00:47:42.139 --> 00:47:44.976 But I think we need a much more subtle 846 00:47:44.976 --> 00:47:47.280 and integrative approach. 847 00:47:47.280 --> 00:47:50.618 That medication is not the only real thing you can do. 848 00:47:50.618 --> 00:47:52.570 It's one thing you can do. 849 00:47:52.570 --> 00:47:55.934 But there are other things that are helpful as well. 850 00:47:56.751 --> 00:48:00.900 So he also said, despite his scathing critique, 851 00:48:00.900 --> 00:48:03.919 that in the midst of all this grim picture, 852 00:48:03.919 --> 00:48:07.172 like in one of those doom and gloom science fiction stories 853 00:48:07.172 --> 00:48:11.139 in which, to our relief, in some remote crevices 854 00:48:11.139 --> 00:48:14.883 of the scorched earth, patches of flowers 855 00:48:14.883 --> 00:48:16.946 begin to bloom again. 856 00:48:17.112 --> 00:48:19.832 A variety of systemic practices inspired 857 00:48:19.832 --> 00:48:23.800 by the powerful ideas of the field of family therapy 858 00:48:23.800 --> 00:48:26.264 were still growing here and there, 859 00:48:26.264 --> 00:48:28.162 posing new challenges, 860 00:48:28.162 --> 00:48:30.663 pushing new envelopes. 861 00:48:31.693 --> 00:48:33.308 So. 862 00:48:34.509 --> 00:48:38.455 The next leap in my life I really can't explain. 863 00:48:38.455 --> 00:48:42.306 It's easier for me to say that I had a fairy godmother 864 00:48:42.306 --> 00:48:46.529 that waved a magic wand than to explain 865 00:48:46.529 --> 00:48:49.089 how I got a Fulbright to go to Finland 866 00:48:49.089 --> 00:48:51.515 to study Open Dialogue. 867 00:48:52.108 --> 00:48:56.747 But, I came across Open Dialogue 868 00:48:56.747 --> 00:49:01.242 when I was doing this research on managed care. 869 00:49:01.462 --> 00:49:06.095 And the contrast was astonishing to me. 870 00:49:06.613 --> 00:49:10.442 So in this remote corner of western Lapland, 871 00:49:10.442 --> 00:49:14.048 they had a family-centered, 872 00:49:14.048 --> 00:49:18.175 network-centered approach that was delivering care 873 00:49:18.175 --> 00:49:22.431 in the community and achieving impressive outcomes 874 00:49:22.431 --> 00:49:25.230 with the severest problems. 875 00:49:25.706 --> 00:49:29.590 In contrast to the United States where systemic thinking 876 00:49:29.590 --> 00:49:33.984 was vanishing, in Finland it was being regarded 877 00:49:33.984 --> 00:49:37.355 as a serious agent in the treatment 878 00:49:37.355 --> 00:49:40.480 of the most severe conditions. 879 00:49:40.480 --> 00:49:43.434 And so I became very very interested in this 880 00:49:43.434 --> 00:49:46.005 and when I had a chance to go to Finland, 881 00:49:46.005 --> 00:49:48.697 I leapt at that chance. 882 00:49:49.354 --> 00:49:53.375 So I went to the University of Jyväskylä 883 00:49:53.375 --> 00:49:56.810 Department of Psychology and that's the beautiful bridge 884 00:49:56.810 --> 00:49:58.150 and river. 885 00:49:59.948 --> 00:50:02.433 It's a little murky, the photograph, 886 00:50:02.433 --> 00:50:05.377 but that's the psychology building, there. 887 00:50:05.377 --> 00:50:07.175 And I went there in 2001. 888 00:50:07.175 --> 00:50:10.930 And I was invited there, actually, to talk about research 889 00:50:10.930 --> 00:50:13.095 I had done on anorexia. 890 00:50:13.095 --> 00:50:16.252 And I had done a series of case studies 891 00:50:16.252 --> 00:50:20.294 with women who had recovered at a time 892 00:50:20.294 --> 00:50:23.750 when recovery was a disputed concept 893 00:50:23.750 --> 00:50:26.417 in the eating disorders field, 894 00:50:26.417 --> 00:50:28.416 and it may be still today. 895 00:50:28.721 --> 00:50:31.366 But using a phenomenological approach, 896 00:50:31.366 --> 00:50:34.800 I came to understand anorexia, 897 00:50:34.800 --> 00:50:37.397 at least in the beginning phases, 898 00:50:37.563 --> 00:50:41.744 as something in which women 899 00:50:41.744 --> 00:50:46.224 draw on the language of food and body 900 00:50:46.224 --> 00:50:50.420 to express a dilemma that's unspeakable. 901 00:50:50.597 --> 00:50:53.956 In other words, food and body is a territory 902 00:50:53.956 --> 00:50:57.209 that the culture gives to women, 903 00:50:57.209 --> 00:51:01.597 and women use that territory, that symbolic language 904 00:51:01.988 --> 00:51:05.017 to convey unspeakable dilemmas, 905 00:51:05.017 --> 00:51:09.355 or inexpressible dilemmas that are felt to be, 906 00:51:11.575 --> 00:51:14.098 that they otherwise can't express. 907 00:51:14.702 --> 00:51:18.286 So what struck me about what was happening in Finland 908 00:51:18.286 --> 00:51:20.856 is that the Finnish team also 909 00:51:22.776 --> 00:51:27.708 conceptualized psychosis as a crisis of inexpressibility. 910 00:51:28.109 --> 00:51:31.801 As also stemming from an inexpressible 911 00:51:31.801 --> 00:51:33.950 or unspeakable dilemma. 912 00:51:34.073 --> 00:51:37.209 And they were evoking a similar interplay 913 00:51:37.209 --> 00:51:41.010 of body, voice, and communication. 914 00:51:42.595 --> 00:51:45.709 So, what happened is that these two research areas, 915 00:51:45.709 --> 00:51:48.419 one on larger systems and the other 916 00:51:48.419 --> 00:51:51.328 on embodied communication came together. 917 00:51:51.328 --> 00:51:53.762 Because as I said, Open Dialogue 918 00:51:53.762 --> 00:51:56.711 has this double helix structure. 919 00:51:56.717 --> 00:52:01.346 It's both a system and it's a dialogical practice 920 00:52:01.346 --> 00:52:03.910 in open psychiatric meetings. 921 00:52:04.034 --> 00:52:06.502 So it has these two levels. 922 00:52:06.796 --> 00:52:09.441 So I decided that I wanted to learn more about it 923 00:52:09.441 --> 00:52:13.366 and I arranged to go to Keropudas Hospital, 924 00:52:13.366 --> 00:52:18.123 which is a six hour train ride from the university 925 00:52:18.123 --> 00:52:21.543 where I was teaching, so that I could learn 926 00:52:21.543 --> 00:52:26.119 more about it and I could give a kind of living form 927 00:52:26.119 --> 00:52:29.270 to these statistics. 928 00:52:29.926 --> 00:52:31.811 So I went to Keropudas Hospital, 929 00:52:31.811 --> 00:52:34.823 and I went there in December. 930 00:52:35.362 --> 00:52:37.660 So this is the dark time. 931 00:52:37.912 --> 00:52:40.167 Below the Arctic Circle, 932 00:52:40.450 --> 00:52:44.508 where there was no sun, but there was light. 933 00:52:45.719 --> 00:52:49.052 And I wanna tell you about that experience. 934 00:52:49.175 --> 00:52:51.003 So here's the, 935 00:52:52.311 --> 00:52:55.515 a photograph from outside of my hotel. 936 00:52:55.564 --> 00:52:57.830 That's 8:30 in the morning. 937 00:52:58.326 --> 00:53:01.131 And I left that hotel 938 00:53:01.131 --> 00:53:02.454 and that's what it looked like. 939 00:53:02.454 --> 00:53:05.003 It looked like evening, and it was quite lovely 940 00:53:05.003 --> 00:53:07.760 but nothing I'd ever experienced before. 941 00:53:08.160 --> 00:53:10.454 And I was picked, so I was picked up 942 00:53:10.454 --> 00:53:13.824 by the chief psychologist at Keropudas Hospital, 943 00:53:13.824 --> 00:53:16.032 Kauko Haarakangas. 944 00:53:16.032 --> 00:53:20.271 And we were driving out to the hospital. 945 00:53:20.928 --> 00:53:23.871 And we tried to do small talk, 946 00:53:23.871 --> 00:53:26.826 although that wasn't working because small talk 947 00:53:26.826 --> 00:53:29.354 is not a cultural practice in Finland. 948 00:53:29.354 --> 00:53:32.579 So even though we were both trying, 949 00:53:33.951 --> 00:53:37.520 Finnish silence quickly descended on our conversation. 950 00:53:38.953 --> 00:53:41.929 And so I started looking out the window 951 00:53:41.929 --> 00:53:45.161 and looking at this winter landscape. 952 00:53:45.161 --> 00:53:49.704 And it was one monochromatic field of whiteness. 953 00:53:51.614 --> 00:53:54.178 There were very few buildings. 954 00:53:54.760 --> 00:53:57.751 The river was frozen on our left. 955 00:53:58.056 --> 00:54:00.104 There was a cloudy overhang 956 00:54:00.104 --> 00:54:03.138 that fused the sky and the earth. 957 00:54:03.677 --> 00:54:06.354 And I thought about something that Tom Andersen, 958 00:54:06.354 --> 00:54:09.394 this Norwegian psychiatrist I mentioned earlier 959 00:54:09.394 --> 00:54:13.831 had said in a seminar that had been given 960 00:54:13.831 --> 00:54:17.852 earlier that summer in Sollejellen, Norway, 961 00:54:17.852 --> 00:54:20.177 and I also had the privilege of going to that. 962 00:54:20.177 --> 00:54:24.540 And Sollegjellen, Norway is a desperately beautiful 963 00:54:24.540 --> 00:54:29.540 and barren mining town in northern Norway. 964 00:54:29.851 --> 00:54:33.001 And he started the conference by saying 965 00:54:33.001 --> 00:54:35.368 go to the margins 966 00:54:38.131 --> 00:54:40.296 if you wanna be creative. 967 00:54:40.296 --> 00:54:42.658 So, he said that, 968 00:54:43.240 --> 00:54:44.872 or maybe he said go to the margins 969 00:54:44.872 --> 00:54:46.888 and I added the part about creativity. 970 00:54:46.888 --> 00:54:51.888 But anyway, I was thinking, this is where we must be. 971 00:54:51.901 --> 00:54:54.913 I am on the margins. 972 00:54:55.804 --> 00:54:59.446 So, this is also, kind of what it looked like there. 973 00:54:59.548 --> 00:55:04.145 And so we got to the hospital and I got out of the car 974 00:55:04.145 --> 00:55:08.689 and I really appreciated the no holds barred effect 975 00:55:08.689 --> 00:55:11.366 of winter near the Arctic Circle. 976 00:55:11.366 --> 00:55:14.517 There was a dry and absolute cold. 977 00:55:14.843 --> 00:55:18.886 And we went into the hospital and the morning was spent 978 00:55:18.886 --> 00:55:21.744 learning about Open Dialogue, 979 00:55:21.744 --> 00:55:24.112 Kauko did a PowerPoint presentation 980 00:55:24.112 --> 00:55:26.149 and talked about this work. 981 00:55:26.149 --> 00:55:29.477 But I was about to see it in action 982 00:55:29.477 --> 00:55:33.391 because the head psychiatrist Birgittu Alakara 983 00:55:33.391 --> 00:55:36.527 had gotten a call from a therapist that morning 984 00:55:36.527 --> 00:55:40.804 about a woman who was saying that she was suicidal. 985 00:55:40.804 --> 00:55:45.657 And so Birgittu invited the woman, 986 00:55:45.657 --> 00:55:48.697 I mean, the therapist called about this woman, 987 00:55:48.697 --> 00:55:51.182 invited the therapist, the woman, 988 00:55:51.182 --> 00:55:56.131 an outpatient nurse, and this woman's partner 989 00:55:56.131 --> 00:55:59.033 to what's called a treatment meeting 990 00:55:59.033 --> 00:56:01.379 and I was offered a chance to participate 991 00:56:01.379 --> 00:56:03.016 in that meeting. 992 00:56:03.694 --> 00:56:07.971 So the treatment meeting is the main therapeutic forum 993 00:56:07.971 --> 00:56:10.055 of Open Dialogue. 994 00:56:10.573 --> 00:56:14.584 Within 24 hours of the initial call, 995 00:56:14.584 --> 00:56:17.143 there is a meeting that's called, 996 00:56:17.143 --> 00:56:19.970 in advance of any hospitalization, 997 00:56:19.970 --> 00:56:23.948 that brings together the person at the center of concern, 998 00:56:23.948 --> 00:56:26.753 any family members, any professionals, 999 00:56:26.753 --> 00:56:30.481 and anybody else closely involved in the situation. 1000 00:56:31.511 --> 00:56:33.878 The treatment meeting then, thus 1001 00:56:33.878 --> 00:56:36.556 brings together the family. 1002 00:56:36.556 --> 00:56:41.072 The family is involved from the very beginning of treatment. 1003 00:56:42.774 --> 00:56:45.835 And not only did this treatment meeting 1004 00:56:45.835 --> 00:56:49.184 reorganize the hospital admission process, 1005 00:56:49.184 --> 00:56:53.658 it also changed the therapeutic enterprise itself. 1006 00:56:54.016 --> 00:56:56.501 Because professionals were thrown in together 1007 00:56:56.501 --> 00:56:59.285 with families and people in trouble 1008 00:56:59.285 --> 00:57:01.252 from the very beginning. 1009 00:57:01.322 --> 00:57:04.708 And they began to change their clinical philosophy. 1010 00:57:04.810 --> 00:57:07.594 Instead of thinking as old-style, 1011 00:57:07.594 --> 00:57:09.588 systemic family therapists that they 1012 00:57:09.588 --> 00:57:13.492 have to initiate change and make interventions, 1013 00:57:13.492 --> 00:57:17.653 they shift it 1014 00:57:17.653 --> 00:57:20.810 to a very different kind of practice 1015 00:57:20.810 --> 00:57:24.042 influenced by the ideas of Bakhtin, 1016 00:57:24.042 --> 00:57:26.474 that their goal was simply 1017 00:57:26.474 --> 00:57:30.239 to foster dialogue and make sure 1018 00:57:30.239 --> 00:57:33.022 all voices were heard, 1019 00:57:33.022 --> 00:57:36.809 and to try to come up with a more shared understanding 1020 00:57:36.809 --> 00:57:40.499 of the crisis, to try to help the person 1021 00:57:40.499 --> 00:57:43.496 at the center of concern find words 1022 00:57:43.496 --> 00:57:47.443 for what was frightening and distressing them, 1023 00:57:47.443 --> 00:57:50.720 and that this social weaving 1024 00:57:50.720 --> 00:57:53.506 of this assembly of voices, 1025 00:57:53.506 --> 00:57:58.506 this polyphonic conversation, to use Bakhtin's word, 1026 00:57:58.708 --> 00:58:02.563 became the basis of care. 1027 00:58:04.543 --> 00:58:07.956 So, when I walked into the meeting after lunch, 1028 00:58:07.956 --> 00:58:12.686 there was a young woman sitting there, 1029 00:58:13.150 --> 00:58:15.849 and she was sitting next to the door, 1030 00:58:15.849 --> 00:58:17.795 and she was 1031 00:58:19.870 --> 00:58:21.587 not making eye contact. 1032 00:58:21.587 --> 00:58:25.256 She still had her white puffy parka 1033 00:58:25.256 --> 00:58:28.407 with its snowflake pattern on it zipped up. 1034 00:58:28.808 --> 00:58:32.424 And the color was drained from her face 1035 00:58:32.424 --> 00:58:34.279 and her body seemed inert, 1036 00:58:34.279 --> 00:58:38.391 and her spirit seemed also absent. 1037 00:58:39.228 --> 00:58:41.942 And next to her was her partner. 1038 00:58:42.204 --> 00:58:44.007 So I'll call her Hannah, 1039 00:58:44.007 --> 00:58:46.545 and her partner, who I'll call Euke, 1040 00:58:46.545 --> 00:58:48.007 was the opposite. 1041 00:58:48.007 --> 00:58:53.007 He was dark-haired, he was wiry, he was alert, 1042 00:58:53.020 --> 00:58:57.318 his body was turned toward her in a protective way. 1043 00:58:57.318 --> 00:59:01.936 He was a social worker, he was also completely fluent 1044 00:59:01.936 --> 00:59:03.445 in English. 1045 00:59:03.611 --> 00:59:05.904 He sensed my need for a translator 1046 00:59:05.904 --> 00:59:08.831 and he began to translate the session. 1047 00:59:09.808 --> 00:59:12.826 I had the counter-impression that he was a caretaker 1048 00:59:12.826 --> 00:59:15.444 of the first order of magnitude. 1049 00:59:16.890 --> 00:59:20.975 Birgittu, the head psychiatrist began the Open Dialogue 1050 00:59:20.975 --> 00:59:23.066 meeting in the way we begin, 1051 00:59:23.066 --> 00:59:27.311 which is to ask about the history of the idea 1052 00:59:27.311 --> 00:59:29.054 to have the meeting. 1053 00:59:29.241 --> 00:59:31.311 Whose idea was it to have this meeting? 1054 00:59:31.311 --> 00:59:33.006 Who took the initiative? 1055 00:59:33.006 --> 00:59:35.492 And because the therapist is the one 1056 00:59:35.492 --> 00:59:38.685 who asked for the meeting, she began speaking. 1057 00:59:38.926 --> 00:59:42.126 And she described how Hannah 1058 00:59:42.126 --> 00:59:44.632 had moved here from another part of Finland. 1059 00:59:44.632 --> 00:59:46.264 She had grown up 1060 00:59:47.674 --> 00:59:50.563 in a family that had been very abusive. 1061 00:59:50.563 --> 00:59:52.952 She had fallen in love with this man. 1062 00:59:52.952 --> 00:59:56.578 He was from this area and he was coming back here 1063 00:59:56.578 --> 01:00:00.103 for work, and she had come with him. 1064 01:00:00.471 --> 01:00:03.377 She knew no one else in the area. 1065 01:00:04.631 --> 01:00:07.330 And she had been seeing this therapist 1066 01:00:07.330 --> 01:00:10.003 in individual therapy, and she had been, 1067 01:00:10.003 --> 01:00:12.392 for several weeks, telling this therapist 1068 01:00:12.392 --> 01:00:15.058 that she did not wanna live anymore, 1069 01:00:15.058 --> 01:00:16.850 that she wanted to kill herself, 1070 01:00:16.850 --> 01:00:18.589 that she had a plan. 1071 01:00:18.589 --> 01:00:22.465 And the therapist was becoming very very concerned. 1072 01:00:23.676 --> 01:00:27.228 So Birgittu listened and then asked 1073 01:00:27.228 --> 01:00:32.060 the fiance, what are your thoughts about 1074 01:00:32.060 --> 01:00:34.464 what the therapist had said. 1075 01:00:36.006 --> 01:00:38.438 And there was a silence. 1076 01:00:38.438 --> 01:00:41.627 There was a stillness, it was completely concentrated. 1077 01:00:41.627 --> 01:00:45.222 Although, I must say that I have never felt so calm 1078 01:00:45.222 --> 01:00:49.354 in any kind of meeting before. 1079 01:00:49.360 --> 01:00:51.120 I felt completely calm and safe. 1080 01:00:51.120 --> 01:00:52.991 It was really remarkable. 1081 01:00:53.563 --> 01:00:55.280 And I looked at Birgittu's face, 1082 01:00:55.280 --> 01:00:59.482 and I was really struck by how open and intent it was. 1083 01:00:59.482 --> 01:01:02.170 That there was no suggestion in her face 1084 01:01:02.170 --> 01:01:06.164 that she was assessing or scrutinizing this couple. 1085 01:01:07.748 --> 01:01:10.270 She was just waiting for an answer. 1086 01:01:10.511 --> 01:01:15.193 And the man looked at her and he said something 1087 01:01:15.193 --> 01:01:17.337 that stunned all of us. 1088 01:01:17.337 --> 01:01:22.227 He said, I get drunk and I beat her. 1089 01:01:27.182 --> 01:01:29.923 I then was stunned 1090 01:01:29.923 --> 01:01:32.568 and, but I looked over at Hannah 1091 01:01:32.568 --> 01:01:34.605 and all of a sudden she 1092 01:01:34.605 --> 01:01:37.560 came back into the room 1093 01:01:37.560 --> 01:01:40.274 and started to look more alert 1094 01:01:41.133 --> 01:01:44.615 and the color started coming back into her face. 1095 01:01:44.983 --> 01:01:47.601 It's as if she'd woken up from a dream. 1096 01:01:49.260 --> 01:01:51.884 And then, I too began to feel movement 1097 01:01:51.884 --> 01:01:55.063 and I turned to her and I said, 1098 01:01:55.063 --> 01:01:57.409 she also spoke English, 1099 01:01:57.409 --> 01:01:58.636 I said, 1100 01:02:01.825 --> 01:02:04.246 which is more dangerous to you? 1101 01:02:04.246 --> 01:02:07.301 Your thoughts of suicide or the beatings? 1102 01:02:08.214 --> 01:02:11.066 And she said instantly, the beatings. 1103 01:02:15.019 --> 01:02:18.613 So now it was really easy to see her position 1104 01:02:20.149 --> 01:02:22.922 and to comprehend 1105 01:02:22.922 --> 01:02:25.589 what Mary Catherine Bateson has called 1106 01:02:25.589 --> 01:02:29.017 the whole contextual structure. 1107 01:02:29.770 --> 01:02:32.063 So this man that she loved 1108 01:02:33.713 --> 01:02:37.044 also, and that had rescued her from her family, 1109 01:02:37.044 --> 01:02:40.035 also was violent and abusive at times. 1110 01:02:40.297 --> 01:02:43.198 And yet, she was wholly dependent on him 1111 01:02:43.198 --> 01:02:45.289 and knew no one else in the area 1112 01:02:45.289 --> 01:02:47.949 and did not have a family to go back to. 1113 01:02:49.747 --> 01:02:53.896 My sense was that there was something subtle and powerful 1114 01:02:53.896 --> 01:02:57.378 about the stance of the professionals. 1115 01:02:57.736 --> 01:03:01.421 John Shotter calls this withness. 1116 01:03:01.747 --> 01:03:04.898 As opposed to aboutness, thinking. 1117 01:03:05.202 --> 01:03:08.194 Being with rather than doing to. 1118 01:03:09.831 --> 01:03:12.850 Bakhtin has a fancy word, dialogicality, 1119 01:03:12.850 --> 01:03:16.140 to talk about this sense of being with. 1120 01:03:16.775 --> 01:03:19.164 And what happened, 1121 01:03:19.164 --> 01:03:21.511 even though this was about something terrible 1122 01:03:21.511 --> 01:03:25.574 that was happening, there was a common language forming 1123 01:03:25.574 --> 01:03:28.630 that gave this young woman a voice. 1124 01:03:30.193 --> 01:03:33.045 And so, you know, 1125 01:03:33.073 --> 01:03:36.176 I was really struck because I'd worked in emergency rooms 1126 01:03:36.176 --> 01:03:38.523 and I don't think I'd ever experienced 1127 01:03:38.523 --> 01:03:41.749 such a rapid shift in perspective. 1128 01:03:43.003 --> 01:03:46.559 So after this experience I decided to do, 1129 01:03:46.608 --> 01:03:48.858 to learn more about it, to do some research. 1130 01:03:48.858 --> 01:03:51.503 I did a very, sort of a, what could be loosely described 1131 01:03:51.503 --> 01:03:53.669 as an ethnographic study. 1132 01:03:53.669 --> 01:03:56.847 I teamed up with Jaakko Seikkula 1133 01:03:56.847 --> 01:03:59.098 and we did writing together. 1134 01:03:59.098 --> 01:04:02.739 And then I came back to the United States. 1135 01:04:06.287 --> 01:04:08.494 So let me just quickly kind of review 1136 01:04:08.494 --> 01:04:10.227 before I go on, 1137 01:04:11.118 --> 01:04:14.830 and just kind of speak in a little bit of a different voice 1138 01:04:14.830 --> 01:04:19.171 and give somewhat of a brief overview of this approach. 1139 01:04:20.951 --> 01:04:22.861 There are these seven principles. 1140 01:04:22.861 --> 01:04:25.475 These are the principles that Kauko had outlined 1141 01:04:25.475 --> 01:04:28.045 in his PowerPoint presentation. 1142 01:04:28.045 --> 01:04:31.789 Immediate help, the team meets within 24 hours. 1143 01:04:31.789 --> 01:04:34.381 A social network perspective. 1144 01:04:34.381 --> 01:04:37.335 You can distill the aim of Open Dialogue 1145 01:04:37.335 --> 01:04:41.137 to reducing psychic and social isolation. 1146 01:04:41.442 --> 01:04:43.490 So bringing everyone together 1147 01:04:43.490 --> 01:04:45.414 to try to figure out what's happening. 1148 01:04:46.017 --> 01:04:48.247 Flexibility and mobility. 1149 01:04:48.247 --> 01:04:50.156 There's geographical flexibility, 1150 01:04:50.156 --> 01:04:52.566 there's clinical flexibility. 1151 01:04:52.566 --> 01:04:55.371 This is not an approach that strives for theoretical 1152 01:04:55.371 --> 01:04:58.832 or clinical purity, so it's very integrative. 1153 01:04:59.435 --> 01:05:01.131 It brings in ideas and insights 1154 01:05:01.131 --> 01:05:03.472 from various traditions. 1155 01:05:03.830 --> 01:05:06.219 The responsibility of the therapist, 1156 01:05:06.219 --> 01:05:09.536 the therapist is responsible for organizing the services. 1157 01:05:09.536 --> 01:05:12.138 Psychological continuity, meaning that the team 1158 01:05:12.138 --> 01:05:14.976 that comes together within the first 24 hours 1159 01:05:14.976 --> 01:05:18.404 remains your team during the duration of the crisis. 1160 01:05:19.061 --> 01:05:21.983 Tolerance of uncertainty means that 1161 01:05:23.913 --> 01:05:25.887 it's really a relationship to time, 1162 01:05:25.887 --> 01:05:29.097 that to try to develop an organic understanding 1163 01:05:29.097 --> 01:05:32.095 of the situation, integrating the voices 1164 01:05:32.095 --> 01:05:36.852 of everyone present means that you have to be able 1165 01:05:36.852 --> 01:05:39.689 to tolerate the uncertainties so you can build 1166 01:05:39.689 --> 01:05:41.374 the plan and the decisions 1167 01:05:41.374 --> 01:05:43.262 based on an organic understanding. 1168 01:05:43.262 --> 01:05:45.790 So there's an avoidance of hasty decisions 1169 01:05:45.790 --> 01:05:47.832 and quick assessments. 1170 01:05:47.880 --> 01:05:51.112 And finally, dialogue, which I'm gonna say more about 1171 01:05:51.112 --> 01:05:53.640 a little bit later, but the aim of dialogue, 1172 01:05:53.640 --> 01:05:58.018 the aim of the meeting is simply to create dialogue. 1173 01:06:01.215 --> 01:06:04.183 I also analyzed this practice using 1174 01:06:05.063 --> 01:06:09.121 these two levels of the micropolitics and poetics. 1175 01:06:09.713 --> 01:06:12.540 The micropolitics being the institutional practices, 1176 01:06:12.540 --> 01:06:15.046 and the poetics being the dialogue 1177 01:06:15.046 --> 01:06:16.934 and the language practices. 1178 01:06:16.934 --> 01:06:19.462 And what's happened over the last 10 years 1179 01:06:19.462 --> 01:06:23.686 is that the dialogic practice has also been adapted 1180 01:06:23.686 --> 01:06:28.608 to more ordinary kinds of couple and family therapy 1181 01:06:28.635 --> 01:06:31.269 So now we talk about dialogical therapy 1182 01:06:31.269 --> 01:06:34.960 that shares many of the same psychotherapeutic principles, 1183 01:06:34.960 --> 01:06:39.647 but it's not embedded in this overarching system. 1184 01:06:41.626 --> 01:06:44.613 Finally, just to highlight two important key assumptions. 1185 01:06:44.613 --> 01:06:47.940 In contrast to traditional family therapy, 1186 01:06:47.940 --> 01:06:51.706 the Open Dialogue approach and dialogical therapy 1187 01:06:51.706 --> 01:06:55.236 does not view the person or the family 1188 01:06:55.236 --> 01:07:00.040 as the cause of the psychosis or the cause of the problem. 1189 01:07:00.644 --> 01:07:04.942 It really takes a kind of ideological agnosticism 1190 01:07:04.942 --> 01:07:07.171 saying we really don't know what causes 1191 01:07:07.171 --> 01:07:09.742 these severe crises and conditions, 1192 01:07:09.742 --> 01:07:12.654 but that bringing people together in a crisis, 1193 01:07:12.654 --> 01:07:15.928 not separating people seems to be particularly 1194 01:07:15.928 --> 01:07:18.866 important in these severe situations. 1195 01:07:19.981 --> 01:07:22.818 The other is that it's a meaning-driven, 1196 01:07:22.818 --> 01:07:26.300 language-driven view, say, of psychosis. 1197 01:07:26.487 --> 01:07:29.687 That psychosis is a terrifying, alienating, 1198 01:07:29.687 --> 01:07:33.548 temporary estrangement 1199 01:07:33.548 --> 01:07:36.561 from shared communicative practices. 1200 01:07:36.684 --> 01:07:38.636 It's a no-man's land where a person 1201 01:07:38.636 --> 01:07:42.064 has no genuine voice or agency. 1202 01:07:42.390 --> 01:07:45.569 So there's a great emphasis in this way of working 1203 01:07:45.569 --> 01:07:50.352 on constructing voice, constructing agency. 1204 01:07:50.593 --> 01:07:54.539 And in contrast to the way we tend to work with people 1205 01:07:54.539 --> 01:07:58.240 in these states, they start from the very beginning 1206 01:07:58.240 --> 01:08:02.298 in engaging a communicative process. 1207 01:08:03.573 --> 01:08:05.393 Here are the outcome studies, which is I think 1208 01:08:05.393 --> 01:08:07.537 the whole reason we're here, 1209 01:08:07.537 --> 01:08:09.877 the whole reason we're talking about it. 1210 01:08:10.022 --> 01:08:13.286 So, in terms of medication use, 1211 01:08:13.286 --> 01:08:16.987 two-thirds of their first-time psychosis people 1212 01:08:16.987 --> 01:08:21.087 are not put on anti-psychotic medication. 1213 01:08:23.689 --> 01:08:28.165 In terms of relapses, almost 70% 1214 01:08:28.165 --> 01:08:31.503 did not have a relapse within the five years, 1215 01:08:31.503 --> 01:08:35.076 and these statistics are pretty consistent for both 1216 01:08:35.076 --> 01:08:37.353 five year followup studies. 1217 01:08:38.266 --> 01:08:42.095 80% have very, have residual, 1218 01:08:42.095 --> 01:08:46.041 very light residual or asymptomatic at five years, 1219 01:08:46.041 --> 01:08:48.249 and then the functional outcomes, 1220 01:08:48.249 --> 01:08:51.331 80% working, studying, looking for a job 1221 01:08:51.331 --> 01:08:54.504 and only 20% on disability. 1222 01:08:54.627 --> 01:08:57.390 The best longitudinal research that we have 1223 01:08:57.390 --> 01:09:00.974 in the United States is Martin Harrow's work. 1224 01:09:00.974 --> 01:09:05.677 And he has found that a comparable statistic 1225 01:09:05.677 --> 01:09:10.418 in the U.S. would be 5% recovery rate. 1226 01:09:11.576 --> 01:09:15.042 So, for this reason, people are trying to figure out 1227 01:09:15.042 --> 01:09:18.236 what are they doing right. 1228 01:09:22.284 --> 01:09:24.183 So, coming home. 1229 01:09:24.183 --> 01:09:25.851 So I came home 1230 01:09:26.017 --> 01:09:28.140 from this experience 1231 01:09:28.140 --> 01:09:32.207 and I found people 1232 01:09:32.207 --> 01:09:34.361 at Smith College School for Social Work 1233 01:09:34.361 --> 01:09:35.993 who were interested in Open Dialogue. 1234 01:09:35.993 --> 01:09:40.993 I found like-minded people at UMass medical school. 1235 01:09:41.082 --> 01:09:44.707 But, as I said, we wrote grant applications, 1236 01:09:44.707 --> 01:09:46.755 we did our best, 1237 01:09:46.755 --> 01:09:51.755 and we repeatedly did not get funding for this research. 1238 01:09:53.304 --> 01:09:55.437 But at the same time, I began, 1239 01:09:55.437 --> 01:09:57.805 in my own clinical practice 1240 01:09:57.805 --> 01:10:00.359 to experience 1241 01:10:01.068 --> 01:10:04.037 startlingly positive outcomes 1242 01:10:04.037 --> 01:10:06.849 in working with young women and their families 1243 01:10:08.699 --> 01:10:13.134 with eating disorders, depression, cutting, 1244 01:10:13.134 --> 01:10:16.344 psychosis, and I think that, 1245 01:10:16.344 --> 01:10:18.915 though not in every case, 1246 01:10:18.915 --> 01:10:22.125 but what was different in my own practice, 1247 01:10:22.125 --> 01:10:24.856 I would say, is that 1248 01:10:24.856 --> 01:10:29.063 I started to drop the clinical gaze. 1249 01:10:30.733 --> 01:10:33.548 And even though I thought I didn't have a clinical gaze, 1250 01:10:33.548 --> 01:10:36.098 'cause, you know, I was feminist, I was systemic, 1251 01:10:36.098 --> 01:10:38.604 and social justice, and all this stuff, 1252 01:10:38.604 --> 01:10:40.251 but I did. 1253 01:10:40.695 --> 01:10:44.454 And I remember the moment that it was gone. 1254 01:10:45.089 --> 01:10:48.897 And it doesn't mean that you don't use your expertise, 1255 01:10:48.897 --> 01:10:52.602 you just use it much more lightly. 1256 01:10:53.440 --> 01:10:56.000 And instead of looking for the crazy thing 1257 01:10:56.000 --> 01:10:57.899 in the person and family, 1258 01:10:57.899 --> 01:11:01.701 I simply tried to make sure that everyone was heard. 1259 01:11:03.189 --> 01:11:06.464 And the difference, I think it created a kind of 1260 01:11:06.464 --> 01:11:08.277 openness of mind 1261 01:11:08.277 --> 01:11:12.153 that families, that people can sense. 1262 01:11:12.831 --> 01:11:16.750 And it's very subtle, but it's very powerful. 1263 01:11:21.492 --> 01:11:23.273 There're two quotes 1264 01:11:23.273 --> 01:11:26.110 that tended to capture, I think, 1265 01:11:26.110 --> 01:11:30.963 the effect of this work on my own practice. 1266 01:11:30.963 --> 01:11:34.334 One is by the architect Christopher Alexander 1267 01:11:34.334 --> 01:11:38.157 who talks about aliveness in architecture, 1268 01:11:38.579 --> 01:11:43.389 and I felt there was a new aliveness in my clinical work, 1269 01:11:43.389 --> 01:11:46.034 and I was struck with the idea that 1270 01:11:46.034 --> 01:11:49.490 the more we learn about this method, 1271 01:11:49.490 --> 01:11:52.231 and I would say this dialogic practice, 1272 01:11:52.231 --> 01:11:56.508 the more I found it doesn't so much teach us new processes, 1273 01:11:56.508 --> 01:12:00.519 but rather opens up a process in us 1274 01:12:00.519 --> 01:12:03.723 which is already part of us. 1275 01:12:04.743 --> 01:12:06.806 And that was my experience. 1276 01:12:07.046 --> 01:12:09.457 And the other is Peter Rober 1277 01:12:09.457 --> 01:12:14.246 talking about dialogue is a space 1278 01:12:14.246 --> 01:12:16.885 where life can come. 1279 01:12:19.675 --> 01:12:22.118 Okay, so I said that I would talk 1280 01:12:22.118 --> 01:12:24.063 a little bit about. 1281 01:12:25.253 --> 01:12:26.992 Let me just say before I go forward, 1282 01:12:26.992 --> 01:12:29.914 the really, the ground of my conviction about this work 1283 01:12:29.914 --> 01:12:33.264 is my own lived clinical experience 1284 01:12:33.264 --> 01:12:36.991 in tandem with what I saw in Finland. 1285 01:12:37.786 --> 01:12:40.964 But the shift in my own clinical practice 1286 01:12:40.964 --> 01:12:44.516 and the way my own clinical work started to flourish 1287 01:12:44.516 --> 01:12:47.955 is what has kept me going. 1288 01:12:48.889 --> 01:12:50.670 But let's think now, 1289 01:12:50.670 --> 01:12:53.710 I wanna turn now to talk about 1290 01:12:53.710 --> 01:12:56.409 the cultural and historical factors 1291 01:12:56.409 --> 01:12:59.114 that are shaping this interest in Open Dialogue 1292 01:12:59.114 --> 01:13:00.740 at the present time. 1293 01:13:01.162 --> 01:13:04.458 So as I said, you know, biological determinism 1294 01:13:04.458 --> 01:13:07.455 has shaped the mental health field, 1295 01:13:07.455 --> 01:13:10.079 but now, at the highest levels, 1296 01:13:11.389 --> 01:13:14.932 there's the recognition that this way of thinking 1297 01:13:14.932 --> 01:13:17.513 has some serious problems. 1298 01:13:17.513 --> 01:13:19.849 And here are, I think, 1299 01:13:19.849 --> 01:13:23.789 the various reasons why 1300 01:13:24.147 --> 01:13:27.810 this perspective is being rethought. 1301 01:13:28.232 --> 01:13:31.805 The first is that, as has been brought forward 1302 01:13:31.805 --> 01:13:34.519 by the work of Robert Whitaker, 1303 01:13:35.112 --> 01:13:37.448 U.S. psychiatric disabilities 1304 01:13:38.941 --> 01:13:41.426 have increased, actually, they've skyrocketed 1305 01:13:41.426 --> 01:13:45.164 for children and adults over the past 20 years. 1306 01:13:45.820 --> 01:13:49.068 The reasons for this are not well understood. 1307 01:13:50.439 --> 01:13:54.918 Whitaker's perspective is that the medications over time 1308 01:13:54.918 --> 01:13:58.940 tend to chronify sever difficulties. 1309 01:13:58.940 --> 01:14:01.489 It's probably more complex than that 1310 01:14:01.489 --> 01:14:05.627 because there have been profound changes in work patterns, 1311 01:14:05.627 --> 01:14:07.110 in welfare reform. 1312 01:14:07.110 --> 01:14:09.685 I think it's a much more complex picture. 1313 01:14:09.894 --> 01:14:12.475 But this has been well-documented, 1314 01:14:12.475 --> 01:14:14.981 that psychiatric disability rates 1315 01:14:14.981 --> 01:14:19.434 have increased exponentially in the last 20 years. 1316 01:14:20.325 --> 01:14:24.901 The other influence is the rise of the recovery movement 1317 01:14:24.901 --> 01:14:28.282 and the testimonies of psychiatric survivors 1318 01:14:28.282 --> 01:14:31.764 and mental health consumers 1319 01:14:34.211 --> 01:14:38.276 who have really formed a world wide movement 1320 01:14:38.276 --> 01:14:41.619 that has been propelled by the internet. 1321 01:14:41.646 --> 01:14:46.009 So psychiatric survivors in Germany can compare experiences 1322 01:14:46.009 --> 01:14:48.530 with people in the United States. 1323 01:14:48.590 --> 01:14:51.352 So this has become a very powerful lateral 1324 01:14:51.352 --> 01:14:53.624 social and political movement, 1325 01:14:53.624 --> 01:14:56.797 and they have testified to 1326 01:14:57.645 --> 01:15:00.824 what they feel are dehumanizing practices, 1327 01:15:00.824 --> 01:15:05.596 hasty insurance-driven treatment decisions, 1328 01:15:06.274 --> 01:15:09.265 and an over-reliance on medication. 1329 01:15:11.970 --> 01:15:15.223 Their power and their influence is important. 1330 01:15:15.223 --> 01:15:17.228 I think that this is probably one 1331 01:15:17.228 --> 01:15:19.916 of the most important things that has come out 1332 01:15:19.916 --> 01:15:22.715 of the mental health field in the last 20 years. 1333 01:15:23.212 --> 01:15:27.350 But it also means that if somebody wants 1334 01:15:27.350 --> 01:15:29.878 to do research, 1335 01:15:29.878 --> 01:15:34.198 it's now impossible to do research without including, 1336 01:15:34.198 --> 01:15:37.472 and I think this is a very important ethical shift, 1337 01:15:37.472 --> 01:15:41.141 without including the voice of the consumer, 1338 01:15:41.141 --> 01:15:43.802 the voice of the psychiatric survivor. 1339 01:15:44.757 --> 01:15:47.082 And psychiatric survivors and consumers 1340 01:15:47.082 --> 01:15:49.237 have embraced Open Dialogue. 1341 01:15:49.237 --> 01:15:53.631 They see it as the one clinical approach 1342 01:15:53.631 --> 01:15:56.415 that is consistent with the values and principles 1343 01:15:56.415 --> 01:15:58.873 of their movement. 1344 01:16:00.404 --> 01:16:04.067 I think the third factor is that 1345 01:16:04.724 --> 01:16:08.190 genetic researchers and psychiatric epidemiologists 1346 01:16:08.190 --> 01:16:11.838 are now inferring social factors, 1347 01:16:11.838 --> 01:16:15.425 say in the study of people 1348 01:16:16.039 --> 01:16:18.193 diagnosed with schizophrenia. 1349 01:16:18.193 --> 01:16:22.112 The diagnosis of schizophrenia is also being deconstructed. 1350 01:16:22.310 --> 01:16:27.163 Understood not as a discrete disease entity, 1351 01:16:27.163 --> 01:16:29.963 but as a cluster of symptoms. 1352 01:16:30.502 --> 01:16:33.120 But I don't wanna get into that right now. 1353 01:16:34.288 --> 01:16:37.904 But, for example, psychiatric epidemiologists 1354 01:16:37.904 --> 01:16:41.877 have shown that if you're a person of color, 1355 01:16:42.618 --> 01:16:46.128 your chances of being diagnosed with schizophrenia 1356 01:16:46.128 --> 01:16:50.516 increase greatly the whiter your neighborhood becomes. 1357 01:16:53.306 --> 01:16:57.060 The diagnosis of schizophrenia is also corollated with 1358 01:16:57.060 --> 01:17:01.470 disruption of social network and immigration. 1359 01:17:01.913 --> 01:17:04.424 There is an enormous literature on that. 1360 01:17:05.753 --> 01:17:08.857 Genetic researchers also have failed to produce 1361 01:17:08.857 --> 01:17:13.309 any kind of single gene for, say, schizophrenia. 1362 01:17:13.870 --> 01:17:16.942 Now there may well be a genetic contribution, 1363 01:17:16.942 --> 01:17:21.831 but there's so many genes that are involved, it's dizzying. 1364 01:17:23.693 --> 01:17:28.060 So the idea that it could be distilled to one gene 1365 01:17:28.429 --> 01:17:31.911 is really a hypothesis that has failed. 1366 01:17:32.919 --> 01:17:36.354 And finally, it's become clear that these medications 1367 01:17:36.354 --> 01:17:39.298 have very serious side effects. 1368 01:17:39.298 --> 01:17:41.964 They affect brain tissue, they're associated 1369 01:17:41.964 --> 01:17:46.964 with metabolic syndrome, and people who are longterm users 1370 01:17:46.988 --> 01:17:51.787 of anti-psychotic medications, 1371 01:17:51.787 --> 01:17:55.435 it's been shown that their life expectancy 1372 01:17:55.435 --> 01:18:00.427 is 25 years less than people 1373 01:18:00.427 --> 01:18:03.002 who do no take these medications. 1374 01:18:03.680 --> 01:18:06.901 So it would have been really wonderful 1375 01:18:06.901 --> 01:18:10.058 if we could do research and come up with medications 1376 01:18:10.058 --> 01:18:13.583 that could cure the human suffering. 1377 01:18:13.781 --> 01:18:18.073 But it's turned out to be much more complicated. 1378 01:18:18.186 --> 01:18:22.026 And as I said, this is well known at the highest levels 1379 01:18:22.026 --> 01:18:23.764 of academic research. 1380 01:18:23.764 --> 01:18:26.388 And the highest levels of academic research, 1381 01:18:26.388 --> 01:18:30.328 no one believes in the chemical imbalance theory anymore. 1382 01:18:33.769 --> 01:18:37.272 There's also some other troubling trends. 1383 01:18:37.715 --> 01:18:40.990 The use of anti-psychotics in children with Medicaid 1384 01:18:40.990 --> 01:18:44.563 is four times that of children in the private sector 1385 01:18:44.563 --> 01:18:47.159 and for less serious conditions. 1386 01:18:48.403 --> 01:18:53.181 13 to 15% of foster kids are prescribed psychiatric 1387 01:18:53.181 --> 01:18:57.196 medications compared to 4% of non-foster kids. 1388 01:18:57.597 --> 01:18:59.869 So these medications, the other troubling trend 1389 01:18:59.869 --> 01:19:03.207 is these medications are being used disproportionately 1390 01:19:03.207 --> 01:19:07.527 with the most vulnerable and the most disenfranchised 1391 01:19:07.527 --> 01:19:09.916 population, so why is that? 1392 01:19:09.916 --> 01:19:14.422 If this is an objective disease. 1393 01:19:17.585 --> 01:19:18.667 So. 1394 01:19:20.742 --> 01:19:22.896 The other part of this 1395 01:19:22.896 --> 01:19:25.222 is that neuroscience is beginning 1396 01:19:25.222 --> 01:19:28.974 to show that the brain 1397 01:19:28.974 --> 01:19:32.221 really does not operate like a thing. 1398 01:19:32.600 --> 01:19:36.803 Its logic is not linear, it's not cause and effect. 1399 01:19:36.803 --> 01:19:39.843 It's dialogical, it's systemic, 1400 01:19:39.843 --> 01:19:41.538 there are feedback loops. 1401 01:19:41.538 --> 01:19:43.687 It's much more like a network. 1402 01:19:43.928 --> 01:19:46.647 There's a group in Switzerland that's mapping 1403 01:19:46.647 --> 01:19:49.218 the architectural and functional principles 1404 01:19:49.218 --> 01:19:52.055 of the brain, and the metaphor that they use 1405 01:19:52.055 --> 01:19:54.577 is the brain is like a symphony. 1406 01:19:55.959 --> 01:19:58.999 Of course, it's also a chemical entity. 1407 01:19:58.999 --> 01:20:02.508 But its organizing logic is probably musical 1408 01:20:02.508 --> 01:20:04.240 and communicative. 1409 01:20:05.473 --> 01:20:08.325 So, and this is not to say, 1410 01:20:08.331 --> 01:20:10.443 at the same time, that these medications 1411 01:20:10.443 --> 01:20:12.858 aren't necessarily helpful. 1412 01:20:13.302 --> 01:20:15.947 As I said, for come people they're helpful. 1413 01:20:15.947 --> 01:20:19.381 Why they're helpful is not really well understood. 1414 01:20:19.381 --> 01:20:22.351 It's more empirical rather than theoretical. 1415 01:20:22.987 --> 01:20:26.816 And it also may be, like many things in medicine 1416 01:20:26.816 --> 01:20:30.431 and many things in the biological living world, 1417 01:20:30.431 --> 01:20:34.730 that these medications have time factors. 1418 01:20:34.730 --> 01:20:38.239 In other words, if you go on prednisone for your asthma 1419 01:20:38.239 --> 01:20:40.393 you can't stay on that indefinitely. 1420 01:20:40.393 --> 01:20:44.734 So this is being understood and there's a rethinking 1421 01:20:44.734 --> 01:20:48.990 of this simple idea that a severe symptom 1422 01:20:48.990 --> 01:20:52.425 is a biochemical event, it's a brain, 1423 01:20:52.425 --> 01:20:57.278 it's a chemical imbalance that can be repaired, 1424 01:20:57.278 --> 01:21:01.607 like insulin is to diabetes, with the right medication. 1425 01:21:01.607 --> 01:21:06.423 And that really, we have ben in the grip of a false idea. 1426 01:21:07.656 --> 01:21:11.617 So what's changing is, and I think one of the reasons. 1427 01:21:12.391 --> 01:21:15.346 Now again, I don't what you coming away from this 1428 01:21:15.346 --> 01:21:18.172 thinking Open Dialogue means no medication. 1429 01:21:18.172 --> 01:21:20.754 Because medication is used, but it's used 1430 01:21:20.754 --> 01:21:24.561 in a pragmatic way. 1431 01:21:24.561 --> 01:21:29.297 It's used to facilitate social participation, 1432 01:21:29.297 --> 01:21:34.123 rather than in a theoretical way to fix an imbalance. 1433 01:21:36.241 --> 01:21:38.843 I think over time, the paradigm shift 1434 01:21:38.843 --> 01:21:40.816 that we are going to be seeing 1435 01:21:40.816 --> 01:21:44.827 is a shift from biological reductionism 1436 01:21:44.827 --> 01:21:48.752 that treats symptoms as biochemical processes, 1437 01:21:48.752 --> 01:21:50.917 the brain as a thing, 1438 01:21:50.917 --> 01:21:55.141 to a dialogical approach that responds to a suffering person 1439 01:21:55.141 --> 01:21:59.796 in a context, and that the mind is a relational process. 1440 01:22:00.474 --> 01:22:04.766 This has enormous implications for the social work field. 1441 01:22:05.519 --> 01:22:09.647 Open Dialogue is a more collaborative, egalitarian, 1442 01:22:09.647 --> 01:22:13.625 less hierarchical way of organizing a system, 1443 01:22:13.625 --> 01:22:16.665 and I think clinical social workers 1444 01:22:16.665 --> 01:22:20.334 are poised to be leaders in bringing forward 1445 01:22:20.334 --> 01:22:24.082 this new way of thinking and this new practice. 1446 01:22:24.910 --> 01:22:27.576 I wanna just say a little bit more 1447 01:22:27.576 --> 01:22:29.031 just to, 1448 01:22:31.693 --> 01:22:33.570 so there's truth in advertising. 1449 01:22:33.570 --> 01:22:34.770 I, so. 1450 01:22:35.426 --> 01:22:38.487 So this is the project that I'm working on. 1451 01:22:38.487 --> 01:22:42.178 I hope I mentioned that I'm working together 1452 01:22:42.178 --> 01:22:47.178 Jaakko Seikkulak, who telecommutes from Finland, 1453 01:22:47.265 --> 01:22:49.053 Skype commutes, and also comes here 1454 01:22:49.053 --> 01:22:52.231 once or twice a year, and also Doug Ziedonis, 1455 01:22:52.231 --> 01:22:54.205 who's working with us, and he's Chairman 1456 01:22:54.205 --> 01:22:56.871 of Psychiatry at UMass Medical School. 1457 01:22:56.871 --> 01:23:00.988 So this is really remarkable that a Chairman of Psychiatry 1458 01:23:00.988 --> 01:23:04.743 of a major medical school would be working with us 1459 01:23:04.743 --> 01:23:09.547 to try to bring forward this Open Dialogue approach. 1460 01:23:10.150 --> 01:23:13.009 And one of the things that we've done so far 1461 01:23:13.009 --> 01:23:15.633 is we have done what you need to do 1462 01:23:15.633 --> 01:23:16.891 in order to do research. 1463 01:23:16.891 --> 01:23:19.728 we got funded by the Foundation for Excellence 1464 01:23:19.728 --> 01:23:23.056 in Mental Health Care and we spent the last two years 1465 01:23:23.056 --> 01:23:26.629 doing the preliminary work, developing 1466 01:23:26.629 --> 01:23:29.594 the research protocols and materials you need to do 1467 01:23:29.594 --> 01:23:31.796 for clinical study. 1468 01:23:32.528 --> 01:23:34.821 We have, if you're interested, I'm not gonna go over this 1469 01:23:34.821 --> 01:23:37.263 right now, but if you're interested, there is something 1470 01:23:37.263 --> 01:23:40.655 that we've, we have a finished product that you can download 1471 01:23:40.655 --> 01:23:43.183 from our website called the 12 elements 1472 01:23:43.183 --> 01:23:44.623 of dialogic practice. 1473 01:23:44.623 --> 01:23:47.780 Like, 12 is I guess a mystical number. 1474 01:23:47.780 --> 01:23:50.404 I don't know why we came up with 12, but. 1475 01:23:51.514 --> 01:23:54.344 But this will soon be available on our website. 1476 01:23:54.819 --> 01:23:57.369 I call it, it's an anti-manual manual, 1477 01:23:57.369 --> 01:23:59.555 because I couldn't tolerate, as an English major, 1478 01:23:59.555 --> 01:24:01.923 the idea of writing a manual about something. 1479 01:24:01.923 --> 01:24:04.131 So instead of writing a manual, 1480 01:24:04.131 --> 01:24:06.744 we tried to distill what the elements were 1481 01:24:06.744 --> 01:24:09.415 and then give examples from our own practice. 1482 01:24:09.603 --> 01:24:12.711 It's not a cookbook, it's not a how-to. 1483 01:24:14.509 --> 01:24:17.687 Finally, though, I said that I wanted to also 1484 01:24:17.687 --> 01:24:21.020 give a word of caution. 1485 01:24:22.562 --> 01:24:25.254 And that is to say that 1486 01:24:26.044 --> 01:24:30.977 I think, despite the great appeal of Open Dialogue, 1487 01:24:30.977 --> 01:24:33.264 the promise of Open Dialogue, 1488 01:24:33.761 --> 01:24:34.918 that 1489 01:24:35.660 --> 01:24:40.140 it's an idea that we really need to understand more deeply 1490 01:24:40.140 --> 01:24:42.113 and how it would actually work 1491 01:24:42.113 --> 01:24:45.158 in our own context, in our own society. 1492 01:24:46.965 --> 01:24:49.803 You know, for example, I think one of the things 1493 01:24:49.803 --> 01:24:53.686 that has allowed Keropudas Hospital 1494 01:24:53.686 --> 01:24:56.864 to achieve the outcomes it has achieved 1495 01:24:56.864 --> 01:24:58.880 is that it has a very good relationship 1496 01:24:58.880 --> 01:25:01.829 with the Rural County Employment Office. 1497 01:25:02.155 --> 01:25:05.269 So they're able, because of this relationship, 1498 01:25:05.269 --> 01:25:07.631 to get people back to work. 1499 01:25:08.522 --> 01:25:09.743 Now, 1500 01:25:10.304 --> 01:25:12.693 how can that be replicated. 1501 01:25:12.693 --> 01:25:14.325 If you get people back to work, 1502 01:25:14.325 --> 01:25:15.690 that's a self esteem issue, 1503 01:25:15.690 --> 01:25:17.364 you're gonna manage your symptoms, 1504 01:25:17.364 --> 01:25:20.244 you got a job, you're in a natural network, 1505 01:25:20.244 --> 01:25:22.307 so there're all these benefits. 1506 01:25:22.495 --> 01:25:25.172 So I think we really have to think carefully 1507 01:25:25.172 --> 01:25:27.646 and think about how we're gonna adapt this 1508 01:25:27.646 --> 01:25:30.345 and be cautious about the claims we make. 1509 01:25:30.345 --> 01:25:32.787 I think there's a danger, also, 1510 01:25:32.787 --> 01:25:36.009 in saying, you know, Open Dialogue is this new, 1511 01:25:36.009 --> 01:25:39.027 magical, miracle cure, 1512 01:25:39.027 --> 01:25:42.434 because everything is contextually shaped. 1513 01:25:44.253 --> 01:25:46.973 You know, maybe the outcomes that they got, 1514 01:25:46.973 --> 01:25:49.298 you know, sometimes they use the analogies, 1515 01:25:49.298 --> 01:25:50.600 like the Beatles, you know. 1516 01:25:50.600 --> 01:25:53.693 You had this particular idiosyncratic group 1517 01:25:53.693 --> 01:25:55.837 of therapists working together, 1518 01:25:55.837 --> 01:25:58.711 and how do you replicate that? 1519 01:25:59.943 --> 01:26:03.954 So I wanna quote Gregory Bateson and say 1520 01:26:03.954 --> 01:26:06.695 behind every scientific advance, 1521 01:26:06.695 --> 01:26:09.969 there's always a matrix, a mother load of unknowns 1522 01:26:09.969 --> 01:26:14.123 out of which the new partial answers have been chiseled. 1523 01:26:15.035 --> 01:26:18.651 He advises us to be careful, not to rush in 1524 01:26:18.651 --> 01:26:21.504 where angels fear to tread. 1525 01:26:23.878 --> 01:26:25.429 So with that, 1526 01:26:28.389 --> 01:26:29.983 I'll end my talk. 1527 01:26:30.448 --> 01:26:33.300 (applause) 1528 01:26:58.403 --> 01:26:59.961 Should we take a few questions? 1529 01:26:59.961 --> 01:27:00.826 Yeah? 1530 01:27:00.826 --> 01:27:02.853 - [Voiceover] We have time for a few. 1531 01:27:02.853 --> 01:27:04.329 - Okay. 1532 01:27:08.239 --> 01:27:09.513 Yeah. 1533 01:27:10.351 --> 01:27:12.790 - [Voiceover] It's an observation. 1534 01:27:12.955 --> 01:27:17.414 So I was just struck in your case example, 1535 01:27:17.414 --> 01:27:21.776 when you spoke of speaking to the fiance 1536 01:27:21.776 --> 01:27:25.776 and you said that in reference to the woman, 1537 01:27:25.776 --> 01:27:29.759 but my reaction was to the man, 1538 01:27:30.096 --> 01:27:32.922 before the woman, the man had spoken, 1539 01:27:32.922 --> 01:27:36.751 and when I think about it, I think 1540 01:27:36.751 --> 01:27:41.636 it's a tribute to the approach being 1541 01:27:41.636 --> 01:27:44.361 not just a focus on prior expectations. 1542 01:27:44.655 --> 01:27:48.367 But this then allowed him, also, 1543 01:27:48.367 --> 01:27:51.662 to think about where he was going wrong. 1544 01:27:51.662 --> 01:27:54.212 - Absolutely, I couldn't agree with you more, 1545 01:27:54.212 --> 01:27:55.449 I couldn't agree with you more. 1546 01:27:55.449 --> 01:27:57.465 Absolutely, absolutely. 1547 01:27:57.465 --> 01:28:00.537 He spoke the unspeakable, and then that allowed 1548 01:28:00.537 --> 01:28:02.890 for her to acquire a voice. 1549 01:28:02.890 --> 01:28:06.445 So even though he was doing something terrible, 1550 01:28:06.445 --> 01:28:09.389 he also had the humanity to throw her a lifeline. 1551 01:28:12.369 --> 01:28:14.136 - [Voiceover] He needed help as well. 1552 01:28:14.136 --> 01:28:15.448 - And to find him, 1553 01:28:15.448 --> 01:28:17.133 yeah and so, and so 1554 01:28:17.133 --> 01:28:19.949 they define, so instead of being alone, 1555 01:28:19.949 --> 01:28:22.295 he was defining himself now 1556 01:28:22.295 --> 01:28:26.332 as somebody who was in need of help. 1557 01:28:26.572 --> 01:28:28.407 And I don't know if I mentioned this, 1558 01:28:28.407 --> 01:28:30.583 I meant to, but I may have forgotten it, 1559 01:28:30.583 --> 01:28:32.550 being a little nervous. 1560 01:28:32.791 --> 01:28:35.649 They referred him to a program, 1561 01:28:35.649 --> 01:28:37.089 they have very good programs, 1562 01:28:37.089 --> 01:28:39.617 they were starting to have good programs then 1563 01:28:39.617 --> 01:28:41.963 for men who are violent toward their partners, 1564 01:28:41.963 --> 01:28:44.645 so he accepted that referral. 1565 01:28:45.536 --> 01:28:49.477 So it really made the situation much less dangerous. 1566 01:28:53.173 --> 01:28:54.703 Yeah. 1567 01:28:54.716 --> 01:28:56.348 - [Voiceover] Can you say a little bit more about 1568 01:28:56.348 --> 01:28:59.686 the way that you can see adaptations to the model 1569 01:28:59.686 --> 01:29:02.315 (mumbles) 1570 01:29:03.729 --> 01:29:05.617 - Well, I mean, I think that 1571 01:29:06.977 --> 01:29:09.168 the next step is that we are gonna see 1572 01:29:09.168 --> 01:29:12.304 and this is, we just wrote another grant 1573 01:29:12.304 --> 01:29:15.760 in which we're gonna try to see if we can, 1574 01:29:17.600 --> 01:29:19.578 there isn't a lot of money, 1575 01:29:19.578 --> 01:29:21.925 but we're gonna try to see if we can 1576 01:29:23.589 --> 01:29:26.106 organize treatment meetings in the UMass 1577 01:29:26.106 --> 01:29:27.839 Emergency Room. 1578 01:29:28.698 --> 01:29:33.150 And to see if we can have three meetings. 1579 01:29:34.116 --> 01:29:36.484 We have two people in the Emergency Room. 1580 01:29:36.484 --> 01:29:40.334 We also, Peter Rober and I and Jaakko Seikkula 1581 01:29:40.334 --> 01:29:42.841 have been running training seminars 1582 01:29:42.841 --> 01:29:45.486 and we have people come from different agencies 1583 01:29:45.486 --> 01:29:47.987 to train with us and to learn this approach. 1584 01:29:48.643 --> 01:29:51.992 And we have two people in the Emergency Room now 1585 01:29:51.992 --> 01:29:55.427 who have been through two years of our training program. 1586 01:29:55.427 --> 01:29:58.147 And so we're very fortunate to have a nurse practitioner 1587 01:29:58.147 --> 01:30:00.930 and a clinical social worker who 1588 01:30:00.930 --> 01:30:05.090 now are two of the 50 people in the country 1589 01:30:05.090 --> 01:30:07.245 who are trained in this way of working. 1590 01:30:07.245 --> 01:30:09.655 And so we're gonna see if we can launch this 1591 01:30:09.655 --> 01:30:11.490 with 10 families and see, 1592 01:30:12.900 --> 01:30:14.594 see if it's feasible. 1593 01:30:14.594 --> 01:30:15.980 You know, can we do it? 1594 01:30:15.980 --> 01:30:17.495 Do the families accept it? 1595 01:30:17.495 --> 01:30:18.657 Do they come back? 1596 01:30:18.657 --> 01:30:20.689 Is it possible within the Emergency Room? 1597 01:30:23.041 --> 01:30:24.400 Yeah. 1598 01:30:24.662 --> 01:30:26.753 - [Voiceover] In some ways, the model, 1599 01:30:26.753 --> 01:30:29.398 the very systems are not foreign, 1600 01:30:29.398 --> 01:30:32.310 it seems to me, in terms of social work. 1601 01:30:32.310 --> 01:30:36.314 - Absolutely, absolutely. 1602 01:30:36.651 --> 01:30:40.224 - [Voiceover] We're probably one of the professional groups 1603 01:30:40.224 --> 01:30:45.224 that has looked at the total arena of the individual. 1604 01:30:45.237 --> 01:30:46.172 - Absolutely. 1605 01:30:46.172 --> 01:30:49.884 I feel that and I also feel that the curriculum 1606 01:30:49.884 --> 01:30:52.956 at the Smith College School for Social Work, 1607 01:30:55.096 --> 01:30:58.022 this, you know, the excellent clinical training, 1608 01:30:58.022 --> 01:31:00.966 the ability to zoom in on the individual, 1609 01:31:00.966 --> 01:31:03.867 but also to look at the wider environment, 1610 01:31:03.867 --> 01:31:07.120 I mean, this is exactly the curriculum, 1611 01:31:07.120 --> 01:31:11.418 exactly the training that prepares people 1612 01:31:11.418 --> 01:31:13.594 to do this kind of work. 1613 01:31:13.594 --> 01:31:15.599 And we've had extraordinary graduates 1614 01:31:15.599 --> 01:31:18.895 in our program come through our training program 1615 01:31:18.895 --> 01:31:22.447 and they're like ducks to water. 1616 01:31:22.447 --> 01:31:24.559 And I think you need both, 1617 01:31:24.559 --> 01:31:26.436 you know, one of the things about Finland, 1618 01:31:26.436 --> 01:31:29.517 it hasn't kind of divided the psychoanalytic 1619 01:31:29.517 --> 01:31:32.196 and the systemic in the way that it's been divided here, 1620 01:31:32.196 --> 01:31:35.699 so they draw fluidly form both sides of that. 1621 01:31:36.057 --> 01:31:39.929 And I think it's very important to be able 1622 01:31:39.929 --> 01:31:43.971 to do that and to have as broad a perspective as possible 1623 01:31:43.971 --> 01:31:48.306 when you're confronting these great challenges. 1624 01:31:51.918 --> 01:31:53.117 Yeah. 1625 01:31:53.240 --> 01:31:55.640 - [Voiceover] I've come to be inspired by your vision 1626 01:31:55.640 --> 01:32:00.555 of a coming paradigm shift away from the biochemical model. 1627 01:32:01.165 --> 01:32:04.162 At the same time, I wonder what it will take 1628 01:32:04.162 --> 01:32:07.500 for these dialogic concepts to take purchase 1629 01:32:07.500 --> 01:32:12.283 in the minds of big pharma or insurance company executives. 1630 01:32:12.609 --> 01:32:16.332 - Well, you know, I just was in Nashville, Tennessee, 1631 01:32:16.332 --> 01:32:19.094 I've never been there before, talking to 1632 01:32:20.594 --> 01:32:22.992 managed care executives, 1633 01:32:23.723 --> 01:32:27.109 many of whom are also fundamentalist Christians. 1634 01:32:27.318 --> 01:32:31.333 And a couple of 'em said, you're doing the Lord's work. 1635 01:32:37.120 --> 01:32:39.599 So maybe, who knows? 1636 01:32:44.597 --> 01:32:46.169 Okay, one more. 1637 01:32:46.964 --> 01:32:48.490 - [Voiceover] Yes I'm also cautious 1638 01:32:48.490 --> 01:32:50.574 with the paradigm shift that you had mentioned. 1639 01:32:50.911 --> 01:32:53.236 Would you say in juxtaposition to this 1640 01:32:53.236 --> 01:32:55.487 that there's also a paradigm shift 1641 01:32:55.487 --> 01:32:57.460 that at least we feel this in Canada 1642 01:32:57.460 --> 01:33:00.297 where people are wont to do more natural things, 1643 01:33:00.297 --> 01:33:04.190 looking at all the things that new immigrants 1644 01:33:04.190 --> 01:33:06.846 things that they used in their country, 1645 01:33:06.846 --> 01:33:09.651 and so this then, in essence, will be helpful 1646 01:33:09.651 --> 01:33:11.400 to you to make this shift. 1647 01:33:11.400 --> 01:33:13.271 - Absolutely, absolutely. 1648 01:33:13.555 --> 01:33:14.973 Absolutely. 1649 01:33:14.973 --> 01:33:17.554 Yes, I think it resonates with something, 1650 01:33:17.554 --> 01:33:19.784 I think people feel, it's not that, 1651 01:33:19.784 --> 01:33:22.802 you know, again, it's not to be anti-medication. 1652 01:33:22.802 --> 01:33:26.813 It's just, it's not sufficient to address 1653 01:33:26.813 --> 01:33:29.180 these problems and difficulties, 1654 01:33:29.180 --> 01:33:32.033 and I think people intuitively know that. 1655 01:33:32.754 --> 01:33:33.735 Yeah. 1656 01:33:33.735 --> 01:33:35.591 Okay, well you've been a wonderful group 1657 01:33:35.591 --> 01:33:36.849 and thank you for coming. 1658 01:33:36.849 --> 01:33:39.232 (applause) 1659 01:33:47.014 --> 01:33:48.849 - Thank you all so very much. 1660 01:33:48.849 --> 01:33:50.619 Mary, that was an absolutely wonderful, 1661 01:33:50.619 --> 01:33:52.059 wonderful presentation. 1662 01:33:52.059 --> 01:33:52.987 Thank you. 1663 01:33:52.987 --> 01:33:55.829 And I have someone's cell phone from the dinner. 1664 01:33:55.931 --> 01:33:57.307 If anybody's missing one. 1665 01:33:57.307 --> 01:33:59.147 Thank you.