Explorations along the Bakhtinian trail. In dialogue with Paul Sullivan

Reformulation meets with Paul Sullivan, author of ‘Qualitative Data Analysis Using a Dialogical Approach’, 2012 and scholar of Mikhail Bakhtin (1875 – 1975 AD)

Ed. - Thanks for agreeing to be interviewed for Reformulation. I’m curious about the Mikhail Bakhtin influence and how it’s come into CAT. What separates his thought from Vygotsky? How do we help a CAT audience navigate through Bakhtin?

Paul: It’s a pleasure to talk to you today about this. I guess how Bakhtin comes into CAT is via Vygotsky. Maybe it’s a certain love affair with the Russians and their particular time and space in which they were writing: a time of persecution; of Stalinist oppression and of underground creative freedom. There’s something very appealing about Vygotsky: to contextualise - Vygotsky brings us beyond Cartesian dualism, particularly between the public and the private where the public utterance being (reduced to) almost a symptom of the private machinations of cognition.

Vygotsky turns it upside down on its head and argues that there is an inner saturation from the Social (world). That saturation is a type of tool that we use to formulate our own higher cognitive processes. So the role of the Other is so vital for Vygotsky; of course he’s embedded in a certain type of Hegelianism, a certain type of dialectical materialism coming from the context of Marx and this idea that the Social comes before the individual - in that there is a dialectical transformation whereby we transform the Social into what we call the personality. So personality isn’t something that we are born with. There’s something quite hopeful and optimistic about this Vygotskian approach. He doesn’t say – in contrast to other psychologies laced through with elements of determinism – whether that is determined by nature or environment which has bedevilled psychology through time. Vygotsky offers a much more hopeful view that as our dynamic relationships change, our Being is reconfigured. That’s quite optimistic but also quite grounded and gives quite important tools – that gives us the Zone of Proximal Development [ZPD]. So I can appreciate the value of Vygotsky for therapy; particularly the ZPD tunes into this idea of Socratic Dialogue and towards the more knowledgeable other who interrogates - this idea of a tool where you are interrogating, challenging, thinking through.

Remember that Vygotsky was speaking as an educational psychologist; he wanted to understand how children and special needs people could develop. Bakhtin was a literary scholar; he dealt much more with connotation than denotation; with the vague and with metaphor.

If I was to pull out of this amazing rubric of work, I would say that Bakhtin offers us a more vertical view of consciousness. He draws attention to what he calls the authoritarian discourse and the internally persuasive discourse. So we still have the Outer and the Inner but he is now really talking about discourse. What he’s drawing attention to here is the particularity of the relationship that we are in (the feeling that we have of particular other people).

This is something that Vygotsky didn’t dwell on because he really had a very singular view of the Other and the Self. Bakhtin opens this up to multiple Others and multiple Selves. Having that vertical line [of consciousness] means that what one person says, even if they are a more knowledgeable other, but perhaps in the dialogical relationship, their opinion is not valued, then their words have very little impact; they don’t crash into you. Whereas Bakhtin exemplifies: words from priests; teachers and parents have an authority to them, profound for their own charge.

Ed. - ….so the terms of the relationship – in thinking of the dialogic position: what is my disposition before the Other – is deeply rooted in the felt experience of the Other beyond cognitivised knowing or holding information as a learning task.

Paul: Exactly. The scholar James Wertsch^** speaks about Bakhtin and Vygotsky and asks: “Who is speaking?” I would imagine that this is an issue in therapy when someone seems quite dogmatic or convinced. Who is speaking? Is it a ventriloquation of an authoritative Other when somebody says that they are useless; is this a ventri-loquation of an important person; an authoritative person … a teacher in their history? Who is speaking? Who is in the room? What are the parallel dialogues that are going on?

So for Vygotsky we have a singular dialogue. For Bakhtin we have parallel and multiple dialogues. There’s dialogue for you as the therapist and with the authoritative others that are going on as well.

Ed. –When I unpack Who is speaking? I unpack it for me and as a helpful Other for the client, who perhaps adopts this mantle of my asking: “Does this speak to me in relation to my history of my family and of my parents?” The utterance – that indivisible unit of the reciprocal role that anchors itself as the Bakhtinian contribution par excellence - reveals the socially constructed Me in the Vygotskian influenced world.

Paul: Yes I agree. The concept of reciprocal roles shows the kind of dialogical dance in the moment between one and the other. For sure - within that – what are the parallel reciprocal roles that are going on between voices within consciousness outside of the reciprocal roles between one and the other. Let’s say the material others. What about the immaterial others? I think this is what Mikael Leiman talks about as the Epiphanic Sign - I would probably say Epiphanic Other - the [lived voicing of the] ‘ressurected Other’ who touches me. You speak and you’re touching a sore spot.

We’ve spoken about the vertical – the upward – but we also have the downward side of consciousness – the carnivalesque – as the elements which create internally persuasive discourse. Now this is the more unpredictable and dangerous side of the relationship. We don’t know where it is going. It could terrorise us. It is embodied in Bakhtin within the scatological (concept of) the Body Grotesque as corporeal and the sense of irreverence towards authority.

Ed.- This calls to mind how clients come up against authoritarian structures: a referral system; waiting room and perhaps going through assessment. The vertical axis of hope also points downward to the feared experience; of noticing “Not again – I’m in this waiting room…here I am trying to seek treatment” and any lived moment of waiting from its storied genealogy can be resurrected. To which I can waver with reverence or with the carnivalesque.

Paul: Hmm! Ambivalence. Where do get ambivalence in Vygotsky! This threshold between these alternatives just doesn’t really come up [for Vygotsky]. The key to trying to internalise the words of others is the reverence and/or the irreverence with which these words are storied. Beyond which we also have the discourses of society. We have a whole stream of irreverence in satire; on the internet; it can be quite vicious thinking of trolling; who are the trolls of our own minds?

Ed. – Hmm! To think that the client brings unformulated reverence, or irreverence; to be in dialogue with these challenging concepts moves us away from a linear model of process of protocols, algorithms towards a very relational approach.

Paul: - and I would add it brings you towards an aesthetic in the relationship because the authority – for Bakhtin shapes the content of what the dialogue is. In a way it’s possibly reassurance. In humanistic therapy it’s the unconditional positive regard; in cognitive therapy it’s more pragmatic let’s say; but it’s in the shaping. It’s in the relationship that we create the other as well as find the other. What Bakhtin says here is that we creatively understand the other. So in these multiple relationships going on between client and you; within a client’s mind or with you and within your own mind - therapists have multiple layered dialogues, then a fully committed absorption is difficult to sustain (but not impossible). There’s the art – the early work: Art and Answerability* in which there’s a very permeable thin line between art and life. How we react and how we treat one another reciprocally - creates the possibility for a new shaping of the person in that moment.

Ed. - On Bakhtinian authorship and answerability: is it my role to revere the tension between authorship of the therapy direction for a client and as the Vygotskian Enabling Other so that the client may discover his own creative authorship to script a new narrative for a symptom set or challenging target problem procedures.

Paul: Yes. It’s that dynamic interplay between reverence and respect and being in the moment; being alongside; being with and shaping authoritatively, helping – of course it’s a dialogue – there’s another in the room. In dialogue, less palatable alternatives may enter that require effort to dismiss – e.g. irreverent voices but they too have creative potential.

Ed- I’m thinking about the focus on the potential. How do I separate the helpful voices in dialogue from the unhelpful? How do I focus our relationship along the reverent aspects of a shared treatment plan for therapy. Do we review it: check for ambiguity and explore both ambiguity and uncertainty?

Paul: I think that is very well said and very well thought out. I would just add to that – in culture in general there’s a sort of revulsion towards the irreverence. A kind of a cultural shock: shying or keeping away. What I like about Bakhtin’s work on Rabelais, is how he turns that irreverence into a positive aesthetic value – not to be shocked by raw unformulated experience necessarily – but to see it as part of who we are as social beings. Within the disregard for love, even lingering, in the collective melee is another side of humanity that is revealed. A kind of creative and collective side which is eternal. A bit like consciousness which has all these parts to it, that can be brought into the surface of consciousness. Bakhtin talks about exploring the heights and depths of consciousness: you can’t help but contrast to the Freudian model or the depths of the unconscious which is inaccessible. For Bakhtin in carnival and the mésalliance of ideas, thoughts and people, it’s all brought into the surface consciousness as voices we were dimly aware of; that can be amplified, or drowned out.

Ed. - I think that’s a really fascinating and relevant point: the searching with a torch light which Bakhtin undertakes -

Paul: That’s a nice way of putting it yes -

Ed. - He’s not afraid to shine light into the dark areas where we are afraid to go into in therapy. You’ve written about dialogic analysis in Qualitative Data Analysis^ɫ drawing from the Bakhtinian methodology of revering the utterance as a relational unit. It’s a very solid relational method of illuminating utterances as building blocks to construct a way to know the dark areas unlike the expert Freudian method of hermeneutic interpretation of the expert-known for the non-agentic patient in a zone of expert dependency beyond his ZPD. I’m thinking of how Bakhtin’s life and his writing embodied this approach about not being afraid to engage in what has been left out of outer and inner life …

Paul: I love that idea Rob. It reminds me about that passage in Problems of Doestoevsky’s Poetics where he talks about Devushkin^± and poor people – So what if I am a poor man living in a kitchen! and he has this re-analysis: You’re a poor man living in a kitchen: Absent Other! The absent other structures Devushkin’s dialogue.

Ed - That’s important to me as a therapist: Bakhtin absolutely refuses to divorce from social reality – the social construction of the self in the situation of neglect and poverty in which the world is given to me. I bring this – whatever is given to me – aware or not – I bring it into the therapy relationship.

Paul: Yes that sounds to me like a skill…like a practice that needs training and work on. I think this is a bit like Vygotsky meeting with the optimism of Bakhtin: better and worse kinds of dialogic relationships are possible. Dostoevsky was elevated by Bakhtin as the only polyphonic author in the history of writing.

Ed – Can you explain what polyphonic means?

Paul: – I can try – but of course there are so many debates about all of these concepts that it can be very difficult to say authoritatively! (laughs)

Ed. – Thinking as a musician - in ethnic Chinese music, polyphony has not existed as a tradition. In contrast 17^th/18^th Century sung Russian liturgical polyphony includes multiple voicing lines across different octaves; carrying different harmonies passed through the soprano, alto, tenor and bass pitch…they create a sound more than sung unison.

Paul: I think you’re absolutely spot on… occasionally when I listen to Tchaikovsky, I’ve been just blown away at how the same sequence of notes can be taken up and replayed and sound different but you can perceive that they’re the same notes. This to me is equivalent to what Bakhtin is trying to get at with polyphony when he talks about the idea of heroes – who take the same idea and pass it through different voices through the ages. Again here we’re getting at the distinction between epistemological and ontological knowing: knowing as the more knowledgeable other for Vygotsky. I can see how that can work for basic educational questions around literacy, maths, reading, writing etc. but Vygotsky doesn’t really ask profound questions: What’s the meaning of life? What is it to be authentic? What is it to be false? Am I phoney? Do people love me? What is love? He comes close, talking about predicated speech, at one point or another. But for Bakhtin, if I want to know what love is then I need to explore the meaning of love’s polyphony in this relationship.

Ed.- You write of the polyphonic orchestration within organisations^∞∞. If a therapist says a client has no locus of control; the client’s says he feels useless. From his employer’s point of view, he should be working; from his partner’s view, maybe he needs another job. Each voice holds a valid resonance to the client’s lived experience waiting for an orchestration of the polyphony in all of those voicings.

Paul: Yes it connects with the idea of truth as abstract and truth as lived; with his critique of Ferdinand de Saussure’s linguistics where you have dictionary meaning and lived meaning. What does uselessness mean? What does it mean in an embodied sense when someone calls you useless? What does it mean in a relational sense when you feel useless? What does it mean when what you do is useful but everyone else sees it as useless? These are the different musical notes which spring from concept. When he talks about Dostoevsky and Raskolnikov’s question^¥ of what is the meaning of doing good in the world? What does it mean to kill? What if that is useful? What if I am ostracised by society? In that ostracisation which I am posing, I can then feel the meaning of the morally repugnant act. Really feel it. It feels different dependent on the kind of adventures and experiences; the picaresque hero as he journeys through different adventures, finds different connotations of lived meanings and emotions. I’m sure in the therapy context, you’re also in a particular time and space and a particular kind of adventure around meaning and exploration and finding out what do these concepts mean now in this relationship with you, the authoritative other with the reverence.

Ed. – Is Bakhtin slightly scary for therapists because he is so open ended and requires a degree of translation? I can see embracing uncertain possibilities and the dialectic between the official and the unofficial or authoritative or irreverent voicing open up therapeutic scope but also invokes a sense of uncertain knowing – maybe of feeling lost on the Bakhtin trail as a curious explorer.

I’m thinking of what we have seen recently in the CoVid-19 hero – the modern successor to the picaresque or Greek hero. The literary text is predicated on the utterance as the fundamental social relational unit: then utterances in fiction are as relevant as utterances in therapy.

Paul: Yeah I agree with all of that Rob. I can imagine the risks and dangers of creative space in therapy because by definition you don’t really know where it’s going to end up. So you can’t really know for sure. Unlike friendly dialogue, trying to equalise and democratise the therapy relationship, the client could end up going wrong because of what Bakhtin calls the sore spots which we rub. Maybe this is one of the reasons why it can be scary along with some inaccessible prose translation of Bakhtin … certainly a challenge!

In 20 years meditating on Bakhtin, I can see a tremendous paradigm shift in psychology and by implication for therapy – a paradigm shift away from the Cartesian emphasis on the public outer, social as a symptom of some kind of private, internal machination, towards a very variegated version of consciousness that is very open; very responsive; very cathartic and is full of creative adventure, that draws attention to time and space; that draws attention to the parallel - the multiplicities of worlds and of voices; the distinctions between what we mean as true for abstract concepts. All of the exploration that is possible in Bakhtin, I think, is is very much worth the effort of engaging with.

Ed. - Bakhtin’s torchlight on a novel CAT direction away from the procedurally sequenced object relations driven model: through his lens, the opening of creative possibilities of CAT towards this socially constructed reality is well put as a variegated richness; of how CAT refuses a Brexit from Outer and Inner and does stay in dialogue with CoVid-19 monsters and the pandemic chronotope.

Paul: Yes. It’s multi-faceted. Lockdown. Not being able to meet or socialise with people; no opportunities; no job to go to; few possibilities – we can see it as a metaphor for self- states of emotional distress in constant lockdown.

Ed. – yes like the death of a relationship with others. Or is it the death of public space?

Paul: The death of a public space. Brilliantly put. Yes.

Ed. – Bakhtin’s experience of Russian revolution and of being exiled [death of familiar space]. These contemporary catastrophes that befall us [saturation of lockdown’s inner space] require our reflection: can we draw on Bakhtin for choral support to orchestrate own identity? How do we answer authentically to CoVid-19?

That collapse of the institution of public space yields confusion and not knowing from which springs a jockeying apprehension of “whatever next?” Time and space of public life before CoVid-19 takes a major fall: as therapists are we responding authentically with minor strokes: trying to swim and negotiate uncertain and scared feelings – ours and theirs [as reciprocal roles] or hoping for rescue in a heroic narrative by a hero vaccine from some pharmaceutical company. We’re in dialogue with the same Bakhtinian ideas.

Paul: Yes. What I find inspiring about Bakhtin is his absolute commitment towards scholarship which dominated his identity. He was exiled to Saransk [Siberia] with very little access to books yet he immersed himself in that deep hermeneutic practice of delving; not just echoing, but reformulating what he was reading in his limited access to written text. Now when I think about the shift towards online (speaking from personal experience), I find an illusion of infinite possibilities – infinite things I can look up. Yet my accreted habitual practice is to have a carousel of revolving news websites. I’m finding no new news when I looked last. Now this to me is a kind of crucification (I’m inspired by this picture behind you Rob!) – a kind of online crucification of the mind. We throw ourselves into it and it’s not enough. It’s very difficult to be authentic. Bakhtin for me was a romantic in that zone of deep excavation. It’s difficult with this revolving carrousel limit of possibilities for deep excavation. I’ve discovered I’m exhausted from checking – a kind of obsessive compulsive checking … it’s crucifying. So I’ve started just reading books that I think will be good. I started reading Dostoevsky after reading Bakhtin’s writings on Dostoevsky over 20 years ago. I’ve since been delving into other writers who also inspire me.

Ed. – and there’s certainly a parallel in thinking about the overexposure of social media and social media disinhibition. If I am following the BBC News, morning, afternoon and evening, stimulated and overwhelmed, eventually the traumatic PTSD-like repetition blunts my emotional response towards pain, terror and catastrophes in the world. Curating of personal identity: to choose not to be exposed to traumatic repetition. Am I noticing as an agentic self that the responsibility of curating my self becomes more urgent now? Before - I might have checked the news absent-mindedly. Now - I notice I am checking 20 or 500 times a day habitually. I have not brought into reflection - that invasion in my life of collapse – the death of public space – the loss of familiar storied relationships and my sudden callowness at new uncharted ones. The Compulsive [Checking to Checked] reciprocal role does not existentially secure me. Maybe the illusion of security from the reciprocal role is the best I can grasp, until the transcendental movement of the Observing I blossoms: noticing as an I – Author; I – Orchestrator or I – Curator who can then create my own identity and choose: “Hold on. Stop. Breathe with mask.” (laughs).

Paul: Yes. Optimism. We can go deep into meanings of the abstract words; words of meaningful love, life and authenticity. But to do that is particularly challenging, I think, with the surfaces of things revolving around us, to find authenticity and to create it is a big challenge.

Ed- The far horizon outgrowth of client authenticity is one of the hardest tasks to hold when colonised by symptom management or by a pseudo-authorial algorithm to get the map or the reformulation letter to nail the symptom set (as if it can be done without reduction). I’m thinking about how that tension is unscripted for the therapist [to orchestrate]. Perhaps this is the danger where losing authenticity is a real temptation for it’s easier to collapse back into the security of doing target problem procedures or what we know or have been taught.

Paul: Yes and you have pressures to meet targets and pressures to be the hero in everyone’s journey. The knight in shining armour rescues somebody from a malignant reciprocal role procedure. That’s a lot of pressure! It’s difficult to be authentic and in the dialogue in the new learning adventure which both parties are committed to, as something novel, some kind of creative engagement as the more knowledgeable other. I love Vygotsky, but for Vygotsky, the more knowledgeable Other is perhaps a kind of superhuman Other who doesn’t tire; who doesn’t learn much because he’s more knowledgeable already. Perhaps this is one of the wild optimisms of Bakhtin – that in dialogue you can continue across multiple time zones and fields to continue to be authentically committed to delve in deeper through the sheer number of lived encounters. Instead we daydream or distract from focus with irreverent thoughts - the trolls of our own minds as they say.

Ed. - So the noticing of these monsters or trolls on our landscapes – belong within our own landscape of the self as a microcosm of the wider society and our need to dialogue with monsters like poverty and CoVid-19 which lock us in unhelpful reciprocal role procedures. The possibility of Bakhtinian authorship is so expansive; so rich and so overwhelming! What would you say is the core Bakhtinian anchor that we should hold onto in this life’s wonderful mess?

Paul: What springs to mind is answerability. For example even mask wearing in the pandemic. Why wear a mask in public? Answerability: to protect others. Why should I be constrained by this time and space, where nothing is open? I’ve seen public graffiti here and there in different places: Tyranny! It’s a hoax! The whole thing! And these are people – who to us seem completely irreverent. For them – I guess they are adventurers on the CoVid-19 road trip trying to smash out into this new time and space which we are in. For the rest, we are committed to the zones of answerability to the trust and towards the authoritative others who would tell us that that this is societal life and death. They are backed up by history for we have seen similar pandemics wipe out millions because of our actions. For some it’s an infringement on their value relativism, romanticism and intrepidness to go to places that should be open. It’s that view of the epic narrative which sees us as explorers breaking through and smashing these timid values in this timid space.

Ed. – “Who am I answerable to?” is a great Bakhtinian anchor to steady myself. Thank you. Finally, some questions from the floor: What is a chronotope? Is it relevant to CAT as a brief intensive therapy?

Paul: - This is an excellent question. So chronotope is time, space and for me, time, space and value. It’s grounded in literal realities e.g. - a bridge. A bridge connects one place with another place. It could connect an island to a mainland. We talk about creating a bridge between us and bridging our differences. So in the material world the reality of bridges, as they are designed by engineers who build bridges, allow us to bump into one another. It’s a crossing place where we move from one place to another. We might move from an island where time is very slow and little changes; seasons are very carefully respected with festivals. Time is viscous in the concept of the Idle chronotopic time. Things don’t change very much. The hero goes adventuring from Idle time to cross the bridge. Things can happen under the bridge: maybe bumping into a troll under the bridge (laughs) or when you cross the bridge you might move into an urban space and here now time moves very fast. Events happen quickly and are then forgotten. Back at home, events in Idle time stay locked in memory; this was an event and is still there; held in mind; as a grudge; as a celebration or commemoration.

Ed. - So the relationship in that time and space flow is of crucial importance.

Paul: - It is. Yes for you will have targeted time and space; how many sessions do I need? How long is the session? Can I compress a lot of emotional valence into an hour? What can I get through? It’s very rigid: this is the beginning; this is the end. Time doesn’t really have meaning if we live in the present moment.

Ed. (laughs) So we may need to do that. Thank you Paul. It’s been very illuminating exploring Bakhtin’s trail with you. I would certainly like to carry on …

Paul: Me too. So let’s try and do that amidst this compressed nature of life where we have to do so many things all at the same time. It’s been an absolute pleasure.

Paul Sullivan

p.sullivan@bradford.ac.uk

Transcript: 11^th December 2020

1. Wertsch, J., 1991 Voices of the mind, Harvard University Press
2. Bakhtin, M., 1990 Art and Answerability – Early Philosophical EssaysUniversity of Texas Press Slavic Series
3. Sullivan, P., (2012) Qualitative Data Analysis
4. Dostoevsky, F. (1845) Poor Folk. From Feodor Dostoevsky’s first novel, Poor Folk, published in 1845 as a set of correspondences between Makar Devushkin and Varvara Dobroselova, two poor people living in poor conditions.
5. Sullivan P et al, 2015 Crossing chronotopes in the polyphonic organisation https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/46167412.pdf
6. Sullivan P, McCarthy J, 2008 Managing the Polyphonic Sounds of Organizational Truths https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840608088702 
7. Dostoevsky, F. 1866 In Feodor Dostoevsky’s masterpiece novel Crime And Punishment, published in 1866, Raskolnikov is the protagonist whose root etymology of ‘raskol’ refers to a split or dissociated aspect of identity through which personal agency after a crime is investigated.