Professor Emeritus in Psychology, University of Stirling. She was born in Czechoslovakia but since 1967 she lives in the UK. Current research includes dialogicality, the theory of social representations and communication, trust, responsibility, and the relations among forms of social knowledge. The latest books include: The Dialogical Mind: Common Sense and Ethics (2016); Dialogue in Focus Groups: Exploring Socially Shared knowledge (2007, with P. Linell, M. Grossen, A. Salazar-Orvig); Trust and Distrust: Sociocultural Perspectives (2008, co-edited with A. Gillespie); Trust and conflict: Representation, culture, dialogue (2012, co-edited with A.Gillespie); Dialogical Approaches to Trust in Communication (2013, co-edited with P. Linell).

Inner dialogue

Ivana Marková

Plenary sessions: Thursday 18/05/2023 from 10:45 to 12:15

Dialogue involves an interaction of voices between the Self and various ‘Others’. Such ‘Others’ may include individuals, groups, the public, socio-political and cultural environments, and their institutions. Moreover, ‘Others’ contribute to simultaneous and heterogeneous viewpoints expressed in inner dialogues within the Self. These diverse dialogues may be in mutual contradiction, may interfere, or corroborate one another. Among the manifold dialogues, in this lecture I shall focus on inner dialogues of the Self, and consider, in two ways, the rational (‘superior’) and intuitive (‘inferior’) dialogical voices. First, throughout the history of humankind, these two dialogical voices played substantial roles in human and social sciences leading to different kinds of knowing. Second, the Self has the capacity to reflect on oneself, for example, on one’s health and on one’s subjective experience. Most importantly, the Self has the capacity to reflect on own thoughts and mental states, and evaluate clashes, contradictions, and corroborating voices in inner dialogues, leading to uncertainties, hopes, and fears. This capacity of the double reflexivity is particularly important in family therapy, expressing itself in ‘the person of the therapist’.

Marková, I. (2016). The Dialogical Mind: Common Sense and Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Marková, I. (2023). The Making of a Dialogical Theory: Social Representations and Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University press.
Rober, P. (2017). Addressing the person of the therapist in supervision: the therapist’s inner conversation method. Family Process, 56, 487-500.
Rober, P. (2021). The dual process of intuitive responsivity and reflective self-supervision: about the therapist in family therapy practice. Family Process, 60, 1033- 1047.