DBT explored: Seeing dialectics through art and mythology

What is a dialectic?

 Dialectical Behavioral Therapy uses the concept of a dialectics to help shift our thinking towards increased mental health and psychological balance. Marsha Linehan, the creator of the DBT model, defined a dialectic as a synthesis or integration of opposites, involving two simultaneous yet opposing truths. DBT focuses particularly on the dialectic of acceptance AND change, highlighting that both are essential and neither are mutually exclusive.

I am often curious about the ways that dialectics can be visualized to better integrate this concept into our mental frameworks. Ven diagrams can be useful in reflecting dialectics, and can help us to avoid the traps of dualistic thinking through creating an intentional boundary that holds space a new creative synthesis. While schematic diagrams are efficient and elegant, they can also strip away some of the underlying narrative richness that contribute to the fuller understanding of a construct or concept.

Recently, in exploring a painting process, I was struck by a possible example of an ancient dialectic held in a picture. The image I was working from was drawn from a Norse myth, depicting the origin of the human-inhabited world. In this story, our earth was created through the ancient convergence of two separate ancient realms—one of ice, frozen mist, and obscure darkness, and the other of blazing heat and radiant light. In the world resulting from the synthesis of these two antithetical realms, the conditions for life were established, and all of the subsequent life was sustained.  

I began to wonder if this myth reflects the concept that as humans, we occupy a world that is fundamentally built on and reflected by a dialectic reality, that shows up in multiple planes between our external contextual environments and our internal bodies and psyches. It occured to me that perhaps the dialectical perspective is an ancient thought framework that emerged through art making that was built off of our sensory understanding of the physical world, and from there has evolved with thought traditions and cultural shifts—but still remains relevant to understanding and moving through our lives.

Dialectics perspective in scholarship:

The dialectical perspective highlights the relationship of contradictory elements as adversarial and transformed through conflict. It attends to the use of the creative strategies people use to manage tensions between contradictory elements, and recognize that acceptance of contradiction can play a role in transformation. In this view, transformation does not emerge “in the relationship” between the two poles, but rather is a new element which emerges from the relationship of the two poles. The acceptance of coexistence of contradictory elements also sets the stage for using the tension between these elements as an opportunity for creativity. Quinn and Cameron (1988) argue that acceptance can induce “a synergistic or ‘flow’ state” (Csikzentmihalyi, 1976) in which “complex contradictory forces … produce a source of creative energy” (p. 298). Eisenhardt and Wescott (1988) note that the major effect of creating contradictory demands is creativity. People are forced to look beyond the obvious and to reexamine basic assumptions.

The dialectical perspective is rooted in the premise that human understanding of reality is composed of logically and socially constructed contradictions—opposed yet interdependent elements which require each other for their existence and meanings. In dialectics, the relationship of contradictory elements plays out through a process in which actors espousing one element, the affirmation, engage in conflict with actors promoting the opposed element, the negation. This conflict releases the tension between the contradictory elements and produces a new set of arrangements and practices, the transformation. Dialectical theory suggests that power initially is concentrated behind one element of the contradiction, the affirmation. Expression of this element, however, inevitably invites the emergence of the contradictory element, the negation. According to Hegel, this summoning is inevitable because the affirmation is inherently incomplete and imperfect as a principle for action. 

According to Marxian and Hegelian dialectical models, conflict between the affirmation and negation has the consequence of producing a synthesis or transformation. This transformation is the reconciliation or dissolution of contradiction, or “the ordering of parts to form a new whole or ‘gestalt’” that neither side could have produced itself (Lourenço & Glidewell, 1975, p. 489). Once produced, transformation becomes the new affirmation which is subsequently negated, as the dialectical process recycles (Benson, 1977; Hargrave & Van de Ven, 2006; Nielsen, 1996; Seo & Creed, 2002; Van de Ven & Poole, 1995). Transformation can occur only if proponents of both the affirmation and negation have the power to effectively confront each other--where proponents of the negation have succeeded in building the energy needed to successfully challenge the affirmation. When power is concentrated behind the affirmation, the negation remains latent, and the tension between opposites is not engaged, and does not lead to transformation. Philosopher and sociologist Georg Simmel argued that conflict “allows us to prove our strength consciously and only thus gives vitality and reciprocity to conditions from which, without such corrective, we would withdraw at any cost” (Simmel, 1955, p. 19).

How art therapy employs a dialectic perspective:

Dialectics then are a dynamic synthesis of opposing polarities that inherently engage our creative brains to find a new container that can hold both aspects of the underlying duality leading to the tension, and the resultant convergent reality that holds our complex existence. This is a catalyst to our creative process that makes use of tension rather than trying to avoid or minimize areas of discrepancies that may be underlying our issues of mood, personality, anxiety, and adjustment challenges. When it comes to reintegration after trauma, we can see the rich framework of dialectics being particularly helpful in that it neither minimizes the role of the trauma, or our personal responsibilities to organizing a way of moving forward in the current reality through internal and conceptual transformation.

Art therapy provides opportunities for all of the elements of the dialectic to be seen, validated, explored, and balanced in order for the conflict between the elements to be effective and balanced enough for a new synthesis to emerge. Art materials themselves can also serve as a fertile example of dialectics. In mixing paint, building forms, or layering pigments, we can see new synthesized forms taking place that are the result of distinct polarized elements such as complementary aspects of a color wheel, amalgamation between rigid and fluid pigments, three-dimensional and two-dimensional objects, abstract and representational depictions, written text and free form image. Through transforming media, we honor our creative brain’s capacity to find new solutions from distinct and opposing concepts or elemental objects—and these syntheses can affirm our ancient human potential to make new areas of meaning that can hold space for internal and external contradiction.

 References:

Benson J. K. (1977). Organizations: A dialectical view. Administrative Science Quarterly, 22, 1–21. 

Cameron K. S., Quinn R. E. (1988). Organizational paradox and transformation. In Quinn R. E., Cameron K. S. (Eds.), Paradox and transformation: Toward a theory of change in organization and management (pp. 1–18). Cambridge, MA: Ballinger. 

Csikzentmihalyi M. (1976). Beyond boredom and anxiety. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

 Eisenhardt K. M., Wescott B. J. (1988). Paradoxical demands and the creation of excellence. The case of just-in-time manufacturing. In Quinn R. E., Cameron K. S. (Eds.), Paradox and transformation: Toward a theory of change in organization and management (pp. 169–193). Cambridge, MA: Ballinger.

Farley, Ned (2008). Living in Paradox: The Theory and Practice of Contextual Existentialism. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

 Hargrave T. J., Van de Ven A. H. (2006). A collective action model of institutional change. Academy of Management Review, 31, 864–888. 

 Hargrave, T. J., & Van de Ven, A. H. (2017). Integrating Dialectical and Paradox Perspectives on Managing Contradictions in Organizations. Organization Studies, 38(3-4), 319-339.

 Lourenço S. V., Glidewell J. C. (1975). A dialectical analysis of organizational conflict. Administrative Science Quarterly, 20, 489–508. 

 Nielsen R. P. (1996). Varieties of dialectic change processes. Journal of Management Inquiry, 5, 276–292. 

 Quinn R. E., Cameron K. S. (1988). Paradox and transformation: A framework for viewing organization and management. In Quinn R. E., Cameron K. S. (Eds.), Paradox and transformation: Toward a theory of change in organization and management (pp. 289–308). Cambridge, MA: Ballinger.

 Seo M., Creed W. E. D. (2002). Institutional contradictions, praxis, and institutional change: A dialectical perspective. Academy of Management Review, 27, 222–247. 

 Simmel G. (1955) [1907]. Conflict. New York: Free Press.