{"id":17794,"date":"2021-01-20T11:31:09","date_gmt":"2021-01-20T10:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/paricenter.com\/?page_id=17794"},"modified":"2024-04-24T12:27:37","modified_gmt":"2024-04-24T10:27:37","slug":"the-backstory-of-david-bohms-dialogue","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/paricenter.com\/library-new\/pari-perspectives\/the-backstory-of-david-bohms-dialogue\/","title":{"rendered":"The Backstory of David Bohm\u2019s Dialogue"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Introduction and Overview<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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For many of you, your introduction to David Bohm came through his scientific contributions, and, in the other presentations at this conference, we\u2019ve had deep reminders of the magnitude of those contributions. My own introduction came through a different route, not from the orientation of science, for my background in science falls far short of that of most of you. My entr\u00e9e to Bohm came through the process of his signature social change process that he called dialogue<\/em>. In the description which follows we will go into Bohm\u2019s meaning of the word dialogue, and will distinguish it from its common usage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several of you also share an interest in dialogue and, given the breadth of Bohm\u2019s thinking, you may have entered this realm from a number of vantage points. So, <\/strong>surely there are those of you who would take a different orientation or approach to looking into our topic\u2014the history of dialogue. From my conversations with some of you here, I know you started your journey into dialogue through an interest in Bohm\u2019s work with Krishnamurti. I haven\u2019t yet delved into Bohm and Krishnamurti\u2019s long friendship and conversations together, and so cannot speak with any depth about the influence of Krishnamurti on Bohm, except to say that he greatly impacted the intent<\/em> for dialogue. While we will not go deeply into that aspect of dialogue, I can, hopefully, take you on a journey describing a model or methodology<\/em> of dialogue David Bohm inherited and how he built upon it to become what many of us have come to think of as Bohmian dialogue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early in my exploration of Bohmian dialogue, I thought that Bohm was its originator, its creator, but after much digging into the early starts of this process, my contention is that David Bohm did not develop from scratch the form of dialogue which carries his name. Now, that came as a shock to me as well as to other folks. Through my research, I\u2019ve come to see that he inherited a model or methodology of dialogue and then built into it other rich areas of inquiry, such as his deep delving into the process of thought and, of course, his unique work in quantum theory and theoretical physics. So, what I want to share with you is some of those early methodological starting points for dialogue as he first came into them and to let you backtrack along with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before diving in, let me give you a brief overview of my presentation. To set the context, I\u2019d like to share a bit about myself and how I came to be intrigued with what I\u2019ve called the \u2018backstory\u2019 of dialogue. Then, to start us all off with a similar understanding of David Bohm\u2019s dialogue, I\u2019ll share some of the characteristics that he said were the essence of dialogue. And finally, I\u2019ll introduce the individuals who form the lineage of Bohm\u2019s methodology for dialogue and identify the traces of their thought in Bohm\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Setting the Context<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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For me this is a historical journey which came out of my early learning about and the practice of dialogue. People practise dialogue in very different ways, and I want to give you a taste of what my practice has been and to give us all a common starting point. Early in my career, I had gone back to university wanting to explore how social change happens. I had had some rather intense experiences that acquainted me with social change, but that experience was inarticulate. I figured that if I went to business school, there I could learn what corporations knew about how change happened. I wanted to know what change agents actually do. How does the process of change work? My first encounter with the work of David Bohm came when I studied systems theory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly after finishing those educational pursuits, I worked as the administrator of a large health care system. One of the long-term care facilities in that system was having significant problems. For example, absenteeism was a terrible problem. We had to hire one-and-a-half, full-time-equivalent nurses to keep one nurse on the floor. The absenteeism rate was so high that if one nurse didn\u2019t show up for duty, a nurse from the previous shift had to stay over for a double shift. So, it was a really huge issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had tried many interventions to resolve the various problems, but all those interventions had failed. At a particularly troublesome point, the medical director and I sat down to plan what to do next. By then, I had exhausted everything my management education had taught me, except for one thing. By that time, I had participated in training for David Bohm\u2019s dialogue process, and that was the only option I could think of which potentially would be a strong enough intervention to penetrate to the heart of the problems. But, it was risky, and it would have to be conducted for a long time\u2014a year\u2014I predicted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The powers-that-be approved. I trained all 170 staff members of that facility in a day-long course on dialogue. And then I asked for a cross-section of thirty employees who would work with me over a year. Much to my surprise, eighty-some staff volunteered\u2014about half of the whole staff. With such a large number, we were able to create multiple cross-sectional groups including every shift, level, job and discipline. It was one of the most mind-bending years of my life! I want to give you two examples that set the stage for my researching the methodology that Bohm inherited in his development of dialogue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, a description of our dialoguing about the problem of the extremely high absenteeism rate. One day, as a dialogue group was beginning, one of the maintenance men came in. He was a real salt-of-the-earth kind of guy who had worked in the facility for forty years, a person who was usually quite unemotional and stoic. But this day he looked grey and very distressed when he came in. As we sat down, I said to him, \u2018What\u2019s going on with you, you look so sad?\u2019 He was very close to tears, but with difficulty he said, \u2018Mr Jones [a patient] died during the night. And I used to go see him every day. I did that every day for the past ten or twelve years. He was like a father to me. And, he died.\u2019 The group became hushed. After a while, one of the nurses said, \u2018You know, some days I pull into the parking lot, I put my car in park, and I sit there and I say to myself, who\u2019s going to die today? I can\u2019t stand it, so I put my car back in drive and I go home and call in sick.\u2019 And then s<\/strong>omeone else said something similar, and someone else, and someone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of our Human Resources processes, all of our high and intelligent interventions that had been an attempt to deal with the absenteeism had failed to identify the real problem. What had emerged in this group of people who, through participation in the dialogue group, had come to trust each other was a simple but profound human issue: GRIEF! The patients that these staff took care of day in and day out, patients they loved, died. It was, after all, a long-term care facility for elderly people. At the bottom of this extreme absenteeism issue, so far buried under the surface of their awareness, their human hearts were entangled! And what then was the resolution? We began offering grief therapy for staff and more outward, humane understanding of those caregivers who hurt when their patients had died. We would never have found the core underlying problem without dialogue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So that\u2019s one example of the deep power of dialogue to go under the surface and to unearth those things that our psyches know at some level but that we can\u2019t articulate. The other example is not such an easy one. Following the sessions, people came to those of us conducting the dialogue and said things like, \u2018The perception came to my mind, while I was sitting there, of being sexually abused when I was three.\u2019 Others shared deeply buried early life experiences that surfaced during the dialogues, experiences that were unrelated to the topic around which the dialogue session had been oriented. We had begun unearthing and evoking issues that were not anticipated; they were not organizational issues, but rather were very deep psychological issues that needed professional intervention. That bothered me a lot! I didn\u2019t know what we facilitators had done that would evoke that kind of response. We were able to refer these folks to the professional resources appropriate to their issues, but the concern stuck in my mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those two issues\u2014the power of dialogue to go very deeply and to evoke the issues under the surface and, secondly, some of the risks that go into doing dialogue if you\u2019re not prepared for the consequences that can arise\u2014these two concerns catalysed in me a quest for the history and the underlying methodology of dialogue. Perhaps you could say I wanted to dialogue the underlying premises and processes of dialogue, to dig under the surface and to find the drivers of dialogue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In previous days here, David Schrum talked about the way in which the brain and consciousness work. His charts hung on the walls around us, and I suggest that you ponder the similarities between David\u2019s presentation and what I will be sharing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I have shared this particular research effort of teasing out the backstory of dialogue, some folks have found it irritating. David Bohm has been such a prophet that to some these thoughts suggesting Bohm wasn\u2019t the originator of this form of dialogue, seem heretical. Well, it is not at all my intent to discredit David Bohm, but I suggest that there are good reasons for looking back into dialogue\u2019s origins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d like to think that when practitioners have enough awareness of Bohmian dialogue\u2019s dynamics and origins, they will more wisely construct their own working models of it. I spoke a moment ago of one of my dialogue interventions that evoked psychological issues. At the time I didn\u2019t know why that happened. My contention is that it is wise to know such things can arise during dialogue, so that you make good choices in deploying your skills and your capacities and thus to safely manage on behalf of your clientele. Deep knowledge of dialogue\u2019s dynamics and origins also helps build a coherent methodology. I see all sorts of variations of supposed dialogue models in my work, and some of them are a hodgepodge of this, that and the other. Some of what is called dialogue just doesn\u2019t fit into the process of dialogue that Bohm would have advocated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Description of Dialogue<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

To start with, let\u2019s look at Bohm\u2019s intentions and the characteristics of dialogue pulled from his own writing so that we start with his ideas of a standard for dialogue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bohm\u2019s Orientation to Social Change<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Very fortunately for me, for a few years David Peat was my mentor and kept me closely on track with Bohm\u2019s thinking. From Peat\u2019s research we can see that even as a child, David Bohm himself talked about his growing up in a fractured family situation that led him to a lifelong search for wholeness. Also,<\/strong> he grew up in the 1920\u2019s, seeing his childhood friends\u2019 families suffer when the fathers lost their jobs in the coalmines of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. And, there were deep schisms in the community regarding ethnicity. From the get-go, these early life difficulties created in David Bohm a commitment to bringing about a much healthier society, and that commitment flows through all of his life endeavours. Seeing the discord around him as an adult, he worried that the needed societal change would not happen on its own. Here are his words: \u2018People say, \u201cAll we really need is love.\u201d If there were universal love, all would go well. But we don\u2019t appear to have it. So, we have to find a way that works1<\/sup>.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bohm was very deeply concerned about using his life in science not only to advance theoretical physics but also to find ways to help the world mend itself. He said the things that we face today are different than they\u2019ve ever been.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The challenge that faces humanity is unique, for it has never occurred before. Clearly a new kind of creative surge is needed to meet it. This has to include not just a new way of doing science but a new approach to society, and even more, a new kind of consciousness2<\/sup>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Keep in mind he was someone who had helped develop the science instrumental in creating the atomic bomb. He had lived at the end of the First World War and had seen the Great De<\/strong>pression. He had lived through the Second World War and he had been through some difficult personal issues. So, he had experienced a heavy load of societal trauma. From that, he concluded that a new kind of consciousness was required. Never before have we confronted the things we\u2019re confronting today, he said. Our way of thinking must change. Dialogue, he proposed, might help bring about that change<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Key Descriptors of Dialogue<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Again, I want us to start with a common picture of dialogue, especially if some of you here are more familiar with his science than with his ideas about social change. Here are some of Bohm\u2019s key descriptors of dialogue to give us a shared orientation. Bohm would say that dialogue<\/p>\n\n\n\n