Introduction

Summary

Dialogue has become a central concept in various theoretical perspectives in human and social sciences as well as in professional practices like education, health, therapies and counselling, among others. Since the concept of dialogue dominates the discourse in these fields, they usually call themselves ‘dialogical’. The main presupposition of dialogical perspectives is that the mind of the Self and the minds of Others are interdependent in and through sense-making and sense-creating of social realities, in interpretations of their past, experiencing the present and imagining the future. Such multifaceted social realities are situated in history and culture, and dialogical approaches study them in diverse fashions. The perspective taken in this book endorses the general contention of dialogical approaches foregrounding the interaction between the Self and Others as a point of departure. More than that, the dialogical perspective presented in this book presupposes that the nature of the Self-Other interdependence is ethical and that ethics is embedded in common sense thinking and socially shared knowledge. Ethics based on the Self-Other(s) interdependence permeates all daily thinking, communicating and acting and it is therefore of major interest to social psychology and to the dialogically based professional practices.