The 2011 Winter issue of the ACR Conflict Resolution Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 2, includes an article by Cheryl Picard and Marnie Jull describing "insight mediation" as a new and emergent method or style of mediation. Learning Through Deepening Conversations: A Key Strategy of Insight Mediation. The authors attempt to distinguish it from other styles or theories of mediation, and includes some new terms and language, but
in practice it does not seem so different from traditional mediation. That said, the authors provide some great ideas and new ways of thinking of mediation generally, although the article could use some serious editing for clarity and redundancy. Id.; see also Melchin and Picard, Transforming Conflict Through Insight (2008), and Neil Sargent, Cheryl Picard, and Marnie Jull, Rethinking Conflict: Perspectives from the Insight Approach.
The author's describe insight mediation as applying Bernard Lonergan's late 1950's theory of cognition to conflict. Insight mediation is said to use a "key strategy" called "deepening conversations" in which the mediator pays attention to verbal and non-verbal cues to "peel the onion" and identify the parties' "cares, values and threats" revealed underneath presenting and more superficial disputes.
Using the Lonergan notion of "human goods," the authors describe "cares" as the most basic level of human goods. Cares include objects of desires, something we want. "When we seek to realize our objects of desire, we move to the second level of the human good." This effort to realize our cares, moreover, puts us in social relations, which are "often expressed in the form of narratives." The third level of human good are "values," or "judgements about the narratives that express how they relate and ought to relate to others." Values are carried or implied in feelings, and are closely connected to our sense of identity, "which helps to explain why individuals can experience profound threat over what may at the surface appear to be a trivial matter."
The authors distinguish theirs as a "relational approach" that, like transformative and narrative approaches, "understand[s] humans as connected to each other through complex webs of relationships and meanings formed through social interaction." They distinguish it from interest-based approach articulated by Fisher and Uri (1981), which they view as currently the "most prevalent approach" to conflict resolution. The authors also describe the insight approach as having "an interpretive conception of human nature," that understands conflict arising in combination of our "meaning making" and "defend attack patterns of behavior."
The authors observe (while oddly attributing it uniquely to insight mediation) that conflict often emerges "when what matters to us is experienced by others as a threat to what matters to them." This experience--and a resultant "certainty of threat"--gives rise to a "defend-attack pattern of interaction" common to conflict. Then the parties become defensive and are no longer open to hearing the cares and values of the other, and become even more certain of threat.
However, the author's posit that humans have natural "curiosity and wonder about the other," despite this fear/threat cycle. The insight (or, in my view, simply insightful) mediator will listen for cues as to cares and threats and massage or soothe them using well known mediation techniques such as acknowledgment, clarification and bridging. Once the parties' fears and threats are diffused, they will naturally move toward greater understanding of each others' respective cares and fears, due to their natural wonder and curiosity.
The process by which this occurs is as follows. First, there is an initial stage in which the mediator "attends to process" by explaining his or her role, and discussing what process the parties feel would be safe and productive. Next there is a short and focuses stage in which the parties are invited to "broaden understanding" by speaking about "what they have come to talk to the other about and what they hope will be better in their work/life/etc. if that conversation occurs. At the third stage, the parties--with careful observation and exploration by the mediator--"deepen insights" and "discover how their threats-to-cares are getting in the way of realizing their hopes for a better tomorrow." The authors posit that once the parties have deepened their insight with the mediator's help, they may be able to conclude the final two stages on their own--explore possibilities and make decisions, including writing a final agreement.
Ultimately, the article is rife with confusing and frequently vague or opaque quasi-scientific jargon. However, it comes together pretty well and is clarified in the accompanying "case study." Nonetheless, that same case study illustrates that they are not really describing anything new, once it is stripped of its jargon and demystified.
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