What is Real Dialogue?
Real Dialogue™ is a set of principles, practices and methods for healthy conflict. Like fire, humans use conflict for both creative and destructive purposes. Healthy conflict increases problem-solving, wisdom, and love while unhealthy conflict, and conflict avoidance, lead to polarization, dehumanization, stereotyping, racism and war. Humans have neither the guiding instincts of animals nor the infallibility of gods and yet, in destructive conflicts we act as though we are animals or gods.
Our human “superpower” is self-awareness. We can become aware of what we perceive, think, and feel, and we can change our minds. Our self-awareness also naturally leads to conflicts about the “world out there” as we cannot agree about “what” it is.
Every project we develop, from science and technology to art and culture, to religion and personal relationships, requires a long conversation about our disagreements.
Real Dialogue™ offers evidence-based skills, methods, and knowledge for welcoming differences and regulating our drive to win or simply defeat others. Learn to become curious about those who see things differently than you do and to thrive within the limits of your own self-awareness and humanity!
What is the Center
for Real Dialogue?
The Center for Real Dialogue is a non-profit organization that was founded and developed by Polly Young-Eisendrath who is a widely-recognized psychologist, Jungian psychoanalyst, and mindfulness teacher.
The Center provides evidence-based practices, education and training in the skills and methods of Real Dialogue through free podcasts and other public programs, fee-based affordable training for individuals and groups, and continuing education for mental health professionals in Dialogue Therapy.
Ride the Waves:
Training in the Skill of Real Dialogue / Level 1
Would you like to improve your relationships and leadership capacity in a two-day training that will enhance your confidence in speaking and listening, as well as mastering your own emotions?
Where: Osher Center for Integrative Health, 184 South Prospect Street, University of Vermont, Burlington
Real Dialogue Skill
The three-part skill of Real Dialogue is Speaking for Yourself, Listening Mindfully, and Remaining Curious. Through learning, practicing and teaching this skill, individuals learn how to speak and listen in ways that foster healthy disagreements, learning from conflicts, and remaining curious, even when emotionally activated.
Real Dialogue Method
This facilitation method (for difficult conversations) is rooted in evidence-based and precise techniques from mindfulness, psychodrama and psychoanalysis. People learn how to do both solo and co-facilitation through advanced training processes. Contracting our Real Dialogue Specialists for facilitation of difficult conversations is also a fee-for-service offer that can be arranged with the Center for Real Dialogue for your group or organization.
Dialogue Therapy Training for Professionals
The Center offers comprehensive training for mental health professionals in Dialogue Therapy — a time-limited, structured therapy that draws on mindfulness, psychoanalysis, and psychodrama to address the complexity of 21st century relationships for couples and other adult pairs.
Our Impact
Reaching out globally and locally, the Center offers free education through two podcasts and local public programs to help people understand and master our natural tendencies to make enemies, blame others, and create stereotypes when we avoid conflict or become polarized.
