Open Dialogue as Coupling of Psychic, Social and Creative Systems

Abstract

In this paper, we study Open Dialogue, a psychiatric programme developed in Western Lapland, Finland, with the theory of autopoietic systems. Although originally developed as a psychiatric programme, we anticipate that the approach can be applied to not only psychotherapy but also educational and organisational situations as a way of “collaborative problem dissolution,” because it is based on the philosophy of dialogism, which is not limited to psychotherapy. In an attempt to apply it in a more general context, we study the function of Open Dialogue in a higher level of abstraction with concepts of systems theories, i.e. the Social Systems Theory and Creative Systems Theory. Our consideration implies that Open Dialogue can be understood well through a combination of chain of consciousness in the psychic system, chain of communication in the social system and chain of discovery in the creative system.