Persons-in-Relation: Dialogue as Transformative Learning in Counselling

The co-authored paper explores dialogue, with its potential for mutuality, as promoting opportunities for transformative learning in counselling, in particular, and education, in general. With the person defined as essentially relational (I-You), dialogue becomes an essential element in self development and mutual understanding. Viewing the person as relational implies a shift from mechanistic and organismic worldviews that presuppose a solitary, separate 'I' self to a relational and communal worldview that assumes an 'I-You' unity as basic to personhood. The movement from understanding and communicating about the self as an individual isolate to conceiving the self as relational and then acting from that knowledge is seen as involving radical learning (unlearning) and deep transformation. In this regard, the counselling encounter is explored as a dialogic meeting between persons in which developmental stages of dependency, independency are worked through and included in interdependency. The professionalism of the counsellor is understood as subordinate to and included in the persons-in-relation concept. Dialogic encounters in counselling and education are discussed as promoting creativity, discovery, learning, mutuality and transformation.