Becoming Dialogical: Psychotherapy or a Way of Life?

After birth the first thing we learn is becoming a participant in dialogue.We are born in relations and those relations become our structure. Intersubjectivity is the basis of human experience and dialogue the way we live it. In this paper the dilemma of looking at dialogue as either a way of life or a therapeutic method is described.The background is the open dialogue psychiatric system that was initi- ated in Finnish Western Lapland. The author was part of the team re-organizing psychiatry and afterwards became involved in many different types of projects in dialogical practices. Lately the focus has shifted from looking at speech to seeing the entire embodied human being in the present moment, especially in multifarious settings. Referring to studies on good outcomes in acute psychosis, the contribu- tion of dialogical practice as a psychological resource will be clarified.