The Very Idea of Conflict: Working with Image and Metaphor in Re-Visioning Conflict

Abstract

Grounded in phenomenological/hermeneutic perspectives, this study invites consideration of conflict through examination of images gathered in imagery exercises during conflict management training sessions. It explores how we might be released from our common constraining metaphors of conflict and how we might alternatively envision conflict. Images rather than definitions may act as keys to unlock the doors of our conceptual systems. As we trace our steps back to imaginal, reflective levels of experience we move from more abstract or theoretical ideologies and conventions to our own felt perceptions. In contemporary organizational contexts this re-visioning is vital so that we may embody images that facilitate a new range of movement and response.