“Their voice becomes my voice”: Understanding the development of the dialogical self through the internalization of voices in group psychotherapy

Abstract

This article focuses on the important issue of the social nature of self and the ways the different aspects of the self are being internalized through external dialogues. It presents a study that systematically explores the development of the clients’ voices during group psychotherapy from a narrative and dialogical perspective. Thematic narrative analysis was used to study 20 two-hour group therapy sessions of a systemic informed approach that was completed over 2 years. The analysis involved mapping of the voices of each group member, their categorization as compassionate and/or reflexive, and a sequential depiction of the group voices through timelines. The analysis reveals the ways in which voices, especially compassionate voices, that appear in the dialogue between clients and therapists and are rehearsed in the context of the group are gradually internalized by the clients, becoming clients’ voices, changing thus the dominance of voices of each client’s voice repertoire. This study empirically depicts the process of internalization of voices, providing support to the dialogical self theory and the social nature of the self.