The Dialogical Self: Research and Applications

The paper presents dialogical self theory and its current theoretical and empirical status. We start with some inspirations from philosophy and literature and then describe the main thesis of the theory - self-multiplicity conceptualized in terms of I-positions and the dynamic relations between them. In the next section we present examples of empirical explorations of inner dialogical activity. Although dialogical self theory is generally perceived as a qualitative approach, there is a growing number of quantitative studies conducted both in correlational and experimental designs. Moreover, numerous interesting and promising topics are still open for further research - e.g. temporal dialogues, dialogical interpretations of personal identity, values and valuation, relations between self and culture. After reviewing these empirical results we try to explore the relations between the dialogical and the cognitive approach to self-multiplicity. We propose that those two approaches can be seen as complementary rather than competing. The last section discusses some practical implications of dialogical self theory for psychotherapy and counseling.