Dynamic Constructivism: Conversation Is Reality
This sense of a constructed reality that is reinforced by narrative and conversation is a starting point for dynamic constructivism—just as it is a starting point for traditional and static forms of constructivism. The key point with regard to dynamic constructivism is that each specific conversation is itself a reality. Shared narratives and language are where we actually meet self and others, self and society, self and shared cultural narrative. From this perspective, our stories about self will constitute our fundamental sense of self. They are the building blocks of our identity.
Perhaps our stories about self are everything we mean by the term “self.” This would suggest that our stories about childhood, about major adult accomplishments, and about difficult lifelong disappointments may be the basic building blocks of self-image—whether or not they are accurate. Contemporary professional coaches, like Julio Olalla (Olalla, 2004) and David Drake (Drake, Brennan, and Gørtz, 2008), emphasize the role of narrative for a good reason. Narrative is a very powerful and influential tool. We are profoundly impacted by two often unacknowledged (or even unseen) forces in these narratives.
First, we are influenced by the broad-based social constructions of reality which are conveyed through the stories of the society and organization in which we find ourselves. This is the contribution made by static constructivists. This is the source of many economic and money-based constructions. Second, we are influenced by a more narrowly based personal construction of reality that is conveyed through stories we tell about ourselves (and perhaps stories that we inherit from and about our family and immediate community). These are the much “softer” and “intangibly based” stories that inform us of the meaning of money in our life and the ways in which we best determine our personal “worth.”
The hermeneutic circle and use of metaphors
There is actually a third level of narrative which makes the dynamics of constructivism and professional psychologizing even more complex and challenging. We are co-creating narratives (and ultimately creating reality) with other people—those with whom we are interacting. All meanings or statements refer to a system of narratives and semiotics, but this is in itself an open-ended system of signs that refer to other signs that refer to yet another set of signs. No concept can therefore have an ultimate, unequivocal meaning.
I can illustrate this complex, nested dynamic—called the hermeneutic circle—by turning to narratives and conversations that occur within a workplace. For example, once the manager of a specific department has spoken about some economic matter, the reality that was created when she spoke is no longer present. Even if she says the same words, they are spoken in a different economic context, hence have somewhat different meaning.
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