Bill. I want to look at some philosophical foundations. You’re sounding very Danish.
Julio. Danish?
Bill. You are a bit Kierkegaardian, like somebody who just moved from Chile to Denmark by way of Switzerland, with a little bit of Carl Jung. Are there Kierkegaardian or some other existential pieces within your work?
Julio. Not only Danish, in that sense. There was a Portuguese man, Spinoza (2006), who lived in Holland who also has an influence on our work. Spinoza dared, when very few people spoke, to talk about emotions and to question some spiritual traditions. He was really hit by that, as you know. But I will go even further if we go into the philosophical realm. Even Socrates said that if we don’t dare to have some conversation, we never dare to think anything. And he knew that to cross the thresholds of conversation, you need to deal with fear, and you need to create courage.
So, whatever the context of those conversations, many philosophers have pointed to that. In order to produce reflection, we will have to deal with suffering. We will have to deal with courage; we will have to deal with fear. But it was not a manipulation of fear. Fear was a necessary phenomenon.
Bill. It seems to me in your work you’re not just talking about the conversations that have not occurred. You’re also talking, in a sense, about what might be called the meta-conversations (Argyris & Schon, 1974; Bateson, 1979; Com mons, Richards & Armon, 1984; Kegan, 1994). The woman saying the problem is that our boss doesn’t listen- that would be kind of a first order. Second order is that issue of why haven’t we told him about this? That’s a meta-level conversation which seems to me is very much a part of the work of Newfield. So, it’s not just the courage to say what we haven’t said; it is the courage and the capacity to have those conversations about the conversations that have or have not occurred. In that tradition of meta-cognition and the new blending of philosophy and psychology, how do you situate yourself regarding these conversations about conversations?
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