My Inner World: Analyzing the Client’s Self-Dialogicality with the Method of Internal Multi-Actor Performance

Abstract

Abstract The Internal Multi-Actor Performance method (IMAP) is a qualitative method developed in a therapeutic context and aims to analyze the client’s multivoicedness. It is consistent with the notion of the “self as a theater of voices” (Hermans, 2006) and the subsequent elaboration of this metaphor as a theoretical tool for therapeutic procedures from a dialogical perspective. IMAP focuses on exploring and tracking inner dialogues between different I-positions. It also highlights internal dialogical processes such as positioning, counter-positioning, repositioning, or positional coalitions and the activation of a meta-position that has an overarching perspective. It is divided into four evolving dialogical stages (Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis, and Meta-thesis) oriented toward reorganizing clients’ narratives by creating the space for new dialogical exchanges between more or less dominant internal positions. On this basis, the present article aims at presenting IMAP and describing its underlying dialogical processes. Its application is illustrated by a clinical case study of a woman suffering from depression who processed her therapeutic course with the help of IMAP.