The Radical Middle

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Satin draws inspiration from nonpolitical realms of society where people are blending what works from various orthodoxies. He points to developments like integrative medicine, in which techniques like homeopathy and acupuncture meet conventional Western medicine; socially responsible business, where ecology and social justice combine with economics; and judges' increasing use of psychology, economics, and even literature in crafting legal opinions. "Politics," he says ruefully, "is the last area of society where this kind of creative thinking is taking hold."

Laura Chasin Healing Through Conversation

One day in 1989, as Laura Chasin watched an abortion debate on Boston public television, it hit her that the debaters were acting like a dysfunctional family, demonizing each other and screaming as if the only way to win were to raise their voices louder and louder. "My family therapy head and my citizen head connected," said Chasin, who studied political science before becoming a therapist. She realized that a family therapy approach might help to create respectful dialogue about contentious public issues. The Public Conversations Project (www.publicconversations.org) was born.

PCP's first project brought together leaders from both sides of the abortion debate for a series of dialogues. One key, Chasin says, is not to strive for "common ground"; PCP focuses on getting participants to simply listen to each other and see each other as human beings. It may seem counterintuitive, "but after three hours of dialogue, at least the outline of what some would call common ground begins to emerge," she says.

Chasin was surprised by the success of those early dialogues and has seen similar results many times over in conversations on all sorts of issues. In northern New England, where industry and environmentalists were deadlocked in a debate over plans to protect the region's pristine northern forest, PCP led a private dialogue process parallel to the public negotiations. "The people involved in the private process started behaving differently in the public process," Chasin says. "Instead of attacking each other in the press, they would call each other on the phone." Eventually, they succeeded in negotiating a plan all sides could agree to. But PCP's dialogues are not intended to push public policy or move disputing parties toward collaboration. "The more you push for an agreement on outcomes, the less you tend to get it," she says. "But if you shift the relationships, often they will move spontaneously toward collaboration on solutions."

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