Conflict: Gateway to Community

Typically, we think the tension of conflict is a good reason for people to remain separate. But the tension of conflict often works to draw and hold people together, like a magnetic force we hope but never quite manage to escape. Although it may seem counter-intuitive to think this way, conflict has a connective function. It connects parts that are separate—through tension. People are conflict-generators, but they are also relationship-seekers. Sitting in the tension of conflict can be a first step towards creating more authentic relationships and community life. In fact, the need for more authentic relationships and community life is often a powerful, though unconscious, motivating force behind much conflict, irrespective of stated problems and final outcomes.

Many traditional conflict resolution approaches based on an adversarial model of right and wrong do not address the relationship between parties. Addressing the relationship requires seeing that both sides need each other to grow, learn and solve their problems. It requires focusing on and using the tension of conflict to explore people's thoughts, feelings and fantasies in relation to one another. Through sitting in the tension of conflict and processing it together, we can learn to connect with our opponents as parts of our own humanity and as repressed aspects of ourselves. Relationship and community are made from human connection, shared experiences, authentic interactions and common dreams. Amazingly, this commonality is built from sitting in the cauldron of tension together and being willing to face each other and ourselves. Tension and

conflict can create a powerful gateway to new learning and renewed relationship. Conflict can also transform our problems in unexpected ways.

The following interview with Arnold Mindell is an edited except from a larger dissertation entitled Conflict: Gateway to Community.\ In this excerpt, Mindell speaks about tension and conflict: the phases of conflict; the importance of processing rather than resolving conflict; and conflict as connection, a doorway to contacting the common ground of human experience.

Gemma Summers: Conflict resolution is an exploding field right now. It's the social science of the nineties. Everybody is interested in conflict resolution in one form or another.

Arny Mindell: Conflict is definitely something of the nineties. It's a huge thing that people are beginning to get into—the study of tension. I would like the concept of conflict resolution to be changed to working with tension and transforming tension into community life. Conflict resolution is a very limited, allopathic concept for me. Solving a conflict is not the point. I'm interested in how conflict is a bundle of energy that's being used around a specific content.

GS: Do you have a typology of conflict? Have you observed basic, universal conflicts the world over?

AM: When you say a typology of conflict, I think, yes, there are issues and conflicts that belong to today. We can name some of them. But instead of talking about specific types of conflict, I first want to say that all conflict looks the same from the process viewpoint, regardless of its content. So we can also talk about the phases of

the process of conflict—phases instead of types of conflict.

But let's start with the major types of conflict today. I think the leading issue in the United States is racism. When I say racism, I include ethnic diversity issues of all forms. Other leading issues are sexism and homophobia. These are the main issues right now and they're global. Beyond these specific issues is a deeper and more fundamental issue that people are insufficiently aware of—human rights. Whenever I talk about conflict, the issue of human rights is very important.

But before most people can focus on the phases of conflict, they first seem to have to go through about a dozen issues consciously. It's probably too early to focus on human rights in general because these other specific issues are more in the foreground. But in the next century people will be focusing deeply on human rights. Having touched upon some of these other issues, they'll realize that the basic thing is human rights. They'll ask: What are our innate rights as human beings? What is the definition of being human? When that point is reached, we'll have a real democracy. And it's going to happen! Why? Because nothing else works. Then you'll know in kindergarten what the rights of children are. What are the rights of each child? What are boys' rights? What are girls' rights? Are they different rights? Teachers will be asking kids in kindergarten, "What are your rights as children? Do you have the right to choose what food to eat?" There will be a children's movement.

GS: What about the phases or process of conflict?

AM: There are definite phases of conflict. There is a first phase of conflict, whether it's inside yourself or outside. You dream that someone has said something nasty to you before they've actually done it—there is no conflict whatsoever on the outside. This is the subtle-body or dreambody conflict. 2 Only certain tribes take this seriously.

GS: The Senoi.

AM: The Senoi is one such tribe. If you dream that someone is upset or angry with you, when you get up in the morning you have to give her a gift. You have to bring her a little present. I don't think that's a very good method of dealing with conflict, but these people know from thousands of years of human experience that even projecting something onto somebody is the beginning phase of a conflict. That's the time when it can be

worked on with almost no problem whatsoever. That's the first phase to a conflict. You're dreaming about it.

Of course, you may have already picked up on the other person's double-signals 3 in communication, so the conflict may be a dream that is there even before you have gotten into it. So another phase of conflict is realizing that you are being used by the global dreambody 4 to channel a difference of opinion. It's working its mind out through you. You didn't produce that particular problem but it is using your relationship to understand itself and express its different viewpoints.

GS: Are you saying that conflict originates from within? That conflict happens inside us first?

AM: But we don't know! What's "inside" mean? What's this concept of "inside" or this concept of "where do your dreams come from?" You feel them inside yourself first, but quite democratically speaking, where do conflicts come from? Where do your dreams come from? Nobody knows. That's why I use a field concept. 5 The global field uses you and your partners to express itself. That's fundamental.

GS: The global field uses us to channel differences of opinion?

AM: Yes. But you never think that, right? You think, "This is between me and her." You think you're right and she's wrong. But you never think in a detached manner that you're being used by the field, that your life is not your own, that you're being tormented by a problem which is universal in the area you live.

GS: Believing in a global field can give you courage to enter a conflict. You think, "I'm a channel for the world."

AM: That's the basic idea. That's why the empirical viewpoint is so important, because I have never seen a problem between a couple which isn't universal. We're all being used by the collective dreambody to express itself.

GS: So we shouldn't feel bad when we're in a conflict?

AM: No, we should feel good! We should feel, "This is my life, but it's not only mine. As long as I'm on this planet, why not use the conflict to do my service to the universal spirit, to God, to myself, to my partnership, to the world around me, and try to clear it up?" Clear it up by getting into it. Clear it up by saying, "I don't think you like me." The other person will say, "You're

projecting again." But soon enough will come the second stage when the other person finally comes out with it. "Well, I don't like you now. For two days you've been saying that I don't like you and now it's true. It wasn't completely true in the beginning but now it's really true. I can't stand you!" Then you say, "Well-, I knew it from the beginning." And then the other one says, "You're projecting your stuff onto me again." And you say, "No, you're projecting your stuff onto me." Then there's a symmetrical reaction happening. That's another phase.

GS: It's the blaming phase.

AM: Blame is part of it. I call it a "symmetrical reaction." This means that both people have something in-between them that they're working on. Then there's another phase, the solution phase, where one person decides to work on the problem. If one person decides to work on it alone, the conflict is resolved temporarily. This is the individual psychological paradigm. If you work on your stuff and forget her, or if she works on her stuff and forgets you, things get better. If one party takes everything on herself and says, "It's me. I see that now and will work on it," then the job is done for a time. But it's only a temporary solution because the other person is still in the conflict.

GS: And the other person comes back!

AM: The other person comes back and then it's not just you or the other person doing their own thing—it's learning how to process the real relationship. The real relationship comes through using the tension in connection with one another. Then you have a relationship! Otherwise, you're just two people living as isolated little systems. You don't have a warm fluid pot that has spices in it, you just have two individual peas in a cold water soup, which is where a lot of relationships are! There's no mushing together, there's no soup, there's nothing to taste. A relationship is also a unit. It should have a taste to it!

GS: Where does revenge come in?

AM: Revenge is one of the phases of conflict and comes from being hurt. One of the basic things about conflict is that you feel hurt by the other person or by what they're doing. And there's nothing sweeter than getting revenge! Just the thing all religions say you shouldn't do! They say, "Forgive! Forgive!" Everyone is always forgiving everybody, which is nice, but instead of

forgiving and forgetting, people should be getting into and processing conflict.

GS: Processing, rather than resolving conflict?

AM: Processing is the thing that relationship is made of. That's what relationship is! It's learning how to process, how to connect with the other person or group. The resolution just leaves you as happy, isolated individuals doing your own thing. Two peas in a cold water soup! Instead of the soup being cooked properly so that it tastes good and the peas are mushy, you have two individual peas going off by themselves.

GS: Just think of the conflict between Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill in 1992. Getting to the solution stage was very irritating. Nothing new had really happened.

AM: They're two happy peas. The Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill conflict reflects conflict resolution today in democratic countries. There are various forms of conflict resolution. Conflict resolution in non-democratic countries means that a dictator comes in and kills everybody. That's the end of the conflict. That's resolution! Nobody accepts it, of course, except for short periods of time.

In democratic countries conflict resolution is a very different procedure. The legal system in a democracy is based upon someone deciding who is right and who is wrong. The major powers of today, Japan, Germany and the United States, all have this adversarial process of two peas without a soup. Someone is right and someone is wrong. That's our new world order. It's really the old world order.

GS: Social psychologists have experimented with reducing conflict by bringing conflicting groups together, for example, rival street gangs, or youth from conflicting ethnic groups such as Palestinians and Israelis. They create situations which call for cooperation between parties. For example, you bring the two groups together and give them a common project. The completion of the project requires cooperation and teamwork and is meant to help them get along. It's a key approach to conflict resolution in social psychology—creating situations which call for cooperation between parties. 6

AM: It's a good idea, but it's like most ideas on conflict: it's a non-sustainable idea. It doesn't create sustainable culture; it doesn't think about the future enough.

GS: Why doesn't bringing people together for a common project create sustainable culture?

AM: Because you've repressed the conflict that was present. The basic problem with conflict is how to conflict, as opposed to solving the specific issue. Of course, the issues are terribly important and must be dealt with too.

Giving people something in common is an aspect of conflict resolution, but it's not sustainable in and of itself. It's like saying that if you're hungry, someone should buy you breakfast. But the deeper problem is, why can't you buy yourself breakfast? What's the larger process behind that? It's the same with people in conflict. You give them something to take their minds off the problem and they'll form friendships, right? But the problem of conflict and community hasn't been dealt with.

GS: So there's no getting away from it—you have to deal with the conflict?

AM: It's naive to think otherwise. And you can't get people who are at war to join in a common concern! This works only at a certain phase of conflict where people are harmonious enough to talk about things. Nice conflicts will work like that. But just think about getting the Germans and Russians together for a common project during the second world war!

GS: The idea behind the common project approach is that if you give people a task in common, you give them a motivation and an opportunity to work through their projections and stereotypes about each other. If you bring Palestinian and Israeli children together for a common task, they'll form friendships and not just think the other group is all bad.

AM: At a certain phase in conflict you can do that. But you can't bring Palestinian and Israeli kids together in the midst of a war. When things are relatively quiet, that will work. These tasks work when people are in relatively good humor. But the problem is, what to do with them when they are at war? Everyone already has a common task—the world! But nobody takes it seriously! The common task is good only at a certain phase in conflict resolution.

At the stage where a common task will work, anything will work, because people are in a nicer state of mind. They still hate each other but they're not taking arms against each other. So any reasonable discussion will work. Any good-natured mediation procedure will work. But

that's not the problem area. The problem is what to do with people when they don't like each other enough to sit down at the table. They won't come to the table in the first place!

GS: What do you do in a situation like that? Take the conflict between Serbs and Muslims in former Yugoslavia. You can't get them to come together.

AM: Then all sorts of other things have to be done. First of all, you have to understand that this is the phase where heavy revenge is at stake. People hate each other. Understanding that is very important. Appreciating that people want to kill one another is crucial. If enough people want to kill and gain revenge, then war is present. So the first step in dealing with that is just knowing it.

The second step is to use public television. Instead of the United States giving thirty million dollars worth of arms to protect one side against the other, they should do a public television show in that area. As long as there is still television and radio there, it will work.

So you take the conflict between the warring parties and show it on television. And you have people watch it. You say, "Here's a Serb or a Muslim who wants to gain revenge." And you have a conflict resolution facilitator who understands revenge, say, "Of course you want to kill that person, you hate them! You want to murder them. You are hurting. They've hurt you and you want to get back." You have people look at that until you start to touch the real feelings that are present among the people. You don't tell them to make peace and stop war.

GS: It's not peace-making, but bringing out the conflict?

AM: It's bringing out the revenge and processing it on television. Someone says, "I hate that person on the other side. I want to kill them." Then the facilitator says, "Why? Where's that coming from? Tell me about your family and about your family history." And you continue like this until the person gets to the emotional core. "Because I'm hurting, because I'm afraid and in terror." Transformation happens way down there. That's the job of a facilitator or a therapist, and that's why you can't have facilitators who are just into peace-making.

Then you have someone do it on the opposite side as well. The facilitator says, "And now you say what you feel." "I hate that asshole! They put

me down for so many years and I am so upset." Then the facilitator says, "I don't blame you. Tell me more. Tell me what happened to your father and mother and brothers and sisters. That was horrible." Until the person gets to the emotional essence of their story. Then that person will feel heard and will start to relax. But only then.

GS: Only after you bring out the feelings?

AM: Only after you believe and love and understand the people. It's difficult to do but it's necessary.

GS: You worked like this with terrorists in Belfast?

AM: We worked in this way with people who were terrorists and we saw terrorists transform right in front of our eyes. Hard-cast terrorists will change if you deal with them like this.

GS: It sounds like you believe that people aren't really bad. There is so much belief around that people are bad, that terrorists are evil.

AM: You're bringing up the main debate about the human race. Some people say that there is such a thing as absolute evil, that many people are just bad and vicious. But those who believe in absolute evil haven't really worked with people in these highly charged emotional states. They haven't worked with murderers and psychotics.

GS: When you work with the hatred and revenge, do people actually change?

AM: There are moments of change. They're not changed personalities, but there are moments when things change, and these changes are the things we look for. Not permanent change but the capacity to change. That capacity to change is enough to stop a war. It can stop someone from being a terrorist.

GS: I want to go back to the question of evil and the problem of hate. Take the problem of "ethnic cleansing," where one group wants to get rid of another group. It seems evil. The persecuting group may be hurting themselves, but not necessarily by the group they're now persecuting.

AM: Right. They are gaining revenge for things that have been done to them. I know it's interesting and very attractive to focus on the evil around racism or religious hatred. But most of these people have been severely abused and hurt. I want to say all but I can't because I haven't worked with all those people. I think the idea of absolute evil comes from the topic of abuse having been neglected. Psychotherapy hardly touches upon

abuse, except dashingly around the edges, and only in recent times.

GS: How would you work with one group's desire to exterminate another?

AM: I'd interview them on television and appreciate their desire to get rid of the other people. This is a very difficult thing to do, but you've got to listen to them. I'd ask, "Why do you want to get rid of this other person, this other group, this other religion, this other sexual orientation? What is this going to bring you and why will it bring you that? And why are you fighting so much? Have you been a fighter all your life? And when did you begin to get so rough and strong and fundamentalist? Tell me about that. How did that come about? Were your parents like that? Was it a warm family? I want to know more about you."

GS: And the person says, "It's God's will. These people are amoral and wrong."

AM: I'd say, "For the moment I'll respect your opinion, but I want to go deeper than your opinion. I want to go right down to where your power comes from. Is it coming from God? When did you feel God's power coming through your body? What was happening at that time?" I'd go backwards, bit-by-bit, to where all that comes from. It's listening. "God came to you at the age of twelve! Wow! What happened? Somebody broke into your house at the age of nine? And what happened to your mother? She was raped and beaten? What did you say? Phew! God was a big help to you then. You have been trying to do something to make a correction! What? Your father was an alcoholic and he turned around because of religion? Wow. Religion helped him stop? That was important. I can understand that." Going back and feeling out where all that hardness comes from. It's asking, "What was it like when you lived under a communist regime? And have you ever met somebody from the other side? Do you have a friend who's gay or lesbian? Have you ever been close to anybody who is black? Do you know women well?"

GS: It's peeling back the layers.

AM: It takes time, it takes listening, it takes energy, it takes patience. And it takes doing it publicly. These are public demonstrations that have to be done. You have to listen to people get up and say, "Don't talk about this!" You have to meet all the difficulties and deal with them.

GS: Revenge is such an important point. People tend to perpetrate hurts that have been done to

them. If they aren't aware of that tendency, they scapegoat others, looking for someone to hurt.

AM: When you deal with people in an ongoing war, it's cyclical revenge. "I'm going to get back at them for what they did to me." If you think of the Middle East, it's fully comprehensible. The Jews have been stepped on and now they're gaining revenge. And they say it! They say, "This has been done to us and we are going to protect ourselves." And in a sense, there is justification for it. Every minority group does it. Every child does it.

GS: What is your highest dream for conflict work? What are you hoping is going to happen?

AM: We've just been invited to the University of Oregon to do a town meeting on sexual harassment. And we've been invited to go to a small town in Oregon where a black man's house has been burned down. The city wants to have a town meeting about it. These things are happening all over the place. One of my greatest hopes is that people will see that conflict is the gateway to community. My hope is that people will see the need for a sustainable ongoing forum for people to step forward, complain, be heard, and be argued with. These forums don't yet exist. "Town meeting" is a foolish name in a way. We're still using the name "town meeting" because everyone else does, but it's not at all descriptive. We don't want to do a town meeting; we want to create a place where people can bring up their deepest concerns, where feelings can be heard. That's my hope—that such forums will be created in the big and little cities of the world. My hope is that cities will understand that part of their job is to create an alternative dispute resolution forum where the whole town comes together. It's not just having little groups meet in a corner somewhere, trying to reach agreement, but creating a place where people can really try to reach an understanding of one another. That's my goal.

GS: Why does the whole town have to come? What's behind this notion of the "town?" You say that conflict resolution has to be done publicly, even on television. What is this about?

AM: The idea of community, of the town, occurs when people share something emotional together. That's what community is about.

(We stop the interview momentarily to listen to a woman who suddenly started crying in a room next door.)

AM: Hear that?

GS: Someone is crying! It's the feelings!

AM: Sobbing! It's the feelings! That's what brings people together—when they feel something together. It's not only happiness that brings people together. It's the shared pain we have as human beings. It's touching the dreaming process we all share. That was once the indigenous and shamanic way. That wants to happen again. That's the vision I have. That communities will work and the world will work again, when, as in the old shamanism, some form of openness to spontaneous occurrences happens again.

GS: That's a different vision than solution oriented conflict resolution.

AM: I have been reading what people are doing with conflict resolution, but this is different. For example, after the town meeting with the Oregon Citizens Alliance (OCA)7 and gays and lesbians in Portland, a conflict resolution specialist came up to me and said, "Why didn't you focus on the common ground that came up?" I said "The idea of common ground usually means the point where everybody agrees, for example, that the OCA and gays and lesbians all don't want to be hurt by the other side. So why didn't I focus more on that? For me, the common ground isn't the moment of agreement, the real common ground is the emotions people share." If we agree, that is beautiful. Agreement must be built and is being built in various ways, but it isn't sustainable on its own. Sustainability is when people feel what the others are feeling.

GS: It's connecting to each other as human beings, with all our feelings.

AM: With the feelings! Then you know the other person! Then we feel common. Then you can understand someone who's been oppressed and who is angry and in pain about that. That sort of pain everyone knows. It's scary too. It's terrifying to hear the real common ground. The real common ground is awesome! It's like dreaming. It's deep; people suffering and going into their suffering and beyond their suffering. It is awesome. That is our true common ground! Notes

See Gemma Summers' "Conflict: Gateway to Community. Process Oriented Conflict Resolution: An Interview with Founder, Arnold Mindell." Diss. Union Institute, 1994.

Dreambody is a term coined by Mindell which refers to our invisible and unconscious life process. The dreambody manifests through our

dreams, fantasies, relationship troubles, altered states of consciousness, synchronicities, and body experiences, etc.

A double signal is a communications term which refers to an unintended communication signal (either verbal or non-verbal, though often non-verbal) that does not go along with our intended communication. For example, saying to someone that one wants peace while turning one's body away is a double signal. In Process Work, we attempt to unfold the signal of the turned away body to uncover its meaning and message in the total communication.

Mindell's concept of a global dreambody or global field, is the notion of a multi-dimensional, holographic entity or force, mostly invisible and unconscious, which has a profound effect upon individual, group and national behavior. The local and global fields of humanity are made up of unconscious feelings and fantasies, dreams and myths, deep body experiences, altered states, and interpersonal and group tensions. A field is experienced as the "feeling atmosphere" of a group or community. Bringing this background field or dreaming process into conscious awareness is a way to build community and discover a group's deeper direction.

A field is a naturally occurring, invisible phenomenon which exerts a force upon things in its midst. Fields include magnetic, electromagnetic and gravitational fields. We can see fields through their impact upon the visible world. Human fields are experienced as atmospheric forces which impinge upon us, creating attraction and repulsion between people and groups. Mindell's concept of a "field" is similar to Kurt Lewin's field theory. Lewin, who is considered the father of social psychology, hypothesized that there was a "force field" or "life space" which described the various factors determining human behavior. This "field" or "space" is a subjective experience, comprised of conscious and unconscious feelings, intentions, hopes, goals, etc.

See Roger Brown's review of social psychological theories of ethnocentrism and ethnic hostility, and of experiments aimed at reducing ethnic conflict in Social Psychology: The Second Edition, Part VI. See also Michael Hogg and Dominic Abrams, Social Identifications: A Social Psychology oflntergroup Relations and Group Processes.

7. In October 1993, Mindell and colleagues facilitated a town meeting at Portland State University between the Oregon Citizens Alliance (OCA), a fundamentalist Christian group, and local gays and lesbians. The goal of the meeting was to foster communication between these two conflicting groups. The conflict between the two groups was initially sparked by the 1992 OCA-inspired ballot, "Measure 9." This measure was an attempt to limit the civil rights of gays and lesbians and legalize discrimination against them. The ensuing political battle leading up to voting day included verbal death threats and violent acts such as broken windows, burglaries, and stealing and defacing of campaign advertising materials. Both sides engaged in sabotage tactics. Voters defeated the measure at the polls. The town meeting took place 12 months after the defeat of Measure 9 and was reported on local news stations. It was broadcast in its entirety on local public access television.

Arnold Mindell, Ph.D.,who founded Process Work with his colleagues, is the author of numerous books. With his wife Amy, he teaches and learns about Process Work as it applies not only to psychotherapy but to world and social issues including racism, conflict resolution, extreme states, coma and dying.

Gemma Summers, Ph.D., certified process worker, is an artist, therapist and group facilitator. She is currendy researching a book on women and conflict. Gemma is originally from Australia, and now lives in Portland, Oregon.

f

Hi

Bibliography

1. References
2. Brown, Roger. Social Psychology: The Second Edition. New York: The Free Press, 1986.
3. Dworkin, Jan. "Group Process Work: A Stage for Personal Growth and Global Development." Diss. Union Institute, 1989.
4. Hogg, Michael and Abrams, Dominic. Social Identifications: A Social Psychology oflntergroup Relations and Group Processes. London: Routledge, 1988.
5. Lewin, Kurt. Field Theory in Social Science. New York-Harper and Brothers, 1951.
6. Mindell, Arnold. The Year One: Global Process Work. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1989.
7. Mindell, Arnold. Leader as Martial Artist. London: Penguin, 1989.
8. Mindell, Arnold. Sitting in the Fire. Portland, OR: Lao Tse Press, 1995.
9. Summers, Gemma. "Conflict: Gateway to Community. Process Oriented Conflict Resolution: An Interview with Founder, Arnold Mindell." Diss. Union Institute, 1994.