Individual Differences and Disagreements

25th January 2015

Inevitability and importance of this

There are always individual differences:

  • Between team members
  • Between worker and client

It is important to avoid a Pretend mode response to the awkwardness of disagreement by acting as if Mentalizing is just a short cut to agreement - it is not!



Disagreement and Differences in teams

The act of manualizing our work not infrequently makes explicit what has previously been implicit, and this marks growth within the team rather than any kind of failure, although differences can be uncomfortable. Similarly, AMBIT is a team approach which involves whole teams taking part in basic training, and we are very aware that individual workers will have different views and experiences about taking part in AMBIT training (see Individual differences and AMBIT training).

Manualizing Differences

In the event of significant differences arising in relation to proposed material for the Team's Manualization, the first questions for the protagonists of each view to consider are:

  • Under what specific circumstances would I consider the alternative view to be applicable?
  • To what extent is my view influenced by recent (or distant) events in my own history of work, or other events?

If a resolution (for instance "in circumstance 'a', then approach 'x' is most appropriate, in circumstance 'b', then approach 'y' should apply") cannot be achieved, then the SupervisoryStructures should be invoked and outside (MetaTeam) consultation applied to to help resolve this.

Finding resolutions, or mentalizing across differences: an exercise

Among the many Training exercises that this manual contains, try setting up a brief training event to do Line-ups - exploring individual differences.

Differences and Disagreements between Client and Worker in Care Planning

See the following resources to explore this, and ways to identify and address differences and disagreements:



Mentalizing and Disagreement



This diagram demonstrates the difference between mentalizing and agreement or disagreement; how you can agree and accurately mentalize each other, or you may agree, but do so only based on an inaccurate mentalization of what the other person is promising/intending (this is highly likely to end in disappointment or conflict!)

Alternatively, you may disagree, but to some extent "agree to disagree" on the grounds that you are both mentalizing each other accurately enough to have respect for where each one comes from (this can still be awkward, but interpersonally it does not need to be experienced as an attack or betrayal, etc).

Alternatively, your disagreement may in fact be based on erroneous understandings (inaccurate mentalization) of where you each are "coming from", or what you are actually proposing or intending. In other words, your disagreement may actually be less dramatic than it appears, but neither of you may realise this, or worse, you may become increasingly unable to come to shared understandings because of the passionate feelings (Psychic equivalence) that your mutual misunderstanding provokes.

Does Mentalizing imply a new ORTHODOXY?


It is reasonable to ask if mentalization-based approaches are another way of insisting upon a new orthodoxy - having everyone in the team "see things the same way". Mentalization doesn't work like that - it is precisely about acknowledging the facts that:
  • We (humans) see things from different perspectives
  • We act upon our own perceptions
  • We are not always very good at making sense of each others' different respective perspectives.

We do not presume that a mentalizing team will all agree!

We do presume that just as one way of making sense of the evolutionary advantage that Mentalizing offers is that it makes violence towards those to whom we are attached less likely, so a mentalizing team might be rather better at coming to an understanding of different perspectives among its members!