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THE CREATIVE IRRITANT OF CULTURAL DIFFERENCES:
FORGING MORE REAL DIALOGUE

NONIE VALENTINE, Ed.M., L.M.H.C.

TALK FOR TIESWEB CONFERENCE:
RESHAPING TRANSATLANTIC RELATIONS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY, NOV. 14 - 16, 2202

I think there is tremendous yearning for the world to come together and for nations and regions to heal, and this conference (thankfully) speaks to that. But I also think that to actually move towards global consciousness in practice is no easy feat. That's why I use the provoking phrase "creative irritant of cultural differences" because I want to speak to the way that cultural difference can also be hard for us, and maybe is supposed to be. I think It's the most creative thing imaginable - maybe our survival as a species depends entirely on engaging with difference - and yet this asks us to grow beyond ourselves, which we may not find easy.

So I'd like to come at this question of whether Europe and the US may converge through paradox: to suggest that our convergence will depend very much on how fully and how well we also enter into the divergence of our values, expectations, and norms.

I am American and, like so many others, was attracted to eastern Europe at the end of the cold war. I moved to Prague, Czech Republic when I met my Czech husband, and together we opened a psychotherapy practice - working with people from around the world -- individuals, couples, groups and companies. From diplomats and business people to journalists and artists. In the early nineties Prague was a joyful scene of the reunion of east and west. Hopes were high for joint ventures of all kinds; the place was buzzing with entrepreneurial energy and self-reinvention. But with the attraction and good will, came surprising cultural collisions, and these collisions left many wrecked projects. And many disillusioned people who streamed into our offices.

We found ourselves in the unexpected role of witnesses and helpers to a particular kind of cultural pain. Obviously different skills were going to be needed to assimilate new cultural voices and to forge better dialogue - Not only between individuals, but also groups and nations. And not only between entities but inside ourselves, where we can fumble towards embodying a number of cultural voices and move back and forth between them.

I want to keep underlining this: How wanting to embrace cultural difference brings the inevitable resistance to it: This is the natural pulse of the human psyche: opening to what is new and different, contracting or resisting; experiencing the potential, experiencing the block, back and forth. But we don't need to be afraid of that resistance if we know how to include and work with it. If we neglect to include it - neglect to hold the resistance alongside the openness - this side will come out more problematically. It will be taken up, for example, by extremists, by hate groups such as neo Nazis, who will express and act it out.

One of the problems with political correctness is that it assumes the idea of diversity and tolerance is enough - that saying it means we are there instead of that we commit to the bumpy and exhilarating ride.
Though the east/west encounter I experienced in Prague may have had a particular drama because of how polarized the democratic and totalitarian systems had been, I think some lessons from it still apply for the larger transatlantic relationship we're dealing with here. First of all the Czech Republic is one of the countries set to become a member of the EU so its particular cultural dynamics will need to be taken into account as it is integrated. And secondly, Europe and the US will have their share of cultural collisions as well, so the dialogue process I will describe can help collaborative projects to be more successful.

As therapists practicing in a transitional democracy, we were able to have a finger right on the pulse of the changes because the stress alone brought so many people to us who would never have set foot in therapy. Czechs and foreigners came to us at their wits end from these collisions of culture and had no choice but to thrash out their dilemmas quite openly, whereas outside they had an image to protect. Therapy could be an unusual laboratory for speaking about it all and our helping them to contain it all: the ideals about the new culture and the dashed hopes, the frustration and confusion, as well as the discovery of other ways of seeing.

Because of time I'll limit myself to just one major example of the cultural collisions we saw and this was the most frequent in those early days.

This was the American businessperson (almost always a man) who was tearing his hair out because of the pressure from his investors to raise productivity. But his Czech employees weren't cooperating. Despite his giving them his most energetic inspirational talk, sprinkling it with words like "know how" and "can do," they just nodded and continued to work at a fourth of their capacity. He outlined the criticalj mission of the company to appeal to their pride in their work. He tried modeling the behavior of a committed hard worker, but they continued to say yes, Mr. Director, and nothing changed.

He grew frustrated with the slippery communication and didn't like being placated. His impatience made him push but this only made things worse. His balance sheet looked miserable. Bewildered, and rather desperate, he turned to his Czech secretary for comfort and intimacy. During their liaisons she gave him useful clues about the Czech norms he was coming up against and he began to depend on her. She, in turn, began to use her influence to affect his policy decisions, which her colleagues sensed and resented, so they intensified their non-cooperation. The business teetered on the edge of failure. The American was heard to shout into the phone, "Those lazy Czechs; you can't get anything done in this bloody country..." and. the Czech employees outside his door looked at each other. "What a typical arrogant American, throwing his weight around..."

What was happening? These were employees still reeling from totalitarianism which meant living every day with fear on the one hand, and with meaninglessness on the other. For the American, work was a source of identity, but for them it was a mandatory exercise, disconnected from a larger recognizable purpose. His enthusiasm only struck them as an echo of the former regime which was always promising a bright socialist future, while in fact undermining their lives, so this had to be the capitalist version of the old lies.

In their world, bosses were bosses because of their loyalty to the regime not because of competence, in fact they were often wildly incompetent. Work was often something to be gotten through, and it could be used as a source of goods in a scarce economy. (The saying went, "He who does not steal from work robs his family.) And it could be a source of love affairs to alleviate the boredom. The American's sense of mission was quietly ridiculed because the Czechs' very real need for meaning had been so badly manipulated by the communist regime that it was simply too painful and provoking to hear him.

For the subordinates to speak directly was not yet safe: The habit of expecting an informer to be present made them keep their heads down and their mouths shut. But the American had no experience of a system which made one afraid all the time. And, given the vicious circle of unaddressed assumptions and frustrations, the stereotypes each fell into, seemed utterly true.
How did the therapy process help? Explaining cultural dynamics was useful but listening to the American's frustration and anger without judging him even more because negativity could come out without harming anybody. Being listened to helped him to listen better to his employees. Communicating more deeply with us, and releasing the pressure of his resentment, helped him to communicate more deeply with his people. It became clearer to how his own cultural instincts could provoke a backlash in them, because it had actually never occurred to him that his agenda wouldn't be taken on board - after all the company was offering his employees prestige and success. But both his power and his pressure, had in effect blinded him to important signals. So the workers did what they knew and dug their heels in, using their power covertly by sabotaging what they saw as his unrealistic (and naive) goals.

When we worked with these same issues in a dialogue group in a company setting with western managers and Czech employees, we stumbled on what proved to be a mighty tool: to name clearly the power differences and their influence. Right away this made it safer for the Czechs to try and speak. And it was also revealing for them to recognize consciously how they used what power they did have in a hidden way, in passive resistance or sabotage, as they'd had to before in a dangerous regime. Another mighty tool proved to be to actually invite any negative feelings which immediately transformed the atmosphere in the room from restrained politeness to real vitality. We made a point further to seek out the unspoken voices which nearly always brought unexpectedly valuable feedback into the group which led to inventive solutions.

Our therapeutic work changed us as well as our clients. They needed the freedom to criticize our cultures too and our principles of openness were put to the test. But whenever we could hear the difficult reactions without judging, a liberating psychological space opened up towards change. My husband's German client was embarrassed to expose some anti-Czech feeling she thought was politically incorrect but which was nevertheless there from old stereotypes in the German-Czech relationship. He encouraged her, and though it wasn't easy, this opening and airing of the judgements with someone from the "other side", released a knot in her cultural history.

I was surprised myself how moving from a superpower to a small country with a long history of violation changed me. Without quite realizing it, as an American I had been identified with the muscle and privilege and forward-looking approach of a large, rich country. But as I was immersed in a nation which had been misused so often and for so long by larger powers, I came to know paranoia and powerlessness and a certain sense of cultural immunity left me. There was the wondering: Will they let us into NATO? Will they let us into the EU?. This magnified a voice my own internal conversation: the voice of oppression - and so initiated new dialogue between the poles of power and oppression..

Now to focus on dialogue and the transatlantic relationship. My experience is that good dialogue is based on the same principles as good therapy, and these principles can be applied not only to individuals, couples, and groups, but at wider levels too: to institutions, to nations, even to political systems.

Trying, as I think we are here, to alleviate some of the strain between the US and Europe through civic cooperation is such a critical enterprise, I think, that we can't afford to overlook the obvious cultural work. The different polarities in the transatlantic relationship reveal themselves over and over: The power of history vs. the power of the future. Assertiveness vs. diplomacy. Individual responsibility vs. social care. A faster pace vs. a slower pace.. There are many and you may name them differently than I. As a friend who lives on both sides of the Atlantic put it to me: "In the US I'm expected to be more than I am, in Europe, I'm expected to be less than I am."

However we may name them, the polarities, the differences, are there and they are active and therefore my essential proposition to you is: that a dialogue group dealing with cultural difference be considered as a possible component of each new transatlantic project that is born at this conference, as an experiment in change that lasts.

What is this dialogue? First I'll tell you what it is not:

It is not debate or negotiation. It's not about papering over conflict, or imposing one cultural view upon another, and it is not for dumping feelings, putting down, or blaming others. It is not about positions, but about experience.

Some of the core principles of good dialogue I've mentioned, such as holding both: that is, taking care to recognize as valid both our embrace of the new and our reaction of resistance. Also, making power differences explicit - being sensitive to things like who's the boss, whose language is the dominant language, who's from the more prestigious institution or country, etc... Another is soliciting negativity, which has the paradoxical effect of reducing its power.

Though there are many more, I'll just mention just two key principles.

1. Safety. This is the mother of all the others because everything else depends on it: Basic safety is established by agreeing to keep confidentiality, by listening fully, and keeping the pace of dialogue slow enough (there's a tendency to speed up when conflict emerges) slow enough, that charged moments can be navigated through carefully.

2. Speaking from one's own experience. Very important. Each of us sees the world in a different way so in reality none of us can claim the objective truth. The only thing we can be experts on is our subjective experience, so we speak from this rather than making so called objective statements or judgements. So instead of putting it as "You just don't make any sense…" we might say: "I feel frustrated by how…" or, "I'm uncomfortable with…."

Experience involves not just our reason but also feelings, intuition, imagination, and bodily language. These need to be very much included, acknowledged and respected, otherwise they build inner pressure which has a distorting effect on what we think and say.

When each person's experience is included the circle of subjective truths widen towards a greater group objectivity. And again, seeking out the least spoken voices often brings the most creative input, right from the voice that is most quavering or awkward.

What happens when you do this in a group - which deals with cultural difference in our case - is, that stories come out, history is explored, national injuries and myths get acknowledged - strengths are seen. There is tension at moments, there is anger; perhaps tears. Entering into the others' history begins to generate empathy and recognition and we begin to recognize a little our own stereotypes. The context for the differences begins to make sense. People are moved. Differences that might have been allergic to each other moments before begin to be felt as interesting parts of a larger whole, and we can begin to move between them. Curiosity wakes up, people laugh. Suddenly the good ideas of tolerance and diversity take real meaning

This work is new and takes practice. It involves , among other things, cultivating what we now call emotional intelligence, something perhaps very much needed now in public life. It's quite daring to take the taboo off of feelings in civic dialogue and quite daring to take the taboo off of negativity. There's much we don't know about this yet, but taking up the experiment may be what makes the difference between good intentions and a dialogue that changes us.