A psychotherapist has no business meddling in international affairs. Or does she? It's just that the parallels between US/Europe and Europe/Europe conflicts and the couples struggles I've been seeing in my consulting office are too obvious to ignore.

Putin snubs Blair after inviting him to his dacha and the US burns with desire for retribution against France. Germany tries to regain a foothold in the transatlantic alliance while gathering with other anti-war nations to discuss European defense, igniting accusations of undermining NATO. France is stung by the loss of its investments in Iraq and is determined to be the alternative to American hegemonic power. The US tells Europe it doesn't really need allies and Europe tries to argue for the importance of "soft power." Everybody's asking how serious the transatlantic rift is. How long it is likely to last. Placing their bets.

It's time, guys, (because they're mostly guys) to try something else besides the posturing, verbal fencing, the speaking in code, the enactment of national wounds, and enter into a new kind of conversation that can actually help.

But who wants to try out a new conversation that might actually help? The Europeans might - they'd like to be heard after all - but not so much the US which holds the ostensible power and finds partnership a distraction. Iraq has brought to the surface not only disagreements about power and national interest, but also long-standing differences in world-view which are unlikely to melt away.

A couple doesn't normally come into psychotherapy to alter its unhappy conversations until it is suffering badly enough, or rather until the person who is seen to be more powerful is suffering enough; in traditional relationships, usually the husband. The wife will try everything to get the husband in the door early on but he resists right to the edges of his fingernails until he feels keenly enough the danger that he might lose her.

If we make the leap to the global picture, borrowing from Kagan's dubious analogy, Europe-as-Venus can't get US-as-Mars anywhere near a therapist's office for a proper conversation between partners. The relationship may be awry from the Europeans' point of view but the US is not hurting enough and may not hurt enough to engage for quite some time. Perhaps the results of overextending itself militarily and/or undernourishing its own economy will bring it to real conversation. But perhaps that, or a host of other scenarios to bring it to the threshold, won't happen, and the US is right; it really doesn't need Europe.

But I suspect you don't believe that either. I can't imagine yet what might motivate the US to enter into this new kind of conversation but meanwhile Europe has a golden opportunity to use its apparent rejection by the superpower to forge its own more coherent identity and prepare itself for any openings. In couples therapy where the wife, who is generally the one with less open power, wants to repair the relationship, you have to help her find her own sources of power: so she will be able to confront her husband cleanly on important issues, and/or to sort out how to make it on her own if he cannot be an engaged partner. Analagously, a Europe divided and weakened is no match for the US; no partner to which it would respectfully listen.

So what is to be done? First, gather the de Villepins and the Straws and the other influential persons from both "old" and "new" Europe involved in the key divisive issues for a series of daring, deeper conversations that help to build a more coherent European voice. These would be facilitated dialogues alongside the usual working structures in which persons of influence already participate - dialogues which are specifically designed to handle tensions and taboo issues differently than in diplomatic approaches. This approach is not about debate where one battles to be right while the other is wrong. It is about creating the safety to express one's experience genuinely, to listen well, and to communicate the response to what the other is saying not as an attack, but as an acknowledgment of one's own experience. There is a moment to moment quality about it. Dialogue-not-debate is on the one hand an art form that is a marvel to behold, and on the other it is a plain skill that needs to be learned and can be learned, even by persons of influence unused to such techniques. There are good people around the world who know how to do this but they are still largely invisible in the arena of international affairs.

Where I am, in Prague, discussions about the Czech expulsion of Sudetan Germans at the end of World War II repeatedly deteriorate into bitter arguments for and against compensation. The brutality of the expulsion, and of the Nazi regime in which it was embedded, has made this an extremely painful issue to speak about for both Germans and Czechs. Between the lines of the "rational" arguments can be heard the rage and pain of both sides. The powerful material precisely between the lines is what needs to be addressed in order to cleanse the atmosphere for genuinely rational discussion to take place.

Better versions of dialogue include with the rational the emotional and intuitive aspects of participants' experience, which are normally left out. In a very specific way. This is most compelling when historical wounds come to the surface and stall negotiations as between Israel and Palestine or England and Northern Ireland. Far-fetched as it may sound, the emotional history of nations simply has to be cleaned, not suppressed or bypassed, and this can only happen where emotion too is welcomed and worked with in very careful and precise ways.

Some time ago German-speaking members of the European Parliament asked that German be included as one of its working languages along with English and French. This raised for other members the spector of German dominance, too frightening and taboo a historical wound to address openly. As I understand it, the use of German was officially approved but it is not in fact used in practice. If that's so, I recognize this as a common outcome - that is, unconscious sabotage - in discussions where the underlying emotional issues have no safe or legitimate place to be worked through.

Only a few of the principles underpinning transformative dialogue can be mentioned here, so it's hard to convey the uncanny nature of the work. But the principles add up to a process in which unusually difficult differences can be aired honestly and at the same time without violence. This is no easy task for any of us and calls for good faciliation, discipline, and then practice. But in my experience participants who develop the ability to tolerate the "heat" get completely seduced by the surprising creative intelligence that shows up in such a process.

A forum was faciliated by American psychologist, Arnold Mindell, in which Chinese, Korean, and Japanese people gathered to address psychological residue from Japan's damage to China and Korea during World War II. Each group had made preparations beforehand, but when they actually came together the tension was extremely high. One Korean woman listened closely to the apologies made by the Japanese, but in the meeting's very last moments, as things seemed to be coming together, she spoke out bitterly about the Japanese attacks on Korea. She said sadly that though she appreciated the insights gained from the various sides, in her heart she knew she would never, could never, forgive them, regardless of how apologetic they were today.

There was a pause and someone spoke briefly in Japanese, then to the surprise of those in the large hall, every Japanese person present stood up and then threw himself to the ground. Face to the floor, each one admitted his guilt and vowed never to allow this to happen again. The woman could hold back no longer and with many others in the room, burst into floods of tears.

The dialogue is not a "fix." It is, though, a way of opening new and deeper ground between groups caught in conflict, prejudice, and suspicion. It taps in some inexplicable way a deeper organizing principle at work in a group, even in a group of apparently incompatible people and aims. The idea is that by adhering to particular ground rules, a quality of conversation can emerge where unexpected solutions become possible. The principles of dialogue applied skillfully are, as one facilitator puts it, an expression of "deep democracy." Isn't that what we're after? Here are a few basics.

1. Every voice is indispensable and expresses an integral part of the whole. Seek out and include the normally silenced voices.

2. Communicate subjectively rather than objectively.

3. Expect and invite tensions to reveal themselves. Proceed slowly and respectfully in order to open hard differences truthfully yet without damage.

4. Practice repeatedly including and tolerating all opposing views and seemingly incompatible experiences that emerge.

5. Acknowledge and make explicit power differences rather than bury them.

Dialogue like this is a tall order for policymakers and public figures who are used to a primarily rational, legalistic, and debate-oriented framework, but it's exactly the limitation of the known framework that is likely to keep the transatlantic and the intra-Europe relationship mired in conflict. If committed and influential Europeans start by undertaking the riskier conversation I propose amongst themselves (with help) they will be addressing all the surface issues you know better than I: post-Iraq differences, re-aligned relations with the US, the challenges of enlargement, agricultural policy, immigration, terrorism, and so on. But underneath will be a host of other issues simmering: reinvigorated rivalries, loss of former empire, suspicions between so-called old and new Europe, other national wounds, unfinished business, and unaddressed stereotypes. These need a place to be handled so they don't continue to distort policy and undermine substance. Faciliated dialogue that includes "the hard stuff" in a truthful and responsible way, doesn't inevitably spell change of policy, but it can. I think it can help alter long-standing national wounds and enmities so that policy conversation is transformed and common tasks actually work. If Europeans would be this daring, how strengthening this process will be for them in the transatlantic conversation which lies ahead.

If there is suffering enough. If there is will enough.