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Prof. Flader:
Comment to George Brown´s report on recent mediation cases

Although the main reason for this effectiveness of mediation is already given by Thomas Waelde´ s model, I would like to explain it in my words, from the point of view of my experiences - and my research work - on psychotherapeutic communications, in order to clarify what I think is the inner logic of this model.

When a dispute is emotionally charged - let it be a couple´s dispute in family therapy or a dispute at court - what You often find is that both sides are engaged in a form of confrontational interaction in the course of which they perceive each other as enemies. As a consequence of this, both sides are no longer interested to analyze the reasons for their dispute jointly, to find out their interests and possible elements of solutions.

What happens here - apart from the respective emotional impact of unresolved individual problems - is a restriction of social intelligence on both sides, first of all a restriction of what is called in some social interaction competence models "taking the role of the other", that means the cognitive ability to take over the point of view of the other, looking at things (and persons) as he/she is doing this, is restricted heavily. Of course, even in a confrontational interaction this role-taking still takes place, but it is reduced, because the other is reduced to an adversary. And when a professional lawyer takes over the case, there is a tendency from his side to strengthen this reduction by the "warrior" approach which looks for a strategy to win the case at the cost of the opponent.

By this process, the potential for creating a settlement gets lost because elements which are indeed available for finding a solution simply get out of view on both sides. They become blind for them.

This is why the mediator´ s activities (which are described in Tomas Waelde`s model) have a goal in terms of social interaction competence: The mediator brings back to the dispute social intelligence in a non-reduced form.

This is done -. quite similar to the psychotherapeutic discourse - by following the principle of substitution, this means that what the opponents no longer can do by themselves is now done, in favour of both sides, by the mediator: "listening", "analyzing" (identifying different evaluation and different preferences) and "constructing a package of elements" which may fashion a solution in a win-win situation.

So, if my understanding of Thomas Waelde´s model of mediation is right, its inner logic is to help opponents of a dispute to remove their existing inner blockades of social interacting and to overcome communication barriers. And this ability is in fact "beyond the powers of the court". In a broad (sociological) sense of psychotherapy, anybody who helps another person (or clients) to mobilize positive resources and to break up inner blockades is engaged in some psychotherapeutic activities - e.g. good consultants.

Although this model makes use of a psychotherapeutic principle and of some psychotherapeutic activities, the professional mediator is not a psychotherapist himself. He combines - as Thomas Waelde has explained in his paper - several qualifications - among them is the qualification of a lawyer. And it may help, of course, if a team of a mediation project has got a member who knows how to analyze unconscious psychic processes which cause existing communication barriers - especially when a case is emotionally charged.