Conflict Studies

What does it mean

to facilitate, rather than resolve, a conflict?

What is the process

behind the conflicts that disturb our inner life, relationships and communities?

Can inner and outer conflicts

be facilitated to create stronger relationships, a more resilient community and a deeper sense of shared meaning?

Processwork conflict studies - a living field of practice and research

Conflict is one of the most active areas of inquiry in Processwork. Practitioners around the world are continually researching how conflict moves, what it’s trying to say and what helps it find its way through. Out of decades of this work has come a rich set of tools and frameworks for facilitating difficult conversations, working with power dynamics and staying present when things get hard. If you’re drawn to this kind of work, whether in your own life, your community or your professional practice, conflict studies is where Processwork has some of its most developed and continually evolving offerings.

The Processwork Approach

Most mainstream approaches to conflict focus on de-escalation, agreement, tone policing, enforcing particular communication styles and getting everyone back to getting along quickly.

There's a place for that. But anyone who has spent real time inside difficult conflicts knows that something is missing.

The same disputes keep returning. The agreements don't hold. The deeper hurt and the deeper truth never get spoken. People walk away technically reconciled and inwardly unchanged.

Processwork takes a different stance. Conflict is treated as something the system is trying to say, often something it has been trying to say for a long time without anyone being able to hear it.

The work isn't to suppress the heat or rush past it. It's to follow the conflict skillfully enough that what's underneath can come through.

The methods of Processwork are built for sitting in the fire, as Arnold Mindell put it, long enough for the fire to do its work.

“Human events that at first appear to be random and chaotic always evolve meaningfully from ordered, previouly hidden parametors.“

Arnold Mindell

Curious to learn more?

Check out our upcoming courses to get a sense of the work

We offer a wide variety of online and in person courses at our institute in Portland, Oregon, United States. Our courses draw deeply from the roots, applying these areas of study to contemporary human issues.

If something in you has been looking for an approach to conflict that doesn't require you to fake calm, doesn't moralize, doesn't reduce hard situations to communication exercises and doesn't ask you to leave power and history at the door, Processwork might be for you.

Explore More Applications of Processwork

Processwork offers a range of tools and techniques for working with this inner and outer process. It is a flexible modality with frameworks for understanding what is actually going on and tools for how to facilitate it.

Processwork is applied in a wide diversity of areas including innerwork, relationships, dreams and body symptoms, organizations and group work, conflict studies and states of consciousness.