Tools in Network: an E-Net Approach to Sharing Mediation Competences.

Jacqueline Morineau: The Mediation's spirit

Jacqueline Morineau is to be considered the pioneer of humanistic mediation in Europe. The mediation technique she developed is based upon an empathic listening resulting from a peculiar way of being and feeling. According to Morineau, mediation aims at building a relationship whereby the liberty of the individual is asserted by encouraging an active and true involvement in handling the daily routine.

Mediation is not a new form of justice; it is more a matter of stopping to turn to the past and the fault to be judged and punished, and rather focus on the present to integrate the fault and understand its true meaning which often goes well beyond mankind. Guilt can then transform into a resource of future renovation through the suffering endured. Mediation, like tragedy, was born in a crucial transitional period when men aimed at getting rid of external authorities to better exercise their own self-sufficiency. Mediation is the remedy to disorder. The spirit of mediation is unique no matter the context it is applied to; mediation's essence is also unique. Mediation is not a miracle but an instrument to get to know oneself and reach the other to build a new future together. It is a non-theoretical, non-rational knowledge resulting from meeting one's own emotional nature.

The funding documents Morineau used to develop her own model, besides the works of some contemporary French authors who dealt with this issue, consist of the works of some eminent philosophers and writers from the past such as Hempedocles, Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle, Aeschil, Sophocles, Cartesius, Shakespeare, just to mention some of them. By rapproching very distant theories and thinking, Morineau is capable of creating a space containing her personal "view" of mediation.

Let us examine in details how her mediation model is organized.

- First phase: theory

It consists in the simple exposure of facts: either party shall express his/her own current feelings under those circumstances. At intake, each party shall be given the opportunity of telling how it feels, underscore his/her disagreement and be listened to by the other party. The main encounter must be at emotional level: each individual leaves rationality aside and brings in the narration of the role he/she has played outside the violence to reach one's own reality: the ontological truth of both parties is found out at a deeper level as well as what made him/her react that way. It is only by reaching such a deeper level that a rapprochement may eventually be envisaged. As a matter of fact, between conflicting parties there stands a wall, a separateness with no way-out: we are facing two monologues. Mediation causes the wall to fall down and set up a dialogue where each party starts discovering his/her own experience from a new perspective. This is a "vital" moment in that it offers each of them the opportunity to hear the other's version of the conflict. Once such exchange has taken place the mediator shall paraphrase the parties' respective narrations and sum up each one's standpoint. It is a reformulation of the conflict, a more impartial and objective one, helping to better focus it.

- Second step: krisis

The narration of both parties' experiences necessarily leads to strong reactions from the participants. They meet directly on the field of their respective contrasts. This field is called the krisis which allows to express the most acute suffering. However, the krisis shall be restrained to a unity of time, place and action to be under control. Mediators, who acted as simple mirrors in the first step, are now invited to ease reflection and questioning on the "scene" that was just played. The dual opposition between the mediators and the parties shall remind the latter their own inner duality and fight. The distance so created between the parties and the mediators in this mirror game and the consequent questioning allow each participant to gradually abandon his/her own emotions and find another perspective on one's own experience. In such a way, expressing and acknowledging the grief already contain the possibility of healing.

Hence, the mediator is...

1) a third party to the conflict, selected to face an emergency. People turn to the mediator as the last resort when all efforts to settle a conflict turned out unsuccessful. The mediator steps in when the parties to a conflict have been captured in a mechanism of absolute violence where they run the risk of losing and destroying themselves;

2) the one who restores the order, in the middle between the need to step in during a conflict and the need to maintain an unobtrusive and neutral position with regards to the conflict. The mediator acknowledges the owners of evil and gives them the floor, receives their narrations and becomes their mirror without taking possession thereof. The mediator sends back to the sender the image of the latter's own pain and violence as perceived from another viewpoint;

3) a catalyser, a transformation agent. The mediator acknowledges all the parties' impurity, accusations and pain and drops them just to send them back to the parties themselves. There is no confusion, no role or identity exchange between the mediator and the parties. In other words, the mediator shall never play the role of persecutor; on the contrary, the mediator gives both parties the opportunity to move back and forward between the two roles of the persecutor and the victim of persecution.

- Third step: catharsis

This step is the passage from the self-awareness to the ability of contemplating the other's interests. In turn each one plays the role of the other's scapegoat within a continuous exchange between persecutor and victim of a persecution. Self-accountability is one of the key-elements of mediation. Each one can witness the pain he/she caused the other. Mediation is a slow path towards the acknowledgement of the other's pain and our ability to forgive. A transformation, a catharsis occurs which allows to overcome the fixity of the previous relationship. At this time, the hatred and the rage are cleansed, thus healing heart's evil. A release from anxiety and both illusions steps in. At the end, settlement is reached and needs change: parents may still be separate but having dropped hatred and vengeance.

- Fourth step: the outcome

Mediation activity always leads to its essential component: the continuous oscillation of opposites (good and evil, victim and persecutor, death and life). Its logical conclusion is the overcoming of duality: no more good and evil because, once the mediation is over, each party has found out both good and evil within him/her. Such path can be applied to any conflicting situation. When anyone is allowed to tell his/her own suffering, it will turn out that suffering is the same, is universal. People are victims of circumstances which see them on opposite sides (as in wartime), but they can come out of this anguish circle when they get to realize that they are experiencing the same suffering: only that way they can hope for the future; otherwise the end of the world is near.