Rate how strongly each inner position shows up toward each outer figure
Take the positions you chose and rate, from 0 to 5, how strongly each inner position is active in your relation to each outer figure.
Why it works
The PPR pairs a qualitative and a quantitative strategy in two matrices. In the matrix of inner and outer positions, each inner position is rated for how prominent it is in relation to each outer position, positively or negatively, with inner positions as rows and outer positions as columns (DeSouza et al. 2013, p. 324).
How to do it
- Lay out a grid: the inner positions you chose as rows, the outer figures you chose as columns.
- For each pair, estimate how prominent that inner position is, positively or negatively, in your experience of that outer position.
- Rate each pair on the study's scale: 0 none, 1 very little, 2 to some degree, 3 quite a lot, 4 considerably, 5 very considerably. These English labels are this page's gloss of the Portuguese scale.
Evidence
DeSouza et al. (2013) describe the matrix step: the participant estimates, on a Likert-type scale from 0 to 5, how prominent each chosen internal position is, positively or negatively, in relation to each chosen external position, producing a matrix. The study had 17 participants aged 19 to 34 (11 women). (observational)
In the study this rating was completed in the first of two meetings in different weeks. These steps come from a research assessment procedure (DeSouza et al., 2013), here described for reading on your own. The ratings are self-reports in the source, and the paper concludes that the PPR can show the spatial structure of dialogicality but not dialogicality in action. The study does not check the ratings against behaviour or outcome. Stop line: if a rating brings up strong feeling that feels too much to hold, stop and work with a trained therapist.
Sources
- DeSouza, M. L., Oliveira, M. Z., DaSilveira, A., & Gomes, W. B. (2013). A lógica da dialogicidade narrativa no Repertório de Posições Pessoais [The logic of narrative dialogicality in the Personal Position Repertoire]. Psicologia: Teoria e Pesquisa, 29(3), 321-329.
- Hermans, H. J. M. (2001). The construction of a Personal Position Repertoire: Method and practice. Culture & Psychology, 7(3), 323-366.
Common mistake
Rating only the pairs you expect to be high and leaving the rest blank, which turns the grid into a confirmation of what you already believed.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for Dialogical Self Theory: Hermans and the Self as Inner Positions
- Set the voices down and come back to your body
Put the list of positions aside, feel your feet and breath, and let the room hold you while the loud voice quiets.
- Reach a clinician now if the voices are unclear or frightening
If you cannot tell what is you, or a voice pushes you toward not being here, reach a trusted person and a clinician now rather than sorting it out alone.
- List your inner and outer positions and choose the ones you recognise
Choose from a list of inner figures and outer figures the ones you recognise in your life, and name any the list leaves out.
- Write a story from two of your positions, then rate what shaped each one
Choose two of your positions, build a narrative across past, present and future with guided questions, then rate how much events and people in your life affected each valuation.
- Picture your inner and outer figures on one stage
Imagine a stage with your inner characters entering from one side and your outer figures from the other, then notice how the two groups are linked.
Related concepts
- Shadow Work
Meeting the parts of yourself you have been ignoring
- Internal Family Systems (IFS), Made Practical
The parts model, the mechanisms behind it, and an honest read on an emerging evidence base
- Voice Dialogue: Meeting the Selves That Run Your Life
Hearing the pusher, the pleaser and the critic in their own voices, so they stop running you unnoticed
- Shadow Projection: Recognizing It and Taking It Back
When someone else seems to carry exactly the fault you cannot stand, and how to bring that energy home
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