Engaging Social Conflict with Strength and Love: 

A Seven-Week (Donations Only) Workshop

To sign up, click here.

We need to move beyond “I’m right and you’re evil”.  Peace is not simply the absence of conflict. Conflict is inevitable in life. If you want peaceful relationships, learn to resolve conflict. 

Creating Common Ground is a nonprofit. We want to change the ways in which people handle conflict in their everyday, professional and political lives. And we want to start with you. This workshop will teach you how to bring conflict resolution values into your local spheres of influence.  Think of it as a kind of non-adversarial activism!

The workshop is free (donations accepted) and will be conducted on zoom in 7 two-hour sessions over a series of Sundays.  We typically have an international group of participants.  As soon as we have a group of interested participants, we will a time that all can meet (Sundays).  Then we’ll begin.  

The Workshop

We become people only through other people.  This workshop is based on the idea that each of us develops through relationships with others. 

1. Overview: Building Ourselves and Our Relationships
   1. Solving Problems through Emotional Engagement and Collaboration
2.  How to Connect to the Humanity of Your Opponent without Denying Your Own
   1. Fear for the Self and Love for the Other
   2. Humility, Care and Compassion
   3. How to Connect
3. Separating (Interpersonal, Social and Political) Positions from Human Needs
   1. Separating Positions from Needs
   2. Skills for Listening and Asserting
4. Getting Past Defensiveness — Theirs and Yours
   1. How Language Divides and Connects
5. Building Novel Solutions 
6. When Beliefs Collide
7. Building Shared Beliefs
   1. Results of Your Efforts
   2. Practice, Practice, Practice

Your Guide

Michael F. Mascolo, Ph.D. is Director of Creating Common Ground.  He is a Harvard-trained developmental psychologist and Professor of Psychology at Merrimack College. He is also the Founding Director of the Compass Program at Merrimack College, a bridge program for college students that is organized around the principle of self-cultivation through relationships.  Dr. Mascolo is the author or editor of seven books (The Routledge International Handbook of Dialectical Thinking; From Conflict to Collaboration: A Step-by-Step Guided to Solving Problems in Everyday Relationships; The Handbook of Integrative Developmental Science, Eight Keys to Old School Parenting for Modern Day Families; Psychotherapy as a Developmental Process; Culture and Self; What Develops in Emotional Development?). He is also the author of over 100 scholarly papers on topics related to human development. He has ushered many people through the process of resolving interpersonal conflict.

Resources 

Mascolo, M. F., (2024). Creating Common Ground Teaching and Learning Program.  Manual for Teaching and Learning. 

Mascolo, M. F. (2021). From Conflict to Collaboration: A Step-by-Step Guide to Solving Problems in Everyday Relationships.  Absolute Author.

Mascolo, M. F. (2024). Toward a More Collaborative Democracy: Bridging Political Divides through Dialectical Problem Solving. In Shannon, N., Mascolo, M. F.., & Belolutskaya, A. (Eds.). Routledge International Handbook of Dialectical Thinking. Routledge.

Other Internal Publications

Several initial papers and projects on the theoretical framework and results of this study have been completed or are in process. They include:

• Basseches, M., & Mascolo, M. F. (2010). Psychotherapy as a developmental process. New York, N.Y.: Routledge/Taylor & Francis.
• Mascolo, M. F. (2020). Bridging Political Diversity through Dialectical Engagement and Radical Sociality. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 35, 877-903.
• Marginean, D., Lambert, S., La Torre, J., & Mascolo, M. F. (2019). Transcending Cultural Divides: Dialectical Engagement in the Cultural Construction of Self. Psychological Studies, 64, 365–375.
• Mascolo, M. F. (2016). The transformation of an ex-white supremacist: A dialectical developmental analysis. Qualitative Psychology, 1-20.