Research, Our Approach, International Negotiation Initiative

Seminar Series on the Psychology of Conflict Management

INI has established a seminar series on the Psychology of Conflict Management that involves highly distinguished scholars from Harvard and other institutions, as well as students from the Harvard Medical School and Law School who will be working in conflict management internships over the summer.

Purpose of the Seminar Series

The overall purpose for the seminar series is to explore the psychology of conflict management in order to equip students with skills and understandings to improve their decision-making while working in the "real-world" on various types of interventions. Here is a sampling of recent seminars:

Seminar 1 Background and Introduction to the Psychology of Conflict Management
This seminar provided students with a general overview of the International Negotiation Initiative and the Physician in Community Course. In addition, students were introduced to foundational ideas of negotiation, as well as to the psychology of conflict management.

Dan Shapiro, director of INI, and Claire Pierre, director of the Physicians in Community Course, provided an introduction to the seminar series and their respective programs.

Bruce Patton, Deputy Director of the Harvard Negotiation Project, lectured on the "Foundations of Negotiation".

Mari Fitzduff, director of the Conflict and Coexistence Program at Brandeis University, lectured on the "Psychology of Conflict Management.

Seminar 2 Violence: Perpetrators and Victims
This seminar provided students with a broad look at violence from the vantage of perpetrators, victims, and those of subsequent generations affected by the intergenerational transmission of trauma.

Robert Jay Lifton, renowned author and Harvard psychiatrist, focused on violence from the perspective of the perpetrator;

Judith Herman, a Harvard professor and international expert on trauma and recovery, focused on violence from the perspective of the victim; and

Joe Albeck, chairman of the International Society for Traumatic Studies, focused on violence from the perspective of intergenerational transmission of trauma.

Seminar 3 Conflict Management through the Lens of Psychopathology and Relational Psychology
This session utilized two lenses to examine the psychology of conflict.

The first is the lens of psychopathology. Bruce Cohen, Harvard Medical School professor and McLean Hospital President Emeritus, provided insights on how one should deal with people who exhibit symptoms of psychopathology.

The second is a relational lens. Kimberlyn Leary, director of psychology at Cambridge Hospital/Harvard Medical School, offered insights on how to understand the relational dimension of a conflict situation, and how to use that understanding toward effective intervention.