Beyond Intractability: A Free Knowledge Base on More Constructive Approaches to Destructive Conflict

Introduction: Nancy Ferrell, private mediator and trainer, talks about how family members get caught up in destructive patterns of interaction in an effort to save face.

This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).

Common Patterns of Destruction
Nancy Ferrell
Private mediator and trainer

Interviewed by
Julian Portilla
2003

People get on a track and they don't know how to get off of it. I have people in mediation that if I were a counselor I would be telling them you need to get back together, I mean, what are you doing here? But they've gotten themselves on a track and they don't know how to get off. They don't know how to stop the bus. And to save face, they keep going and neither one of them really wants that, but they don't know how to say to the other one, let's rethink this.

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. -- Longfellow

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Search for Common Ground

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Beyond Intractability

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Nobel Peace Prize Winners

Emily Green Balch
Former International President of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and 1946 Nobel Peace Laureate

Beyond Intractability Version IV
Copyright © 2003-2007 The Beyond Intractability Project
Beyond Intractability is a Registered Trademark of the University of Colorado
Project Acknowledgements

The Beyond Intractability Knowledge Base Project
Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess, Co-Directors and Editors
c/o Conflict Information Consortium (Formerly Conflict Research Consortium), University of Colorado
Campus Box 580, Boulder, CO 80309
Phone: (303) 492-1635; Fax: (303) 492-2154; Contact