The Systemic Way
The Systemic Way Podcast is a therapy and mental health podcast featuring conversations with experts, practitioners, researchers, and people with lived experience from the worlds of systemic psychotherapy, family therapy, psychology, social work, and community practice. Hosted by Sezer and Julie, two systemic and family psychotherapists, the podcast explores mental health, relationships, trauma, resilience, social justice, culture, and change. Through engaging discussions on theory, practice, and real-world experiences, listeners gain a deeper understanding of how systemic and relational approaches can support individuals, families, organisations, and communities.
Artwork by Arai Drake Creative: http://www.araidrake.com/portfolio/thesystemicway
Music by Rena Paid
The Systemic Way
Why Dialogue Cures: In Conversation with Dr Jaako Seikkula
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In this episode we speak with no other than Dr. Jaako Seikkula on this latest bookWhy Dialogue Does Cure: Explaining What Makes Dialogue Unprecedentedly Effective in Difficult Crises (2025). The book presents the core principles of Open Dialogue, a system of psychiatric care and dialogic psychotherapy that has spread to over 40 countries. Why Dialogue Does Cure explores the transformative power of Open Dialogue, a radically humanistic approach to mental health care developed in Western Lapland. This episode unpacks why dialogic practice—where clinicians, clients, families, and networks meet in shared conversation—can lead to recoveries unimaginable in conventional psychiatry.
Together we discuss the history, development and discovery of how Open Dialogue redefined care: not by aiming to eliminate symptoms, but by meeting the full human through transparent, team-based dialogue.
Dr. Seikkula argues that the widening gap between humanistic and conventional approaches must be bridged—and that dialogue itself can be curative. This episode is essential listening for psychotherapists, clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and anyone interested in meeting the full human in therapeutic practice.
Seikkula, J. (2025). Why dialogue does cure: explaining what makes dialogue unprecedentedly effective in difficult crises.