New Developments of the Shared Concern Method

The Shared Concern method (SCm) has become a wellknown tool for tackling actual group bullying amongst teenagers by individual talks. A decade after its launch to English readers the author reviews the original approach and describes new developments. The psychological mechanisms of healing in the bully group and what hinders the bully therapist in eliciting them have become better clarified. It is expressed in terms of know-how: (1) do not demonize the bully suspects; (2) consider the bullying as a conflict between the parties and elicit the archetype of a mediator through your behaviour; (3) prepare the summit meeting between those involved by shuttlediplomacy and (4) seal the agreement with a communication contract. The most important recent advancement of the SCm approach is its capacity to discover clandestine bullying: when a bully therapist has acquired routines in solving actual cases with SCm he or she is capable of guiding a discussion with a teenage class about the methods to deal with bullying with the result that the class entrusts conflicts including bullying to the bully therapist for mediation. Information about this mediation-centred treatment is spread amongst the students, improving the school atmosphere and introducing a model for conflict resolution for future citizens. The Shared Concern method (SCm) was described in English for the first time in this journal (Pikas, 1989). During the ten years since then it has found many followers and has been described in English speaking countries in at least four books which compare different methods (Rigby, 1997; Sharp and Smith, 1994; Smith and Sharp, 1994; Sullivan, 2000). The first two of these authors have practised the SCm themselves and give favourable descriptions of its methodology which was valid at the time when the authors became acquainted with it and, basically, still is. Address correspondence to: Professor Anatol Pikas, Department of Education, Uppsala University, POB 2109, S-750 02 Uppsala, Sweden. Email: [email protected]. http://surf.to/scm or http://www.bahnhof.se/ ~annalenapikas/scm/ School Psychology International Copyright © 2002 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi), Vol. 23(3): 307–326. [0143–0343 (200208) 23:3; 307–326; 026234]