Who can afford not to reach an agreement?

A lock is forced. The act takes only a few minutes. The mediation, by contrast, drags on. At a certain point, the proposals become reasonable, at least in economic terms, but they are no longer enough.

Not because there is no possible arrangement of interests, according to the mediator, but because the conflict seems to have changed its object.

So what is really being negotiated: a property, an offence, or the need for someone to pay?

I. When what started the conflict is no longer what keeps it alive

GIORGIO MARZOCCHI

One mediation in particular has stayed with me. It concerned an inheritance dispute and went on for a long time without reaching a positive outcome. I had also placed some trust in the passage of time, but time does not always heal wounds or make people more willing to understand each other’s reasons.

One of the heirs, facing an eviction that had already reached the enforcement stage, entered without the others’ consent an apartment belonging to the estate that had long been vacant and unused. He forced the lock. From his point of view, he had been compelled to enter a property that was also his; for the other heirs, that act became the sign of an abuse of power.

From that moment on, they rejected every proposal for an amicable settlement that came from him, even when it was reasonable and in line with market conditions. Although I cannot be absolutely certain, I believe it is highly likely that the mediation failed partly because of this: the offence had not been erased and, at a certain point, I had the sense that for the other heirs the aim had also become to punish the person responsible for that act. The mediation ended without an agreement.

PIER LUIGI LATTUADA

Sometimes listening, empathy and openness are not enough. There are situations in which a person does not genuinely want dialogue, or is not yet ready to take responsibility for their own part.

What we are forced to acknowledge is that not everything depends on the quality of our own presence; we cannot transform a conflict alone; change requires mutual willingness.

True transformation, in these cases, means accepting the limits of our own action: we are not omnipotent.

GIORGIO MARZOCCHI

I have had to recognise that mandatory mediation and the techniques available to a mediator can be entirely useless and ineffective in reaching an amicable resolution if the people involved and their lawyers are not genuinely willing to seek a non-judicial solution in good faith, and retaliation or punishment prevail instead.

II. Does conflict always have to transform us?

PIER LUIGI LATTUADA

I believe every conflict can teach us something, but not every conflict has to be inhabited all the way through. A threshold opens towards greater awareness, even when it is painful. A trap, by contrast, is a conflict that repeats itself unchanged, consumes energy, feeds dependence or violence, and produces no growth.

One possible criterion is to ask ourselves: what would happen if I gave up my conviction?

We are truly free when we are also able not to do what we are doing, not to think what we are thinking.

When we are able to tolerate difference and accept conflict without needing to resolve it.

GIORGIO MARZOCCHI

In my view, we need to find a way out of every conflict. The question is how.

If the parties manage to leave the conflict through an agreement, they may simply have reached a new arrangement in their relationship, a new balance of reciprocal rights and obligations. They have solved their problem.

Reaching an agreement does not necessarily mean that the parties have rebuilt a friendly relationship. That would indeed be a transformation; in my experience, however, I have seen it very rarely.

I do not believe that resolving a conflict necessarily transforms the people involved.

III. Can an agreement be unjust? And when there is a strong imbalance of power between the parties, who risks paying the price of peace?

GIORGIO MARZOCCHI

A negotiation can be profoundly asymmetrical even when both parties are formally sitting at the same table. Power takes many forms. The most obvious imbalance is economic, but it can also be informational or emotional.

Those with greater resources can face the costs, time and risks of court proceedings with more confidence. They may also have greater resources when choosing technical advisers and lawyers, and often better access to information that helps them anticipate the possible outcome of a case. On the other side is someone who simply cannot afford to wait.

Asked who risks paying the price of peace, the simplest answer is this: the weaker party. Someone who needs the dispute to end may be faced with a proposal they do not consider fair, but which becomes difficult to refuse because the alternative means waiting years, bearing costs and accepting the uncertainty of litigation.

Sometimes the stronger party’s participation is merely formal: they are present, but make no genuinely workable proposals. In other cases, I have the impression that delay itself is one of the stronger party’s objectives: someone who can afford to wait for years enters the negotiation from a very different position from someone who cannot.

The weaker party is the one who cannot afford to wait for the courts.

PIER LUIGI LATTUADA

Yes. When power is heavily unbalanced, reconciliation risks being demanded above all from the more vulnerable party, who may end up giving up their own voice simply to restore an appearance of harmony. Genuine peace cannot ask the victim to carry the burden of the relationship alone.

Peace does not always coincide with justice.

IV. We now ask Giorgio what happens when the mediator realises that this imbalance is shaping the negotiation. How far can neutrality go?

GIORGIO MARZOCCHI

When this happens, even a so-called facilitative mediator, whose role involves minimal intervention in the negotiation itself, must act more actively, while still avoiding any overlap with the role of the weaker party’s lawyer, who is already there to represent them.

It is a particularly delicate moment. The tools are those of the profession: separate meetings, in which the weaker party can be encouraged to reclaim their ability to negotiate, while the stronger party can be subjected to a reality test and confronted with the possible risks of litigation.

But this intervention also has a limit. If, despite these techniques, the mediator is unable to rebalance the parties’ negotiating power, I believe it is better to end the procedure without an agreement.

Only in this way, I believe, can we avoid becoming complicit in the stronger party’s coercion.

V. We ask Pier instead: when does moving beyond opposition risk weakening concrete responsibility?

In Biotransenergetics, Pier Luigi Lattuada speaks of a «Further Mode» capable of moving beyond the polarities of the ego.

PIER LUIGI LATTUADA

The Further Mode invites us to transcend and include, but it needs to be understood correctly. Transcending does not mean neutralising differences or suspending ethical judgement.

The «Further Mode» should not erase the distinction between victim and aggressor, nor make personal responsibility irrelevant.

The limit is reached when the language of transcendence becomes a way of avoiding confrontation with truth, justice or concrete suffering.

Moving beyond polarities does not mean placing them all on the same level, but passing through them without losing our sense of responsibility. It means creatively expanding consciousness and reaching a space where we can see what we could not see before, where beyond the conflict we may glimpse the message, the opportunity, the way forward which, as we were saying, may first of all consist in accepting the conflict itself.

VI. What remains when we do not reconcile?

GIORGIO MARZOCCHI

As a civil mediator, rather than a family mediator, I need to make one point clear: after a mediation ends without an agreement, I do not really know what happens to the parties. No one has ever come back to tell me what they did afterwards. In all likelihood many conflicts move into court proceedings, but I do not believe that every unsuccessful mediation necessarily ends up in court.

In what I consider to be a significant number of cases, mediation has at least helped clarify the parties’ respective positions and define the boundaries of the conflict. The parties may come to understand more clearly the other person’s position, values and vision of the future.

And with that understanding may come the recognition that a truth different from one’s own is possible, together with a deeper understanding of why the positions differ.

PIER LUIGI LATTUADA

Acceptance is the basis of any solution. If I do not accept a situation, I cannot even change it. So the first thing we should accept is that there may or may not be an agreement, that there may or may not be understanding.

Acceptance is the solution behind all solutions, and it lies at the heart of respect for others and for ourselves. Understanding does not require agreement.

Sometimes the most mature outcome is being able to say:

I understand your position, but I cannot make it my own.

In that space, dignity, distance and the absence of hostility can coexist.

One question remains:

If no one has reconciled and no agreement has been signed, how can we tell whether something has changed all the same?

To learn about her path and the other contributions published in Emozioni, discover Pier Luigi Lattuada.