Indeed the term of integrated mediation is not chosen best as everybody thinks to know what it is. In fact there is a basic misunderstanding about integrated mediation everywhere. Integrated mediation is NOT a court based mediation. Integrated mediation at court is just one possibility for using it. At court there it was our root and beginning, nothing more. Seeing us just as a kind of court based mediation is putting us in a wrong corner and reducing what IM means. IM is much more.

Integrated mediation is a very high leveled mediation which is possible almost everywhere. I know it’s difficult to believe. However we are touching the borders where mediation for most of mediators doesn’t seem to be possible anymore. In fact it can be used in companies, families, private and professional life. We understand mediation more like a psychological procedure of cognition and understanding where different kinds of thinking (logical, analogue, associative, systemic and so on) can be combined and where it means to imporve understanding of each other. Understanding should be possible everywhere. It can be mediated, although the conditions of understanding are difficult because of some circumstances. Those circumstances can be when people feel in contradiction (don’t get out of their null sum game) and if they are not really ready to agree voluntarily to an isolated mediation procedure or if they do not have the money to consume another procedure. Naturally people prefer cooperation. They sometimes just don’t know how to cooperate when the envirenment seems to be hostile. In spite of that integrated mediation can be used at court for example but also if the mediator is an adviser a psychotherapist or the superior in a company, who is involved as he might decide the case. Integrated mediation is a pure mediation as well as the bridge into a pure mediation. It appers like that as soon as the pre-phase of mediation is seen as a part of the whole procedure. Integrated mediation definitely knows about methods how to deal with hostile circumstances. And integrated mediation researched how mediation can be implemented in spite of that. The benefit of this research leads to a kind of improved services. Of course integrated mediation covers normal mediation cases in all its means. More than that integrated mediation know every kind of conflict resolution procedure since we have to think about combinations and exclusions. The idea behind is that people should have the benefit of cognition in every case possible and in a way respecting the principles of mediation (i.e. voluntariness) as they were meant. We have developed a strategy (migration strategy), methods and rules how to proceed in those cases and really have a lot of experience and scientific knowledge about it. It is much more than just using some mediation skills. Many people assume integrated mediation is not more than using some technics. But using technics alone wouldn’t help that much. Then it appears that people have a very formalistic view on mediation and treat it more and more like a procedure in a juridical sense. They definitely are reducing the ability and resources that mediation can give to them. Thus integrated mediation is the implementation of a thinking. A treatment of mediation more like a meta or a hybrid procedure for establishing an understanding under terms where it seems not to be possible any more or under more or most difficult conditions. Understanding the mediation like that will increase the market tremendously and the number of cases will be infinite. It really is a vision. That is what many people do not believe on the one hand and what they envy on the other hand. People who do not know what integrated mediation is intend to say: “integrated mediation is not a mediation” after they learned what it is they say: “integrated mediation is a real mediation and nothing else”. After all integrated mediation requires that a mediator who wants to become an integrated mediator (2 stars) is very well educated in mediation. I think it is very important that others see mediation is a crucial and necessary part of integrated mediation. We do see the various kinds of it. Beside that it is absolutely necessary that integrated mediators (2 star mediators) understands mediation deeply down to its roots and knows about the pure meaning behind. He needs to understand the principles and elements used in mediation not only praying them. There are not so many mediators who do have this understanding. But mediators, who are experienced, agree to that way of proceeding. They know that the borders of mediation are fluent as conflitcs are not obeying borders of procedures. Maybe now it will become understandable why we prefer to train mediators ourselves and why it is important to follow own curricula step by step. They are adjusted to the natural standards but on highest level. We can assure that our own trainings help to a become deeper understanding than usual. Last a student, who had passed a mediator’s education of 200 hours before already and who is now joining the 2nd semester of a mediation and integrated mediation course (2 star mediator) wrote, that “scales fell from her eyes” when she learned mediation like that.