When I was a child and later as a nursery school teacher, I had a favorite book featuring Grover from Sesame Street called The Monster at the End of this Book (Stone andSmollin, 1971). Apart from being a wonderful metaphor for how humans attempt to use barriers to avoid self-discovery and difficult truths about themselves (Grover's the monster), it's also a nice introduction to this speech since there's a gorilla at the end of this speech. Before we get to the gorilla, I will introduce you to some of the philosophical and theoretical foundations of human conflict, review some of the thinking about mediation in the last 30 years, and introduce my critical incident and intervention approach to working with conflict. Yes and there's a gorilla in there, did I mention that?
