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 Criminal mediators, sometimes chosen from among former judges or police commissioners, might see mediation as a subset of a criminal lawsuit, without necessarily reaping all the potential of a more methodical approach including gaining a mutual understanding of the causes that led to a criminal offense.

 Some mediators, who are often efficient in the search for solutions, seem less focused on the reconciliation between people. In this case, it is a question of working, also, if necessary, on the relationship on top of the concrete problem at stake.

A mediation process entails its own methodological requirements. To ignore them, or to apply inadequate ones that are fundamentally foreign to it, is to risk the failure of mediation, or in any case to deprive oneself of assets in favor of the resolution of the conflict.

Hence this book: it is not about proposing the method – as if only one method exists – but rather about synthesizing methods, drawing from enough sources and tempered by enough experiences to be applied flexibly to most contexts. It is not a question here of limiting oneself to a single model, but of being inspired by several, to unfold an approach that allows each mediator to find their own ways of engaging in mediation. In doing so, we will try to bring as much to experienced mediators – who are sometimes so comfortable employing a single method that they end up ignoring others that may be useful – as to beginners – who venture in this delicate path with, depending on their personalities, either the misleading feeling of knowing it all or the paralyzing impression of not knowing anything.

To structure this method, mediators and parties in conflict can rely on what we call the Seven Pillars of Mediation, which we will develop in the following chapters.