Introduction to Social Work - Oxford University Press
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Chapter 10. Humanistic Practice, Existentialism, and Spirituality
Humanistic and related areas of practice contribute to social work largely in terms of enhancing individual personal development. The goal of these areas of practice is for the individual to understand their own personal identity in relation to the totality of who other persons really are and the individual’s relationships. These approaches become a way of empowering all aspects of our human creativity in support of human rights in society. In terms of spiritual thinking, humanism and existentialism are systems of secular beliefs but unlike purely secular views, humanism is regarded as a spiritual system of beliefs similar to spiritual thinking in social work.
Terminology
Humanism is centered on the belief in the capacity of conscious human being to reason, make choices and act freely, uninfluenced by higher beings such as gods and religion or superstition.
Existentialism is concerned with the meaning for human being of the fact that they exist and that they are in fact human beings.
Spirituality is a human search for meaning and purpose in life, of seeing being human as integrating a wide variety of experiences into a whole personality.
Self-actualization and self-fulfillment In very general terms, these come about when a person achieves their goals, wishes, and desires thus allowing their personality and relationships to grow and develop in a healthy manner.
Empathy, congruence, genuineness and unconditional positive regard are the attributes of a practitioner in a successful practice as set out by Roger’s person-centered practice among others.
Scripts and games These are used in transactional analysis (TA) to describe how transactions in the past have led to present life positions and games; games are typical patterns of ulterior transactions that recur, reflect, and promote damaging life positions. Social workers analyze games with clients who can then understand and avoid them in favor of more satisfying interactions.
Wholeness and connectedness are spiritual ideas that contributed important human aims and values to social work.
Body, mind, and spirit interaction is an organizing concept in spiritual care.
Democracy and participation as elements of practice were influenced by humanistic psychologies.
Dread and alienation are drawn from existential theory and used by many social workers.
Interaction of parent, adult, and child both internally and externally is a Transactional Analysis metaphor that has come to influence social work.
Key Ideas
Humanism and existentialism both are ways of seeing human life.
The humanistic perspective focuses on the capacity of conscious human beings to reason, make choices, and act freely while being uninfluenced by higher powers such as gods, religion, and superstition. Human caring in social relationships is seen as an essential aspect of humanity. Given that perspective, humanism is closely associated with democracy and related ideas because humanism believes that human being have the capacity to value and help one another. This helping capacity is a major strength for individuals to restrain the damaging pressures from the surrounding social environment and the natural world. Humanistic and existential ideas also connect with ‘green’ environmental political and social philosophies.
Existentialism focuses on the meaning for human beings of the fact that they exist.
Existentialism focuses on the capacity of people to gain the personal, individual power to control their lives and thus to change ideas governing how they lives. For the existentialist, the surrounding environment often appears to contain absurd and alienating experiences and suffering; existentialism focuses on those experiences and suffering and their impact on people’s lives.
Spirituality provides a path to search for meaning and purpose.
Spirituality sees human beings as integrating a wide variety of experiences into a whole personality. Social work often interacts with the spiritual elements in peoples’ lives; as a result, despite social work secularization in some countries, social work and social welfare often remains connected to religious faiths and practices.
Many cultural views see spiritual concerns as universal.
Many different philosophies and belief systems have relationships with spirituality because they emphasize the process whereby human being realize their capacity to enhance their own well-being through spiritual developments.
Humanistic models see people’s interpretations of themselves are valid and worthwhile.
Humanistic models of practice are based on the common idea that human being are trying to make sense of the world that they experience. In addition, social workers are trying to help people gain the skills that they need to explore themselves and the personal meaning that they attach to the world they perceive, which in turn affects them.
Humanistic approaches have filtered into well-known systems of practice and writings.
Laing used existential ideas as well as psychoanalysis in his early work on theories of mental illness. Existential ideas were also used by Krill and Thomason to inform approaches emphasizing emotional reactions to human experience as the basis of practice. Frankl’s work focusing on introspection and the drive to find meaning even in the most painful and difficult circumstances expresses two basic points of humanistic practice: introspection to understand others by comparison with our own experiences and the importance of achieving security with ourselves, others in relationship to ourselves, and our lives and thus meaning in life experiences—influencing conceptualizations of spirituality in therapeutic work. Roger’s person-centered practice was a decision influence on humanistic practice as was Gandhi’s philosophy that included collaboration and an avoidance of compulsion and Berne’s transactional analysis approach.
Humanistic practice must operate through interpersonal and social equality.
Humanistic practice sees the humanity of all human beings as equal and human rights integral to humanism. Humanistic approaches thus are strongly committed to the shared value principle of equality and respect. Practitioners thus treat clients in the same way as they do themselves and they seek equality of treatment between groups by actions such as reduction of oppression.
Humanistic practice also acts flexibly as it responds to the complexity of personal identity.
Human beings and relationships operate in multiple manners and so all sorts of responses to situations should be acceptable and workable. Behavior is not linear but many factors interact sometimes in ways that we cannot understand.
Caring and creativity are essential in humanistic practice.
Caring involves creating an environment where caring relationships develop that support connections between practitioners and clients. They thus can use creativity to stretch the practice, generate additional connections, and empower others to be creative in resolving issues they face. As a result, the term ‘caring’ is preferred to ‘helping’ as the latter implies that one person has both expertise and good intent.
Humanistic practice links the importance of self with spirituality.
Our spirituality develops from dialectic, an internal debate, between our experiences of ourselves and our experiences of the world around us. Our spirituality develops from this dialectic as we give meaning to our own existence and the existence of others in relationship to ourselves. Thus individuals develop a personal identity, understanding the characteristics that they share with others as well as the diversity of human beings, which strengthens their differences from us.
Humanism rejects problem solving.
Humanism sees problems as a natural part of the human condition. Humanists argue that people’s emotional and physical security and resilience should be enhanced so that they can response to the challenges of life. As a result, humanistic practice offers a positive view of humanity and the human situations that people are a part of rather than focusing on the deficits of individuals and their social environment. As a result, humanism focuses on enhancing emotional and physical security and resilience.
Spirituality is an important part of the ideas about mindfulness.
Ideas about mindfulness are increasingly important in therapeutic practice. Eastern thoughts see reality as constantly changing and life as always in a state of becoming—no final state of well-being is possible. Balance or the Buddhist ‘ middle path’ implies not a compromise but an incorporation of different elements into a unified whole. As a result, mindfulness argues for including spirituality in the conception of healthy change and seeing balance as central.
Issues
Humanism is widely accepted as a central value of social work for two reasons.
First, the origins of social work are associated with the shift of welfare provision from the Christian churches to become part of the secular role of the state. The second is that practicing social work requires a belief that social problems may be understood
However, humanistic ideas while seemingly interesting also appear insubstantial to many.
While humanism addresses aspects of human experience that are important to many people, their lack of clarity and the difficulty of forming clear goals and agreed explanations make these ideas hard to turn into an operational language of practice in a public profession. Thus humanism and related views are often a source of criticism and thus less widely accepted among powerful groups in society whose influence is importance in the lives of clients. As a result, the explicit use of humanistic therapies has not developed strongly in social work. The one consistent element has been Roger’s person-centered practice with a focus on personal empowerment.
TA provides an example of why humanistic theory is a fringe interest in social work.
TA came into vogue on a rise of popular interest but now is seen as fringe psychotherapy. It’s rapid rise and fall are seen as due to giving superficial accounts of behavior in semi-humorous language and thus perhaps not making people feel they were being treated with respect, although some practitioners find the entertaining and unpretentious terminology can help in working with clients. Similarly existential ideas rose and fell in importance but their source in a 1950s philosophical trend, revived from time to time, disconnects those ideas from mainstream social work. Similarly issues of spirituality by some practitioners may seem to be more of a personal preference or an area of personal development rather than a professional responsibility in work with clients. Such attitudes are reinforced because public agencies are required by many legal and administrative systems to have a secular stance.
The primary critique of humanistic practice is that it draws in a broad range of ideas.
The primary critique is the way in which it draws on the openness of the humanistic psychotherapies to a broad range of ideas, including the arts and spirituality as important elements of the human experience. In treating them as valid ways to understand and interpret human experience and social problems, humanistic practice goes against the shift toward secularism, evidence-based practice, and rational, positivistic knowledge. Humanism values all human knowledge and creativity and not just that created by evidence-based practice, etc. because it focuses on human experience as the basis for understanding contrary to secularism’s reliance on neutral external observation.
Humanistic social work opposes technical and bureaucratic approaches.
Humanistic social work sees perspectives such as cognitive-behavioral therapy as too technical and agency practice as too bureaucratic and devaluing the capacity of human being to improve themselves. Humanistic practice seeks to re-establish the focus of social work as empowering and liberating rather than problem-solving and to focus on exploring, understanding and coming to terms with human experience rather than resisting adverse social forces as with critical, social change views of social work.
Final thoughts…
Humanistic social work ideas provide a principled approach to understanding human beings as wholes. This approach is more flexible, less deterministic, and less judgmental than many psychological ideas used in social work. This approach also can be a useful way of explaining clients’ behavior and problems without blaming clients who are the victims of social processes and so the interaction between clients’ perceptions and interpretations of the world and the reaction of the world to clients can be less problematic.
These theories of humanistic social work emphasize that respect for whole persons and common good are an essential part of effective practice and the value base of social work. Understanding and accepting the role of spirituality and the way in which people interpret social experience is essential to understanding many clients and to understanding the particular cultural experiences of minorities who may be oppressed or excluded in many societies. The technical, rational and secular elements of social work have often downplayed the importance of these elements of practice. Many practitioners therefore find that the humanistic and spiritual elements of practice provide a useful balance to the main rationalistic thrust of social work. [pic]
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