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@organizingthroughconflict-blog
“Since then, China actually has one of the world's largest Social Work systems. But it lacks the history that Social Work has in the United States, because of just the fact that Social Work is newer there.”
Social Work in China/Neoliberalism and Social Work
Social realities that may have appeared inalterable, impenetrable, came to be viewed as malleable and transformable, and people learned how to imagine what it might mean to live in a world that was not so exclusively governed by the principle of white supremacy.
Angela Davis
I'm not nostalgic. I'm looking back to mine the past for what it can help us with right now, and for what it can help us pass on and create.
Demita Frazier
Therapists et al exist as a way to outsource emotional support that should be performed by the people in our lives who we have mutually emotionally invested in, but because capitalism dominates all our time and energy, those people are unable to, and the whole body of psychological therapeutic practice is just the development of methods to make that as efficient, sterile, and uniform as possible.
Also, keep in mind, modern psychology is founded in the development of “The Talking Cure” which was literally just the revolutionary discovery that, if you sit down and let people in psychiatric distress just talk about their problems and then help them work through them, they can begin to recover, and the fact that that occurred around the turn of the previous century really isn’t just a coincidence.
Meanwhile, “therapy dogs” are treated as a fairly recent breakthrough, which isn’t to say that dogs aren’t therapeutic, but that the bulk of non-medication therapy is just a medical repackaging of basic human emotional fulfillment.
Therapy is basically the commodification of love
I went to school to become a therapist and this is exactly why I dropped it off that program. I realized that the specialist knowledge was a lot less scientifically rigorous than the public was led to believe and that what therapy really amounted to was selling your friendship for money.
… which I find abhorrent.
And yes, I have used therapists. I have used therapists to cope with abuse. I’ve used therapists to cope with a serious mental disorder. I recognize that the way out culture is set up laypeople really aren’t equipped to cope with a lot of that.
… and that isn’t okay.
There is a lot that is wrong with therapy. Structurally wrong down to the very core. That problem is money and the fact that the therapeutic relationship will always hinge on your therapist getting paid. That isn’t necessarily the individual therapist’s fault–they need to eat, after all–but the relationship is an exploitative facsimile of the kinds of genuine relationships that we should all enjoy but rarely do.
As someone who has grown into some very deep friendships I can say that their emotional counseling is orders of magnitude more therapeutic than anything I’ve gotten from a professional.
Do therapists fill a needed niche in our society? Yes. Especially so long as abuse is a thing because when you’re being abused your abuser basically controls your access to social support and victims need places they can turn to that they know are safe and that can help.
… except therapists actually do a terrible job at this. They can provide a safe place to talk–if you’re abuser let’s toy talk to them–but they are profoundly incapable of providing any of the material support a victim needs to actually escape. Those rules ‘for your safety’ prohibit your therapist from offering you their couch or the kind of long term friendship and support that real recovery requires.
If we cared about survivors we would have trans or specialists with material resources to meet the physical needs of a victim who had been made dependant of their abuser. They should be a transitional role as that person is introduced to be friends who can then take care of them emotionally.
… and they can then help the next generation of survivors. There is literally nobody more qualified to help someone deal with trauma than someone who has survived it and is healed enough to help others.
People already do this. This is literally a cultural institution among trans women. Largely in part because psychiatric violence leaves therapists largely inaccessible to us. Ditto people with psychosis or bipolar disorder.
Anyway… To all the people replying to this post clutching their pearls about how lay people don’t know how to handle a crisis or anxiety or [insert mental health thing here]: maybe that’s the problem?!
That’s literally the entire point of this entire thread.
Disempowering the average person from providing emotional support to survivors and disabled people through a lack of education and through capitalist exhaustion is the problem and therapists aren’t the solution.
Also… To all the people angry at the op for ‘talking down’ to disabled people like this is someone telling you to ‘try yoga:’ this is what radical mad liberation discourse looks like. This thread.
In other words therapists do have an important role to play but that face is a symptom of a deep social sickness and we, as disabled people, should be trying as hard as we can to dismantle three conditions that support this institution.
hmmm I agree with this for the most part. The thing I’m struggling with the most is the original post which states that some people are unable to give you the emotional support a therapist would be able to, because of capitalism. Even if a capitalistic society didn’t exist, I’m not sure I believe in the fact that every single problem you deal with should be handled with friends, without negatively impacting your friend’s mental health and progress. The benefit of a therapist is that’s what they signed up to do. Help you work through complex trauma. A friend can support you in that journey, but they are a person themselves. I think that lay people can absolutely help people work through complex issues, the question is if they really should be expected to, regardless of a deep connection shared across identity.
Another thing is the difference between traditional therapy, and social work. Both are deeply flawed and have fucked up roots. But social work theory surrounding therapy is much more empowerment/community based. With traditional therapy, you only see the client as an individual, and you’re less aware of outside factors. The role of a social worker (which isn’t always followed), is not just to change the client’s position in society/their smaller group, but also work to change the outside factors impacting a clients life.
We have strict rules on confidentiality, however in all of my courses we learn that our rules really depend on the individual context of the client. For example, many queer people seek out a queer social worker, only to run into them in personal settings. This is something that is strictly forbidden in traditional therapy, however might be treated with more leniency in social work practice. A social worker may connect a homeless client to outside resources in the community, while also providing traditional therapy. This isn’t something you see in psych settings.
I’m also toying around with the idea of your friends unpaid emotional labor that lays outside of the scope of traditional friendship.
TLDR: I think lay people can help people work through complex trauma, the question is whether or not they should be tasked to do so.
Social work therapy differs slightly from other therapies, but both need improvements.
Once I was in an organizing space and a man just outright said “Social Workers could never be radical.” And it’s a year later and I just think about it all the time because he said it with such authority though he knew very little about the subject.
Many people don’t even know about social work. They often think of people working in Child Protective Services, or in the foster care system. Social workers work in a variety of settings including medical ones, research settings, and other case management roles. Macro social workers (which is what I will be), work on systemic issues through organizing, policy advocacy, etc. Micro social workers must gain licensure to work in a clinical setting, while macro social workers typically do not. We both take classes with the other’s emphasis, but most of my classes revolve around social policy, organizing, and community building.
Of course, (as my classmates prove), there are many social workers that only want to address the problems of their individual clients, without questioning why those problems arise, and what they do as a privileged individual to perpetuate those problems. But that’s literally not the basis of social work. Not now, with an emphasis on service and social justice in the literal code of ethics, and an entire book of policy platforms which talk about a variety of issues like housing policy, eliminating racism, community organizing, etc. Research shows us that it wasn’t like that in the past. Of course there’s the historical context of social work being started by white women in the 1800s, but at the time, the work that social workers engaged in was thought to be radical as well.
In Michael Reisch’s book The Road Not Taken, which is a literal textbook about the radical origins of social work, he points out the fact that the original social workers were ALREADY socialists. They worked with labor organizers, and provided free housing to the poor. Reisch also discusses how they were radicalized by being in the field, or they joined the field because they WERE already radical.
‘Another Social Work is Possible’ Reclaiming the Radical Tradition by Iain Ferguson also talks about this. “Social work practice in the United States of America is often assumed to be innately conservative, limited to individualistic, clinical approaches carried out in private practice settings. While much contemporary practice undoubtedly does take this form, it is very far from being the whole picture, either now or
in the past.”
This (very good), article talks about the decline in radical social work due to a global shift towards conservatism, and also an increase in neoliberal ideas of what it means to “help people” but overall, radical social work still remains. There are literal textbooks on radical social work, which is also referred to Critical Social Work Theory. Critical Social Work Theory essentially means seeking to end injustice as a means to improve a client’s individual life.
“Here's an article on The History of Social Work Education for Black People https://t.co/BOMGUCXxBo”
Thread of Black Social Workers for Black History Month
Public discourse narrative positions Detroit's post-bankruptcy revitalization as a rapid process of business and investment descending upon the city. In spite of this narrative, Detroit today remains a city of intense poverty and inequality.
Such a good article displaying the ways that whiteness makes Blackness invisible, to then use as justification for preying on neighborhoods, overlooking community groups for funding, and just white saviorism in general.
“Blackness in Post-Bankruptcy Detroit” should be required reading
Its by Maya Stovall and Alex Hill. Trying to find a link that wont piss off my library.
?We kick off a three-part series on housing in Detroit with an examination of how the single-family home became the city's dominant housing type.
By Matthew Desmond
Really important research on the different ways that people choose their housing based on race, and class. Also research on how people feel about their housing. This information is totally relevant for people working in affordable housing, and housing policy.
Op-Ed: It comes down to who and what we value as legitimate participants in a city’s economy.
“Grassroots organizers and advocates are pushing for a more holistic vision of strong communities and economic development, reframing everything from what constitutes a small business to how loans and funding are distributed to what ownership of land looks like. These organizers are community members who are best poised to make decisions for themselves and for their neighborhoods.”
America begins in Black plunder and White Democracy, two features that are not contradictory but complementary.
The Case for Reparations
Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
We understand the work of community organizing groups as transformational...They are trying to build leadership and community capacity to transform power relations.
A Match on Dry Grass
Community organizing is a phenomenon that is rooted in and responsive to context.
A Match On Dry Grass
A Match on Dry Grass: Community Organizing as a Catalyst for School Reform [Mark R. Warren, Karen L. Mapp] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The persistent failure of public schooling in low-income communities constitutes one of our nation's most pressing civil rights and social justice issues. Many school reformers recognize that poverty
In Chapter One of A Match on Dry Grass, Community Organizing is modeled using a tree. I can’t find the image online, and don’t want to break copyright but I recommend buying the book.
In the leaves of the trees, the book lists “transforming individuals, transforming communities, and transforming institutions.”
In the base of the tree, the book lists “building power, and building relationships.”
In the grass, the book lists “opportunities and challenges.”
In the roots, the book lists “shared histories and identities, and organizing traditions.”
Over 30 students lined the halls of the University of Michigan School of Social Work Tuesday afternoon to call attention to an email sent by SSW Payroll Coordinator Kari Dumbeck, in which she implored students to respect the Pledge of Allegiance, with an emphasis on overtly religious rhetoric.
