Blinkered self-denial

Abstract

Just as some people are unable to find any more passable way of resolving their problems than by becoming clients, others tackle the ordinary problems of living by becoming social workers in the belief that it is satisfying, respectable, relatively autonomous and even remunerative. It is, however, a limited and parasitic resolution of life’s contradictions. A world full of social workers would be quite unbearable. Nevertheless, the fact that we set ourselves up as purveyors not just of survival but even sometimes of fulfilment suggests the possession of some secret understanding which is protected, as Geoffrey Pearson puts it, by an arcane professional culture, designed to persuade both our clients and ourselves of its potency. The result is a serious loss of reality and perspective.¹