human interactions 10-1

Zastrow and Kirst-Ashman (2016) stated, “We need theories to guide our thinking and our work so that we may undertake research-informed practice” (p. 127-128). At the same time, the authors asserted, “No theory will be perfectly applicable. Perhaps you will decide that only one or two concepts make any sense to you in terms of working with clients” (p. 128). Though you may be able to apply only a few concepts in a particular theory to your work with clients, as a social worker, you should be applying evidence-based research to your work. Empirically-based developmental theories may guide you as you assess clients and their presenting problems. You may also apply developmental theories to your treatment decisions.

For this Assignment, you discuss theories of life-span development by evaluating a theory that seems especially relevant to you and your role as a social worker. Select a theory of life-span development to address in this Discussion. This may be a theory described in the resources of this course, or you may select a theory based on personal research. Locate at least one scholarly resource (not included in the course resources) that addresses the theory you selected.

Post a Discussion in which you analyze the theory of life-span development that you selected. Summarize the theory; then, identify the strengths and weaknesses of this theory, especially as it relates to social work practice. Explain one way you might apply the theory to your social work practice.

300-400 Words

USE MY REFERENCES

References:

Dybicz, P. (2012). The hero(ine) on a journey: A postmodern conceptual framework for social work practice. Journal of Social Work Education, 48(2), 267–283.

Villadsen, K. (2008). ‘Polyphonic’ welfare: Luhmann’s systems theory applied to modern social work. International Journal of Social Welfare, 17(1), 65–73.

I N T E R N AT I O N A L

J O U R N A L O F

SOCIAL WELFARE

ISSN 1369-68

Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare.
Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2397.2007.00504.x

Int J Soc Welfare 2008:

: 65–

Villadsen K. Polyphonic welfare: Luhmann’s systems theory
applied to modern social work
Int J Soc Welfare 2008: 17: 65–73 © 2007 The Author(s),
Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the
International Journal of Social Welfare.

This article applies a series of concepts from Niklas
Luhmann’s systems theory in an analysis of modern welfare
organisations. The point of departure is that social help in late
modern welfare states has become ‘polycentric’ in that ‘help’
is today being defined by various different agents: public,
voluntary and private care providers. Empirically, this article
investigates re-housing work with homeless people, a kind
of social work which involves several different welfare
organisations. The case study shows how these organisations
define themselves by making internal constructions of

their

surroundings, and how their self-enclosed nature creates a
certain ‘insensitivity’ towards one another. How to coordinate
and translate within this ‘polyphony’ of incomparable
observations and values represents a major managerial
challenge for present-day social workers.

Kaspar

Villadsen

Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

Blackwell Publishing LtdOxford, UKIJSWInternational Journal of Social Welfare1369-6866© 2007 The Author(s), Journal compilation © Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social WelfarexxxOriginal Article

Polyphonic social workVilladsen

‘Polyphonic’ welfare: Luhmann’s
systems theory applied to modern
social work

Key words: systems theory, welfare organisations, management,
social work, homeless people

Kaspar Villadsen, Department of Management, Politics and
Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Porcelaenshaven 18a,
2000n Frederiksberg, Denmark
E-mail: k_villadsen@yahoo.com

Accepted for publication January 8, 2007

During the last 15–20 years, most advanced welfare
states have witnessed a social policy discourse, that
speaks about the positive potentials of ‘welfare mix’
and more intensified public–private cooperation between
different welfare providers. The idea is that different
types of welfare organisations – public, voluntary and
private – each have specific qualities and ‘comparative
advantages’ when it comes to caring for marginalised
people. In particular, we have witnessed a strong emphasis
on voluntary and local organisations as new care providers
for people who have turned their back on public services.
These organisations are considered to constitute necessary,
critical voices in the public debate, as pioneers in
finding new methods for social work, and as providers
of institutions and spaces where marginalised clients
can be met in a more equal and genuinely human
manner. In a sense, we might say that voluntary welfare
organisations have been proclaimed ‘rescuers’ of a state-
governed social policy that finds itself in an impasse,
not being able to provide solutions to those welfare
problems that are still considered a state responsibility.

Schematically speaking, the dream of the classic
welfare state of an all-embracing, uniform system of
public services has been superseded by the strategy of
‘welfare pluralism’. In most late modern welfare
states we have witnessed an increasing policy emphasis
on community-based and voluntary care provision

encapsulated by the popular slogans of providing
‘welfare mix’ (Ugo & Costanco, 2002) or a ‘mixed
economy of care’ (Gostick, 1996). In this situation, new
agents have moved onto the stage, both as care
providers and as participants in the public debate on
welfare policy and its future directions. In effect, social
help has been ‘differentiated’ so that a spectrum of
different welfare organisations each define what help is
according to their particular programmes and organisa-
tional identities. Borrowing from Luhmann’s systems
theory, one might say that social help has become
increasingly ‘polycentric’ in that social help is a theme
which can be observed from various different organisa-
tions that each observe help from within their particular
horizon, their programmes and self-descriptions. What
constitutes ‘help’, therefore, is not a given, but is rather
defined by a multiplicity of agents, often cooperating,
overlapping or competing with each other.

The promotion of ‘welfare mix’ probably brings
some positive changes and innovations within social
policy. However, if the diagnosis of polycentric help is
correct, it raises a number of questions pertinent to
management of social services, welfare planning and
problems of equal access to social services. First, there
is a question of cooperation. In as far as the organisations
conceive of help from different, or even incompatible,
perspectives, how can different organisations cooperate

Villadsen

with the same client? Second, there is a question of the
status of the clients. Which consequences does the
existence of different conceptions of help imply for clients
who depend upon several different welfare providers?
And, third, which challenges for management and planning
arise from the diagnosis of polycentric social help?

This article will illuminate these questions by applying
Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory to an analysis of
practical social work. In this context, systems theory
serves as an alternative, or at least a rarely acknowledged
approach in the English-speaking research community.
So far, the study of welfare organisations and social
work has been dominated by a number of other
constructivist approaches including, in particular,
symbolic interactionism (Järvinen, 2004; Pithouse &
Atkinson, 1988), Bourdieu’s field analysis (Bergmark &
Oscarsson, 1988), neo-institutional organisational theory
(Levin, 1998) and Foucauldian perspectives (Parton,
Thorpe & Wattam, 1997). Each of these analyses has
differently sought to investigate the forms of power
exercised in modern social work. Within this research
domain, Luhmann’s systems theory still awaits an
international breakthrough, although it has been
applied to social work in Germany (Baecker, 1994;
Bommes & Scherr, 2000; Merten, 2000) and in a few
recent contributions in the Scandinavian context (Andersen,
2003; Appel-Nissen, 2005; Moe, 1998). As Luhmann’s
systems theory suggests a multifaceted framework for
understanding communication, power and organisations
in a modern, ‘polycentric’ society, this article shall
consider and apply specific parts of his theory to the
analysis of modern social work.

The article is in two sections. The first section briefly
introduces Luhmann’s systems theory as a perspective
on modern organisations, highlighting in particular the
thesis of a historical movement from ‘homophonic’ to
‘polyphonic’ organisations. It also discusses how welfare
organisations can be studied by means of systems
theory – especially focusing on the question of
organisational self-description and boundary construction.

The second section demonstrates empirically how
help is defined radically differently by specific welfare
providers. By drawing upon a case study from Denmark,
this section describes how welfare organisations obtain
self-descriptions by internally constructing images of
their surroundings. The study shows how the involved
welfare organisations define ‘re-housing work’ – i.e.
social work preparing the client for living in his or her
own home – in incompatible ways, and how these
incompatible definitions make necessary the employment
of specific communicative strategies.

Organisations in systems theory

It is a fundamental premise of systems theory that the
observer must always carefully specify exactly what is

being observed. Or put differently, when observing we
must specify our own distinctions, our own system of
observation, as it determines how the world emerges for
us. This also goes for organisational analysis: the
categories we choose radically determine how the
organisation emerges for the observing eye. The article
chooses two strategies (out of several) for analysing
organisations, which can be found in Luhmann:

systems
analysis

and

form analysis.

The

systems analysis

takes as its point of departure
the distinction fundamental to systems theory: system/
environment. This analysis observes how an organ-
isational system creates itself by making an internal
construction of its environment. Or, as Luhmann contends:
‘a system constitutes itself through a process of auto-
catalysis or self-selection by reference to its difference
from an environment’ (Luhmann, 1982a: 88). Thus, an
organisation’s self-description dramatically depends on
the way it constructs its environment – whether it
constructs it as, for instance, consumers or as citizens
with rightful access to its services, as a political
landscape of alliances and power games or as a market
for products. By constructing an image of its sur-
roundings, the organisation concomitantly constructs an
image of itself. However, an organisation is not only
one system with one environment; it often operates with
several system/environment constructions. We must
therefore observe how organisations communicate a
multiplicity of system/environment demarcations. An
organisation might, for instance, construct itself as
both a bureaucracy that implements governmental
decisions and as an agent competing with other
‘companies’ on a market. In this way, we can avoid
conceiving of the organisation as a stable unity with
only one self-image in order to analyse how organisa-
tions construct themselves through multiple system/
environment distinctions.

The

form analysis

describes how organisations attach
themselves to functional systems in modern society.
Here, we must shortly recapitulate Luhmann’s
fundamental thesis on the historical differentiation of
modern society. Schematically, pre-modern society was
based on religion as a universal explanatory framework,
and there was a hierarchical segregation in classes
(Luhmann, 1982b). Modern society breaks with this
order as it sees the emergence of a series of ‘functional
systems’, each of which refer to their own logic, their own
rationality and their own communicative structures. The
economic system, the judicial system, the educational
system and the system of art are examples of such
systems that employ different criteria for observing the
world (Luhmann, 1994). In concrete terms, it makes
sense that a law violation cannot be observed as more
or less artistic when seen from the judicial system,
whereas such an assessment indeed can be made from
the system of art. The point that the different systems

Polyphonic social work

are unable to understand each other’s rationality and
criteria for evaluation is crucial, and, in this respect,
systems theory reflects Weber’s diagnosis of modernity
as a ‘tragic’ state that provides the individual with no
ultimate reasons for choosing between its conflicting
‘value spheres’ (1946).

It should be stressed that Luhmann’s systems are
reproduced by means of communication. More specifically,
functional systems are reproduced by communication
operating through a fundamental

distinction

code

characteristic of each system. Such distinctions can be
described as temporary ways of observing the world,
each of which for a period of time attains stability
and installs expectations to the continuation of the
communication. For example, the judicial system
operates through the distinction legal/illegal, which
means that everything that can be observed is positioned
either at the ‘inside’ or at the ‘outside’ of this distinction.
Judicial communication can only observe from its own
rationality, which transforms the world into legal
problems that can be determined as legal or illegal
(Luhmann, 1992). We emphasise that functional systems
are abstract systems of communicative logic that exist
in modern society. They have no specific location or
physical boundary since any organisation system or
interaction system can communicate through, or one
might say ‘activate’, their codes.

Organisations activate the codes of functional
systems by forming one of the symbolically generalised
media of communication that each functional system
bases itself on – e.g. money (the economic system), law
(the judicial system), power (the political system) or
‘the learning child’ (the pedagogical system). When
an organisation, for instance, turns a problem into a
question of paying or not paying, it forms the media
of money, and this has drastic consequences for how
communication can continue, and for how the organi-
sation fundamentally emerges. It certainly makes a dif-
ference whether welfare organisations attach themselves
to the judicial, the educational, the economic or the
religious system when communicating about their clients.
We might say that when an organisation decides to
communicate through, for instance, money, law or faith,
it thereby activates those abstract communicative logics
that the functional systems offer for communication.
The specific effects this attachment or activation has
upon the organisation’s communication must, however,
be examined empirically in each particular case.

From ‘homophonic’ to ‘polyphonic’ organisations

Taking systems theory as their point of departure,
sociologists have advanced a general thesis about the
specific character of some modern organisations
(Andersen, 2002). The basic premise is that the differen-
tiation process of modern society saw a crystallisation

of organisations attached primarily to one functional
system and thus dominated by its specific communicative
code. This differentiation meant that each functional
system would be ‘institutionalised’ in the shape of
particular organisational forms; in the case of, e.g. the
healthcare system, these include hospitals, clinics,
children’s nurses and so on. Such focal organisations,
which communicate by means of a primary codification,
can be defined as ‘homophonic’ organisations because a
homophonic organisation ‘has a primary codification
that regulates the relevance of codifications’ (Andersen,
2002: 34). Seen from this perspective, political parties,
public administrations and nongovernmental organisa-
tions would be dominated by the political code,
‘govern/governed’; businesses, banks and stock markets
would be dominated by the economic code, ‘to pay/not
to pay’; whereas universities, research institutions and
scientific journals would be dominated by the code of
the scientific system, ‘true/not true’. In short, homo-
phonic organisations have a primary functional coupling.

One might ask, however, whether this stereotype of
organisations as primarily attached to one functional
system adequately depicts present-day organisations.
Andersen (2002) suggests that more and more organisations
operate with a multiplicity of codes, none of which are
regulated by any fixed internal hierarchy. Therefore, as
the static link between organisations and their related
functional system increasingly dissolves, ‘polyphonic’
organisations emerge. Following from this argument is
the thesis that organisations increasingly must establish
links to functional systems and their various binary
codes by continuous decisions.

According to Andersen (2002), organisational polyphony
has emerged as functional systems have ‘exploded’ and
exceeded their original organisational forms. As an
example, he cites what he calls the ‘explosion of
education’. As a consequence of this development, the
concept of the ‘child’ – a symbol of something not yet
perfected, in the process of being formed by means of
education, training etc. (Luhmann & Schorr, 2000) – is
now increasingly applied to a series of new phenomena.
Today it is commonplace to speak of such things as
‘lifelong learning’, ‘supplementary training’, ‘adult
education’ or ‘the learning organisation’. Pedagogical
communication, therefore, is no longer restricted to
particular organisations; on the contrary, individuals,
families and organisations are increasingly being
described in pedagogical terms. It seems that everybody
and everything can now be turned into a ‘child’.

The surplus of codes available for communication in
a polyphonic organisation means that which code
should be employed at which time is never a given.
Theoretically, then, the modern organisation is traversed
by a series of heterogeneous communicative codes that
render impossible an

a priori

definition of one of those
codes as the primary. This means that the same type of

Villadsen

organisations, e.g. care providers, can in principle
attach themselves to different functional systems with
crucial effects for their communicative structures.

Polyphonic welfare organisations

The question arises, then, whether welfare organisations
can be conceived as polyphonic organisations. This
answer could well be affirmative if we follow Majgaard’s
(1995) description of the historical development of the
social services departments. In brief, Majgaard argues
that at the beginning of the 20th century, social services
departments were established as judicially codified
organisations for making decisions on citizens’ rights
to receive help in accordance with social laws.
Gradually, however, as social laws increasingly define
goals while leaving the means open, considerations
foreign to the judicial code begin to gain ground:
pedagogy and health with their respective codes
increasingly become available to welfare organisations’
communication. From the early 1990s, the economic
code became more pressing as demands were raised
that social work should not only be legal and ensure
personal development, but also be a ‘good investment’
(given presumed economic crises in the welfare state).
In principle, present-day welfare organisations can thus
be seen as polyphonic organisations that must make
continuous decisions whether to use the code of law,
pedagogy, health or economy for communicating about
clients and for making self-descriptions. This perspective
is illustrated in Figure 1.

It has been suggested that ‘social help’ constitutes a
separate functional system (Baecker, 1994), but this
idea has met serious reservations from followers of
Luhmann (Bommes & Scherr, 2000) and it has,
therefore, been left out of the model. Similarly, it has
been suggested that some welfare organisations attach
themselves to the religious system and its concepts of
unconditional care and ‘being where the other one is’
(Lindberg, 2006; Villadsen, 2007), and this suggestion
finds some support in the analysis below.

Essential to the perspective of systems theory is that
communication is pure ‘emergence’ and so has a very
fluid character. Communication can change its
operational mode from one moment to the next. If the
codification changes in a conversation, not only does
the whole content then change, but a new horizon for
the continuation of the conversation is also established
(Andersen, 2002: 30). For example, a district chief
might say to a social worker, ‘You may be accurate
when you say that the client is highly motivated, but we
have no resources for that plan!’ Once the conversation
changes from a pedagogical codification to an economic
one, the problem of scarcity suddenly emerges, resulting
in a new horizon for possible further communication
and decision making.

Again, it must be emphasised that systems theory
gives strict priority to communication in its conception
of society, organisations and interaction. Traditional
sociological and psycho-sociological concepts such as
‘meaningful action’, ‘experience’, ‘interpretation’ etc.,
are radically reconfigured or excluded from Luhmann’s
theory. Thus, individuals as thinking and living beings
are relegated to a position of ‘environment’ for com-
municative systems. The analytical problem, therefore,
becomes one of analysing how persons, or specific
aspects of persons, are made relevant by communication.
More specifically, for the purpose of the case study that
follows, a crucial task becomes specifying how the
homeless person is made relevant by the involved
organisation’s self-descriptions.

The following research questions shall take us from
the conceptual framework to empirical analysis.

1. We take as basic premise the thesis of polyphonic
welfare – a surplus of heterogeneous codes available
for communication and decision making in modern
welfare organisations. It makes a crucial difference
which functional system a welfare organisation
attaches itself to when it makes decisions, in the way
that the organisation codifies a homeless client – e.g.
as a patient, a subject of rights, a ‘child’ in need of

Figure 1. The polyphonic welfare organisation. My model, inspired
by Andersen (2002).

Polyphonic social work

learning or an investment object. Can clashes
between incompatible codes explain problems of
cooperation and coordination among different
welfare organisations?

2. We see welfare organisations as systems of commu-
nication that, in part, construct themselves by means
of system/environment distinctions. That is, an
organisation constructs its identity through internal
constructions of the organisation’s environment. The
description of the environment is, then, at the same
time a self-description. The question is how welfare
organisations create themselves by means of such
system/environment constructions?

3. The existence of self-referential and self-enclosed –
but structurally dependent – welfare organisations
creates a need for communicative strategies that can
somehow make the complexity of one system available
to the other. Which strategies can the organisations use
to make clients recognisable for partner organisations?

Modern re-housing work

We shall now apply these questions to a concrete
analysis of practical social work with homeless clients.
The case is ‘re-housing work’, which is a kind of social
work that aims to successfully place the homeless client
in a permanent form of independent accommodation.
Re-housing normally involves several organisations –
usually homeless shelters supported by the county, a
municipal caseworker and a housing support unit in the
local social services departments. Homeless shelters are
often run by voluntary organisations that contract with
the local county, it is, therefore, a domain of both public
and voluntary agents. The empirical basis for the study
is interviews with shelter workers, caseworkers and
administrative chiefs in two regions of Denmark–Fyn
and Copenhagen.

A key question pertaining to organisational identity,
cooperation and management among the organisations
involved in re-housing work is how these organisational
systems delimit themselves through communicative
boundary constructions. The following analysis will
describe in more detail the self-observation of specific
welfare organisations and the way in which these
organisations make sense of their environment – including,
in particular, the homeless client and collaborating
organisations. Two organisations are of key importance
in re-housing work: homeless shelters and those

housing support units that are to support clients when
they are referred from shelters to independent housing.

The shelters generally construct their identities around
concepts of care, closeness and personal engagement,
as opposed to professional treatment. Employees from
shelters emphasise that

their

approach to homeless
clients is based on the principle of care-giving. Indeed, a
leader of a shelter run by a voluntary organisation explains
that a core objective of in-service employee training is
‘to get rid of old conceptions about change through
professional intervention’. By opposing shelters to other
types of homeless services, the leader makes a clear
distinction between care and professional intervention:

Shelters are care institutions. The crucial thing is to
give care on the clients’ own terms, and this approach
stands in opposition to all the other institutions
where they believe that treatment and professional
intervention is the recipe for success. The challenge
has been to remain as a care institution that doesn’t
make such demands.

When defining the shelter as primarily a care institution,
the shelters communicate through a distinction between
presence and distance. They stress the crucial importance
of developing ‘close and trusting relationships’ with the
clients. For a client to be capable of making the changes
necessary for personal development, shelter workers
hold the establishment of close relations as an
absolutely essential condition. The client must be
present physically at the activities in the shelter, and he
or she must be involved mentally. A client must open
up his or her personality and share personal or drug-
related problems with employees and other users –
these are considered to be essential first steps for a
positive client development. An employee at a shelter
run by a voluntary organisation explains:

There has to be a trusting relationship if the client
is to dare to give up some of the destructive habits
and behavioural patterns that have so far been part
of his personality. He needs someone to lean upon
and relate to while undergoing such a change.

The dominance of care in the homeless shelters’ self-
description means that the employees hardly ever
consider the issue of how to maintain some distance
from clients and how to avoid the risk of taking over
responsibility. Rather, these employees take as their start-
ing point that only on the basis of a close relationship
can their clients fully recognise their problems, become
aware of their own aspirations, and thereby initiate
positive developments towards re-housing in society.

The environment as an internal construction

Turning to the organisations and social work activities
run by the municipalities, we see a striking difference.

The case study is based on 35 qualitative interviews that were
carried out in a study of re-housing work undertaken by a
research team at the Danish National Institute of Social
Research (Fabricius, Tilia, Ramsbøl & Villadsen, 2005).
Semi-structured interviews were used, and respondents were
asked about their methods for social work, their values and
their cooperation with partners. All interviews were transcribed.

Villadsen

Here, sceptical reflection on the risks of helping clients
too much and making them passive is dominant, as
illustrated by the message ‘we must always keep the
autonomy of the client in mind!’ Contrary to the self-
description centred around care and close relations
dominant in the shelters, the municipal social workers
stress the importance of maintaining what they call an
‘impersonal relationship’.

The housing support units under the social services
department play an important part in re-housing work,
as they continue the social work after the client has
been referred from a shelter. Crucially, these units
emphasise ‘help as self-help’ as the fundamental principle
for their work. An employee states:

If there is a common principle for our work it must
be the principle of ‘help as self-help’ – that I
shouldn’t do everything for them if they can do it
themselves. And this can be very difficult since many
of our clients are true experts when it comes to
persuading other people to do things for them.

This quote expresses the idea of conducting social work
with a certain degree of ‘coolness’ or self-restriction on
the social workers’ part, so that they do not inflict
themselves too much upon the client. Indeed, an overly
caring approach would appear as ‘non-help’ in the self-
observation of the housing support units. In several
interviews, the staff members state that the kind of care
that the shelters give can very easily become too
intrusive and create passivity. A housing support worker
says:

They create a safe environment in which clients are
fixed and restrained. The employees bond with the
clients – they celebrate Christmas, they go to the
beach, they arrange activities and so on. Sometimes
I think that the clients are nursed too much – all this
care can almost become a bit sickening.

The housing support units are highly critical of too
much bonding between professionals and clients and
emphasise that good social work must be based on a
‘professional relationship with the client’. As this
relationship is conceived as a professional effort, it does
not imply any need for forming close relationships or
establishing some kind of friendship. Therefore, one of
the principles guiding the matching of clients with
housing support workers is that they must be strangers
at the time of their first meeting. The housing support
units indicate professionalism and impartiality in their
self-observation, but construct an image of the shelters
as doing the exact opposite, i.e. as inflicting themselves
on clients in an unprofessional manner.

Conversely, when evaluating the work of housing
support workers, the shelters contend that municipal
workers have an insufficient knowledge of their clients
and that they often give up too quickly on difficult

clients. Shelter employees describe how municipal
social workers tend to ‘accept a closed door’, and they
stress that such a closed door is in fact ‘a cry for help’
from isolated clients. According to shelter staff, the
reason that the housing support units do not approach
their clients more actively is because they do not have
‘the necessary relationship’ with the clients. A leader
of a county-run shelter:

When it comes to the outreach workers, I think that
the problem is in the relationship. That is… they do
not reach the clients.

We see how the organisations to a large degree
construct their self-identity by describing other care
providers as a negative otherness. These incompatible
self-descriptions both create different positions or
‘gazes’ for observing the homeless person and set up
different criteria for what counts as good social work.

It follows implicitly from the above quotes that the
organisations attach themselves to different functional
systems which ‘colour’ their communication differently.
The municipal social services departments seem
primarily to attach their communication to the judicial
system, the economic system and the educational
system. The municipal caseworker considers which
services the client has the right to receive and if there
are resources. Decisions are made on clients’ access to
services by assessing whether the client is in a learning
process or not. The shelters, on the other hand, speak
in terms of unconditional care, the inner humanity in
all of us and of ‘being where the other one is’, thereby
activating the semantics of the religious system. This
religious (Christian) emphasis on seeing any human
being as a unique individual contrasts fundamentally
with the political logic of the welfare state and its
emphasis on universalism, equality before the law and
uniform treatment (Lindberg, 2006). To investigate in
more detail how welfare organisations shape themselves
by attaching to functional systems and their com-
municative rationalities is an important challenge for
future welfare studies, but beyond the scope of this article.

Communicative strategies

From the standpoint of systems theory, social systems
– welfare organisations included – are self-referential
systems that are fundamentally insensitive toward each
others’ communication. They can, however, communicate
about the same theme, for instance ‘help’, or about the
same client, but each will do so from within their
particular horizon. They will apply different criteria for
what constitutes good social help, what is good client
development, what is motivation etc.

From this perspective, it should be no surprise that
several of the organisations involved in re-housing work
complain that they often have difficulties recognising

Polyphonic social work

clients who have already been described and categorised
by other organisations. A widely held explanation is
that the referring organisation has simply not supplied
enough information about the client. In other cases, the
problem is said to be a lack of precision in the case
files exchanged between the organisations. For instance,
employees from a housing support unit state that they
rarely receive sufficient information about a client
before the client is referred to them. They emphasise
that the written information often does not accurately
represent the client – and sometimes is directly
misleading.

Another possibility, however, is that the client has
been codified in such a way – e.g. by means of
diagnoses and medical concepts – that he or she cannot
be recognised by the communication of the receiving
organisation. A housing support worker says about the
case manuals:

Yes, it does say if the client has been involved in
crimes or if he’s suffering from any psychic
disorder or something of that kind. Things like that
are written down, but we have no idea how he’ll
appear psychologically. The description doesn’t tell
us this.

Interviewer:

It doesn’t say anything about that?

It says if he has received counselling in 1987 or
1988, or if he has been admitted to hospital and so
on and so forth, but how he is right now…

Interviewer:

This is not described?

Well, sometimes it is described in a few sentences.
But then we experience something completely
different when we meet people and start working
with them.

Interviewer:

Then you experience that the
characterisation you’ve received does not
correspond to your own observations?

Yes, this is sometimes the case.

Social workers emphasise that sharing the same training
and professional background does not prevent
professionals from interpreting what they see very
differently. Moreover, they state that the different
institutional contexts can differ so widely from each
other that the professional who receives a case often has
no understanding of ‘the sender’s environment’. A chief
of housing support unit:

I think that part of the problem is that the message
that is being conveyed is not clear enough. And
sometimes I think that the recipient is simply not part
of the world where the message is made. The
recipient has his conceptions and his views, and the
place where the message is made is characterised

by completely different ones. Quite frankly, I don’t
think that people are on the same wavelength these
days.

These difficulties notwithstanding, information is
exchanged, particularly by means of those ‘action
plans’ that are to form the basis for the cooperation
between the social workers in the shelters, housing
support workers and municipal caseworkers. Representa-
tives from shelters mention that carefully elaborated
descriptions of clients are crucial for establishing a
positive cooperation with the social services depart-
ments. They also emphasise, interestingly, that ‘writing
the right things in the right manner’ is of major
importance when cooperating with the municipal case-
workers. In other words, communicating through the
right codification is essential.

At the shelters, employees explain that a carefully
elaborated action plan is a decisive condition for
securing a client the quickest and most positive treatment
from the social services department. A key element in
facilitating a positive outcome is to obtain ‘support
statements’ from other agencies – for instance, from
drug addiction centres or psychiatry teams – that help
reinforce the social worker’s recommendations. An
employee from a shelter run by a voluntary organisation
in Copenhagen says:

When I fill out the recommendations, I ask the
contact persons to make support statements, because
I’ve been told by the Social Services Department that
the better the client is described, the better they can
assess his case. As I understand it, clients aren’t
treated according to a ‘first come, first served’
principle. There is no queuing up. The client is
evaluated according to the professional statements,
which ascertain if the client is ready to move, etc.
It’s important to prove that there is development
going on in the case. And it is for this reason that I
ask for continuous assessments, so that the people in
charge can see that there is progress in the case.

What is described in the case file, then, is not the ‘real
client’ but a certain picture of the client that will
hopefully lead to the desired outcome of the case.
Operating within polyphonic welfare requires the
employment of ‘strategies of the second order’. This
term designates that the organisation describes itself or
clients with the awareness that it could have made
alternative descriptions. But the organisation chooses a
specific codification for strategic reasons in that this
codification makes possible particular communications,
themes, argumentations, inclusions etc. (Andersen,
2002). How to decode other system’s self-descriptions
and ‘parasitically’ employ foreign codes is a key
challenge for social workers operating in polyphonic
welfare.

Villadsen

Conclusion

This article has sought to demonstrate some possibilities
for critically analysing welfare organisations by drawing
upon systems theory – that is, the concepts of polyphonic
organisations, self-observation through environment
constructions and second-order communicative strategies.
The case study shows that the organisations involved
in re-housing work construct themselves and their
conception of good social work in incompatible ways,
creating a polyphonic domain in which conflicting
images of client and helper simultaneously offer them-
selves. We have suggested briefly how the involved
welfare organisations attach themselves to different
functional systems.

The article’s diagnosis has consequences for both
social worker and client. For the social worker the
decision of how to codify the client – and the concomitant
valuation of specific measures and specific client
developments – becomes crucial for his or her chances
of bringing a specific case to a successful outcome. The
success or failure of a case, then, appears to be highly
dependent on specific social workers’ capacity to think
outside the terms of his or her organisation’s self-
description and to write in the terms of referring
authorities and partner organisations. This situation
makes possible very dissimilar paths for similar clients,
as the development of their cases will depend upon
which organisational systems they are observed by in
the first place – that is, which welfare organisations and
specific social workers they happen to encounter in their
quest for help.

The social worker operating within ‘polyphonic
welfare’ must undertake considerable translation work
and the second-order communicative strategies. Today,
it seems that the social worker must increasingly take
up a position as a kind of

mediator

capable of
translating between different systems and their
communicative codes. Furthermore, the social worker
must be capable of involving the right professionals and
of using their expert statements to codify the client in
the right way and at the right moment in the process.
The ‘polyphonic social worker’, therefore, must not only
be capable of representing clients in the ‘right’ way, but
must also distribute discursive rights to different agents
and mediate their statements in strategic inter-
organisational communication. This complex management
task seems to constitute an increasing challenge facing
today’s social workers.

The political promotion of welfare mix parallels
another tendency in current social policy: the demand
for a unique meeting with the client. Social work
discourse presently speaks of ‘meeting the clients where
they are’, ‘respecting the client’s unique individuality’,
and stresses that social workers should ‘use their full
personality when meeting clients’, not merely their

professional background (Andersen, 2003; Villadsen,
2004). This increased indication of the employee’s
personality and unique resources creates a kind of
‘individualisation’ of social work problems. As part of
the environment of help communication, the social
worker is now made relevant as someone who should
reflect upon his or her own ‘self-management’ and
personal client contact when explaining the inevitable
failures of social work. Perhaps, then, the problem of
managing the multiplicity of incompatible codes is
currently being transformed into a problem of social
workers’ self-management. How to re-introduce the
organisational level and other structural conditions in
welfare organisations’ self-reflection would be an important
challenge. More specifically, studying the specific
conditions for doing social work that results from the
promotion of welfare mix and increased public–private
cooperation constitutes a key challenge for future research
and policy debate.

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THE HERO(INE) ON A JOURNEY: A POSTMODERN CONCEPTUAL
FRAMEWORK FOR SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE

Phillip Dybicz
Keimyung University

Narrafive therapy, the strengths perspecfive, and solufion-focused therapy are

3 prominent examples of social work pracfices heavily informed by social con-

strucfionism. Yet getting students from understanding theory to applying theo-

ry can often be chaüenging. This arficle offers a conceptual framework to aid

students in the appUcafion of social construcfionism and the theory of mimesis

in the aforemenfioned 3 approaches. The “hero(ine) on a journey” is the frame-

work offered for capturing the linguisfic turn that informs postmodern pracfice:

a focus on how narrafives construct the idenfity of the client, how the client’s

efforts at reaching a preferred idenfity serve as the engine that drives change,

and how these efforts arise from an endeavor at consciousness-raising.

MANY CHALLENGES AWATT t h e i n s t r u c t o r w h o

aftempts to teach students innovafive pracfice

approaches such as the strengths perspecfive,

narrafive theory, and solufion-focused therapy.

These approaches have arisen as a crifique to

tradifional approaches of social work interven-

fions. Yet when aftempfing to learn these

approaches, students commorüy struggle with

breaking free from their tradifional (i.e., mod-

ernist) understanding of social work as an

effort at problem solving—an effort predomi-

nated by concerns over funcfiorüng and adapt-

ing to the environment. Teaching various post-

modem theories—such as social construcfion-

ism that aU three of the approaches embrace

(Berg & De Jong, 1996; Saleebey 2006a; White &

Epston, 1990)—provides a new phüosophical

base of understanding on which students may

stand, and thus better grasp these new

approaches. Yet such theories are often a bit

esoteric for students to deeply comprehend.

When this is the case, a good conceptual frame-

work can serve as a bridge between esoteric

theorefical concepts and their pracfical applica-

fion in an intervenfion (for example, person-in-

environment serves such a purpose). The pur-

pose of this arficle is to introduce such a con-

ceptual framework: The hero(ine) on a journey.

In their crifique of the medical model and

embrace of social construcfionism, the three

Journal of Social Work Education, Vol. 48, No. 2 (Spring/Summer 2012).
©2012, Council on Social Work Education, Inc. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.5175/JSWE.2012.201000057 2 6 7

2 6 8 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION

aforementioned approaches seek to move
away from interventions based on concerns
over functioriing. This postmodern stance is
reflected in the following statement made by
Saari (1991):

[T]he adaptive point of view has pro-
vided an inadequate foundation for
clinical social work theory. A theory of
meaning in which psychological health
is indicated by a constructed personal
meaning system (or identity) that is
highly differentiated, articulated, and
integrated is proposed to take the place
of conceptualizations about adapta-
tion, (p. 4)

Saleebey (2006b), for the strengths per-
spective, speaks of painting new brushstrokes
of identity “that depict capacity and ingenu-
ity” (p. 88); White (2004), for narrative thera-
py, emphasizes giving attention to “construc-
tions of men’s and women’s identities” (p. 45);
and De Jong and Berg (2001), for solution-
focused therapy, speak toward “the co-
constructLon of competence that is characteris-
tic of solution-focused work” (p. 365). The
concern over helping the client articulate his
or her identity in a life-enhancing way (i.e.,
depicting competencies and strengths) is
apparent in each of these approaches. But how
does this translate into a guide for interven-
tion efforts? Such a question often befuddles
students.

One way to elucidate the central impor-
tance of the social construction of identity in
these interventions is by offering another the-
ory. The theory of mimesis—first offered by
Aristotle (1996/c. 335 b.c.) but recently updat-

ed by Ricoeur (1984-1988)—offers a theory of
human action based within identity (a brief
explanation of mimesis is offered in the follow-
ing section). Yet this also ulustrates the chal-
lenge faced when attempting to teach students;
a common way to elaborate an esoteric theory
is often through reference to another esoteric
theory. This makes the need for a conceptual
framework to act as a bridge even greater.

This article takes the position that the fol-
lowing basic elements are at work in each of
the three approaches (strengths perspective,
solution-focused therapy, and narrative thera-
py). Based on their critique of the medical
model, each is concerned that the presenting
problem is exerting undue influence on shap-
ing the client’s identity. The helping response
thus involves assisting the cHent in socially
constructing an alternate identity, an identity
that is more life-enhancing and empowering.
To embrace the idea that an alternate identity
is possible (i.e., multiple realties exist), the
client must undergo an expansion of con-
sciousness (i.e., consciousness-raising). An
alternate identity is then constructed that
depicts strengths and successes. Once this
new identity is constructed and embraced, it
serves as the new source directing client
actions, which in turn leads to ameUoradon of
the presenting problem.

Postmodernism has been concisely
described as “the linguistic turn” (e.g.,
Munslow, 2005) due to the importance it
places on the role and influence of language in
human endeavors. As these practices are
based within theories of language, the analo-
gy being made here draws on the notion that
the client’s lived experiences are viewed as
comprising a narrative, or behavioral text

THE HERO(INE) ON A JOURNEY 2 6 9

(White & Epston, 1990). The emphasis on

highUghting cUent strengths, competencies,

and successes speaks to placing the cUent as

the protagorüst (i.e., hero or heroine) of one’s

life narrafive. Hence, presenting problems are

framed as issues concerning confronting

oppressive or problem-saturated narrafives,

and thus helping the cUent achieve a transfor-

mafion from a debUitating self-idenfity to one

that is life-enhancing (De Jong & Berg, 2008;

Saleebey, 2006c; White & Epston, 1990). The

metaphor of the intervenfion process as a

journey undertaken by the cUent, a journey of

self-discovery, has been evoked by a number

of pracfifioners and authors advocating these

approaches (Dimcan, MiUer, & Sparks, 2004;

Rapp & Goscha, 2006; White, 2007).

The theory used as the irispirafion for the

Hero(ine) on a Journey (HOJ) conceptual

framework derives from noted anthropologist

Joseph CampbeU’s (1968/1949) theory of the

monomyth, which he outlines in his seminal

work The Hero With a Thousand Faces. The

monomyth captures all of the basic elements

previously identified: breaking free from an

estabUshed idenfity and constructing a new

one via an expansion of one’s consciousness.

However, before describing CampbeU’s theo-

ry of the monomyth and how it supports HOJ,

it is important to look at the theory of mime-

sis. The HOJ conceptual framework is under-

girded by a concepfion of causaUty that arises

in narrative—one that explains present

acfions of persons/characters by their imag-

ined future idenfity of who they would like to

be (hence the focus on capturing the dreams

and goals of the client). Ricoeur (1984-1988)

expertly detaUs this concepfion of causaUty—

an updating of Aristotle’s conception of

mimesis—in his three-volume work Time and

Narrative. Although a thorough descripfion of

Ricoeur’s elaboration of mimesis and its

impUcafions for social work has been provid-

ed elsewhere (Dybicz, 2010), it is useful to

briefly review the major concepts before mov-

ing on.

Ricoeur on Mimesis

As first conceived by Aristotle in his Poetics

(1996/c. 335 b.c.), simply put, mimesis is the

process of having an image of who we are and

who we wovild Uke to be, the latter mofivating

our present acfions. As Davis (1992) notes con-

cerning Arfistotle’s Poetics, “AU human acfion

is always an imitafion of acfion—AchiUes is

Uving up to his own image of himself . . . Uke

aU brave men, he wants ‘to die Uke AchiUes'”

(i.e., courageously; p. xviii). Building on

insights from social construcfionism in his

examinafion of a broad scope of narrafive,

Ricoeur (1984-1988) updates Aristotle’s con-

cept of mimesis by spUtting it into three parts:

prefigurafion (mimesis^), configurafion (mime-

sis^), and refigtirafion (mimesis^).

Prefigurafion (mimesis^) is the proposifion

that humans intuifively and naturally seek to

imderstand their Uved experiences by placing

them within a narrafive structure. When one

teUs a story about oneself, one does not begin

with one’s birth and give a minute-by-minute

account of what has happened. Rather, one

selects a begirvning point, then selecfively

chooses from a wide array of experiences to

include as pertinent to the middle of the story,

and then usuaUy projects an ending to the

story in one’s future. This is what cUents do

when they access services for an issue they are

facing. From this narrafive structure a theme

2 7 0 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION

arises. It is the theme that serves to determine
whether or not a particular lived experience
(i.e., event) is considered appropriate to fit
within the narrative. Unfortunately, when
most clients access services, they walk in with
a theme of dysfunction (a dominant theme
within the modem discourse): The pertinent
events related by the client, and often asked
for by the social worker, are those that speak
to the underlying causes of the problem. This
theme of dysfunction is unfortunate because
the theme used to organize the events also
speaks to defining the identity of the main
character in the narrative (i.e., the client):
Within mimesis, one is defined by one’s
actions.

Configuration (mimesis^) is a consciousness-
raising process. As previously mentioned, pré-
figuration is an intuitive process; we intuitive-
ly use thematic templates from culture that we
carry around within us. The first step in this
consciousness-raising process is the recogni-
tion that the current theme being used to
organize one’s events is undercutting one’s
self-worth. Next is the recognition that one can
consciously select difterent events to comprise
the story, causing a new theme to arise that
enhances one’s self-worth: In short, one can
construct a new reaHt)’. This consciousness-
raising process captures the metaphor of
author-editor that is often used in postmodern
practice literature (Goldstein, 1990; Saleebey,
2006b; White, 2007) to describe the client-
social worker collaboration. It is important to
note that there are some limitations in this
endeavor. First, one must choose from one’s
actual lived experiences (when creating the
beginning and middle of the narrative).
Second, some events are absolutely necessary

to the story, what Abboft (2002) describes as
constituent events. So, for example, if a preg-
nant teenager comes in for services, the event
of her pregnancy is a constituent event; it can-
not be ignored.

Yet Abbott (2002) notes that supplemen-
tary events also make up a narrative.
Supplementary events are not essential for
defining the story, yet they are fully responsi-
ble for the theme that arises: For example, a
story of pregnancy can have various possible
themes. With configuration, it is these supple-
mentary events that are consciously selected
to be placed within the narrative. Thus, a
client’s strengths and successes are looked for
in relation to the issue. Including these
successes—and the new theme that arises
from their inclusion—does more than simply
enhance a client’s self-worth. It opens up new
possibilities for attainable preferred identities
in the future (e.g., being a good mother). By
viewing these preferred identities as attain-
able and seeking to embrace them (i.e., who I
want to be), it causes one to act in the present
in accordance with this preferred identity
(Brubaker & Wright, 2006).

There is also refiguration (mimesis^). This
happens simultaneously with configuration,
so the consciousness-raising effort is actually
a configuration-refiguration process. Refig-
uration refers to the proposition that we all act
as audience members to the narrative being
created. The person creating the narrative
simultaneously acts as an audience member,
as well as other important individuals in the
person’s Ufe. It is important to note that the
social construction of reality is a social
process. For a narrative to “ring true” it has to
achieve a level of verisimilitude within the

THE HERO(INE) ON A JOURNEY 2 7 1

public sphere. This is where the importance of
caring relationships comes into play. When a
narrative is being configured, caring individu-
als within the client’s Ufe are able to reflect
back to the client the message “Yes, I see you
that way too” (e.g., “Yes, I see those same
qualities within you that will help you to be a
good mother”). It is this process that lends the
newly created narrative verisimilitude, thus
constructing a new reality. Ultimately, this
new thematic template becomes the natural
and intuitive way for the person to organize
his or her lived experiences for this particular
narrative, and thus he or she falls back into
the stage of préfiguration.

Joseph Campbeii’s The Hero With

a Thousand Faces

Campbell’s work (1968/1949) is a compara-
tive analysis of myths from aroimd the world:
He analyzes myths across numerous cultures
and across the centuries. Through his exten-
sive research, Campbell uncovers a basic
structure that is common to all myth; he labels
this basic structure the monomyth. Myths are
particularly relevant in this analysis in that
they represent the poems of Aristotle—the
goal being to provoke an intellectual insight,
or consciousness-raising experience, in the
audience. They all speak to the notion of a rite
of passage taking place, or in other words, a
transformation of identity. The events that the
hero(ine) experiences lead to a new theme
arising concerning the hero(ine)’s life, and
consequently, the hero(ine)’s identity. Noble
and admirable qualities arise and are high-
lighted, befitting to the present role of the
main character as that of a hero(ine). The anal-
ogy being drawn to HOJ is that this basic

structure—this rite of passage to a new
identity—strongly reflects our own efforts to
grasp meaning from the narratives that we
create through the configuration-refiguration
process when facing challenges in our lives.

Campbell’s monomyth can be succinctly
described as that of a hero(ine) on a journey.
Thus the monomyth’s fimdamental structural
elements concerning this journey of transfor-
mation are adopted as the basic elements for
the conceptual framework of HOJ. Arising
from his analysis of thousands of myths,
Campbell (1968/1949) identified five funda-
mental narrative elements common to myths
across cultures and across historical epochs: a
Call to Adventure, Crossing Beyond a Threshold,

Overcoming Trials and Tests, Receiving Aid, a n d

Facing a Supreme Ordeal Yielding a Reward.

These basic elements, expressed in one partic-
ular way or another depending on the culture,
are what comprise the monomyth.

Campbell (1968/1949) elaborates as fol-
lows. The hero(ine)’s journey begins with a
“call to adventure.” The hero(ine) is either
lured away, carried away, or voluntarily pro-
ceeds. Sometimes a hero(ine) may seek to
refuse this caU, but this always results in turn-
ing the hero(ine) into a victim to be saved and
one’s world tuming into a wasteland. Eor
those who choose to proceed, they “cross
beyond the threshold” of their world.
“Beyond the threshold, then, the hero [sic]
journeys through a world of unfamuiar yet
strangely intimate forces, some of which
severely threaten him (tests), some of which
give him magical aid (helpers). When he
arrives at the nadir of the mythological roimd,
he undergoes a supreme ordeal and gains his
reward . . . intrinsically it is an expansion of

272 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION

consciousness and therewith of being” (p.
246). Thus the next elements that the hero(ine)
faces are a number of “trials and tests,” but he
or she also “receives aid” to help with these
chaüenges, with the final chaüenge culminat-
ing in facing a “supreme ordeal )âelding a
reward.” As Campbeü states, “This popular
motif gives emphasis to the lesson that the
passage of the threshold is a form of self-
annihüation. . . . the hero goes inward, to be
bom again” (p. 91).

The Hero(ine) on a Journey (HOJ)

HOJ, informed by Campbeü’s analysis, is not
directed toward providing a template in which
to create narrafives but rather as a conceptual
framework informing the consciousness-
raising process linked to creating a new
narrafive—and the resulting journey of self-
discovery that inevitably results. One thing
that immediately becomes apparent to stu-
dents who are introduced to this framework is
that the intervenfion is not speaking to con-
cerns about adaptafion. As noted earlier, these
pracfice approaches rely on seeking, elaborat-
ing, and developing noble qualifies of the
client (i.e., sftengths, successes, and compe-
tencies). Within HOJ, the cUent is cast as a
hero(ine)—the identificafion and elaborafion
of the client’s noble qualifies serves an impor-
tant and crifical role. A key focus is on how
societal narratives shape (and potentially
undercut) one’s identity and self-worth,
directly infiuencing levels of personal agency
and empowerment. Casting a client as a
hero(ine) underscores his or her personal
agency, enhances his or her self-worth, and
facilitates his or her empowerment.

In addifion, as described earlier, these same
postmodern pracfice approaches draw on the
metaphor of the client undertaking a journey,
resulting in a transformafion of being. As
reflected by Ricoeur’s (1984-1988) theory of
mimesis, the social construcfion of a counter-
story is a consciousness-raising experience—
and the resulting change in consciousness
prompts a change in one’s idenfity (from
“dysfunctional” to valiantly struggling
“hero(ine)”—arising from the newly config-
ured narrafive).

The HOJ framework serves to connect the
theorefical concepts of mimesis and social
constructionism to the various practice
approaches that employ them. Hence, various
metaphors guiding postmodern pracfice—
such as the cHent as the expert, the client-
social worker relafionship as author-editor,
the client as hero(ine) of his or her Ufe story,
and undertaking a journey of self-discovery—
become theoretically grounded concepts
guiding pracfice. To begin with, the case study
of Nick offered by White and Epston (1990),
broken up into a running commentary, is used
to iüustrate the various steps of HOJ in its
appHcafion to narrafive therapy in a thorough
manner. Space limitafions aüow for more
abbreviated explanations to follow under
applicafions to the strengths perspecfive and
solufion-focused therapy.

HOJ Applied to Narrative

Therapy

This classic case study is chosen because it
makes for an exceüent learning tool for stu-
dents. This is because Nick’s presenting
problem—encopresis—at first glance seems to
clearly be a problem of funcfioning, and hence

THE HERO(INE) ON A JOURNEY 2 7 3

leads one to beHeve that it should be treated in
this way. Yet White (acting as therapist) treats
it as a problem in identity construction (White
and Epston, 1990). And in the short span of
three sessions, Nick achieves dramatic
progress in what had before been an
intractable problem.

Call to Adventure

Nick, aged six years, was brought to
see me by his parents. Sue and Ron.
Nick had a very long history of enco-
presis, which had resisted aU attempts
to resolve it, including those instituted
by various therapists. Rarely did a day
go by without an “accident” or “inci-
dent.” (White & Epston, 1990, p. 43)

The hero(ine)’s “call to adventure” is the con-
frontation of a dramatic event (lured or car-
ried away) or the desire to reinterpret an exist-
ing narrative (voluntarily proceeds). This first
stage represents when the client is engaging in
the préfiguration process (mimesis^): The
client is engaging in understanding of one’s
world at an intuitive level. The dramatic event
represents a recent event or series of events
that carmot be successfully (i.e., in a Ufe-
enhancing way) accounted for within one’s
present orientation (i.e., current prefigurative
understanding).

In this particular case study, it would be
Nick’s repeated incidents of encopresis that
paint him as a “bad boy” or dysfunctional.
Within his present orientation, a “good boy”
does not defecate in his pants; hence, he cannot
account for these repeated incidents in a Hfe-
enhancing way. Although the narrative “good

boys don’t soil their pants” serves a useful pur-
pose at a societal level, within the particular
experiences of Nick, it is overly denning who
he is, and thus undercutting his self-worth.
This dilemma marks one’s “call to adventure.”

Crossing the Threshold

In helping these famuy members sepa-
rate themselves and their relationships
from the problem, externalization
opened up possibilities for them to
describe themselves, each other, and
their relationships from a new
nonproblem-saturated perspective; it
enabled the development of an alterna-
tive story of family Ufe, one that was
more attractive to family members.
(White & Epston, 1990, p. 39)

The next stage is that of “crossing the thresh-
old.” It represents the client’s wiUingness to
engage in a consciousness-raising effort via
the configiiration-reHguration process. This
stage represents a movement from préfigura-
tion (mimesis )̂ to configuration (mimesis^).
One’s current orientation is not able to
account for the event(s) in a life-enhancing
way; therefore, one must pass beyond the
horizon of one’s world (Ricoeur, 1984^1988) to
achieve a reorientation that will successfully
account for the event(s). This requires a
consciousness-raising experience. This cross-
ing of a threshold can be likened to the move
of “making the familiar strange” that is pro-
moted by some postmodern theorists as a
means to spark this consciousness-raising (for
example, Bakhtin’s [1984/1929] use of the
carruval).

2 7 4 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION

For the aforemenfioned case study. White
(White & Epston, 1990) uses the technique of
extemaUzing the problem to make the famU-
iar strange. Nick’s presenting problem of
encopresis is depicted as a force outside of
Nick, acting on Nick in an aftempt to trick him
and corrupt him, and is even given a name by
Nick, “Sneaky Poo.” This extemaUzafion frees
up Nick’s consciousness to begin exploring
other quaUfies about himself—posifive, noble
quaUfies—that can now be accessed to prima-
rUy define himself.

In summary, the hero(ine) crossing the
threshold and entering a strange new land
represents the step in the helping process
when the problemafic theme and idenfity is
identified (one is dysfuncfional, a fauure, bro-
ken, etc.) and quesfioned regarding its veraci-
ty. New possible themes are now open to be
explored, themes arising ftom cUent strengths
and successes in relafion to the presenting
problem.

Overcoming Trials and Tests

When mapping the influence of family
members in the life of what we came to
caU “Sneaky Poo,” we discovered . . .
Although Sneaky Poo always tried to
trick Nick into being his playmate,
Nick could recaU a number of occa-
sions during which he had not aUowed
Sneaky Poo to “outsmart” him. . . .
There was a recent occasion during
which Sneaky Poo could have driven
Sue into a heightened sense of misery,
but she resisted and turned on the
radio instead. (White & Epston, 1990,
p. 46)

“Overcoming trials and tests” marks the next
stage. This is when the cUent begins acfively
engaging in the configurafion-refiguration
process. To transform a debiUtating narrafive
into one that is life-enhancing, one must begin
configuring the problemafic experiences into
a plotUne of overcoming trials and tests (e.g.,
marking strengths and successes). In Nick’s
case study, this occurs after the encopresis is
externalized as an oppressive influence in his
life (in eftect, excising it from Nick’s idenfity
and transforming it into a foe to be combated).
His Uved experiences are now mined for
examples of his successes: occurrences when
he successfuUy acted in resisting this influ-
ence in part or in fuU. White and Epston (1990)
term these as “unique outcomes.” These
unique outcomes are moved to the fore-
ground and form the building blocks of the
new plotUne and theme (for Nick, one of defi-
ance). Consequently, previous failures are
transformed within this new context. No
longer serving the role of determining one’s
idenfity, their meaning is transformed into
that of representing setbacks. These setbacks
occur precisely because one is human, and
thus not perfect. This new plotUne (i.e., over-
coming trials and tests) and the theme(s) that
it engenders (e.g., defiance) begins coalescing
a new meaning for one’s idenfity—for Nick, a
new meaning for what it means to be a “good
boy” (someone who acfively fights against the
influence of “Sneaky Poo”)—and consequent-
ly how one would Uke to be. This in turn
begins to guide one’s present acfions, embold-
ening one to continue to add to one’s success-
es and thus further build on this new plotline,
as Ulustrated herein.

THE HERO(INE) ON A JOURNEY 2 7 5

In response to these questions, Nick
thought that he was ready to stop
Sneaky Poo from outsmarting him so
much, and decided that he would not
be tricked into being his pla)miate any-
more. Sue had some new ideas for
refusing to let Sneaky Poo push her
into misery. (White & Epston, 1990, p.
47)

Refiguration (mimesis’̂ ) accompanies
configuration (mimesis^) at this stage. As new
events are added to one’s narrative, one acts
as audience member: judging whether these
new events fit the emerging theme(s) well
(i.e., possess verisimilitude).

After identifying Nick’s, Sue’s, and
Ron’s influence in the life of Sneaky
Poo, I introduced questions that
encouraged them to perform meaning
in relation to these examples, so that
they might “re-author” their lives and
relationships. (White & Epston, 1990,
p. 47)

The role of the editor in this step is to
get the cHent/narrator to reflect on the sig-
nificance of placing such events in this new
life-erú\ancing narrative. Special attention is
given to the theme that emerges from this
new narrative, and consequently, how this
theme reflects on the identity of the client.
This serves to further contribute to the
consciousness-raising experience. As configu-
ration (mimesis^) involves the conscious selec-
tion of lived experiences, knowledge of the
theme at work and the client’s new identity

feature arising from this theme enable the
client to more easuy recogrüze lived experi-
ences that support this new theme. In addi-
tion, having a sharper focus on the new iden-
tity arising from this theme— b̂y plugging into
mimesis’ causality of seeking “who I want to
be”—gives clearer direction to consciously
directed future actions. This is how a change
in the client’s behavior occurs through these
approaches. Finally, one may act as audience
member to the stories others communicate
about your experiences as was described in
the previous section within the context of car-
ing relationships. This is described in the next
stage, “Receiving Aid.”

Receiving Aid

“Receiving aid” is a stage that occurs concur-
rently with that of “overcoming trials and
tests.” Within HOJ, receiving help or aid is not
conceived of as a need arising from dysfunc-
tion or weakness. Rather, one receives help
because one has journeyed to a strange land
(i.e., passed beyond the horizon of one’s
world—préfiguration). Because one is a
hero(ine) possessing noble traits and values,
one is deserving of aid for one’s valiant strug-
gle. This aid serves the purpose of helping the
client achieve his or her preferred identity.
This aid can take many forms. As discussed
earlier, it may come in the form of a caring
relationship. This is the form it takes for Ron
and Sue:

Sue was making good her escape from
guilt. This had been facilitated, to an
extent, by the fact that she and Ron had
been talking more to other parents

2 7 6 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION

about the trials and tribulations of par-
enting. In so doing they had learned
that they were not the only parents
who had doubts about their parenting
skills. (White & Epston, 1990, p. 48)

The social worker acts in the role of edi-
tor: assisting the hero(ine) in the configuration
and refiguration process, affirming the client’s
narrative, and/or directing the client to share
this narrative with others (e.g., family mem-
bers; for Sue and Ron, other parents) who wiU
affirni it.

In addition, help may come in the form of
material aid—such as the linkage to resources,
a common element of social work practice.
Whether in the form of material resources,
advice, or emotional support via a caring rela-
tionship, aid serves the same purpose: It helps
move the cUent along in further strengthening
the newly constructed narrative. It aids the
configuration process by helping the client
build experiences reflective of the new plot-
line and thus the client’s new identity. Eor
example, Brubaker and Wright (2006) write
about the experience of pregnant teens and
their effort to build an identity as a “good
mother.” They elaborate on how caring rela-
tionships help support these teens in their
early efforts at building this new identity. But
information and advice given by experienced
mothers also help these teens in acquiring
skills of motherhood, and thus aid them in
building experiences reflective of good moth-
ering. Along these same unes, linkage to mate-
rial resources—such as a health clinic and pre-
natal care—serves to aid them in building
these experiences of good mothering in the
same fashion.

Tiie Supreme Ordeai Yieiding

a Reward

“The supreme ordeal yielding a reward”
marks the final stage of HOJ. It is the final step
of both configuration and refiguration. The
supreme ordeal is simply the experience that
completes the new narrative for the hero(ine).
This yields a reward of a potent insight: All
doubts fall away as to the solidity of the new
identity one has assumed (e.g., “good boy,”
“good mother”); the plotline and themes of
one’s new narrative are firmly established.
This results in a reorientation to one’s under-
standing of one’s life experiences. This partic-
ular journey of the hero(ine) has ended; the
individual moves back to the intuitive stance
of préfiguration. This usually happens in a
gradual, progressive manner. However, it can
also happen in a dramatic instant, as another
case study by White and Epston (1990) illus-
trates when Carol discards her identity as a
deserving victim and embraces her new iden-
tity of someone worthy of respect:

I didn’t know what happened but it
felt like something had snapped. I felt I
was outside my body. I was screaming
and crying at the same time: “I’ve
given, given, given and I’ve got no
more to give.” I saw a big deep hole:
“Get out or I’ll call the police.” All my
fear went . . . I felt terrific—I’m not
afraid anjmiore. “You can do nothing
to me.” I was surprised it was happen-
ing. .. . Kicking him out—that was the
solution in the back of my mind. It
happened just like you said it would.
. . . A whole new life can start for me.

THE HERO(INE) ON A JOURNEY 277

There was no room for compromise
once I started, (pp. 139-141)

HOJ Appiied to the Strengths
Perspective

Caii to Adventure

There is no difference in the elaborafion of this
step in au three appHcafions. The “caü to
adventure” represents the parficular present-
ing problem that has led the client to seek
services—and the sense that one’s prefigura-
five (mimesis-̂ ) understanding no longer ade-
quately captures one’s positive qualities,
resulting in a diminished idenfity.

Crossing the Threshoid

If we are to help throw off the yoke of
oppression, enhance a people’s sense
of empowerment, and help them
achieve whatever is important to them,
we must remove the pathological
imagery that our current assessment
methods indicate. . . . It [a strengths
assessment] does not reduce the com-
plexity of the person to a diagnosis or
set of problems, but rather it is used to
search for understanding and meaning
from the person’s viev r̂point. The cre-
ative practitioner does not see the
strengths assessment as paperwork,
but rather a canvas on which to create
a portrait of the unique person that is
before them. (Rapp & Goscha, 2006,
pp. 93-94)

Early in the engagement process, social work-
ers are urged to conduct a strengths assess-
ment. A key d5mamic at work in this process.

highlighted by the quote, is how this process
serves to help the client quesfion an old iden-
fity based in pathology and provide a frame-
work in which to begin the process with the
client of generating a more life-enhancing
idenfity reflecting his or her lived experiences.
This is an endeavor in consciousness-raising.

Overcoming Triais and Tests

Personal planning reinforces the client
as the director of the helping process
because it focuses on the person’s
unique journey of recovery. Goals are
highly individualized and the paths
toward goal achievement are limited
orüy by the creativity generated
through the helping process. (Rapp &
Goscha, 2006, p. 121)

In a sense, what is happening at this
point is the writing of a befter “text.”
Reframing is a part of this; not the
reframing of so many famüy therapies,
but adding to the picture already
painted, brush strokes that depict
capacity and ingenuity, and that pro-
vide a different colorafion to the sub-
stance of one’s life. . . . And au of this
must ring true to the person and be
grounded in the dailiness of life.
(Saleebey, 2006b, pp. 88-89)

The next step of the strengths perspecfive is to
encourage the client to develop goals to which
he or she aspires, and then provide assistance
to the client in helping him or her achieve
these goals. As Rapp and Goscha (2006) note,
this goal setting flows directly from the
strengths assessment. Hence, these goals are a

2 7 8 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION

continuation of the identity transformation
process begun in “crossing the threshold.”
What is most important about them in terms
of directing behavior (i.e., mimesis) is that
they empower a client to estabUsh a new
“who I am” and enable him or her to conceive
and then project a preferred identity of “who I
want to be.” This dynamic is best ulustrated
via the case study offered of Mrs. J:

Mrs. J. was due to be discharged into
the community after several years of
hospital residence…. Mrs. J. divulged
that she hated the idea of living in a
home and going to day centers, and
that she really wanted to be the Queen
[of England]. She challenged the
Practitioner to work toward that aim.
Without promising too much, the
Practitioner began to work out with
Mrs. J. what she felt the Queen did that
was worth aiming for. It emerged that
Mrs. J. beUeved that the Queen did not
have financial or administrative wor-
ries, she always knew where she was
going to Uve, people respected her
because she helped them, and most
importantly, she had “companions”
and “ladies in waiting” who helped
her and kept her company. The subse-
quent assessment stated that Mrs. J.
needed a strong sense of financial
security and the guarantee of help with
day-to-day organization, she needed
to move to one location and be prom-
ised that she need never move again,
she needed to feel that she was helping
people and feel respected for it, and
she needed some “old-fashioned”

companior\ship. (Bleach & Ryan, 1995,
p. 175 quoted in Rapp & Goscha, 2006,
p. 133).

Rather than looking at Mrs. J’s goal con-
cretely, the thoughtful practitioner in this case
study recognized her goal as representing a
theme of a preferred identity. As such, the
practitioner was able to creatively develop
workable, concrete goals that retained Mrs. J’s
theme. Importantly, as noted in the quote by
Saleebey (2006b), this new description offered
by the practitioner must “ring true” for the
cUent (i.e., possess verisimilitude).

Receiving Aid

Resource acquisition and advocacy
have always been central themes in the
strengths perspective. From the begin-
ning these activities have been high-
Ughted as important in bringing the
model aUve. (SulUvan & Rapp, 2006, p.
275)

The strengths perspective places major focus
on the role community resources play in help-
ing the cUent achieve his or her goals and
achieve “who I want to be.” It’s authors also
recognize the important role played by caring
relationships, as described previously, of mir-
roring or reflecting back to clients, “I see you
that way too” (Rapp & Goscha, 2006; Saleebey,
2006b).

The Supreme Ordeai Yieiding

a Reward

As previously described, inteUectual insight
occurs that moves the cUent to begin intuitive-
ly constructing events within a narrative that

THE HERO(INE) ON A JOURNEY 2 7 9

supports his or her preferred idenfity, prompt-
ing terminafion.

HOJ Applied to Solution-Focused

Therapy
Call to Adventure

As stated previously, the “caU to adventure”
represents the parficular presenting problem
that has led the client to seek services, the
sense that one’s prefigurative (mimesis^)
understanding no longer adequately captures
one’s posifive quaUfies, resulting in a dimin-
ished idenfity.

Crossing the Threshold

Furthermore, the miracle question
requires an alterafion in both the ther-
apist’s and the cUent’s everyday way
of thinking. And this is a rather rapid
paradigmafic shift from the way most
people conceptualize and talk about
problems both in therapy and every-
day life…. We thirüc it makes a difter-
ence whether or not the therapist
assumes that cUents have the capacity
to create meaningful descripfions of
what they want their Uves to look like
and how they want to be in the world.
Asking the miracle question both
implies and demands faith in the
cUent’s capacity to do this and the
quesfion needs to be asked in a manner
that communicates this faith, (de
Shazer et al., 2007, pp. 38-39)

For solution-focused therapy, the miracle
quesfion acts as the main therapeufic tool to
facUitate movement by the cUent from prefig-

urafion (mimesis^), or “the cUent’s everyday
way of thinking” (de Shazer et al., p. 38) to
achieve the “paradigmafic shift”—or raised
consciousness—^necessary to begin configura-
fion (mimesis^). By laying the groundwork on
which to begin configurafion (mimesis^), the
miracle quesfion seeks to help the cUent elab-
orate the causal mechanisms underl)áng the
configurafion process: the image of “how they
want to be in the world” (de Shazer et al., p.
39).

Overcoming Trials and Tests

Excepfions are those past experiences
in a cUent’s Ufe when the problem
might reasonably have been expected
to occur but somehow did not. . . .
Once the client has identified the
excepfion, you should ask for details.
In doing so, pay special attenfion to the
ways in which this excepfion time was
different from the problem times.
Whereas a problem-focused interview-
er would explore the who, what, when,
and where of cUent problems, you
should be interested in exploring the
who, what, when, and where of excep-
fion times. (De Jong & Berg, 2008, pp.
103)

Excepfions become the buUding blocks of the
newly configured counterstory that the client
is developing—similar to the role that unique
outcomes play in narrafive therapy and the
role that successes and strengths play in the
strengths perspecfive. Flowing from the mira-
cle quesfion, goals are developed by the cUent.
These goals direct the client (and therapist)
where to look for excepfions and encourage

2 8 0 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION

the client to start thinking in terms of solu-
tions rather than problem mechanics.

Consequently, once a client has made
an initial statement about what difter-
ences he or she would Uke to see, the
next task for the practitioner is to open
a conversation that transforms abstract
and vague definitions into a concrete,
vivid vision of what Ufe wül be Uke
when the problem is solved. (De Jong
& Berg, 2008, pp. 77)

As was illustrated with the strengths per-
spective, broadly sweeping goals are useful in
capturing and elaborating the theme (and pre-
ferred identity) of the cUent, but ultimately,
concrete well-formed goals are sought. Tied to
one’s preferred identity, these concrete goals
estabUsh the causal mechanisms (i.e., “who I
want to be”) that will produce change in pres-
ent behavior. “Solutions” are not solutions to
a technical problem (such as fixing a sirik);
rather, they represent an avenue for reaching a
preferred outcome: a preferred identity.

As described earlier, this stage also
involves engaging the cUent in refiguration
(mimesis’̂ ): reflecting on the emerging coun-
terstory as a means to soUdify and enhance its
construction. Solution-focused therapy uses
scaling questions as the method for prompt-
ing refiguration.

By means of scaling questions, a prac-
titioner can help clients to express
complex, intuitive observations about
their past experiences and estimates of
future possibüities. (De Jong & Berg,
2008, p. 106)

Receiving Aid

In formulating feedback for cUents, we
recommend you adopt the structure
developed by de Shazer and his col-
leagues (de Shazer et al. 1986). There
are three basic parts to this structure:
compliments, a bridge, and usuaUy a
task or suggestion. AU are designed to
convey to the cUents that you have
been Ustening carefuUy and agree with
their views about their problems, what
they want to have different in their
Uves, and the steps they might take to
make their Uves more satisfying. (De
Jong & Berg, 2008, pp. 115-116)

As this is a session of therapy, the aid that the
hero(ine) receives comes in the form of feed-
back (although this does not preclude the
addition of material aid as weU). It seeks to aid
cUents in their construction of their counter-
story: advancing them on their journey
toward reaching a new consciousness (i.e.,
their preferred identity).

CompUments are affirmations of the
cUent. First, compUments affirm what
is important to the cHent. . . . Second,
compliments affirm client successes
and the strengths these successes sug-
gest. . . . The bridge is the part of the
feedback that links the initial compU-
ments to the concluding suggestions or
tasks. . . . The content of the bridge is
usually drawn from client goals,
exceptions, strengths, or perceptions.
. . . These tasks fall into two main cate-
gories: observation tasks and behav-

THE HERO(INE) ON A JOURNEY 2 8 1

ioral tasks (de Shazer, 1988). In an
observation task, based on information
gathered in the interview, the practi-
tioner suggests the client pay attention
to a particular aspect of his or her life
likely to prove useful in solution build-
ing. . . . Behavioral tasks require the
client to actually do something, to take
certain actions the practitioner believes
will be useful to the client in construct-
ing a solution. (De Jong & Berg, 2008,
pp. 116-117)

Compliments play the role of reinforcing
the emerging theme fiom the client’s counter-
story by communicating, “I see you that way
too.” The bridge accesses this theme as a way
to generate possible future “exceptioris” that
the client may add to his or her emerging
coimterstory as a means of strengtherung it.
Observational tasks alert the client to take
note of these exceptions as they arise in the
future. Behavioral tasks encourage the client
to directly create these exceptions.

Tiie Supreme Ordeai Yieiding
a Reward

Again, intellectual insight occurs that moves
the CUent to begin intuitively constructing
events within a narrative that supports his or
her preferred identity, prompting termination.

Conciusion

The novelty and apparent strangeness of post-
modem theoretical concepts present many
challenges for students to coniprehend them.
Metaphors, such as “the client as the expert”
and the client-social worker relationship
being described as that of an author-editor.

help to aid students in their efforts at under-
standing. The hero(ine) on a journey offers a
conceptual framework to aid students in
reaching the next level of comprehension: the
often difficult task of applying theoretical con-
cepts to practice. This article has used the
framework to elaborate the application of two
such concepts: mimesis and social construc-
tionism. Elaboration of the application of
other postmodern concepts may be possible
as well, such as Eoucault’s (1980) notions of
“power” and “discourse,” Bakhtiin’s (1984/
1929) notion of the “carnival” and “multiple
voices,” and Wittgenstein’s (1968/1953) theo-
ry of “language games.” All of these concepts
ultimately speak to notior\s of identity and
how it may be transformed—the central tenets
the HOJ fiamework seeks to apply. Thus this
framework may be used to aid instruction at
the PhD level, wherein an in-depth explo-
ration of various postmodern theories and
their applications might take place. Also, as
described in this article, it can be used to aid
instruction at the MSW level of linking a few
basic postmodern concepts to their applica-
tions via various practice approaches.

Similar to person-in-environment, the
hero(ine) on a journey prominently features
the individual as a focus for intervention
efforts, and this article has kept to elaborating
such a focus. However, also similar to person-
in-environment, the hero(ine) on a journey
does not preclude macro-level attempts at
intervention. The hero(ine)’s journey takes
place in a setting; the client’s lived experiences
arise from interaction with society. The suc-
cess in HOJ’s ability to elaborate macro-level
interventions has yet to be explored. Yet both
Eoucault’s (1980) notions of “power” and

2 8 2 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION

“discourse” and Wiftgenstein’s nofion of “Ian- with micro-level intervenfions described here-

guage games” (O’Cormer, 2002) can speak to in, the focus of macro-level intervenfions

how oppressive narrafive stmctures of under- through this framework would be on con-

standing get reified into oppressive structures fronting oppression and transformational

in society—and hence, become targets for change, not on enhancing funcfioning and

macro-level intervenfion efforts. As is the case adaptafion efforts.

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Accepted: 0 3 / 1 1

Phillip Dybicz is assistant professor at Keinnyung University.

Address correspondence to Phiilip Dybicz, Keimyung University, Department of Social Welfare, College
of Social Science Building, 2800 Dalgubeoldaero, Dalseo-Gu, Daegu 704-701, South Korea; e-mail: pdy-
bicz@gmail.com.

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