Who Do We Think We Are?

Abstract

A counterbalance to evidence-based approaches in public services and professions such as social work is the assertion that professional expertise is more about process than outcome. Postmodern frameworks have prompted practitioners to challenge any notion of objective truth that excludes contradiction, paradox and subjectivity. Rather, workers should seek to engage with service users in a process of negotiating meaning through intersubjectivity and attention to individual experience. Informed by research with women marginalized by mental ill-health, this article examines feminist perspectives of narrative and validating experience in the construction of self. Helping women to `re-story' their lives requires reflexivity by workers, and sensitivity to the management of power in the relationship. Creative autobiography offers a process that enables women to negotiate conflicts between subjective experience and that which is socially constructed. We argue that the challenge for reflexive professional practice is a similar struggle for reconciliation between professional and personal identity.

Against the wind: Male victimization and the ideal of manliness

“…A completely different type of obstacle is the definition attributed to social work practice, perhaps especially as it appears to be understood by official agencies. Butler et al (2007) claim that 'During the last decade social work has been increasingly described as an overly bureaucratic, technical activity, particularly as envisaged by the state sector ' (2007, p. 284). It is principally evidence-based practice that is promoted -with a particular weight on empirical evidence.…”

Nurturing the Intersubjective Capacities of Social Work Students

“…Intersubjectivity offers a framework for an entire social work curriculum, explicit and implicit. Intentional use of self is a hallmark of effective social work (Bogo, Katz, Regehr, Logie, Mylopoulos, & Tufford, 2013;Butler, Ford & Tregaskis, 2007), and nurturing this skill in the next generation of social work practitioners is not accidental. This paper serves to identify social work educators' obligation to support students' emotional use of self, to explore the value of the intersubjective framework in doing so, and to discuss educator practices and learning activities that foster students' intersubjective development.…”

Co-creating Mental Health services that prevent a descent into Homelessness

“…'Reflexivity' as a term has been used in numerous ways in different academic contexts, but its primary basis is an attention to and reflection on the interpretation of the experiences of both the observer and the observed (Butler et al, 2007). To answer the main question of this thesis -How can outpatient clinic services be adjusted to accommodate pathways to prevent homelessness among people with mental illness emerging from self-expressed experiential knowledge and perspectives of key stakeholders and women attending outpatient clinics?-calls for a reflexive approach that highlights how both the organisation itself and the individuals they serve must be continually evaluated and re-evaluated to accommodate the continued shifts in realities and the continued growth of knowledge.…”

“…While there have been calls for reflexivity in mental health care, they most often refer to research practices or to individual practitioners (Veseth et al, 2017). An ideal form of practice would treat the subjectivity inherent in both research and practice relating to the PMIH nexus not as a contradiction to be avoided but rather as a space for learning and reflection that will create space for as yet understudied or unacknowledged issues (Butler et al, 2007;Veseth et al, 2017).…”