Psychosocial Theory for Social Work: The Example of Shame

Though a great deal of theory claiming to be “for social work” has been advanced over the last decades, attempting to address the individual, their social context, and the dynamic relationship between these, frequently the debates it generates fail to transcend academia. Little theory reaches practitioners. Paradoxically, social work has always fought to maintain a professional identity grounded not only in an ethos of care and social justice, but also, crucially, in a critical social science knowledge base, which can – which must – offer an analysis of the struggling theory which, I will argue in this chapter, uniquely addresses this. Theory for social work has work to do, and psychosocial theory has the requisite breadth, depth, and ethical leanings to do it. Psychosocial thinking addresses people as constituted within social structures and personal internal landscapes. It also insists that the experiencing, relational human subject is placed at the center of the analysis: the knower and the known in terms of knowledge construction, the worker and the service user in social work, are both equally dynamically present and constitutive in all encounters, and this subjective interface is fundamental to the relationship. The human subject is at the core of psychosocial understanding: a crucial position for social work. In the world of social work it is evident that struggle, mess, and confusion are ubiquitous, and even “all-rightness,” let alone wellbeing, is extraordinarily difficult to attain. Suffering comes in many forms, though particularly insidious is the damage to the internal world of the individual perpetrated when it comes under attack from the internalized and self-appropriated toxicity of the policy and political contexts of its existence. Shame and moral injury are two such instances, where failures of care, even of humanity, generated by governments and systems, are absorbed and experienced by individuals and groups as their own shame, and their moral failures. I will discuss “shame in social work” to illustrate how psychosocial theory offers our best chance of understanding and addressing this complex, and destructive state.