The Vulnerability of Giving: Ethics and the Generosity of Receiving

Shabad, Peter

doi:10.1080/07351690.2017.1334443

Cited by 13 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…With reference to the later, in common with Orange and Casement, Social Workers are encouraged to 'understand alongside' family members and others (Holland, 2011, p. 173), thereby permitting opportunities for change to be built together with service users. Similar too, are some of the more philosophically orientated thoughts, concerned with ethical knowing practices that seek to protect individuals (their singularity) from a perceived unjustness of representation and totalization (Rossiter, 2011) -an example comparable to Shabad's (2017) psychoanalytic insights. In terms of social work and social science research more generally, while debate has concerned how the researcher positions themselves within the research and the possible effects of their own biography upon it (which is where a psychosocial approach has currency) it has also raised questions about who is producing the knowledge and are they best qualified, in the broadest sense of the term, to do so.…”

Section: Vulnerability Exists To Be Embracedmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…In considering what the manifestation of reflexive knowledge might look like, attention is given to the work of Bourdieu (1988Bourdieu ( , 1990 and Giddens (1987Giddens ( , 1991, along with those closer to social work, such as Fook (1999Fook ( , 2002 and Heron (2005). Holding the unconscious in view, it is argued that to entertain a state of not knowing, individuals must first put themselves in a position of vulnerability, enabling them to let go of their assured knowledge and to see others free from distorting transferential representations (Shabad, 2017). Liberated, their new knowledge position means they are better placed to build shared understandings that narrow the emic-etic boundary.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Seeing anew: drawing on a psychosocial approach to consider vulnerability as a virtue for knowing

Dore

2020

Journal of Social Work Practice

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Psychosocial thinking has a long association with social work, guiding practitioners to take account of the individual's inner world of emotion and feeling, together with the outer world of relationships and events that serve to create it. Straddling these two interconnected spheres, Social Workers find themselves in a unique position as 'knowers' as they endeavour to make sense of the lives and experiences of others -in much the same way as many social science researchers. This article explores how a psychosocial approach can help develop a reflexive awareness of the self and others, thereby creating opportunities for new ways of seeing. In doing so, it provides an original analysis of how vulnerability might offer space to enhance knowing, where greater ontological consideration is given to unconscious and structural influences that help shape the subject positions of both knowledge seeker and subject. References to social work practice and psychosocial research also help to re-frame the connections between emic and etic standpoints, showing how it is possible to narrow the epistemological distance between the two. In this novel sense, vulnerability is viewed as a virtue for knowing.

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Section: Vulnerability Exists To Be Embracedmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seeing anew: drawing on a psychosocial approach to consider vulnerability as a virtue for knowing

Dore

2020

Journal of Social Work Practice

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“…Together with their passion to grow and create, people's meaning‐making came to be viewed as the major drive towards self‐realization and towards devoting themselves to others. Even symptoms are perceived as pregnant with constructive meanings, created unconsciously with the purpose of receiving recognition of one's suffering experiences (Shabad, ).…”

Section: Construction Of Meaning In Therapymentioning

confidence: 99%

Negative Capability, Heuristics and Supervision

Yerushalmi¹

2019

Brit J Psychotherapy

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While struggling to construct the meaning of their patients’ experiences, therapists often feel confused by their patients’ communications, driving them to elicit patterns of knowledge and intuitive rules, drawn from previous experiences, and to restore a sense of control. However, what is already known might affect the unknown, biasing the meaning of patients’ communications, hence Bion's recommendation of therapists’ attunement without memory and desire. The present article describes how supervisors can enhance their supervisees’ ‘negative capability’, their tolerance of ambiguity and doubts, by illuminating specific countertransferential reactions in the form of heuristics that interrupt this capability. Heuristics, presented in the literature as potentially helpful mental devices, are examined in this article as possible disruptions to therapists’ meaning‐making processes. However, heuristics in and of themselves are not negative or pathological phenomena. They are natural and spontaneous mechanisms, capable of temporarily reducing the anxiety of supervisees faced with ambiguous clinical situations. It is suggested that understanding the meaning of these phenomena might liberate supervisees from the need to respond impulsively and facilitate internal processes of metabolizing patients’ experiences.

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“…Just as psychotherapy is learning from hospitality, it may be that insights from psychotherapy may be useful to people in hospitality, not only in being able to analyse transactions and interpersonal communication, but also in understanding personal history and dynamics, especially when the host is feeling less than open, welcoming or gracious. Shabad [9] emphasises the importance for the therapist to be open, precisely so that the client (or patient) has the opportunity for what he refers to as the 'dignity' to give of themselves: "When an individual has attained a sense of belonging because of being received himself/herself by significant persons, he/she is better able to mobilize the graciousness of welcoming the gifts of others" (p. 359). In other words, one cannot be a host and offer hospitality (social, cultural, linguistic, clinical or nurturant) without first having experienced, taken in and integrated, both developmentally and psychologically, appropriate and generous hospitality.…”

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confidence: 99%

Hospitable psychotherapy

Tudor

2021

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One of the things I notice when my wife and I go out for a meal in a restaurant is how the staff make contact, welcome us and see us to our table. For me, the quality of the contact (by eye contact, a smile, and an open manner), the welcome (‘Kia ora’), and accompaniment to the table (which conveys a sense of being expected) are all crucial elements to setting the scene of what is to come. Similarly, in psychotherapy, practitioners meet, greet and seat their clients, and, as do restauranteurs, have different perspectives on how to do that. During the last decade, some psychotherapists have been thinking about their practice in terms of what Donna Orange, clinician and a professor at New York University, refers to as ‘clinical hospitality’ [1] . In promoting this concept as a way of thinking about psychotherapeutic practice, she draws on the work of three French philosophers: Emanuel Lévinas (1906–1995), Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) and Paul Ricœur (1915–2005), all of whom devoted themselves to the discourse of hospitality. From Lévinas [2], who drew on the story of Abraham’s hospitality towards three Bedouin (Genesis, chapter 18), we derive the ethical view that the ‘other’ as a guest has a claim on my protection as a host. This view is reflected in the duty of care towards their clients practiced by psychotherapists and those in the helping professions. Much of Derrida’s work examines the ambiguities of hospitality: that it is both unconditional in that, as hosts, we submit ourselves to the other; yet, at the same time, there are ‘laws’ of hospitality that subject both hosting and being a guest to certain social and cultural conventions [3]. Finally, from Ricœur, a philosopher who distinguished between a hermeneutics (or way in which something is interpreted or understood) of faith or trust and a hermeneutics of doubt or suspicion, we get the concept of ‘linguistic hospitality’ [4]: the recognition of genuine otherness, which cannot be translated so much as interpreted. In other words, at best, there is an understanding of our guest or client, with and in all our differences. In this sense, we may think of hospitality as orientated towards being contractual, open, accepting, non-judgmental, and empathic and, insofar as it enhances a person’s mana, it is therapeutic. This is akin to the concept of manaakitanga “where[by] hospitality extends beyond commercial transactions and focusses on reciprocity and care” [5], the implication of which is mana-enhancing psychotherapy [6]. It is in this context that Orange, who is a psychoanalyst and a philosopher, describes her work in terms that she ‘cares’ for her patients [7, 8]. From this perspective, psychotherapy is all about being hospitable: there is – or should be – an openness, welcome, care, and attention that makes our client/guest feel good and that sets the scene for the ensuing therapeutic relationship through which the client resolves their problems and, ultimately, feels better. Just as psychotherapy is learning from hospitality, it may be that insights from psychotherapy may be useful to people in hospitality, not only in being able to analyse transactions and interpersonal communication, but also in understanding personal history and dynamics, especially when the host is feeling less than open, welcoming or gracious. Shabad [9] emphasises the importance for the therapist to be open, precisely so that the client (or patient) has the opportunity for what he refers to as the ‘dignity’ to give of themselves: “When an individual has attained a sense of belonging because of being received himself/herself by significant persons, he/she is better able to mobilize the graciousness of welcoming the gifts of others” (p. 359). In other words, one cannot be a host and offer hospitality (social, cultural, linguistic, clinical or nurturant) without first having experienced, taken in and integrated, both developmentally and psychologically, appropriate and generous hospitality. Corresponding author Keith Tudor can be contacted at: keith.tudor@aut.ac.nz References (1) Orange, D. M. The Suffering Stranger: Hermeneutics for Everyday Clinical Practice; Routledge: New York, NY, 2011. (2) Levinas, E. Nine Talmudic Readings; Indiana University Press: Bloomington, IN, 1990. (3) Derrida, J. Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, Trans. P.-A. Brault, M. Naas; Stanford University Press: Stanford, CA, 1999. (4) Ricœur, P. On Translation, Trans. E. Brennan; Routledge: Hove, England, 2006. (5) Wikitera, K.-A. Under the Stars of Matariki. Hospitality Insights 2021, 5 (1), 1–2. (6) Reidy, J. Ko wai au? Who am I? What are the Meanings of the Mātauranga Māori Concept of Mana and What Might this Concept Contribute to the Understanding and Practice of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy?; Master’s Thesis, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand, 2014. https://openrepository.aut.ac.nz/handle/10292/7863 (accessed Dec 22, 2021). (7) Orange, D. Clinical Hospitality: Welcoming the Face of the Devastated Other. Ata: Journal of Psychotherapy Aotearoa New Zealand 2012, 16 (2), 165–178. https://doi.org/10.9791/ajpanz.2012.17 (8) Orange, D. M. Emotional Availability and Clinical Hospitality; Presentation at Association for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, New York City, March 2014. (9) Shabad, P. The Vulnerability of Giving: Ethics and the Generosity of Receiving. Psychoanalytic Inquiry 2017, 37 (6), 359–374. https://doi.org/10.1080/07351690.2017.1334443

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The Vulnerability of Giving: Ethics and the Generosity of Receiving

Cited by 13 publications

References 2 publications

Seeing anew: drawing on a psychosocial approach to consider vulnerability as a virtue for knowing

Seeing anew: drawing on a psychosocial approach to consider vulnerability as a virtue for knowing

Negative Capability, Heuristics and Supervision

Hospitable psychotherapy

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