ABSTRACT
The notion of intervention into the lives of others can be looked at as an interference with others' freedom; it can also be looked at as an obligation on every citizen, as part of the web of reciprocal social duties which itself constrains freedom. It can readily be seen that all these reservations about intervention may, in some circumstances, be justified. Social work experiences doubts about the ethics of intervention. One of the more paradoxical claims of these helpers has been that they have, as one of their absolute principles guiding their interventions into the lives of others, a principle of 'client self-determination'. When the declared aims of intervention are so broad and client-centred, yet the outcomes are so often stereotypical and predictable, the accusation that the counsellor is not acknowledging or declaring his covert aim comes to be made, and doubts about the genuineness of client self-determination grow.
