ABSTRACT
Resistance is a well-recognised phenomenon in social work. The prevailing way to understand it in professional social work discourse is to focus on clients’ reactions and behaviour. As Miller (2003: 193) states, professionals tend to ‘discuss troubles in their relationships with clients as evidence of client resistance’. So, it is generally assumed by social workers that clients and professionals divide into two confrontational camps, due to resistance on the part of the client. The most obvious professional explanation for this confrontation is that clients do not behave like professionals expect them to behave: they resist acknowledging their problems and thus they also resist change, and they do not follow professionals’ advice, recommendations and so on (Miller 2003). This kind of resistance is often regarded as clients’ normal responses in ambivalent situations, and the professionals’ task and even responsibility is to work with it and, in the end, manage it using, for instance, motivational interviewing (Watson 2011). This line of reasoning is clearly built in to some professional theories, such as cognitive self-change programmes or psychoanalytically oriented approaches (Fox 2001; Vehviläinen 2008). What is almost unnoticed and silenced in this under standing of resistance is the social workers’ own resistance. When clients as individual actors are categorised as resistant persons, the professionals’ resistance, for instance towards clients’ interpretations of their problems or towards their refusal of offered services, can be easily bypassed.
