ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the pre-treatment phase of the clients' lives and examines the resistances they experienced towards receiving material help. Unless one understands and constantly keeps in mind the help-seeking attitudes which the clients brought into the treatment situation, it is impossible to make sense of their later reactions to treatment. The Family Welfare Association (FWA) exists in order to help troubled people, its personnel are trained, information is treated confidentially and so forth. An observer unfamiliar with the situation might assume that those in need of help would flock to agencies like the FWA without the slightest hesitation. The clients' shame was compounded by the fact that they were going to a social agency for help, instead of to a more 'neutral' source such as friends or relatives. Aside from the shame of economic dependency and the ignominy of becoming a client, there was still another reason why our respondents dreaded the prospect of becoming a client.
