ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how such assumptions “imported” from Rogers and Sigmund Freud and “amalgamated” into social work practice af-feet transcultural social worker-client interactions. It outlines Rogers’s and Freud’s major premises about the helping process, and explores how each’s concepts about what constitutes effective therapeutic techniques have shaped the interviewing process. The chapter explores whether the assumptions about the social work interview, both implicitly and explicitly stated in the social work literature, are effective when applied in practice with diverse populations. It suggests that an effective interview the practitioner will affirm a client’s worth and dignity, support client self-determination, forge a therapeutic relationship, and communicate with empathy, authenticity, and genuineness. A social work interview is a communication process comprised of practice skills, guided by a theoretical orientation. Subjectivist theories, as in Carl Rogers’s humanistic approach, take the stance that social reality exists in or is a creation of human consciousness, and that people are proactive in its creation.
