ABSTRACT
Key concepts in this chapter are social work, professional identity, resilience, wounded healer, interpretive phenomenological analysis and identity structure analysis. There are diverse traditions on social work as a profession in the different countries. In Hungary, state socialist ruling regime claimed that the system was an ideal context for human development and was free from exploitation. Consequently, problems that are the usual targets of social or mental health interventions were not even present in contemporary public discourse before the transition of the social system in 1989. Critical-reflective voices that are normally at the centre of social professional practice were silenced. After 1989, initial responses to problems facilitated the development of two closely related professions: social policy, a more prestigious area with its close contact to government initiations; and social work to help clients via direct interactions. The latter, however, has long been the subject of misunderstandings and misinterpretations concerning its main mission and competency areas. In the current chapter, authors focus on social workers' identity development processes.
