ABSTRACT
It is crucial for helping professionals to have some insight into their reasons for choosing their particular kind of work, an awareness of their specific blind spots or ‘valency’ for certain kinds of defences, and their vulnerability to particular kinds of projective identification. The chapter explores various instances where failure to disentangle one’s present from the past results in imposing on oneself a ‘self-defined’ impossible task. For example, key workers may over-identify with children in care and therefore feel that they must ‘become’ the ideal parent they never had. Professional idealism, guilt and disappointment can produce collective as well as individual defences against the limitations of what can be achieved. When the previously unconscious internal task definition is recognised, staff can begin to articulate a more realistic one that is both meaningful and feasible. This makes it possible to achieve some sustainable successes, even if more modest than the earlier unrealistic image, and thus increase one’s capacity to tolerate depressive anxieties. The role of managers in this process is also explored.
