ABSTRACT

This chapter explains a comprehensive sketch of all the possible dangers and the pitfalls which beset asymmetric intervention relations. Critical opinions about social intervention and helping relationships usually begin by analysing the unequal motives of those giving assistance. A modern variation of conceptualizing the advantage of being sick is the idea of sickness benefits. Being a problem case wins immaterial as well as material gain. Vroon describes a 1965 German study that produced spectacular results. Civilization work of Kruithof introduced the concept of civilization offensive after researching the interventions of the upper classes in the working classes. The asymmetry of helping relationships appears in many cases to be a feeding ground for inappropriate motives and strategies. Social intervention is about maintaining the tension of an adequate, appropriate asymmetry in terms of the problem and not succumbing to the quicksand of power, or on the other hand escaping into symmetry.