ABSTRACT
It has emphasised the parts of social work to do with sorrow, suffering, cruelty, crime, illness and insanity. It has been about the self-discipline that the social worker needs to give true help to people in these forms of distress. There has been very little about the kind of helping that springs readily from goodwill, that consists in joyful giving, or that leads to warmth and laughter. Laughter, hopes and strengths can be shared with clients as well as pain, conflicts and weaknesses. Some-times the same thing can be done by helping the client be able just to describe the previously inexpressible, to find words and images for frightening feelings and fantasies. This can be one of the most creative processes of social work, as the worker imaginatively enters the client’s inner world, and gets an intuitive grasp of its landscape and contours, its population and politics.
