Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897 edition. Excerpt: ...to intervene at a policy level. He did feel that he was getting somewhere with these initiatives, and it wasn't this that he wished to focus on in our conversation. What concerned him most, and what he wanted to explore in our conversations, was that, despite his awareness of the context of the dilemmas he was facing in his work, he couldn't help but feel that he was failing the persons who were consulting him. It was this sense of failure that he believed was contributing most significantly to the despair that he had spoken of at the beginning of our conversation. As we talked, I asked Paul some questions: 'Despair isn't something that persons experience without having had some hope that things would be different. Could we talk about some of the hopes that you have for the lives of others, those hopes that you have experienced being frustrated?' 'You said that many of your agency's recent policy decisions go against what you stand for. Would you talk about some of your values and beliefs that are contradicted by these decisions?' 'In regard to the sense of failure that you have spoken of, could you say something about your appreciation of the possibilities that are available to persons in their lives?' In the conversation that was shaped by these questions, I also asked Paul to assist me to understand the history of these hopes, of these values, and of this understanding of the possibilities available to persons in their lives. In tracing the history of these hopes, values, beliefs, and this commitment to the exploration of the possibilities for persons' lives, among other things he spoke of his aunt's and uncle's contributions: of his aunt's habit of caring about the less fortunate and marginal people in her community, in ways emotional...