This is an account of four workers in the human services who have developed an ongoing collective experience. The four of us, all white, professional social workers, drew together in the late Spring, 1972. We were all involved in academic life, primarily as social work professors, although one of us was detaching himself from academic life at that time

Finkle, Harvey

Galper, Jeffry

Lichtenberg, Philip

Sternbach, Jack

English

ScholarWorks at WMU

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare 
Volume 4 
Issue 2 November Article 9 
November 1976 
Social Work Practice as Collective Experience 
Harvey Finkle 
Jeffry Galper 
Temple University 
Philip Lichtenberg 
Bryn Mawr College 
Jack Sternbach 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jssw 
 Part of the Social Work Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Finkle, Harvey; Galper, Jeffry; Lichtenberg, Philip; and Sternbach, Jack (1976) "Social Work Practice as 
Collective Experience," The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare: Vol. 4 : Iss. 2 , Article 9. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jssw/vol4/iss2/9 
This Article is brought to you by the Western Michigan 
University School of Social Work. For more information, 
please contact wmu-scholarworks@wmich.edu. 
SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE AS nOOLZ IVE EXPERIENCE
Harvey Finkle, M.S.W., Philadelphia, Pa.
Jeffry Galper, Ph.D., Temple University, Philadelphia, Pa.
Philip Lichtenberg, Ph.D., Bryn Mawr Colloge, Bryn Mawr, Pa.
Jack Sternbach, Ph.D., Philadelphia, Pa.
This is an account of four workers in the human services who have developed
an oagoing collective experience. The four of us, all white, professional
social workers, drew together in the late Spring, 1972. We were all involved
in academic life, primarily as social work professors, although one of us was
detaching himself from academic life at that time.
Our individual work experiences, when our group first formed, were characterized
by strong feelings of isolation within our different settings. We were, each
one of us, seen as essentially deviant - easily neutralized - without adequate
confirmatory feedback - and in search of some sense of ongoing association
with others.
Three of us knew each other from work in the People's Fund, an alternative
community fund in Philadelphia, organised to raise money for grass roots community
groups working for social change. The other man was relatively unknown to
these three.
Our age range was from early thirties to the aid-cemtury mark, with young,
pro-school children or almost full-groon families on the other hand. Our
history and recognition as academics end scholars ranged from a recently awarded
doctorate to several decades of productive work. But our alienation and sense
of incompleteness - together with some vision and hope for a more integrated
and fulfilling experience, was a common and binding thzead among all of us.
We define ourselves as radicals, and attempt to live out our beliefs in
our teaching, writing, scholarship, community work and personal lives. However,
the response to us from our academic colleagues, the Philadelphia social service
comunity and the profession at large is not sustaining. ach of us has felt
currents of support and identification from a broad ranging population. But
this support had not yet and has not yet emerged into a oherent and mutually
nurturing collective effort.
Two of us had discussed some sort of group, and this possibility was
firmed up when all four of us found ourselves at a colloquj event at one of
the schools of social work. We were ready, each from a different stance, to
risk releasing ourselves from alienation and individuality at that point in tins.
One of us, recently awarded his doctorate, beginning his first full tie
teaching position, and just ending a personal analysis, found himself with
tremendous energies, but with limited channels of expression; with a political
and scholarly analysie threatening to colleagues; and with- a growing sense of
the extent to which the society is not organized to encourage the wholeness and
completeness La people.
Another of us was leaving professional work for a while, and had spent
the past year doing photography work. He had felt the incredible contradictions
of developing human services without being able to relate to clients' social
oppression# and ws filled with the pain of his clear understanding of how the
bureaucratic systems he was part of simply did not permit authentic or responsible
relationships with Ois work mates.
The two others of us had both recently had collective experiences (tine
limited and iaperfect, to be sure), either in the community or with students,
which began to fan some hope for a my out of the fragmenting lives we lived.
When we come together and observed and experienced each other on that day,
there e a sadden recognition that here were others, Impatient with the ae
liberal reformist line, similarly out-spoken, and clearly experiencing the sae
kinds of dilemma born of isolation and frustration.
At that moment of beginning we had only the most rudimentary sense of the
issues that needed examination, the contradictions manifested in our lives,
and the levels of sharing which would be opened up in our collective.
We began with a basic understanding that the Individual and private nature
of our practice was in basic contradiction to our theory, which spoke to the need
for collective labor. We began with some hope that collective work might provide
the coaditions for integration of fragmented pernnal-political-scholarly
and professional parts of our lives. We began with a collective and almost
palpable semsn of at last being In touch with others -- that here at last
night be comrades who could provide trustworthy critical examination of our
Ideas and who night be counted on to food back discongruities between theory
and practice. Here, confrontations, authentic difference, common struggle and
joint labor might take place.
In the beginning we came together from a base of limited but sharply defined
awareness. The full range of concerns which would eventually be shared only
merged from our interaction over time -- from frequent clashes, conflicts,
tenderness and contradictions - as we risked moving together into many areas
previously reserved for discussion on a personal basis with one's mate, with
other intimates, or with no one at all.
We began, appropriately enough, with presentation to one another of our
written work and ideas, and with providing critical feedback to each other.
As time went on and the level of understanding and trust grew, each of us
began to broaden out and bring into the group those troubles which interfered
with our productivity and happiness in many parts of our lives.
For each of us sone major and meaningful events occurred in the collective.
These had the consequence of helping each one of us to make connections
otherwise not noted in our lives. The shared experience and analysis of these
events helped us to integrate and make whole those dLements and life processes
artificially separated and opposed as a result of our experiences In hierarchical,
bureaucratic, alienating working environments.
A sense of the jouzonys we took together and how they impacted on each of
us in our collective can be gathered from some excerpts taken from discussions
together in preparation for this paper.
A classic confrontation between professional success and the need to
have one's work reflect core political beliofs:
-278-
'A lot of the work I've done feels lik, it goes off into the void. The
uncertainty, the lack of feedback, the not knowing whether one is reaching
like minded people. The professional audience doesn't receive my stuff
because it's radical and the radical audience doesn't receive It becuse
It's not couched in the conventional language of the loft."
For another one of us, the need to bring one's work investment into balance
and harmony with other life concernst
"I was into a depression once for two or three weeks and when I ae into
the group I was able to share it. Part of It involved feeling a choice
had to be made between achieving writing goals and meeting my needs for
humanness and relatedness. I was experiencing a sense of distance and
not being able to share my work side of myself with my wife."
For a third man among us it was asking a break-through connection between
personal life crisis and style of worko
"I clarified with the group the nature of my relationship with my wife and
got support for my needs and priorities as a separate person. Although
what I brought was personal I %a also led to exmine the work I did ad
how I did it. I -found that my intensity and self-critioim was a blocking
factor in my creative work as well as in my relationship with my wife."
And for yet another among us it was opening up shameful and despairing
issues for group feedback - finding he could take it with comradely criticism,
break out of his isolation, and break through to a now level of work,
"When I was able to tell about my daughter's suicide attempt, and get help
with filin myself as a father, I could move and take care of things.
Sharing this and other deeply felt concerns has somehow given m the
confirmatory feedback so I can once again do professional writing that
I value and respect, and in which I combine politics and practio."
The group was not always a unified and supportive system. We had many
conflicts. Often our own interpersonal relations were the occasion for learning.
They helped us understand the interplay of competition and trust within a
coaradely framework.
Two of us found, after a continuing struggle, that our competition about
giving and taking from each other airrored and rebounded on the my we were as
son outside the group. On one occasion, really in-depth critical feedback of
one an's writing was unacceptable because of hisfuw of letting another man
go one-up on him.
A third mmber of our group quite clearly tended to down-grade and diminish
himself. He took upon his own shoulders, personally and exclusively, responsibility
for any difficult situations in which he found himself. When others of us could
move from our need to compete with him, we were able to then give him room to
put some of the borden on objective conditions and to give responsibility to
others for bow they responded to him.
The fourth member of our group, who had turned from the in-fighting of
academia to photograpOy, helped us see how our Individualistic career strivings
-279-
were reflected in our group in competitive kinds of inter-personal processes
among us.
Our collective became a place where we could share the despair we often
felt as we cane into the group bruised and somewhat demoralized from yet another
inauthentic and lonely experience with our colleagues and sometimes with our
students. We realized how hard we all found it to keep on struggling, finding
ways to keep in communication with both friends and associates as our polittis
veered away so clearly from the liberal centrist consensus. As one man put
it, "The group has fgiven me a lot more fortitude to do battle with the shit at
my university."
Each one of us in his own way could credit the group with providing certain
crucial spurs to growth when moments of impasse In writing, or loss of belief
in self, slowed productivity down.
Our discussions also centered, often, on our struggles with living partners.
Two of us were divorced, but all of us were in essentially monogamous, deeply
committed, long-term relationships.
As we moved deeper into such explorations, we experienced some important
tensions in our collective. Apparently, the tender and fundamental needs
touched by our processes demanded more commitment, more time and more involve-
ment with each other's lives. We found ourselves unable or unwilling to Make
that commitment, at least at that time. The two hour session, every other
week, was not sufficient for adequate resolution and satisfaction of needs
aroused. Yet, we were not ready to commit ourselves to more.
After a few weeks of missed sessions and dissatisfactions, we very conscionsly
assessed our group and its meaning for us. It was an important moment and a
source of tremendous eastg zelease as we found that each one of us experienced
the collective as one of the central and necessary factors in his ongoing
life. As one of us put it, "I don't know quite how we will work this out,
but I know that I simply cannot let this group fail. I need it too badly
in my life." Indeed, after several months of work focused more on political,
scholarly and collective writing possibilities, we moved back into personal
issues, with a clearer sense of the limits of our group and an enhanced capacity
to maintain a consciousness of boundary points, while at the same time experiencing
depth and feeling.
We discovered that we really needed, at the beginning of each session, to
sake space available and give permission for any of us who required It to
present a need - a pain - and have It met as a precondition for other kinds
of collective activity. Personal problems and task issues, we discovered, could
not be separated. They had become one for us and had to be integrated, with
different balances at different times, but always both present.
We were faced with the contradiction that we had placed work relations and
personal relations over against each other rather than integrated with each
other. By the seductive quality of having a group that we could trust, we
leaned upon our personal needs and preoccupations and slipped away from professional
work. This meant that we did not produce collectively to the same degree that we
-280-
shared the private parts of our lives. In the way that our regular work life
caused us to disregard our human, personal needs (and the needs of our colleagues
and comptriots), our collective efforts uplifted the personal at the expense
of useful labor. Becoming aware of this contradiction, we resolved to over-
come It -- and one step along that path was the composition of this paper.
Some of the glaring contradictions we have seen around this task can be
listed. They include,
Our willingness to attend to each others' needs sometimes blocks out other
kinds of work.
With limited time, we often do not give and take feedback on our writing
as we would wish.
We are keenly aware of how such more we want from the group, how each
achievement sakes us greedy for new ones.
We are motivated to do Important things, yet need to hold ourselves to
realistic goals. In writing thie paper, for exmple, we want to find and
stimulate like-minded comrades, yet we want also to avoid glamorization and
overstatement.
We find again differences among us in how we identify our groups for one
of us it is a en's group, for others a professional group, for another a six
of that and political collective. We are thus reminded of our different strengths
and needs and of how we must develop consciousness in order to integrate and
struggle through these matters.
There are many options we haven't explored such as further friendships,
developing ourselves as an action caucus, generating some pajor writing
projects, expanding the group to include others or helping to start satellite
group., using ourselves to politicize professional organizations in the comunity,
and generally becoming more visible and active outside of our regular four
man session.
However, at this point in time, as we enter our second year, we have at
least realized certain very satisfactory goals, ones which, perhaps, we had
hoped for but not really known if we could reach. We have some very tangible
products of our work. Each one of us has gathered strength and Iapetus to
find energies and creativity. As of today we each have produced some really
substantive professional writing or photographic work where a radical perspective
on social work comes alive and manifest.
Our lives are still shot through with incredible fragmentation an&
contradictions; we could hardly expect otherwise. but we now have had through
our collective a series of fulfilling, integrative experiences where we could
live out, even for a brief while, the fullness and richness of a radical
political analysis which is congruent with professional work and is deeply
satisfying on a fundamental level of human need.
In talking together during our work sessions in getting this paper
-281-
together, we realized how deeply we valued our collective. Some of our state-
ments reflect thist
"This has been my breakthrough into collective work -- and I can now move
into collective labor with others in other contexts. I have overcome my
sense of aloneness as prerequisite to effective work. I have been able to
give up a central leadership experience and enjoy peer experience.,
"The way I feel about this group is that if a major catastrophe were to
occur in my life I would not need to feel alone and without support."
What do we draw from this in a larger context; why are we sharing our
experiences and thoughts with you? Here are some meanings we have had in mind,
some conceptualizations that underlie this effort.
We believe that we are typical of most persons working in social work and
social welfare. he people we work with, speak with, connect with, hear and
see all around us are very such where we are and where we have been. The
isolation, self-doubt, idealism, frustration we express are common to us all
because they are fostered and developed by the system in which we all live
and labor. We think you are where we are, and we want to be more openly aware
of that state.
We believe, for instance, that it is commonplace that social welfare
workers must maintain a separation between their personal and professional
lives; that there is unhappy opposition between the intellectual and emotional
facets of daily work; that spontaneity and discipline stand opposed rather than
integrated; that one cannot be political in professional activities and
professional in political struggles; that most of us are condemned to private,
individualistic career lines rather than collective fates. These are the
conditions of life that accompany normal conditions of work in this society.
By creating our collective, we have been changing in a self-conscious
way the conditions of our work. It is our experience that labor takes on
new vitality under these revised patterns, even when that labor is fraught with
the pains of undoing all the old ways. The process of work is made more
human and, as a consequence, the products of our endeavors are enriched and
humanized. We see big differences in the work we have turned out this past
year, differences that affirm us in our developing working patterns, and we
think others will find the same results.
In brief, as a kind of summary, we want to underscore in your minds and
ours the necessity for ead of us to integrate the political, personal,
intellectual, professional, spontaneous, craftsman factors in our lives. The
enrichment of each piece of living is the road to radical change of alienated
existences and an inadequate society.
Note This paper was first presented at the National Conference on Social
Welfare, Atlantic City, New Jersey, 1973.
-282-


Social Work Practice as Collective Experience

The Journal of Sociology & Social WelfareVolume 4Issue 2 November Article 9November 1976Social Work Practice as Collective ExperienceHarvey FinkleJeffry GalperTemple UniversityPhilip LichtenbergBryn Mawr CollegeJack SternbachFollow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jsswPart of the Social Work CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Social Work atScholarWorks at WMU. For more information, please contactmaira.bundza@wmich.edu.Recommended CitationFinkle, Harvey; Galper, Jeffry; Lichtenberg, Philip; and Sternbach, Jack (1976) "Social Work Practice as Collective Experience," TheJournal of Sociology & Social Welfare: Vol. 4 : Iss. 2 , Article 9.Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jssw/vol4/iss2/9SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE AS nOOLZ IVE EXPERIENCEHarvey Finkle, M.S.W., Philadelphia, Pa.Jeffry Galper, Ph.D., Temple University, Philadelphia, Pa.Philip Lichtenberg, Ph.D., Bryn Mawr Colloge, Bryn Mawr, Pa.Jack Sternbach, Ph.D., Philadelphia, Pa.This is an account of four workers in the human services who have developedan oagoing collective experience. The four of us, all white, professionalsocial workers, drew together in the late Spring, 1972. We were all involvedin academic life, primarily as social work professors, although one of us wasdetaching himself from academic life at that time.Our individual work experiences, when our group first formed, were characterizedby strong feelings of isolation within our different settings. We were, eachone of us, seen as essentially deviant - easily neutralized - without adequateconfirmatory feedback - and in search of some sense of ongoing associationwith others.Three of us knew each other from work in the People's Fund, an alternativecommunity fund in Philadelphia, organised to raise money for grass roots communitygroups working for social change. The other man was relatively unknown tothese three.Our age range was from early thirties to the aid-cemtury mark, with young,pro-school children or almost full-groon families on the other hand. Ourhistory and recognition as academics end scholars ranged from a recently awardeddoctorate to several decades of productive work. But our alienation and senseof incompleteness - together with some vision and hope for a more integratedand fulfilling experience, was a common and binding thzead among all of us.We define ourselves as radicals, and attempt to live out our beliefs inour teaching, writing, scholarship, community work and personal lives. However,the response to us from our academic colleagues, the Philadelphia social servicecomunity and the profession at large is not sustaining. ach of us has feltcurrents of support and identification from a broad ranging population. Butthis support had not yet and has not yet emerged into a oherent and mutuallynurturing collective effort.Two of us had discussed some sort of group, and this possibility wasfirmed up when all four of us found ourselves at a colloquj event at one ofthe schools of social work. We were ready, each from a different stance, torisk releasing ourselves from alienation and individuality at that point in tins.One of us, recently awarded his doctorate, beginning his first full tieteaching position, and just ending a personal analysis, found himself withtremendous energies, but with limited channels of expression; with a politicaland scholarly analysie threatening to colleagues; and with- a growing sense ofthe extent to which the society is not organized to encourage the wholeness andcompleteness La people.Another of us was leaving professional work for a while, and had spentthe past year doing photography work. He had felt the incredible contradictionsof developing human services without being able to relate to clients' socialoppression# and ws filled with the pain of his clear understanding of how thebureaucratic systems he was part of simply did not permit authentic or responsiblerelationships with Ois work mates.The two others of us had both recently had collective experiences (tinelimited and iaperfect, to be sure), either in the community or with students,which began to fan some hope for a my out of the fragmenting lives we lived.When we come together and observed and experienced each other on that day,there e a sadden recognition that here were others, Impatient with the aeliberal reformist line, similarly out-spoken, and clearly experiencing the saekinds of dilemma born of isolation and frustration.At that moment of beginning we had only the most rudimentary sense of theissues that needed examination, the contradictions manifested in our lives,and the levels of sharing which would be opened up in our collective.We began with a basic understanding that the Individual and private natureof our practice was in basic contradiction to our theory, which spoke to the needfor collective labor. We began with some hope that collective work might providethe coaditions for integration of fragmented pernnal-political-scholarlyand professional parts of our lives. We began with a collective and almostpalpable semsn of at last being In touch with others -- that here at lastnight be comrades who could provide trustworthy critical examination of ourIdeas and who night be counted on to food back discongruities between theoryand practice. Here, confrontations, authentic difference, common struggle andjoint labor might take place.In the beginning we came together from a base of limited but sharply definedawareness. The full range of concerns which would eventually be shared onlymerged from our interaction over time -- from frequent clashes, conflicts,tenderness and contradictions - as we risked moving together into many areaspreviously reserved for discussion on a personal basis with one's mate, withother intimates, or with no one at all.We began, appropriately enough, with presentation to one another of ourwritten work and ideas, and with providing critical feedback to each other.As time went on and the level of understanding and trust grew, each of usbegan to broaden out and bring into the group those troubles which interferedwith our productivity and happiness in many parts of our lives.For each of us sone major and meaningful events occurred in the collective.These had the consequence of helping each one of us to make connectionsotherwise not noted in our lives. The shared experience and analysis of theseevents helped us to integrate and make whole those dLements and life processesartificially separated and opposed as a result of our experiences In hierarchical,bureaucratic, alienating working environments.A sense of the jouzonys we took together and how they impacted on each ofus in our collective can be gathered from some excerpts taken from discussionstogether in preparation for this paper.A classic confrontation between professional success and the need tohave one's work reflect core political beliofs:-278-'A lot of the work I've done feels lik, it goes off into the void. Theuncertainty, the lack of feedback, the not knowing whether one is reachinglike minded people. The professional audience doesn't receive my stuffbecause it's radical and the radical audience doesn't receive It becuseIt's not couched in the conventional language of the loft."For another one of us, the need to bring one's work investment into balanceand harmony with other life concernst"I was into a depression once for two or three weeks and when I ae intothe group I was able to share it. Part of It involved feeling a choicehad to be made between achieving writing goals and meeting my needs forhumanness and relatedness. I was experiencing a sense of distance andnot being able to share my work side of myself with my wife."For a third man among us it was asking a break-through connection betweenpersonal life crisis and style of worko"I clarified with the group the nature of my relationship with my wife andgot support for my needs and priorities as a separate person. Althoughwhat I brought was personal I %a also led to exmine the work I did adhow I did it. I -found that my intensity and self-critioim was a blockingfactor in my creative work as well as in my relationship with my wife."And for yet another among us it was opening up shameful and despairingissues for group feedback - finding he could take it with comradely criticism,break out of his isolation, and break through to a now level of work,"When I was able to tell about my daughter's suicide attempt, and get helpwith filin myself as a father, I could move and take care of things.Sharing this and other deeply felt concerns has somehow given m theconfirmatory feedback so I can once again do professional writing thatI value and respect, and in which I combine politics and practio."The group was not always a unified and supportive system. We had manyconflicts. Often our own interpersonal relations were the occasion for learning.They helped us understand the interplay of competition and trust within acoaradely framework.Two of us found, after a continuing struggle, that our competition aboutgiving and taking from each other airrored and rebounded on the my we were asson outside the group. On one occasion, really in-depth critical feedback ofone an's writing was unacceptable because of hisfuw of letting another mango one-up on him.A third mmber of our group quite clearly tended to down-grade and diminishhimself. He took upon his own shoulders, personally and exclusively, responsibilityfor any difficult situations in which he found himself. When others of us couldmove from our need to compete with him, we were able to then give him room toput some of the borden on objective conditions and to give responsibility toothers for bow they responded to him.The fourth member of our group, who had turned from the in-fighting ofacademia to photograpOy, helped us see how our Individualistic career strivings-279-were reflected in our group in competitive kinds of inter-personal processesamong us.Our collective became a place where we could share the despair we oftenfelt as we cane into the group bruised and somewhat demoralized from yet anotherinauthentic and lonely experience with our colleagues and sometimes with ourstudents. We realized how hard we all found it to keep on struggling, findingways to keep in communication with both friends and associates as our polittisveered away so clearly from the liberal centrist consensus. As one man putit, "The group has fgiven me a lot more fortitude to do battle with the shit atmy university."Each one of us in his own way could credit the group with providing certaincrucial spurs to growth when moments of impasse In writing, or loss of beliefin self, slowed productivity down.Our discussions also centered, often, on our struggles with living partners.Two of us were divorced, but all of us were in essentially monogamous, deeplycommitted, long-term relationships.As we moved deeper into such explorations, we experienced some importanttensions in our collective. Apparently, the tender and fundamental needstouched by our processes demanded more commitment, more time and more involve-ment with each other's lives. We found ourselves unable or unwilling to Makethat commitment, at least at that time. The two hour session, every otherweek, was not sufficient for adequate resolution and satisfaction of needsaroused. Yet, we were not ready to commit ourselves to more.After a few weeks of missed sessions and dissatisfactions, we very conscionslyassessed our group and its meaning for us. It was an important moment and asource of tremendous eastg zelease as we found that each one of us experiencedthe collective as one of the central and necessary factors in his ongoinglife. As one of us put it, "I don't know quite how we will work this out,but I know that I simply cannot let this group fail. I need it too badlyin my life." Indeed, after several months of work focused more on political,scholarly and collective writing possibilities, we moved back into personalissues, with a clearer sense of the limits of our group and an enhanced capacityto maintain a consciousness of boundary points, while at the same time experiencingdepth and feeling.We discovered that we really needed, at the beginning of each session, tosake space available and give permission for any of us who required It topresent a need - a pain - and have It met as a precondition for other kindsof collective activity. Personal problems and task issues, we discovered, couldnot be separated. They had become one for us and had to be integrated, withdifferent balances at different times, but always both present.We were faced with the contradiction that we had placed work relations andpersonal relations over against each other rather than integrated with eachother. By the seductive quality of having a group that we could trust, weleaned upon our personal needs and preoccupations and slipped away from professionalwork. This meant that we did not produce collectively to the same degree that we-280-shared the private parts of our lives. In the way that our regular work lifecaused us to disregard our human, personal needs (and the needs of our colleaguesand comptriots), our collective efforts uplifted the personal at the expenseof useful labor. Becoming aware of this contradiction, we resolved to over-come It -- and one step along that path was the composition of this paper.Some of the glaring contradictions we have seen around this task can belisted. They include,Our willingness to attend to each others' needs sometimes blocks out otherkinds of work.With limited time, we often do not give and take feedback on our writingas we would wish.We are keenly aware of how such more we want from the group, how eachachievement sakes us greedy for new ones.We are motivated to do Important things, yet need to hold ourselves torealistic goals. In writing thie paper, for exmple, we want to find andstimulate like-minded comrades, yet we want also to avoid glamorization andoverstatement.We find again differences among us in how we identify our groups for oneof us it is a en's group, for others a professional group, for another a sixof that and political collective. We are thus reminded of our different strengthsand needs and of how we must develop consciousness in order to integrate andstruggle through these matters.There are many options we haven't explored such as further friendships,developing ourselves as an action caucus, generating some pajor writingprojects, expanding the group to include others or helping to start satellitegroup., using ourselves to politicize professional organizations in the comunity,and generally becoming more visible and active outside of our regular fourman session.However, at this point in time, as we enter our second year, we have atleast realized certain very satisfactory goals, ones which, perhaps, we hadhoped for but not really known if we could reach. We have some very tangibleproducts of our work. Each one of us has gathered strength and Iapetus tofind energies and creativity. As of today we each have produced some reallysubstantive professional writing or photographic work where a radical perspectiveon social work comes alive and manifest.Our lives are still shot through with incredible fragmentation an&contradictions; we could hardly expect otherwise. but we now have had throughour collective a series of fulfilling, integrative experiences where we couldlive out, even for a brief while, the fullness and richness of a radicalpolitical analysis which is congruent with professional work and is deeplysatisfying on a fundamental level of human need.In talking together during our work sessions in getting this paper-281-together, we realized how deeply we valued our collective. Some of our state-ments reflect thist"This has been my breakthrough into collective work -- and I can now moveinto collective labor with others in other contexts. I have overcome mysense of aloneness as prerequisite to effective work. I have been able togive up a central leadership experience and enjoy peer experience.,"The way I feel about this group is that if a major catastrophe were tooccur in my life I would not need to feel alone and without support."What do we draw from this in a larger context; why are we sharing ourexperiences and thoughts with you? Here are some meanings we have had in mind,some conceptualizations that underlie this effort.We believe that we are typical of most persons working in social work andsocial welfare. he people we work with, speak with, connect with, hear andsee all around us are very such where we are and where we have been. Theisolation, self-doubt, idealism, frustration we express are common to us allbecause they are fostered and developed by the system in which we all liveand labor. We think you are where we are, and we want to be more openly awareof that state.We believe, for instance, that it is commonplace that social welfareworkers must maintain a separation between their personal and professionallives; that there is unhappy opposition between the intellectual and emotionalfacets of daily work; that spontaneity and discipline stand opposed rather thanintegrated; that one cannot be political in professional activities andprofessional in political struggles; that most of us are condemned to private,individualistic career lines rather than collective fates. These are theconditions of life that accompany normal conditions of work in this society.By creating our collective, we have been changing in a self-consciousway the conditions of our work. It is our experience that labor takes onnew vitality under these revised patterns, even when that labor is fraught withthe pains of undoing all the old ways. The process of work is made morehuman and, as a consequence, the products of our endeavors are enriched andhumanized. We see big differences in the work we have turned out this pastyear, differences that affirm us in our developing working patterns, and wethink others will find the same results.In brief, as a kind of summary, we want to underscore in your minds andours the necessity for ead of us to integrate the political, personal,intellectual, professional, spontaneous, craftsman factors in our lives. Theenrichment of each piece of living is the road to radical change of alienatedexistences and an inadequate society.Note This paper was first presented at the National Conference on SocialWelfare, Atlantic City, New Jersey, 1973.-282-

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Social Work Practice as Collective Experience

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