Working with Violations of Dignity – The Struggle for Recognition
Some people never forget a rejection. But even more never forget the way the rejection was given.
They remember the glance that passed over them. The cold tone of voice. The words that made them smaller. The professional calm that concealed indifference. The feeling of sitting in the room as a number, a case, a burden — and not as a human being.
This is how many violations begin.
Not necessarily with violence. Not always with dramatic words. Often they begin quietly: in the way we meet one another.
Throughout a long life of working with people, I have seen that suffering is rarely caused only by outer problems. It is also shaped by how a person is treated while those problems unfold. A human being can endure much when met with respect. But even small burdens can become heavy when dignity is undermined.
That is why the question of violation is far greater than today’s media debates. It touches something fundamentally human: our need for recognition.
What Is a Violation?
The word is often used casually, sometimes so casually that it loses weight. But in its deepest meaning, a violation is this:
To be deprived of the experience of being a person who matters.
It can happen through humiliation, violence, discrimination, or abuse. But it can also happen in silence:
- when no one listens
- when one’s experiences are dismissed
- when one is treated as a problem rather than a person
- when one is physically present but socially invisible
- when others define who you are without knowing your life
A violation is often not only what happens. It is what happens to the self when it happens.
Something contracts within the person. Self-respect weakens. Trust in community begins to crack.
Why Recognition Is the Key
To understand violation, we must understand its opposite: recognition.
We do not live by bread alone. We also live by being met as someone.
A child needs to see itself reflected in warm eyes. A young person needs to feel that their emerging identity has a place. The adult needs to know that effort, voice, and presence matter. The elderly person needs to feel that age does not cancel human worth.
Recognition does not mean uncritical praise. Nor does it mean fulfilling every wish.
It means meeting a human being as a human being.
Axel Honneth and the Struggle to Be Seen
The German philosopher Axel Honneth developed an important idea: many conflicts in society are, at their deepest level, struggles for recognition.
People do not fight only for money, status, and interests. They also fight for respect, dignity, and the right to count.
This insight explains more than many political analyses. Beneath anger often lies wounded pride. Beneath withdrawal often lies the experience of being overlooked. Beneath rebellion often lies long-standing contempt.
When people are denied recognition, moral pain arises.
Three Places Where Human Beings Need Recognition
Honneth described three basic forms. I will express them simply.
1. Love and Close Relationships
The first place is the home, friendship, and love.
Here the human being learns whether they are worth loving. Here basic trust is formed.
A child who is met with care develops a quiet certainty: I have worth, even when I am weak.
A child who is met with coldness, fear, or instability learns something else.
This is why bodily and emotional violations are so serious. They attack the foundation itself.
2. Rights and Respect
The second place is society.
Having rights on paper is not enough. A person must experience that those rights apply in practice.
When someone is treated arbitrarily by systems, denied access, explanation, or real participation, they are not only administratively wronged. They are violated as citizens.
Many know this from the inside.
3. Social Esteem
The third place is community.
People need to feel that their uniqueness may have value. Not everyone fits society’s standard measures of success. Some take winding paths. Some live quietly. Some carry wounds. Some create without applause.
When only one kind of life is recognized, many lose courage.
Billy Elliot – A Picture of Human Flourishing
The film Billy Elliot carries this truth beautifully.
Billy grows up in an environment where boys are expected to be tough, practical, and follow fixed roles. Yet within him lives dance — something genuine, vulnerable, and strong.
When his talent is finally seen, more happens than social mobility. He becomes more fully himself.
This is the gift of recognition.
Not making people into something else — but helping them become what they already are in the process of becoming.
The Helping System – Where Good and Harm Meet
There are few places where the question of violation matters more than in encounters with helping institutions.
People often arrive there when life is already trembling:
- illness
- psychological distress
- addiction
- poverty
- family conflict
- unemployment
- loneliness
Then the person is vulnerable. Precisely for that reason, the encounter becomes immensely important.
Are you listened to?
Are you understood?
Are you taken seriously?
Are you met as a partner in your own life?
If not, help itself may become a new burden.
I have seen people endure harsh life conditions better than they endured being treated as nothing.
The “Difficult Client”
An old and dangerous pattern exists in many institutions.
When a person protests poor treatment, the protest is turned into a symptom.
Suddenly the person is described as:
- difficult
- uncooperative
- negative
- demanding
- unmotivated
Attention is thus shifted from the system’s practice to the individual’s flaws.
It is an effective mechanism — and often a violating one.
For perhaps the anger was only the final remnant of self-respect.
Beginning Where the Other Person Is
Søren Kierkegaard wrote that if one truly wishes to help another person, one must first find them where they are and begin there.
It is one of the wisest sentences ever written about helping.
Yet we often do the opposite.
We begin where we ourselves are:
- in our theories
- in our routines
- in our deadlines
- in our ready-made solutions
Then even goodwill may become violating.
For what a person first needs is not to be explained, but to be understood.
When the Client Wants Something Else
Here we meet a difficult question.
What if the other person wants something we do not understand? What if someone does not fit society’s ideals of work, education, speed, and performance? What if someone needs silence more than activation? Rest more than goal-setting?
Not every deviation is illness.
Not all resistance is problematic.
Sometimes a person is defending their last freedom.
Aristotle and Practical Wisdom
Here we need what Aristotle called phronesis — practical wisdom.
No manual can fully explain how a person should be met.
When should we support?
When should we challenge?
When should we set limits?
When should we wait?
When is resistance destructive — and when is it healthy?
This requires judgment, not merely rules.
The Invisible Power of Institutions
Many helpers mean well. Yet all are shaped by systems.
Every workplace has its stories:
- this is how we do things here
- this never works
- people like that only understand strict demands
- we know these kinds of cases
When such narratives become stronger than the living person in front of us, blindness begins.
Then we see the category, not the person.
Not Everything Should Be Recognized
Here we must speak honestly.
Recognition does not mean that every action should be accepted. Violence, abuse, manipulation, and destructive demands cannot be legitimized.
There is a difference between respecting the person and setting limits on actions.
This is mature ethics.
It is easy to become hard. It is easy to become boundaryless. The difficult task is to be both warm and clear.
Human Flourishing
The most beautiful goal of helping is not control, but flourishing.
That a person gradually regains:
- self-confidence
- self-respect
- self-worth
- hope
- the ability to act
Some need housing. Some need work. Some need treatment. Some need protection. Some need time.
Some simply need one person who meets them without contempt.
My Experience
Throughout life I have seen how respect can transform people.
I have seen young people close to being lost straighten their backs when one adult believed in them.
I have seen shame loosen its grip when someone was finally met without condescension.
I have also seen how bureaucratic coldness can wound deeply.
Some wounds do not appear on the body.
Our Time
We live in an age where people are quickly judged, categorized, and reduced.
Online it happens in seconds. In institutions it may happen more politely, but sometimes just as effectively.
That is why the question of recognition is more relevant than ever.
How do we look at the other?
As a case?
As an irritation?
As a client?
As an opponent?
Or as a human being with an inner world whose outlines we only dimly perceive?
Conclusion
Martin Buber distinguished between the relationship I–It and I–Thou.
When we turn people into objects, cases, and categories, we enter the realm of I–It. Then the soul of encounter is lost.
When we meet the other as a living Thou, something else opens: responsibility, presence, and possibility.
To work with violations of dignity is therefore not only to avoid mistakes. It is to cultivate vision.
To notice when a person shrinks in our presence.
To notice when our power makes us blind.
To notice when the language of systems hides human pain.
And then to choose the opposite movement:
To see.
To listen.
To understand.
To respect.
To meet the other as a human being.
Practical philosophy often begins exactly there.
References
Aristotle. (2009). The Nicomachean ethics (W. D. Ross, Trans.). Oxford University Press.
Buber, M. (1970). I and Thou (W. Kaufmann, Trans.). Scribner.
Hegel, G. W. F. (1991). Elements of the philosophy of right (A. W. Wood, Ed., H. B. Nisbet, Trans.). Cambridge University Press.
Honneth, A. (1996). The struggle for recognition: The moral grammar of social conflicts. Polity Press.
Høilund, P., & Juul, S. (2005). Recognition and judgment in social work. Hans Reitzels Forlag.
Kierkegaard, S. (1998). The point of view. Princeton University Press.
Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society. University of Chicago Press.
Møller, L. (2008). Recognition in practice. Akademisk Forlag.
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