Social Work Between Human Beings, Society, and Meaning

On Theoretical Foundations, Practice, and the Encounter with a Human Being Asking for Help

There are periods in life when one looks back on one’s own professional practice and discovers that one has carried theories within oneself long before learning their names. Many social workers will recognize this. We use concepts such as self-image, role, relationship, defense, identity, coping, responsibility, and meaning almost daily. Yet we often do so without asking where these concepts actually come from, or what understanding of the human being lies hidden beneath them.

Social work has never merely been a question of methods.

It is also about how we understand the human being.

Behind every conversation between a social worker and another human being lies a theoretical landscape. Not necessarily as fully developed systems or academic models, but as underlying assumptions about what a human being is, why people act as they do, and what makes change possible.

Three traditions have had particular significance for social work during the last century: symbolic interactionism, psychodynamic theory, and existential philosophy. These do not merely represent different theories. They also represent different ways of understanding suffering, relationships, freedom, identity, and society.

Yet it is striking how rarely social workers speak explicitly about this theoretical foundation. In practice, these theories often survive as language, attitudes, and tacit knowledge. Perhaps that is precisely why they are so important. They shape our gaze long before they are formulated as concepts.

When I look back today on many years in social work, I am struck by how often practice was really about these three perspectives. Not as pure models, but as different attempts to understand the human being sitting in front of us.

Sometimes the work concerned interaction and meaning. At other times it concerned wounds, defenses, and what could not be spoken directly. And sometimes it concerned freedom, responsibility, and the question of how a human being can continue living when life itself has almost lost its meaning.

Perhaps this is where social work truly begins:
in the attempt to understand a human being without reducing that person to merely a problem.

A Mother Meets Child Welfare Services

Let us therefore begin with a concrete example.

A single mother with five children meets with child welfare services.

Her husband died while fishing in the North Sea several years earlier. Since then, she has tried to keep the family together on her own. The children struggle at school with both behavioral problems and learning difficulties. The family’s finances have gradually collapsed. The mother has developed alcohol dependency and anxiety. Now she has also lost her job.

She asks for help.

How can social work understand her situation?

The answer depends upon the theoretical lens we apply.

And this is precisely where theory becomes important. Not as abstract academic exercises, but as different ways of seeing a human being.

Symbolic Interactionism – The Human Being Formed Through Encounters with Others

Among the most underestimated theories in social work we perhaps find symbolic interactionism. It is rarely highlighted explicitly in social work literature, yet many of the concepts social workers use daily originate precisely from this tradition.

The core of this tradition is simple and yet profound:
Human beings do not act merely on the basis of objective conditions, but on the basis of the meaning situations hold for them.

This means that reality is never simply “what is.” Reality is also what is interpreted.

In meeting the single mother seeking help, a social worker inspired by symbolic interactionism may first direct attention toward how meaning is created in the interactions surrounding the family.

How is the mother treated by the school?
How are the children spoken about?
How does she experience encounters with the welfare system?
How does she see herself?

Perhaps over time she has internalized certain labels:
“Bad mother.”
“Alcoholic.”
“Unstable.”
“Problem family.”

From a symbolic interactionist perspective, such labels are not merely words. Gradually, they can become identities.

Howard Becker described how individuals who are defined as deviant often begin to understand themselves through those definitions. The same may happen here.

The children may gradually develop self-images as “the difficult children.” Their behavioral problems therefore cannot be understood merely as individual problems, but also as products of social reactions and expectations.

The school, neighbors, welfare institutions, and local community all become part of a symbolic universe in which the family is reflected back to itself.

Charles Horton Cooley described this as the “looking-glass self.” We become who we are through the gaze of others.

This insight has enormous implications for social work.

A child who over time is treated as hopeless or difficult may eventually begin believing this image of himself or herself. Likewise, a human being met with respect and dignity may gradually discover other dimensions within themselves.

Here, the definition of the situation becomes crucial.

The mother may come into the meeting with child welfare services filled with fear. Perhaps she experiences help not as help, but as a potential threat to the family. If the social worker fails to recognize this, resistance may easily be interpreted as unwillingness to cooperate rather than anxiety.

This perspective therefore reminds us of something fundamental:
Human beings react not primarily to facts, but to meaning.

Symbolic interactionism also helps us understand how important the social worker’s manner of being actually is.

How she speaks.
How she listens.
How she looks at the family.

Is the mother met as a resourceful woman in an almost unbearable life situation?
Or as merely another “case” in the system?

The difference is enormous.

Psychodynamic Theory – The Hidden Human Being

Where symbolic interactionism primarily examines the human being in interaction, psychodynamic theory turns its gaze inward – toward the hidden human being.

Sigmund Freud argued that much of human psychological life takes place outside consciousness. Our actions are shaped not only by what we know about ourselves, but also by what we attempt to hide, repress, or protect ourselves from.

This was a radical idea.

Human beings are not fully transparent to themselves.

Beneath the surface exist conflicts, fears, desires, and experiences that continue to affect us even when we are not consciously aware of them.

A psychodynamically oriented social worker may therefore ask different questions when encountering this family.

How has the loss of her husband affected the mother?
What happens psychologically when a human being lives under extreme strain over time?
How do grief, anxiety, and perhaps guilt influence her functioning as a mother?

Alcohol here can be understood as more than substance abuse.

It may be seen as a way of coping with pain.
A form of self-medication.
A defense against despair.

Psychodynamic theory will also pay attention to the children’s emotional situation.

Children who lose a father early while simultaneously living with a psychologically burdened mother often develop strategies for emotional survival. Some become restless and aggressive. Others withdraw. Some attempt to become “the adults” in the family long before they are emotionally mature enough to do so.

The behavioral problems may therefore be understood as expressions of inner turmoil rather than merely disobedience or poor parenting.

Defense mechanisms become important here.

The mother may deny the seriousness of her alcohol dependency.
She may project blame onto the school or welfare services.
She may oscillate between hope and despair.

Yet psychodynamic theory simultaneously reminds us that such reactions are often attempts to protect a vulnerable self.

Not expressions of evil intentions.

Many social workers will recognize this from practice. Human beings who appear angry, difficult, or manipulative are often human beings living with deep fear.

Behind aggression there may be shame.
Behind control there may be anxiety.
Behind silence there may be experiences that have never found language.

Psychodynamic theory attempts to understand such patterns.

Not in order to reduce human beings to diagnoses, but to show how the past continues to live within the present.

Here the relationship between social worker and client also becomes crucial. A safe relationship may gradually reduce anxiety and make it possible to confront painful experiences without fleeing from them.

At the same time, psychodynamic theory must also be approached critically.

One danger within traditional psychodynamic thinking has been the tendency to individualize problems that are also social and structural. Poverty, unemployment, and social marginalization cannot be fully explained as intrapsychic conflicts.

This is why social work can never rely upon only one perspective.

Existentialism – Freedom, Responsibility, and Meaning

Where psychodynamic theory asks why human beings act as they do, existentialism asks:
How can a human being live?

Jean-Paul Sartre and other existential thinkers took human freedom as their starting point. Not a simple or romantic freedom, but a difficult freedom – a freedom existing within limitation, suffering, and social structures.

Existentialism reminds us that human beings must always, in one way or another, relate to their own choices.

This does not mean people are to blame for their suffering. Existentialism does not deny poverty, violence, or oppression. On the contrary, many existential thinkers were deeply concerned with power and alienation.

But existentialism simultaneously refuses to reduce the human being to a victim.

In meeting this family, existentialism therefore asks questions different from both interactionism and psychodynamics.

What is it like to be her?

How does a human being continue living after losing the person they loved?
How does one carry responsibility for five children alone while life slowly falls apart?
How does one hold on to meaning when finances, identity, and hope begin to collapse?

Existentialism does not primarily see her as a diagnosis or symptom.

It sees her as a human being thrown into a deeply tragic life situation.

Anxiety becomes not merely a clinical symptom, but also an expression of human vulnerability. Alcohol may be understood as an attempt to escape an existential pain that has become almost unbearable.

Yet existentialism does not stop there.

It simultaneously insists that the human being still possesses some degree of agency.

Not a romantic agency.
Not freedom without limitations.

But the freedom to relate to one’s own situation.

Perhaps this is precisely why she seeks help.
That small step into the social office or into a meeting with child welfare services may itself be understood as an existential act:
an attempt to continue fighting for the family,
an expression of responsibility,
a hope that life might still change.

This is an important insight.

For social work often encounters people struggling not only with practical problems, but with meaning itself.

Why continue?
Who am I now?
Does life still possess value?

Existentialism does not offer easy answers to such questions. Rather, it insists that meaning is not something already given. Meaning is created through action, relationships, and responsibility.

Within this perspective, the social worker’s task therefore becomes not merely solving problems, but helping the human being rediscover dignity, meaning, and the possibility of action.

Not merely to survive.
But to live.

Social Work Between Theory and Life

After many years in social work, one gradually discovers that no theory alone is sufficient.

Symbolic interactionism helps us understand how identity is shaped through encounters with others.
Psychodynamic theory helps us understand vulnerability, loss, and inner conflict.
Existentialism helps us understand freedom, responsibility, and meaning.

But real human beings live simultaneously on all these levels.

The single mother sitting before the social worker is not merely the product of one single factor.

She lives simultaneously:
in grief over the husband who died,
in economic insecurity,
in social shame,
in fear of losing her children,
in bodily exhaustion,
in anxiety,
in responsibility,
in hope,
and perhaps also in a quiet struggle to preserve her dignity.

Social work must therefore always attempt to see the whole human being.

This becomes difficult within modern welfare systems where efficiency, standardization, and measurable outcomes increasingly dominate. Systems require categories, procedures, and decisions. Yet human beings rarely live within such orderly categories.

Perhaps this is why many social workers experience unease within the systems in which they work.

They know reality is more complex.

That a human being can never fully be understood through a form.
That suffering cannot always be measured.
That hope often emerges in small moments never recorded in any file.

Here social work approaches philosophy.

For social work is fundamentally not merely about technical problem-solving. It is also about how we encounter human beings when life has become difficult.

Not merely what we do.
But how we see.

The Social Worker’s Gaze

Perhaps, in the end, the social worker’s gaze becomes the most important question.

For theories are never neutral.

They shape what we notice.
What we overlook.
What we perceive as the problem.
And what we believe is possible.

An exclusively psychological gaze may make poverty invisible.
An exclusively social gaze may make inner suffering invisible.
An exclusively bureaucratic gaze may make the human being invisible.

This is why social work requires multiple perspectives simultaneously.

Not in order to create theoretical confusion, but to protect the complexity of human life.

Perhaps maturity in social work consists precisely in this:
to tolerate the existence of several truths at the same time.

That human beings are both shaped by society and responsible for their actions.
That human beings carry both trauma and possibility.
That human beings are both vulnerable and strong.

This is no simple insight.

But perhaps this is precisely where practical philosophy begins.

Conclusion

Throughout many years in social work, I have often thought that the most important moments rarely appear in official records.

They exist in the small encounters.

A human being who for the first time dares to speak.
A child who slowly begins trusting adults again.
A mother who, in the midst of her own despair, still struggles to keep the family together.
A social worker who remains a little longer in the silence than the system really has time for.

Such moments cannot fully be understood through procedures alone.

They also require theory.
Not as abstract academic knowledge detached from life, but as language for the human condition.

Perhaps this is why social work will always exist somewhere between science and philosophy.

Between system and human being.
Between explanation and understanding.
Between action and reflection.

And perhaps all genuine social work begins precisely there:
in the attempt to encounter another human being without reducing that person to merely a problem.

References

Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance
Becker, H. (1963). Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York, NY: Free Press.

The Second Sex
Beauvoir, S. de. (1972). The Second Sex. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.

Freud and Modern Society
Bocock, R. (1976). Freud and Modern Society. London, UK: Nelson.

Human Nature and the Social Order
Cooley, C. H. (1902). Human Nature and the Social Order. New York, NY: Scribner.

Childhood and Society
Erikson, E. (1950). Childhood and Society. New York, NY: Norton.

Psychotherapy and Existentialism
Frankl, V. (1967). Psychotherapy and Existentialism. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.

Civilization and Its Discontents
Freud, S. (1930). Civilization and Its Discontents. London, UK: Hogarth Press.

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
Goffman, E. (1971). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.

Reason and Violence
Laing, R. D., & Cooper, D. (1964). Reason and Violence. London, UK: Tavistock.

Mind, Self and Society
Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, Self and Society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Existentialism and Humanism
Sartre, J.-P. (1948). Existentialism and Humanism. London, UK: Eyre Methuen.

Being and Nothingness
Sartre, J.-P. (1958). Being and Nothingness. London, UK: Methuen.

The Social Construction of Reality
Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The Social Construction of Reality. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.

Social work will always exist somewhere between science and philosophy.

Between system and human being.

Between explanation and understanding.

Between action and reflection.

The text is drawn from my many lectures on this subject for undergraduate students in social work at Østfold University College. It has now been written through a dialogue with OpenAI/ChatGPT, which also created the illustration.