COMMENTARY (12 YEARS ON) ON ‘THE CONTRIBUTION OF OBSERVATION TRAINING TO PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN SOCIAL WORK’ BY JUDITH TROWELL AND GILLIAN MILES

This article aims to stimulate discussion about relationships between the lives of professionals and of service users. The idea is that when parallels are explored and developed, power dynamics between professionals and social workers are reduced, the quality of interaction and work with service users can be improved, and professionals can also be helped in overcoming difficulties in their own lives. I start with an outline of my own personal background and highlight my development throughout, including my emerging identity as a Buddhist. I discuss a case study involving ‘Sally’ and her family and our work together while I was a social work assistant in a Children and Family's team. I try to show the interconnections between the different difficulties that we faced and how that informed my work. I look at some of the benefits, pitfalls and boundaries of working from the point of view that service user and professional are both working to overcome their problems. I also interweave interactions I had at the time with Carlos, a drug user friend in a crisis and the impact he had on me. Because I include my own situation I have called this article a ‘case experience’.

Throughout I refer to Buddhist and psychoanalytic thinking and particularly to agreement between the two around ideas that inner‐resistance is the main barrier to personal evolution. I argue that faith is the key to unlocking resistance, and that faith should be understood as the development of a belief within people that they are able to progress rather than be destroyed in the face of inevitable problems.     

Reconstruction and Deconstruction of the Foundation of South Australia as a Nineteenth-Century Strategic Planning Process and How it Might Compare with Current Planning Practice

ABSTRACT

This article does three things. It reconstructs the narrative about the foundation of South Australia in the 1830s as a strategic planning process. It then deconstructs that analysis to explore the issues it addresses and the outcomes. Finally, it reviews the South Australian experience to see if there are valid comparisons to be made with current practice and what lessons it might offer in that regard. In doing that it briefly reviews one present methodology of strategic planning most akin to that followed in South Australia, and one strategic planning exercise that could learn from it.     

《尤利西斯》与荷马史诗的对应关系探讨

现代意识流经典作品《尤利西斯》与古希腊荷马史诗《奥德赛》之间存在重要的对应关系,这是公认的。乔伊斯在艺术表现及情节内容上进行背反所有传统的标新立异和大胆试验的同时,为什么要追求与荷马史诗《奥德赛》的对应关系呢?它仅仅是一种借古喻今的手法,还是对荷马史诗开创的“尤利西斯传统”的新发展,这正是本文要探讨的问题。在离家与归家的漂泊框架下,古代英雄在海上的十年漂泊化为现代小市民在都市大街小巷一天的游荡,而这一天的游荡又演化为漫长的内心的旅程,凸现出一个有血有肉、多层面的现代“尤利西斯”。一部是古代史诗,一部是现代意识流小说,它们殊途同归,异曲同工,奏响的都是飘泊者之歌和人之歌。     

八股文语言体式论

长期以来,人们一般认为八股文体用排偶的语言体式为明初太祖与刘基所定。其实,八股文体用排偶的语言体式在中国传统文体中并不鲜见,而八股文是把这种体式发展到极致的典型。对体用排偶,就目前所见的官方文献来看,并没有明确的记载。不过,此种语言体式也绝非由某个人或少数几个权威所定,它是在历史发展的过程中,在吸收其他文体的基础上,由众多的人不断修订而成的,这一过程也体现着中国文化语境中特有的人文心态。