Nurture,bureaucracy and re-balancing the mind and heart

With increasing managerialism and bureaucratisation in the caring professions, where the focus of attention is directed primarily to the techno-rational, the instrumental and the impersonal, care becomes labour in the service of economy, efficiency and effectiveness. Relying on the work of psychodynamic theorists, the first part of this paper offers a critical analysis of selected 'snapshots of practice' demonstrating the costs of abdicating emotion and nurture in the care process. The second part of the paper describes an 18-month co-operative inquiry involving women practitioner/students in health, social care and education. The study highlights the quest for meaning and significance in learning and work and the process of re-balancing the mind and heart in the context of the bureaucratic organisation as one of heroic dimensions. Establishing a sustained community of care yielded a renewed sense of direction and creative action among participants.