The social worker as Professional advocate: An incomplete gestalt

Conclusion The reasons for the obvious lack of professional cohesion are varied, but most impelling is the notion that somehow political action geared at self-directed advocacy is alien to professional commitment for social workers. As a result the gestalt of total advocacy is left incomplete, and the legislative efforts in both Connecticut and Texas have ended without the passage of much needed legislation.Fritz Perls (1973a, 1973b), the father of gestalt therapy, has attempted to explain the concept of gestalt, and makes a timely observation: The world and especially every organism maintains itself, and the only law which is constant is the forming of gestalts-wholes, completeness. A gestalt is a complete and ultimate experiential unit. As soon as you break up a gestalt, it is not a gestalt any more, it can no longer exist and function constructively [1973a, p. 16, 17].It seems obvious that the profession of social work needs to devote a good deal of its energy to reexamining the very basis of its existence as a profession. Does it choose to see itself as server rather than as self-serving, or do these two concepts of advocacy need stand in conflict? Is it not only possible but also essential that those who purport to serve the needs of others be able to serve their own needs as a profession as well? Is it not possible for the process of professional education in social work to grapple and be comfortable with the notion of self-serving advocacy on the part of professionals present and future?If the gestalt of social work advocacy is to be, as Perls has stated, a whole, then it would seem essential that both areas of advocacy be mobilized effectively to ensure the survival of the profession. If not, then professional social workers will have to assume the responsibility for their own demise as professionals.