Sharon B. Berlin

Dichotomous and Complex Thinking

Organizing aspects of our realities into dichotomous or bipolar categories is a pervasive, ordinary, and often useful habit of mind. However, when coupled with a search for certainty, this mode of understanding highlights extremes, superimposes a value hierarchy, neglects nuances of meaning, and leaves us with limited possibilities for understanding and action. This article explores bipolarizations that construct absolute differences between the knowledge-generating approaches of scientists and clinicians, clinicians and clients, and clients and scientists. It further argues that using dichotomies as contrasting truths that demarcate a range of intermediate possibilities, rather than a narrow set of either-or options, expands both what we know and what we can do.

The Value of Acceptance in Social Work Direct Practice: A Historical and Contemporary View

This article offers a working definition of the social work value of acceptance, in which compassion for another person is balanced with an appreciation for his or her autonomy. This definition is presented as a basis for comparison as the article traces the ways in which acceptance has been understood in social work direct practice over the history of the profession. The article concludes that acceptance is a complex and powerful concept with major relevance for contemporary practice.

Life after Welfare: AFDC Termination among LongTerm Recipients

This study explored the experiences of thirty-one women AFDC recipients who became ineligible for AFDC benefits when their youngest child passed the age of entitlement. Findings concerning changes from pre- to postjermination suggest that although average income remained about the same, 56 percent of the respondents experienced income decreases. There was a significant increase in health problems over time. Womens perceptions of psychological well-being and coping strategies, as well as factors associated with their final status, are examined, and limitations of current welfare policy regarding this group of women are discussed.

A Cognitive-Learning Perspective for Social Work

Emphasizing the idea that human behavior is the result of reciprocal interaction between personal and environmental realities, the recently conceptualized congitive-behavioral perspective shows promise for contributing theoretical support to social work direct practice. The assumptions and components of this explanation of human functioning are outlined, along with the history of its development, intervention implications, and applicability to social work.

Book ReviewsPsychotherapy with “Impossible” Cases: The Efficient Treatment of Therapy Veterans. By Barry L. Duncan, Mark A. Hubble, and Scott D. Miller. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997. Pp. 222.

From New Zealand comes a haunting study with a radically new perspective on current upheavals in social welfare policy throughout the developed world. David Thomson’s book pushes the theme of generational politics in surprising directions, built on meticulous research and provocative ideas that merit testing in other countries. It embraces no specific ideological agenda, but argues persuasively that the very terms of future welfare debates will be guided by imminent demographic shifts, now much too pressing to be ignored. Thomson’s focus on generations encompasses more than divergent interests between older and younger citizens. He does not concern himself with relative age differences as such, but rather with the unique historical experiences of distinct age cohorts spread across the twentieth century. At one end stands the generation that first benefited from new social and economic policies adopted in the 1930s, those who are now reaching the end of their natural lifespans. A far different encounter with the welfare state awaits the generation born after 1970, who face an entirely less certain and less generous future in the new global environment now taking shape. Generations between these two extremes are part of a steady evolution, according to Thomson, in which the original ideals and policies of welfare systems are being tacitly abandoned, leaving behind a hollow structure that is politically and ethically unsustainable. History is vital for Thomson’s argument. As the welfare state itself matured, through the vicissitudes of depression, wars, crises in natural resources, and global economic competition, it changed from a youth-oriented system, premised on economic opportunity and lifelong social development.Morehaschanged than welfare policies and entitlements: tax policies and economic development strategies are all part of the larger context in which Thomson assesses the lifeenhancing benefits or deficits variously apportioned by society to people growing up in separate decades. We all know, for example, that a generation of homeowners in the 1960s benefited uniquely from a historic shift in housing prices, which has since imposed crushing burdens on more recent cohorts. The sudden spike in worldwide market interest rates during the era of Thatcher-style monetarism helped spread this financial gap from real property to broader economic life, especially to conditions of employment. In reviewing these events, Thomson leaves us with an overpowering sense of specific generational tensions, documenting their historical source in often unwitting short-term priorities, masked