Sunday, May 27, 2007

An Interesting Book About Helping

I recently got a used book called The Helping Relationship: Process and Skills by Lawrence Brammer. It's got some interesting stuff to say. One thing it says is:

"This voluntary quality of the helping process is a crucial point since many persons wanting to help others actually seek to meet their own unrecognized needs. Some helpers, for example, need 'victims'; the helpers may maintain relationships to satisfy their own affiliative or dominance needs and may even continue their relationship longer than necessary in order to feel needed. Doing anything for other people without their initiative and consent frequently is manipulative and destructive. Even when help is solicited and given with the best of human motives it may have an unplanned detrimental effect on the helpee. The reason is partly that persons being helped experience a loss of self-esteem."

I'd like to know what someone more experiences with receiving services thinks of this quote. It seems to me to describe some things I've heard disability rights people talking about, but I haven't experienced this sort of thing personally.

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2 Comments:

Blogger Maddy said...

Not really qualified to comment, but it sounds a bit like co-dependency.
cheers

9:45 AM  
Blogger Kay Olson said...

Yep, beware the person who determinedly chooses you for a "friend" when you have no idea why. Sometimes it's a great adventure, sometimes, not so much.

9:59 PM  

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