Abstract
Social Class and the Helping Professions is the result of the collaborative work of a team of academic experts in the helping professions in the United States. Although some implications and examples typically refer to the American case, the general theme can deemed to be of interest to European and East Asian helping professionals as well. It is a very thought-provoking work, given that usually welfare-related research tends to approach social issues from, alternatively, either a macro (policy implications) or a micro perspective (clinical cases)—instead, the authors seek to let the professional helper reflect on the complexities of a meso-level theme such as “social class,” a very much welcome effort for interdisciplinary discussions.
The book is divided in three sections. The first one broadly introduces the topic of social class, with a special focus on how it works in the United States. The first chapter opens up with a definition of social class. It “[ . . . ] arises from the social and monetary resources that an individual possesses. [ . . . ] social class is measured by indicators of material wealth, including a person’s educational attainment, income, or occupational prestige” (p. 3). Since cultural differences across different national sociopolitical contexts are not yet properly considered in counseling treatment, the authors aim to improve practice by providing “a clearer understanding of how culture influences behavior” (p. 13) beyond 18th century European intellectualist social class analyses. Chapter 2 develops the topic with special reference to the American case: culturally considered a classless society based on meritocracy, the American society tends to deny tout court the existence of social classes in the name of equal opportunities for all. Here, an overview on main sociological themes is presented: the typical upper class in the United States (i.e., White, male, financially secure), upward and downward class mobility, and how social class and poverty relate to mental health, substance abuse, and health in general. Some implications for the helping professions in terms of academic teaching, professional guidelines, and postdegree supervised practice are drawn. Chapter 3 presents a somehow weaker structure: it is meant to explore how poverty issues differ across rural and urban areas, but it ends up enumerating the possible connections to poverty when it comes about geographical areas, race, crime, health, and age. An important observation on the scarce effectiveness of welfare reform in underdeveloped areas is made here. In Chapter 4, the idea of middle class is described as being inextricably related to the privilege accorded to White people. This could be a bias for professional helpers as well, since they are typically highly educated, middle-class White people. Peculiar characteristics of the Black and the Hispanic middle classes are here recounted as well: I found the part on Black colleges and universities particularly insightful. Chapter 5 engages in a compelling analysis on the kinds of social challenges and mental health problems that the rich and the privileged (especially the children thereof) are faced with, and implications and suggestions for the professional counselors are presented as well. This part is very well written and full of empirical evidence and implications for practice.
The second section of the book is meant to be a closer examination to the authors’ direct experiences with clients; however, this intent is very differently pursued across different chapters. The deceptively simple Chapter 6 represents an attempt to analyze the interconnections between race and class—in the light of the fact that social disparities and inequalities are easily dismissed in a society such as the United States, where assumed equality for all is often postulated. Some suggestions for practice are presented: Counselors are once again advised to properly address eventual class distance problems with their clients, since the therapeutic relationship should be characterized by trust and mutual respect. Chapter 7 ventures into the challenging topic of career counseling from a (mostly) theoretical viewpoint. Here, the American dream is described as a benchmark against which “have and have-nots in the society (are measured) [ . . . ] on the basis of income, status, and prestige” (p. 107), and classism results from the frustration in meeting the demands of such culture. It is the counselor’s duty, it is argued, to help clients in career counseling, by understanding their images of possible selves that influence their choices for the future, and the different opportunity structures (i.e., access to stable jobs, safe housing, schooling, health and social services) given by the sociopolitical realities where individuals are embedded. Chapter 8 takes a decidedly practical stance in addressing the issue of social class and mental health services in the United States. The authors make a convincing point that impoverished people and racial minorities are subject to inherent stigma, barriers to treatment, and burdensome expenses. The relationship between “social class” and mental health most resembles a correlation, if not a circular causation: since the poor tend to receive mental health care services from community agencies, staffed with less trained personnel, lower quality of care could worsen clients’ mental health. Chapters 9 and 10 deal with the themes of family and schools, respectively. While the former represents an interesting framework for analysis of different family legacies across upper, middle, and poor classes, resulting in useful implications for family counseling, the latter utilizes Payne (2005)’s definition of poverty for addressing the gap between upper and lower classes in terms of school achievement, quality of education, Internet access, and educational opportunities. Poverty results in students’ increased levels of anxiety, depression, and behavioral difficulties at school. Here it is argued that it might be the system, not the students, that needs adjusting: the authors stress the need for culturally sensitive school counseling that prioritizes strengths, not deficits, of students. Definitions of classism, class privilege, and internalized classism are here provided as well.
Finally, the third section aims to draw useful implications from the social class discourse for the helping professions. Based on Allport (1954)’s study on prejudice, Chapter 11 seeks to understand the worldview of the impoverished person, and the ways in which marginalized groups might experience oppression and internalize it over time. To this respect, psychotherapy often needs to address clients internalizing self-blame for external problems: here the risk lies in letting clients adapt to poverty, whereas therapists should increase their own awareness of classism through self-introspection and follow a strengths-based model to empower their clients. This approach is further developed in Chapter 12: here, in consideration of how poverty affects psychological stress and dysfunction, a working agenda for practitioners is presented. Specifically, the CARE model consists in (1) cultivating the therapeutic relationship with the client; (2) acknowledging realities faced by clients living in poverty; (3) removing barriers to treating people living in poverty; and (4) expanding on the client’s already existing strengths. Chapter 13 is rich in practical implications, since the intertwining of social class and mental health assessment is explained in terms of possible biases that could arise in text taking and diagnostic assessments. In the light if this, the treatment planning should also be aware of the influence of social class throughout the process of problem identification, establishment of goals and objectives, and development of interventions. The volume’s last chapter sets a model for promoting counselors’ possibilities for advocacy with and on behalf of clients/communities/broad public arena. These activities, it is argued, range from the individual client’s empowerment, to social and political advocacy aimed at influencing policy change through lobbying activities and alliances with relevant groups.
The text represents an intriguing attempt to address the issue of social class in relation to the counseling professions. Reference materials on theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence abound, and numerous case studies and self-reflection boxes are helpful in building connection bridges with practice.
A possible limitation, common to most edited books, lies in the lack of a logical coherence among chapters—each of them standing as a reading on its own. As a result, some implications for practice (e.g., the need for a deeper understanding on the clients’ worldviews through the therapist’s self-introspection) are raised repeatedly; more crucially, a coherent and unified conceptualization or operationalization of the idea of “social class” has not been attempted, so that for some contributors social class is a blend of race, income levels, education, and occupational prestige, whereas for some others it is viewed simply in terms of the upper class/poor class dichotomy.
These limitations notwithstanding, the text is very readable, informative, and full of questions useful for group discussion. In addition to that, each chapter can be easily accessible independently of the others—something that renders the volume especially flexible for teaching purposes. In a word, more than being a theoretically based work, this represents a useful didactical tool for graduate students, experienced practitioners, and social scientists interested in the topic of social class and its practice implications in human services. Based on empirical work evidence, and being enriched by explicative boxes describing specific case studies and self-reflection opportunities, it could be usefully employed for advanced practice classes at an academic level, and as a manual for practitioners sensitive to multicultural issues.