June 1 9 6 2

We have sometimes refused to To give help really means t o offer Helping People Is A Ticklish Business help those who refused to help themselves, or who have used our help someone an opportunity to change. All other help is simply a patching by Dr. Alan Keith-Lucas unwisely. We have washed our hands up until the next breakdown, necesof them. Or we have tried to force sary perhaps for the moment but of them to do something about them- no lasting significance. This was rec- Don’t be discouraged if you have trouble selves by punishing them in some ognized by such pioneers as the way, through starvation, or shame, Christian Socialists and the Charity helping an alky to help himself-here are or the workhouse, by the whip or the Organization leaders of the last censtocks, or by what is known as less- .tury when they fought to replace cassome tested and proved methods of an expert eligibility-forcing them to live at a ual charity with planned concern for level below what health and decency those in need. But those sincere peodemands. Or again if we are very ple made one very great mistake. o help another human being may good. And we know perhaps only too T sound like a very simple process. Actually it is one of the hardest things well the person who uses our help as long as we are there to watch over patient and full of a desire to help, we have tried one of three methods according to our knowledge and taste. They thought that what went wrong with the helping that they saw all around them lay in what was given that anyone can be called on to do. him or “jack him up” but backslides Sometimes we have gone on trying to and not in how it was given. They We all know our failures in the as soon as our back is turned. help in the same way, believing that thought that money or material field. We know the person who re- Our natural reaction is to blame in the end the water will wear away things did not offer a framework in fuses to be helped-the client who the people who do this to us, or to the stone. We have exhorted and which change could take place and won’t get medical care, the fellow attribute their failure to get and to urged and persuaded and bombarded that intangible things such as advice, who won’t take the job we offer him use help to some inadequacy in them. with good advice. Sometimes we have persuasion and friendly interest did. even though it would seem that to We label them as immature o r sinful hoped that if only they could learn This is a mistake still made by many do so.was the most obvious common or unco-operative or stubborn or to like and admire us, some change modern helpers, who exalt “services” sense. We know also the man who just plain “no ‘count.” might be forthcoming, and we have such as counselling and ignore the accepts our help but uses it in a way What do we do then, once we rec- been extra nice and non-judgmental help that can come from something that troubles us or seems self-defeat- ognize this wrongness? We can do and friendly. . . . as prosaic as a public assistance ing-the public assistance recipient any number of things, and from the I am not saying that people have grant or transportation somewhere who uses his grant to become more Early Church Fathers to the heyday not been helped in perhaps all of or a job or a little time to rest. dependent instead of less so, the man of the Poor Law and even into the these ways. But I do suggest that all What these people do not see is who seems to accept our advice but era of modem scientific methods of of those answers fail to take into ac- that all help is potentially good if somehow manages to pervert it so helping, we, and society as a whole, count one very important fact about the recipient can choose to make use that it does him more harm than have done one or all of them. the helping process which is perhaps of it and that no help is good if the the key to helping on a deeper level. recipient doesn’t. So that helping Dr. Alan Keith-Lucas is Professor o f Social Work at the University And this is simply the fact that help- comes to mean something, tangible of North Carolina. This paper, from The Christian Schokr, war first ing is a two-way process, involving or intangible, oflered in such a way read to representatives o f helping professions (the ministry, social work, two people, and that what goes wrong that the person to whom it is oflered medicine, public health nursing, education and vocational rehabilita- in the helping may lie to no small can choose to use it-that is, choose tion) under the auspices of the Mental Health Associations of South extent with the person who offers to change through its use. Carolina. Dr. Keith-Lum is the author o f “Decisions about People in But we do have to be very careful Need” and other books. help or with the process through which help is being extended. about this word “choose,” for we use

it in a rather special sense. To choose choice has to be made again and of the helper. If he does so he deto use help means much more than again in different contexts, although feats his ends. In fact he must always to select a course of action or even the fact of having once made it maintain his integrity as a separate to make up one’s mind to do some- makes the more possible the second person, against the will of the helper. thing. It means the decision of the and the hundredth time. It means This is, I would suggest, because the whole person to go along with some- risking the unknown; giving up a helper’s will is of the same imperfect thing, to do something about some- present certainty, even though this nature as his own and because huthing, to risk oneself and everything may be an uncomfortable one, for a man will tends always to control and operative. He keeps appointments. one has in order to get something good which cannot as yet be fully not to set free. And again the helped He tries to learn what he needs for better. seen. person makes this submission not his new job. He takes a position . . .This kind of choosing does not And here it might be said that the forever, or even wholly for a time, offered to him. But in a month or two mean that the person being helped is correspondences between the process but for a specific purpose and for a he develops a psychosomatic asthma free to do anything he wants without of asking for human help and the re- limited length of time. Nevertheless and has to go to bed again. suffering the natural or legal conse- ligious experience of conversion he must admit the helper to some ex- He wasn’t a malingerer. The quences. . . . It has nothing to do are so remarkable that they can- tent into his life. asthma was very real. He didn’t with freedom of choice in the usual not, I feel, be entirely accidental. . . . If this is what being hclped sit down and figure out: If I get sense. . . . One cannot make it be- The words, repentance, submission, means, is it then surprising that asthma I won’t have to work. But in cause one ought to or sees good rea- steadfastness under temptation, and people will do almost anything to the recesses of his mind he was full son for doing so or because someone faith, are plainly corollary to the prevent themselves from experienc- of fears. He was afraid of his new else wants one to. For this kind of four elements that have been de- ing it? Is it surprising that many of job–could he succeed at it? He them refuse to admit their real need? feared having once more to compete Is it surprising that others demand in a world of well men that would help of us on their own terms-“give make no excuse for him, for he was me my check and leave me aloncn- no longer ill. And maybe he feared as a means of warding off any de- too what this n9w job meant to him. mand really to change? . . . One of He was no longer the masculine figthe safest ways of not encountering ure tossing bales. He was pushing a God is to go to church every Sunday, pen-an old man’s job, a weakling’s choice is terribly hard. It is terribly scribed here-a fact that is perhaps sing all the hymns, and obey all the job, a job that could be done by a personal. And it is terribly danger- hard to realize until one has experi- rules. . . . Often enough the person girl. And so his mind and his body ous. Truly, as in a wider context, one enced both. who says that he wants help, who together threw up a protection for must lose one’s life to gain it and to I do not suggest that this is exactly does what seems all he can to get it him. If he were sick he was safe ask someone to change is to ask one the same process. In fact there is one and yet finds it beyond his grasp, is from his fears. And this, we are beknows not what. very important difference. The per- in reality refusing it. ginning to understand, is the real For making this kind of choice al- son approaching God for help must Let me try to illustrate this with a meaning of much of the sickness, ways means at least four things. It try to submit entirely to His will. case. Here for instance is a long- both mental and physical, that we see means admitting your own failure. It What individuality he maintains is shoreman with a hernia that can be in this world. More and more dismeans putting oneself more or less in then God’s gift. He must also intend repaired so that he can do light work. eases are shown to be protections the power of another, letting him his submission to God’s will to be Avocational rehabilitationcounsel- against pressures one cannot stand. know you and take a part in your permanent. The person seeking hu- lor helps him get it repaired and finds . . . This is a state which, in my life. It means hard work, for the man help cannot submit to the will him a job as a clerk. The client is co- profession’s peculiar jargon, we call

ambivalence-wanting two contra- sincerely always means that I could dictory things, feeling two ways at have said “No.” to help people in real trouble-which once. It is a paralyzing condition, so But this truth is terribly hard to is why the extroverted, Pollyanna paralyzing in fact that if often looks recognize in practice. We so much kind of helper who always wants to like laziness, lack of moral stamina, want the man we are helping to make keep things pleasant is sometimes being content with poor conditions, the right decision, to choose inde- more harmful than helpful. even feeble-mindedness. It is what pendence and not dependence, God It follows therefore fourthly that “is wrong” with so many people that and not the Devil. Even to recognize the helping relationship must be one we think are inadequate. And help- the possibility that he may choose in which negative feelings can be exing very often becomes then making the wrong seems like treason to us. pressed without fear of blame, anger, it possible jor people to resolve their . . . When we try to make someone sorrow, or loss of face. This means umbivalence; helping them choose into something that he has not chosen in turn that it cannot be a relation- (in our sense of the word) to get to be, . . . it is utterly defeating. . . . ship of superior and inferior, saint Man. . . must always be free to do- pussionately wished, by the helper. and sinner, wise and foolish, judge well, to change or not to change, to use help or not to use it. . . . even to “curse God and die.” And For the helper to put his own will and judged, or even their modern For there are certain conditions we and even our cherished values are into it takes it away from the will of equivalent, adjusted and unadjusted. which we know make the resolution not of course God. What we think the helped; for the helper to push or . . . As helped and helper struggle toof as the wrong choice may for an- persuade or cajole increases rather gethcr to understand, to come to a of ambivalence more possible and than resolves the hclpcd person’s other person be right. Even if it can- point whcrc the helped person makcs free people to make the kind of ambivalence. . . . not be, the choice must still be there. his decision, they must struggle as choice of which they are capable. And this is why it is usually true, equals either of whom could have And the first, and perhaps the basic The risk must be taken. And the peras a third proposition, that people felt and thought like the other. one on which all the others depend, son who makes the wrong choice is need a great deal more help with It must deal with real things, howis in itself a paradox. It is that a posi- much closer to help than he who makes no choice at all. their negative feelings than with their ever unpleasant. A doctor who retive choice is only possible where the positive. They nced to look at their That is why I insisted that help fused to consider cancer of the anus opposite choice is also possible and negative feelings, to examine them, acceptable. Intellectually this may must be help to choose to be well or because either he was afraid of canto choose not to be well. All we can to discover their weaknesses. Their cer or he prkferred to ignore the not be too hard to see. Man cannot positive feelings usually get a lot of choose to be good unless he can also do as helping people is to set up those bathroom would be no doctor at all. conditions that free a man to make support. They are acceptable and So help with social problems must choose to be bad. If God has comthis choice. And thus we come to the everyone can weigh in with reassur- deal with what is really there-with pelled man to be good, he would not second condition, which is a corol- ance, hope or praise. It is their nega- real sorrow, real hate, real sin, and be good at all. Again, man cannot lary of the first. The choice must be tive feelings with which they must real despair. It cannot deal with false choose to live fully unless he can also struggle-their fears, their doubts, made by the person helped. It can- reassurance, with polite evasions, choose (or accept) death. Nothing is not be made, it cannot even be too their hates, their despair. And this with “pie in the sky.” . . . gained without risk, and to say “Yes” cannot be done, some psychologists It must be bused on trust, on the and some preachers to the contrary, belief that man can be helped, howby pretending that the negative feel- ever wayward he may seem. . . . ings are not there. They are. The And finally and proceeding from man who exhorted us to “accentuate this, it must be based on humility (in the positive and eliminate the nega- the Christian sense of the word). tive” may have discovered a rule of And this is because in the end you social intercourse, but he ncvcr had don’t know what is right for another

(you are lucky indeed if you know can muster. It takes toughness to face it for yourself); you don’t have to reality, to risk anger, even to court it, face what he is facing (and pray God to strip the polite veils from sorrow you never may have to) ; you don’t, . . . to endure . . . doubts and despair. and you never will, and pray God It takes courage not to disarm them that you will never acquire that pride by glossing things over, by being selfthat dares to assert it does, or even righteous, by keeping things on a someday may, know the length and pleasant and utterly meaningless the breadth and the depth of a man. level, Thus I end this list, as I began it, Are you humble enough to help? with a paradox. The more you know, Or in the last analysis must people the less you know or claim to know. be helped your way or by you and These conditions for helping are you alone? what prompt me to ask of any . . . I will share with you a formuwould-be-helping person three very lation that I have found helpful . . . impertinent questions which are nev- as a check on what I am doing: . . . ertheless very pertinent: This is it. This is the real situa- Do you reully wunt to help? Do tion, stripped of all its polite coveryou want to put yourself truly at the ings-what you really are up against. service of another, which is not I know that it hurts. As far as it is everybody’s desire? Or do you in given to me I feel for you and with your heart of hearts want to be you in facing this trouble, and any thanked or to control or to ease your time that you want to bring out your own conscience or to serve some anger, your fear or your doubts it will other end? If you do, I do not blame be acceptable to me-not because I you. There is much else you can do, feel them myself but because I know but helping is not your forte. that I could feel them. Are you tough enough to help? I will stand by you to help you if Any idea that helping is a “sissy” you want me. I will not force you in business is very far from the truth. any way but at the same time noth- It can be and is something that calls ing will shake my willingness to help for every reserve of courage anyone you should you ask it of me.