Operation C: Psychologisation and individualisation of power (operations 10, power 3)

Although the term of empowerment was invented in the struggle against the apartheid and it is a political concept par excellence, it has been diluted, watered down to psychological abilities and capacities such as assertiveness, courage, social skills etc. Or a little better but still misguiding merely to the strength perspective approach.

Strength perspective is an approach to users and human beings in general that focuses on people’s strengths, virtues rather than on their weaknesses, deficits and faults. For social work, for working with people it is important to learn what they can do, how they can be seen in good shade of light, rather than concentrating on what they cannot do, what is wrong with them, what they lack. In this, it is an important paradigmatic shift in getting to know the people and their Life-worlds. It is a giant step towards seeing the users as heroes of survival rather than victims of adverse consequences (poverty, violence, stress) or even as their perpetrators (as with drug users, people in mental distress …).

Strength perspective is an important part of empowerment, but the empowerment cannot be reduced just to it. 

Such a demeaning use of the term empowerment is a consequence of “ideological revision” of the concept, probably not intended, and of the neglect of the structural properties of the situations where it is taking place.

Placing the issue of power in an individual and his or her psychological makeup as well as targeting a person as an “object of empowerment” – “to empower somebody” subverts the gist of the operation making him or her as its object – is in fact the inversion of the cause and effect; making him or her a source of disempowerment or inversely the source of power and not a vehicle of it. Such an operation reiterates the fault, the guilt – making people wonder “What did I do wrong?!”. On other hand, it also reflect powerlessness and lack of resources with the professionals. For example, “empowering” the victim of family violence by counselling and engaging in family therapy may reflect inability to provide material resources, namely housing, a flat where the victim could move to (which would enhance also the counselling or negotiating capacities and possibilities.

On the structural side there is also the notion and the idea of the society being constituted by equal individuals that makes an individual as register of well-being – which in turn keeps turning the attention to the individual. A good and powerful example of this being the deinstitutionalisation – which is in fact a defence of the individual over the oppressive collective. It is a good starting point, and most probably a good point of destination, however, as a process and operation it must be seen a collective issue – be it as individual empowerment resulting in collective action or in term of regaining, recovering the common ground. Investment in an individual is also investment in the community and vice versa.