The Social Work Interview by Alfred Kadushin

Author:Alfred Kadushin [Kadushin, Alfred]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2013-05-02T16:00:00+00:00

CONFRONTATION

The purpose of a confrontation is to point out discrepancies in the client’s presentation that reflect unrecognized conflicts, defenses, and motives that obstruct desired changes. The definition of the word confront implies “bringing together to the front” so what is communicated is clear and visible. By describing contradictions, the interviewer tries to help the client become aware of, understand, and control defenses, underlying feelings, and conflicts that affect problem resolution.

Confrontation can be used to identify discrepancies between values and behaviors; feelings and behaviors; an idealized view of the self and the real self; expressed and underlying feelings; and verbal and nonverbal behaviors (Neukrug and Schwitzer 2006).

A worker in a primary care clinic is seeing an older retired patient who is overweight. The doctor has prescribed walking three times a week for thirty minutes for weight loss, but the patient has not started to exercise.

PATIENT: I want to be fit and healthy, but I don’t have time to exercise.

INTERVIEWER: You don’t have time. . . .

PATIENT: I want to relax now that I am retired. . . .

INTERVIEWER (confrontation between values and behavior): As you talk, I am wondering. . . . On the one hand, you say you value your health and fitness, and on the other hand, you are not exercising as the doctor recommended to lose weight. How do you explain this?

In the following interaction, the worker uses confrontation to point out differences between verbal and nonverbal behaviors. Joan, a bank manager, is talking about the holiday season at work:

JOAN: I am glad I can stay home with Martha (her partner) and skip the holiday party.

INTERVIEWER: You are skipping the party?

JOAN: Yes. . . . It would be too complicated to introduce Martha to everybody. I am content keeping my private life private.

INTERVIEWER (confrontation): As you talk, I am wondering if you noticed that as you said, “I am content keeping my private life private,” you began to grip the arms of that chair so tightly that your knuckles are turning white.

By calling attention to contradictions in the client’s presentation, confrontation disrupts habitual patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving. It stimulates self-examination by presenting the interviewee with a contradiction that he or she is invited to resolve. In the process of examining and explaining these inconsistencies, the client may be helped to view the problem from a new perspective, recognize and control underlying feelings, or acknowledge the influence of ambivalence as an obstruction to change (Hill 2009).

Confrontation creates less of a threat to the worker-client relationship if the confronting statement focuses on strengths rather than limitations. Mr. P., a supervisor in a machine tool plant, is assertive on the job when supervising his employees or when facing plant administrators about workers’ grievances, but he expresses considerable resentment because he generally feels he has to do what his wife wants to do on his time off. The interviewer says, “Look. How is this? You act one way on the job—assertive, verbal, kind of courageous—and another way off the job—unassertive, meekly going along.

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