Understanding Self-Help/Mutual-Aid: Experiential Learning in the Commons - Softcover

Borkman, Thomasina Jo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0813526302 ISBN 13: 9780813526300

Publisher: Rutgers University Press, 1999

Synopsis

Self-help groups have encountered fierce criticism as places where individuals join to share personal problems and to engage in therapeutic intervention without the aid of skilled professionals. These groups have flourished since the 1970s and continue to serve more people than professional therapy.

Yet these groups have been criticized as fostering a culture of whiners and victims, and not using professional help as needed. Thomasina Jo Borkman debunks this commonly held assessment, and also examines the reasons for these groups’ enduring popularity since the 1960s—more people attend these meetings (word?) than see professional therapists. What accounts for their success and popularity?

Understanding Self-Help / Mutual-Aid Groups is the first book to describe three stages of individual and group evolution that is part of this organization’s very structure; it also reconceptualizes participants’ interactions with professionals. The group as a whole, Borkman posits, draws on the life experiences of its membes to foster nurturing, support, and transformation through a “circle of sharing.” Groups create more positive and less stigmatizing “meaning perspectives” of the members’ problems than is available from professionals or lay folk culture.

About this title

About the Author

Thomasina Jo Borkman is a professor of sociology at George Mason University.

From the Back Cover

Self-help groups have encountered fierce criticism as places where individuals join to share personal problems and participate in therapeutic intervention without the aid of skilled professionals. These groups that professionals. These groups have flourished since the 1970s and continue to serve more people than professional therapists.

Yet these groups have been criticized for fostering a culture of whiners and victims, and for not providing professional help as needed. Thomasina Jo Borkman's careful analysis of the group's working debunks this assessment. She also examines the reasons for the enduring popularity of these groups since the 1960s by interviewing participants and organizers.

Understanding Self-Help/Mutual Aid is the first book to describe three stages of individual and group evolution as part of the organizational structure, and reconceptualizes participants' interactions with professionals. The groups as a whole, Borkman posits, draw of the life experiences of their members to foster nurturing, support, and transformation within a "circle of sharing". As Borkman seeks to demonstrate, groups create more positive and less stigmatizing "meaning perspectives" of their members' specific problems than professional therapists.

Edition details

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0813526302
• ISBN 13: 9780813526300
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 257