48. Motivational Process in Motivational Work

The motivational worker’s contact rebus towards the client is thus an ascribed untransmuted constructive contact rebus. This is the most powerful response to a transmuted destructive contact rebus. The values and theories described in this part of the book are intended to make the detransmutation of the client’s contact rebus by the motivational worker as untransmuted (i.e. as conscious) as possible.

This means that conscious detransmutation has an important part to play even if the intuitive part of the process is also present. An important aspect of the conscious decipherment of the client’s transmuted contact rebus is the knowledge of how the transmuted contact rebus and the motivational process work (Motivational Work, Part 1: Values and Theory, page 456 – 492).

The latently motivated client’s transmuted destructive temporal contact rebus is, in principle, no different from other transmuted contact rebuses. Because of the client’s low degree of motivation, his temporal contact rebus will be highly transmuted, and the more transmuted it is the more energy it can acquire.

Moreover, the neutral principles of transmutation are reinforced by destructivity. This means that there is a considerable difference in the temporal contact rebus between the positive and negative rebounds. Both these contact rebuses will also be highly transmuted and destructive, and the polarity shifts between them very abruptly. The degree of transmutation of the contact rebuses also makes them very aggressive and destructive.

The greater share of the motivational worker’s temporal contact rebus is ascribed untransmuted constructive, which means that it has a low degree of transmutation and facilitates a direct channeling of life force. Unlike the transmuted contact rebus, the untransmuted temporal contact rebus is constant and permanent, and, although it is not due to transmutation, its emotional and cognitive content can shift. The basic attitude is the same at all times.

Case Study

Elsa, 29, has been a heavy drug user for many years. The general opinion of her held by the social services is that she is a hopeless case. However, a female social worker finds herself wanting to help her and, in consultation with the client, plans a stay in a treatment center. Elsa approves of the idea but insists on having her dog with her as she cannot bear to be parted from it during her treatment. This excludes most treatment centers.

The social worker is convinced that Elsa is becoming motivated, despite the opposition of her colleagues and bosses, who say that Elsa is deluding her, as she is using her dog as an excuse not to have to go away for treatment, her demand making it difficult to find a center prepared to take them both. After six months of searching, the social worker finally finds a family home willing to accept Elsa and her dog.

Elsa visits the home with the social worker and both give their approval. The social worker then has to spend a great deal of time convincing her bosses to accept the visit and that Elsa is motivated and serious about wanting to stay there. Her organization gives the go-ahead but with considerable reservations, and the following week the social worker drives Elsa and her dog to the home.

On the way back to work, the social worker feels happy that her client is finally in care, as she is likely to benefit from that experience, especially as she is able to have her beloved dog with her. The social worker is also pleased that she has continued to believe in the client and been able to ignore the skepticism of her colleagues. Two days later, the family home calls to inform her that Elsa is no longer there.

The day after her arrival, they explain, a man, obviously on drugs, turned up in a car to collect her, and Elsa left with him immediately, abandoning her dog and the home. This makes the social worker feel like a professional failure and she refuses to have any further contact with the client, as there seems to be no point in it. She also starts to doubt her own ability to help people. She is also plagued by misgivings about Elsa’s motivation and feels she’s been conned. Her colleagues, she decides, were right in writing off Elsa as a hopeless case.

Discussion

The client steps up the pressure of her testing and the bonding with the motivational worker through the temporal contact rebus. In the negative rebound, the client learns how much she is worth if she does not ‘behave herself’, in that she leaves the home. She tests whether the social worker cares about her and continues to believe in the possibility of a change for the better. Her hasty exit gives the impression that she is not motivated, and the abandonment of her dog tests how credible the social worker thinks she is.

First, Elsa tells her how much the dog means to her and then acts in a way that expresses the opposite. The boyfriend’s appearance further reinforces the negative rebound, as it enables Elsa to demonstrate that she has chosen a destructive drug abuser over the commitment of her social worker and her proposed treatment. This aspect of the contact rebus is reminiscent of the teenage girl’s testing of her parents when she comes home with a new boyfriend whom she knows they will find hard to accept.

Just like the teenager, Elsa examines if her ‘parent’ (read social worker) still cares about her even though she has an unacceptable boyfriend. If they fail to respond favorably to her choice, it means they do not respect her. Elsa’s testing is both destructive and dynamic, which increases the weight of the contact rebus. Instead of notifying anyone of her decision to leave the home or warning them of her craving, she immediately acts out her contact rebus, and in a very destructively demonstrative way at that.

She abuses drugs and enters a very destructive relationship with another drug addict, which places her in a very dangerous situation. Added to this is the fact that her destructive behavior is also very obvious negative feedback to the social worker’s commitment. After all the work she has put into her client, this is what she gets.

The contact rebus also contains another test. Elsa is intuitively aware that her social worker’s faith in her is not accepted by her colleagues. When the client acts out her negative rebound, she justifies their opinions of her. At the same time, Elsa seems to give her own social worker negative feedback, and thus tests whether she is able to keep up her commitment, even when she breaks her trust in front of her colleagues.

The social worker is thus beset by the client’s tests. In this situation, she chooses to see the client as manifestly motivated and concentrates on the visible component of her client’s contact rebus. This makes her feel as though she has received powerful negative feedback. Her strong emotional reaction to her client is a result of this attitude, and the social worker ignores the opportunity to do some conscious detransmutation.

The Significance of Supervision

A short while after the incident with the client, the social worker takes up her emotional reaction in a supervisory session, which allows her to see her client’s negative feedback as a concealed indirect contact gambit. The contact rebus then becomes a strong indirect affirmation of her work. The negative rebound is clear evidence that the client is undergoing change, and Elsa’s acting out is down to her growing closer to the motivational worker, a ‘rebound’ that the social worker’s commitment elicits.

By seeing her client’s demonstrative behavior in this way, the social worker recovers her sense of commitment to her client, in the realization that Elsa is seeking affirmation. After the session, the social worker manages to make contact with Elsa again and continue her work.

A year later, Elsa has quit the drugs, found a job, and started to live an ordered life. She is also taking care of her dog, which she has collected from the home where she had abandoned it. All this happens despite her taking no alternative course of therapy; the change has come about solely through her relationship with her social worker.

When the social worker sees the concealed functions of the negative rebound, she gives herself powerful affirmation of her work. Conscious detransmutation allows her to give herself positive feedback and break her own demotivational process so that she enters a motivational process. This enables her to start transmitting an untransmuted constructive temporal contact rebus to her client again.