A typical reaction that the motivational worker can have in his demotivational process is to withdraw from the client completely. This is because he feels so bad about the relationship that his only way to escape his disquietude and stop the depletion of life energy is to break off contact (Motivational Work, Part 2, Motivational Relationship, pages 105 – 127).
If he continues to meet the client, his suffering will continue. The motivational worker feels unable to stop his demotivational process himself and, consequently, no longer controls the relationships. Instead, he lets the client’s demotivation have power over him and effectively places himself in his client’s hands, allowing the latter to rule over his emotions.
Snow White
This sense of powerlessness is illustrated in our fairy tales when someone is put under a spell; in our terms, this gives the motivational worker the sense that his emotions, even his life, are being controlled by an external force.
In the classic Brothers Grimm tale, Snow White flees from her wicked stepmother and hides away with seven dwarves in the forest. However, the stepmother manages to find her and sets off dressed as a kind old woman, taking a poisoned apple that she intends to give to the girl.
Immediately, Snow White is taken in by the disguise and eats the apple. She immediately falls into a deep sleep from which the dwarves are unable to wake her. Finally, she is found by a young handsome prince, who wakes her with a kiss on the lips. He declares his love for her, and a wedding is planned – and they live happily ever after.
Snow White fails to see through her stepmother’s disguise (= destructive contact rebus) and enters a powerful demotivational process that seriously depletes her life energy. Her only hope of rescue is a sudden and liberal injection of life energy from someone who can see her tests (a prince, for example).
Case Study
Josef, 14, lives with his parents and little sister (11). Josef has threatened to kill himself by jumping from a balcony, and so his parents contact the social office, which sends a social worker, Mathilda, 35, to meet him. They want him placed in care as they no longer have the energy to look after him. Josef has to move to an emergency family home after undergoing an examination at the child psychology clinic.
Mathilda finds out from Josef’s mother that he sometimes touches her breasts and that although she finds this disagreeable, she finds it hard to prevent him. When Josef has been away for a month, the mother contacts Mathilda again. She informs her that her daughter has now accused Josef of sexually abusing her.
The home at which Josef is staying has also said that they cannot keep him anymore, as the mother finds him so emotionally assertive. So he is relocated to a youth institution, and at first, Mathilda feels sorry for him, and it seems as if he has taken a liking to her too.
After a while, however, she starts to feel a strong sense of malaise even on hearing his name. Mathilda’s reaction fills her with a sense of hopelessness and vulnerability, and she feels not only that she is powerless to do anything about it but also that she is actually being controlled by Josef. So she decides to pull out of the case and refuses to have the slightest contact with her former client.
Discussion
The social worker initially has a motivational relationship with her client and is keen to build up a relationship. However, this positive feeling for her client is soon replaced by a negative one, which even becomes physical. Thus, she enters the same demotivational process as the mother of the emergency family home.
Mathilda’s passive detransmutation gives her a picture of how Josef and the family perceive their situation. Her malaise can, for example, suggest that there really is sexual abuse in the family; what is clear is that at no point does Mathilda see her client’s contact rebus, which sets off her demotivational relationship.