Social Work: ‘Profession Without Qualities’ Attempt to Link Social Work and Cybernetics

Abstract

From the perspective of the practitioner social work is considered as a crypto-cybernetic performance, i.e. the observations formulated by Heinz von Foerster on second-order cybernetics are translated into action patterns for social workers: the observation of the observer is institutionalized in the form of ‘supervision’; a ‘cultivated sense of possibilities’ corresponds to a reality that is seen as constructed, rather than objectively given; the contingency of moral expectations leads to a ‘practised ethic of responsibility’; the black-box idea corresponds to the proclaimed ‘right of the client for self-determination’. Today, due to Heinz von Foerster, social work can unashamedly celebrate its cybernetic ‘coming out’.

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