Inter‐Subjectivity and Worker Self‐Disclosure in Professional Relationships With Young People: A Psychosocial Study of Youth Violence and Desistance
| Author | PETE HARRIS |
| Date | 01 December 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12229 |
| Published date | 01 December 2017 |
The Howard Journal Vol56 No 4. December 2017 DOI: 10.1111/hojo.12229
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 516–531
Inter-Subjectivity and Worker
Self-Disclosure in Professional
Relationships With Young People:
A Psychosocial Study of Youth
Violence and Desistance
PETE HARRIS
Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Youth and Community Studies, Newman
University, Birmingham
Abstract: This article argues that psychosocial theory can enhance understanding of in-
tersubjective dynamics between workers and young people involved in crime and violence.
After introducing some conceptual tools from psychoanalysis and post-structural theory,
a case study follows a worker’s efforts to bring about a young man’s desistance (including
the worker’s use of self-disclosure) and how this is stymied by systemic failings in a home-
less hostel in the UK. The article concludes that professional work in services targeted
at young people with multiple support needs requires a deep sensibility to intersubjective
and unconscious dynamics within professional relationships and organisations.
Keywords: desistance; intersubjectivity; psychosocial; self-disclosure; young
people; youth violence
This article draws on psychosocial theory to drill down into relationships
between young people and youth professionals, arguing for a need to
broaden the base of traditional understandings of such relationships to
sufficiently account for psychodynamic intersubjective processes. It incor-
porates a theorisation of the worker/young person relationship as a fully
intersubjective field; a system of ongoing, reciprocal, but not always sym-
metrical, influence where worker and young person negotiate the mean-
ings and subject positions that are created between them. I illustrate how
professional engagement with young people exhibiting violent behaviour
(especially when that behaviour is rooted in experiences of maltreatment,
loss, and fractured attachments) may need to incorporate a deeper sensibil-
ity to relational psychodynamic processes. I argue that such a sensibility can
strengthen the desistance-promoting potential of some professional prac-
tices, such as the reflective use of ‘self’ in the shape of worker self-disclosure.
516
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2017 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK
The Howard Journal Vol56 No 4. December 2017
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 516–531
To begin with, I discuss issues of boundaries and self-disclosure in pro-
fessional relationships. I then introduce a psychosocial perspective on in-
tersubjectivity and organisational defensiveness, arguing that this provides
an apposite framework for work with young offenders. A detailed dyadic
case study then follows a young person – a care-leaver (Daniel) with a
history of maltreatment and abuse – and his worker (Jim), charting their
own biographies and their experience of each other in a homeless hostel
for young people over five months. The story includes Jim’s attempts to
engender shifts in Daniel’s perception of himself and others around him
via an approach rooted in dialogical and empathic practice. A psychoso-
cial analysis employs object relations theory to explore the aetiology of
Daniel’s violent behaviour and then views this in tandem with selected
excerpts from Jim’s own biographical narrative to plot the processes of in-
tersubjective recognition (Benjamin 2004) and master-slave (Lacan 1977)
dynamics that feature within the dyad. I highlight Jim’s decision to disclose
an aspect of his own biography that renders him more fallible in Daniel’s
eyes and show how that begins to shift the asymmetry within that dynamic,
thereby generating an opportunity for Daniel to construct an alternative,
less pervasively violent subjectivity.
However, as the case ultimately unfolds and reveals, this opportunity is
quashed by endemic organisational failures within the hostel where Daniel
was living. Inept professional practice, inadequate supervision and the
dominance of professional discourses that valorise dispassionate, bounded
engagement, stymy, rather than enable, Jim’s practice. I argue that these
systemic failings and limited practice repertoire of Jim’s co-workers rep-
resents (if replicated elsewhere) a serious shortcoming in services that
purport to look after and rehabilitate young people like Daniel, many
of whom are in dire need of professional adult support. The article con-
cludes that workers like Jim might be able to offer meaningful support to
young people like Daniel, but if their work is to have maximum desistance-
promoting potential, youth services and professional development regimes
may need to further emphasise understanding of the psychosocial nature of
intersubjective dynamics within relationships and organisations.
Professional Relationships, Boundaries and Self-disclosure
The National Youth Agency (2004) ethical code of conduct states that work-
ers should:
recognise the boundaries between personal and professional life and be aware of
the need to balance a caring and supportive relationship with young people with
appropriate professional distance. (p.6, italics added)
How this might translate into practice remains ambiguous; inevitably per-
haps, as any evaluation of appropriateness can only ever be meaningfully
explored in detailed case studies that provide the necessary contextuali-
sation. Merry (1999) argues that workers taking an objective, distant, and
uninvolved stance can have the effect that young people see workers as only
having a professional interest in them; that they are not really concerned
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2017 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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