Development of My Professional Philosophy, Part I
When I was 11 years old, I volunteered during the summer with children with special needs. I decided to do this because my older sister was doing it and, at that time, I did anything and everything she did. I soon realized these children were not like the preconceived notion I had of them. When I saw children in wheelchairs or not “fully functioning” in some way, I would have a tendency to feel sorry for them, because they couldn’t do what I was able to do. These children, age 6 – 16, were "real people," with their own lives and feelings. If I could make any generalization: they were happy, very warm and welcoming. I felt so privileged to be able to share in their experience and learn from them. I continued volunteering for several more summers. I knew then that I wanted to work with people in some way when I “grew up.”
In undergraduate school, I studied psychology. In my classes, such as Abnormal Psychology, there seemed to be a lot of focus on what was wrong with people and where it came from, then labeling them with a diagnosis. We learned theories about people with psychological problems, seeming to put them in categories, diminishing them for who they really were. I knew I wanted my degree in psychology, so I plodded through four years of what was necessary for me to graduate. I certainly learned many useful things in my education and was given a good foundation to build on through my career.
After I graduated with my bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1971, I worked at a vocational rehabilitation center with “post-institutionalized” adults in Chicago. My clients had been living in mental hospitals for most of their lives and had been diagnosed with various psychoses, schizophrenia, manic depression, paranoia, and more. There was funding for a mass exodus of getting people out of these institutions to live in halfway houses in the community. My job was to help train them to work and function in their new environment.
Interestingly, many of these people had spent their lives growing up together and were like family to one another, with the older generation raising the next generation. I felt blessed that they welcomed me into their hearts.
I observed them displaying amazing adaptive responses to their life circumstances. I learned to see these folks with a major diagnosis very differently from the definition of the labels I had learned from studying in books. They were people with issues, like all of us. This experience taught me so much about people and life.
I will always remember my client Joe, from Poland, who reportedly “heard voices.” He had been hospitalized for 30 years. My rehabilitation center hired a Polish speaking translator to talk with Joe, who was now in his middle 50’s. We learned that he travelled to America on a ship from Poland and when he heard a radio for the first time in his life, he “freaked out.” When he arrived in the US, he was institutionalized and remained so for 30 years, being labeled as psychotic. How happy he was to finally share his true story: He wasn’t “hearing voices,” he was astonished with hearing a radio!