Incest 0000i-xiv FM 1 - William L. White

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t h e i n c e st u o u s wo r k p lac e
profession (Kramer 1974; Schmalenberg and Kramer 1976). Similar reality
shock tramples the idealism of many physicians, teachers, lawyers,
police officers, engineers, and public servants.
Organizations that respond to professional distress using the cognitive
model attempt to resocialize the worker to bring greater harmony
between professional expectations and professional realities. Since professional
distress is viewed as a problem of intellect, the manager’s task
is viewed as indoctrinating workers with beliefs and expectations that,
while reducing idealism, produce a greater level of professional satisfaction
and contentment. The manager using this approach has relationships
that can be characterized as tutorial rather than punitive.
There are a number of strengths to the cognitive approach to
alleviating psychological distress. The approach clearly raises the importance
of professional education in instilling values, beliefs, and expectations
that fit the real world. Managerial practices emerging from
this approach do impact the incidence of worker distress by establishing
clear role expectations and realistic belief systems for workers. In
its response to distressed workers, the approach also avoids the demoralizing
and stigmatizing effects of more punitive approaches.
The disadvantages of the cognitive approach are threefold. By defining
the source of worker distress as irrational and unrealistic ideas and
beliefs, the approach tends to ignore both the emotional vulnerabilities
and the skill deficiencies that a worker may bring to the work setting. A
broader criticism of the approach is that it often serves to support the status
quo by adapting the worker to the imperfections of the work world
rather than pushing the work environment toward, if not perfection, at
least progressive improvement. A final criticism is that the approach ignores
other factors, particularly factors in the work environment, that
will continue to produce professional distress even after the workers are
“appropriately” socialized.
2.3 The Clinical Approach:
Professional Distress as Psychopathology
The clinical approach to workers affected by professional distress defines
such distress as emerging from the poor emotional health of the
worker. This approach is particularly prevalent among human service
agencies whose members have a propensity to see the world through
such diagnostic labels. The models used by these workers to understand
the emotional and relationship problems of their clients are inevitably