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Integrating new knowledge and conceptual frameworks from the many sources that inform and support social work practice is a long and arduous process. General systems theory, which was introduced to social workers over twenty years ago,(1) has been particularly difficult to assimilate because it is so abstract. The distance is great between the lofty principles enunciated by systems theorists and the practical knowledge and skill that guide the practitioner's work with people, day by day. The field has made some progress in utilizing systems concepts in developing middle-range theory, in organizing practice models,(2) in extending and clarifying the boundaries of the unit of attention,(3) and in prescribing general directions for action.(4) Professionals in the field are now at the point of attempting to translate concepts from this middle-range theory into specific and testable prescriptions for practice.
Particularly interesting is the potential a systems orientation has for altering cognitive styles and enabling practitioners to organize and process increasingly complex systems of variables.(5) The attempt here is to derive from systems framework new conceptual models that can enhance the practitioner's and the client's perceptions of reality, thereby contributing to competence and creative adaptation in therapy.
Social workers, in attempting to understand their traditional unit of attention--the person in his total life space aver time--are faced with an overwhelming amount of data. These data must be ordered, selected, and arranged to reduce confusion and overload. Edward Tolman has likened this mediating process to a map room here intervening cognitive charts shape data, lending meaning and manageability to the influx of information.(6) These cognitive patterns have tremendous influence on how reality is perceived, but a not readily observed or easily changed. They are an ongoing and familiar pan of the self and, as Frederick Duhl has pointed out, "that which is constantly experienced is neutral to awareness, being so immersed in the identity, so 'egosyntonic,' that it is rarely open to observation or challenge."(7) As social workers interact with their environment, these mediating cognitive processes so strongly imprint a particular view of reality that they may well be just as crucial as knowledge and values in determining professional decision making.
In dealing with almost continual information overload, cognitive processes tend to operate analytically: to partialize, to abstract parts from...