Presentation Title
Conceptualizations of love in social work: A naturalistic inquiry
Document Type
Poster Session
Department
Social Work
Faculty Mentor
Dr. Adam Quinn, MA, LCSW
Keywords
social work, love, critical consciousness, love ethic, phenomenology, licensed clinical social worker, LCSW, naturalistic inquiry, qualitative, participatory
Abstract
Love is recognized as healing, transformative, and emancipatory, and yet, conceptualizations of love are largely absent in social work—a field guided by core principles such as social justice, self-determination, and service. The limited number of studies on love in social work describe love as critical consciousness or a liberatory ethic to be practiced. Primarily participatory in design, these studies speak from the perspective of practitioners. The purpose of this study is to continue inquiring about how love is known among social work practitioners; in particular, we are asking the question, “how do licensed clinical social workers (LCSWs) conceptualize love in practice?” Acknowledging a lacuna in the research on LCSWs’ perspectives, we facilitated interviews with five practitioners based in Portland, Maine to learn about their concepts of love in practice. We are guided by a phenomenological understanding of language: how our use of language shapes our perception, and vice versa. Through semi-structured responsive interviews, dialogical interviews, and prompted reflections, we sought to understand how LCSWs know love in their practice. As a result of our thematic analysis, emergent themes are offered for the purpose of nurturing concepts of love in social work practice.
Included in
Conceptualizations of love in social work: A naturalistic inquiry
Love is recognized as healing, transformative, and emancipatory, and yet, conceptualizations of love are largely absent in social work—a field guided by core principles such as social justice, self-determination, and service. The limited number of studies on love in social work describe love as critical consciousness or a liberatory ethic to be practiced. Primarily participatory in design, these studies speak from the perspective of practitioners. The purpose of this study is to continue inquiring about how love is known among social work practitioners; in particular, we are asking the question, “how do licensed clinical social workers (LCSWs) conceptualize love in practice?” Acknowledging a lacuna in the research on LCSWs’ perspectives, we facilitated interviews with five practitioners based in Portland, Maine to learn about their concepts of love in practice. We are guided by a phenomenological understanding of language: how our use of language shapes our perception, and vice versa. Through semi-structured responsive interviews, dialogical interviews, and prompted reflections, we sought to understand how LCSWs know love in their practice. As a result of our thematic analysis, emergent themes are offered for the purpose of nurturing concepts of love in social work practice.
