The Soul of Race, the Heart of Color: The Multicultural Imagination: “Race,” Color and the Unconscious. Adams, Michael Vannoy. New York:  Routledge, 1996.

Social work as a professional field suffers from many pathologies, one of which it derives from the larger, Western subjective mind from which it has evolved. The modern tradition attributes “consciousness” to the inferiority of individual being and assumes the world (including the human body) to consist of lifeless external factors that impinge upon and affect the inner core or “soul.” As a result, social work is split into two parts which work separately toward change, either in the individual or in the world. The former is considered to be “psychotherapy,” a mode of reflection upon the subjectivity-“life,” “consciousness,” or “soul”-located within the individual (or couple, family or group depending upon the modality of therapy. Psyche means “soul,” therapeuo, “to wait upon,” so that psychotherapy is a serving or care of the soul). The latter is a mode of action, such as research, education, and social planning and advocacy, designed to directly evaluate or bring about change in a world assumed to be void of its own life.

An alternative to these ontological assumptions can be found in other