Determinism versus Creativity: A Response to Peile

Abstract

In his thoughtful article Determinism versus Creativity: Which Way for Social Work? Colin Peile (1993) described social workers, clients, and research subjects as predominantly caught up in the self-deceptive trap of (p. 134). In differentiating the worldview from the deterministic outlook of the positivist empiricist approach, Peile discussed creativity as the fundamental nature of all processes and related this social work practice and knowledge development. This philosophical discussion is important, and Peile's critique of determinism is worthy of support. His presentation of a is not new social work, however. The development of functional theory, which occurred primarily during the 1930s, brought the conflict between determinism and creativity the forefront of social work practice development. The positive, creative action of the individual client, mediated through the between the social worker and client, was seen as fundamental the process of change by the functional theorists. The functional view differed from the psychic determinism of the diagnostic school as it operated not from a psychology of illness but from a psychology of growth with an emphasis on the creative potential of man and because it put the client rather than the worker at the center of the social work relationship (Smalley, 1967, p. x). As Peile (1993) argued, it is the very belief in a deterministic, causal world that enables and justifies the dominance of one person over another and of people over the environment (p. 129). The functional theorists rejected the determinism of the diagnostic approach in favor of a creative paradigm that focused on the participation of the client in his or her change process (Dore, 1990). It is important that social workers recognize and acknowledge the historical precedence of this view as Peile rediscovers the creative paradigm. As in the 1930s, the importance of the relative nature of time is emphasized as essential the process of social work intervention (Smalley, 1967); the creative process proceeds in each case at very different speeds that reflect very different time frames (Peile, 1993, p. 131). Peile may be blameworthy in that he did not refer to the threads of the past represented in the fabric of current practice theory (Dore, 1990, p. 358) as he discussed the creative paradigm. However, he should be commended for his discussion of viewing reality as a conceptual synthesis of deterministic and random processes, in that he offered a reconciliation of the diagnostic (deterministic) and functional (creative) schools of thought. Dore acknowledged Perlman's (1957) problem-solving approach as bridging diagnostic and functional theory. Peile took a further step in offering a cosmology that synthesizes deterministic and random processes. …