The Personal Service Society

Abstract

(psychotherapists, caseworkers, and so on) have exerted a substantial moral influence on the so-called personal service professions of our time. Let me explain the meaning of this term. Consider first the professions of the clergy, doctors, nurses, teachers, social workers, to list only the largest groups, and compare these with the professions of lawyers, accountants, engineers, architects. Few are likely to be violently opposed to my proposal that the first group differs from the second in some important fundamentals: you will probably agree that the self-denial, matter-of-fact self-effacing personal care, and even human warmth and kindly solicitousness, required by the professionals in health, welfare, and education, is likely to be far more prominently in evidence in their work than in the practice of law, accountancy or architecture. Nevertheless, some fatherly lawyers may deplore that I have listed their profession with the engineers, and some severely academic and scrupulously impersonal teachers may resent being bracketed with the social workers and the clergy. Then let me further explain the rationale of this division. Professions whose principal function is to bring about changes in the physical or psychological personality of the client are the personal service professions, whilst all other professions which are not charged with responsibilities of this sort or, at any rate, which do not set themselves such tasks as these, are the impersonal service professions. It is my contention that this distinction has a marked sociological significance and I hope to show that it is also strongly suggested by the facts and not merely by my desire to engage in sociological speculations. No doubt