Social Role Valorization theory has an entire theme which covers the power of unconsciousness, specifically around the realities of how people come to be at the bottom of the social ladder, and what happens to them once they get there. I have always found this theme fascinating and also unsettling, with good reason.
The big idea behind it is that social devaluation (assigning a low social value to others) is largely transacted with a surprisingly low degree of awareness on the part of any of us, included devalued people themselves, service workers, and, well, most everyone. Most of us don’t want to admit that there are some people we simply think are worth less than others, and so we tend to deny this reality, or suppress it, or “sugar coat” it to soften it. This result is that the bad feelings that much of society holds towards certain groups of people gets expressed in action, or symbolically.
One of the interesting and scary corollaries to this is the tendency for what Dr. Wolfensberger has called “doing/undoing”. This means that when helpful action happens geared towards making vulnerable people’s lives better, another action is likely to occur which “undoes” the helpful action. This allows lots of efforts to happen by really accomplished change agents, while maintaining the status quo of poor life circumstances, and assuring that real forward movement is puzzlingly difficult to make. The “undoing” is hardly ever directly connected to the “doing”, so the net impact is also not recognized.
This happens on a big scale. Many thousands of people with mental disorders were de-institutionalized from State Hospitals during the 1970’s through the 1990s across the US. Over the ensuing decades, many thousands of people with mental disorders (many of the very same people) have now been re-institutionalized in our prisons in the role of inmate. One could even say that prisons are the largest provider of residential services to people with mental illness these days. Many of the very same people with intellectual disabilities that we worked effectively and with passion for decades to free from institutions are now re-institutionalized as elders in nursing homes. Doing. Undoing.
The net effect remains much the same in terms of the realities for our society and for the people affected by this. We could argue the details and nuances of that, but it is a reasonable thing to say.
Doing/undoing happens in small, individual ways, also. A good friend of mine who has a lifetime of involvement in many and multiple human services since he was a young child is continuously receiving goals, support, assistance and counseling about his lifestyle, his weight, and his need for exercise. People are working hard and with good intention to help him with these issues, and they are important. However, at the very same time, he takes a literal handful of pills every day and night, ranging from anti-psychotics, sleeping pills, tranquilizers to anti-depressants, mood- stabilizers, and anti-seizure drugs. Over most of the course of his 35 years, he has taken these drugs compliantly and with little review or oversight or question by anyone. Now he experiences all the conditions we know come from this – weight gain, lethargy, liver damage, partial kidney failure, COPD, congestive heart failure. Meanwhile, everyone in his life is making Herculean efforts to get him to the gym and snack on carrots, and no one is helping him lessen that handful, or even thinking about it. Doing. Undoing.
It pays to understand that this doing/undoing is at work. I came across a less toxic, but revealing image the other day, and I think it’s a pretty good example of the phenomenon. Pictured in the photo below is a colleague of mine, who finds himself in a predicament. Can you help unpack what is happening here in terms of doing/undoing?
(Photo used with permission and perhaps a bit of a wry sense of humor)
On Being of Service 
A very helpful reminder, Betsy! I believe it calls us to think about how we provide potent support that recognizes this real phenomenon, plans as best we can for it, and then deals with the disappointments that come regardless. How do we not become discouraged? The only good answer I can come up with many days is that the alternative is unthinkable!
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I work in an early intervention preschool where several of the students are nonverbal. We are instructed to teach these students sign language to mand (request) for what they want. Unfortunately, the sign language we teach them is not sign language at all, but a modified “baby” sign, that no one, except the instructors understands. Sometimes signs are so similar, even the instructors can’t decipher what the child is manding for.
Occasionally a parent will want to learn their child’s signs, but that is usually not the case. They find it impractical in most settings and no one else understands what the child is saying. I agree with them. Another case of good intentions that are sinfully impractical. Doing. Undoing.
That is a good example, and, although I am not a sign language expert, seems like an impractical thing. Considering that the proeschool years are ones where developmental possibilities and huge for all people, we’d want to focus our efforts on encouraging growth and learning that would build on itself in the years to come. Thanks, Amanda.
The doing/undoing idea made me think of past experiences I have had in my classroom. When I find strategies that work for students and share with parents, they like the ideas but follow through it not always there. In the past I have taught students signs based on ASL for our sight words. I made flash cards that went home for parents to practice so that we could all be consistently doing the same thing. All of my efforts to teach, copy and prepare materials were often overlooked and materials lost which made what I was doing in the classroom go into the undoing stage at home. One key to learning in school is consistency. Without the consistency piece, many of my students struggled to grow as quickly as they could have.
As well, Nicole, there is often a disconnect between big life areas in people’s lives, as you describe between school and home), which can have the same effect, where we are all focusing on different efforts in people’s lives. Sometimes we find we are operating of different assumptions about what a person might need, and how those needs might be met, or what needs are most pressing. Seems to me, our “planning processes” like IEPs tend to make these problems worse rather han better, but take up a lot of our time and effort, (and, incidentally, create lots of employment). Thanks, Nicole, for your comment.
I thought the way you presented the “doing/undoing” conundrum (especially people with mental disorders being de-institutionalized and re-institutionalized in nursing homes) did a great job emphasizing that the whole of SRV is an constant, ongoing process–not just one action/reaction, but a life-long challenge.