The
Case for Intuition
JERRY E. FLOERSCH, PH.D., LISW
Associate Professor of Social Work
Education
Ph.D. in Social Work, University of Chicago
M.S.W. in Social Work, University of Kansas
Courses Taught
Doctoral Program: Models of Qualitative Inquiry; Methodological Issues in Qualitative
Research.
Masters Program: Human development over the life span; Social work with people who have
severe mental illnesses; Theories of groups, organizations, communities, and social class.
Research Interests
Organization of community support services, clinical case management, qualitative methods for
clinical research, and the social, cultural, and psychological effects of youth psychotropic
treatment.
Dr. Floersch brings almost 20 years of experience in mental health services
practice and administration to his research and teaching at the Mandel School of Applied Social
Sciences. He joined the MSASS faculty in 1999.
In his research, Dr. Floersch utilizes ethnographic and historical-sociological research methods
to study case managers at work in the field. He is the author of several articles and his first
book, entitled
Meds, Money, and Manners was published by Columbia University Press in 2002.
In his book,
Meds, Money, and Manners, Dr. Floersch makes a provocative inquiry into the
undocumented oral narratives of case managers. His research has found that case managers utilize
two important forms of knowledge in their practice, disciplinary (or book) knowledge and situated
(or practical) knowledge. Case managers learn disciplinary knowledge in college classrooms and
training workshops. Disciplinary knowledge focuses on how to help persons with mental illness
develop daily living skills, monitor medication, and manage money, among others.
Case managers are not formally taught situated knowledge. Instead, they invent it in difficult
situations as a way to understand the psychological capacity of clients who are trying to become
self-sufficient. In short, Dr. Floersch explains, case managers are inventing and recovering
clinical knowledge because the social work curriculum and management training often suppress that
knowledge.
"We must reintroduce clinical skills into the training of case managers," he says. "Politicians
and the public want persons with mental illness to be self-monitoring good citizens but this is
impossible without some kind of self-awareness, which can be learned from a case manager who knows
how to clinically structure a helping relationship."
In his current research on youth psychotropic treatment, he extends his research of adult
medication treatment to understanding how adolescents and young adults experience psychiatric
medications in their daily lifes.
|
