Issues in overturning a medical model of social work practice.

EMERGENCE OF a healthoriented paradigm of human behavior is particularly felicitous for the social work profession. In its implicit emphasis on growth-enhancing possibilities for human beings, a healthoriented model strikes an affinity with the value base of the profession and stimulates reaffirmation of principles of practice that have always been present. Recent works by Germain and Gitterman. Pincus and Minahan. Meyer, and others have begun to translate the principles of a health model into practice.' The promise of this new view still outstrips its application, in particular, awareness of conceptual traps, which can mute the full force of the new view, is necessary. In any process of change, the weight of old assumptions tends to color the radical possibilities in the new paradigms, leading to a diminished understanding and application of the new principles. While working toward conceptualizations of behavior that center on health, those In the profession must be equally attentive to sabotage from some of the familiar beliefs about the nature of change and particularly the profession's role in facilitating it.