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A Social Worker’s Bag of Tricks

May 2001

Terry Kalahar

Every social worker has special tricks. For Eva Ahmed, it may be flirting: “You would be such a handsome man if you would just get cleaned up.” For Matt McGinley, it may be humor: “Don’t worry about the FBI getting you, they are no match for the ACT team.” And for Terry Kalahar, it is quoting literature and philosophy.

In one recent case Kalahar used philosophy to save a client’s life. “I had a client with a severe mental disability who was diagnosed with prostate cancer and needed surgery to survive,” Kalahar recalls. “Because of his illness he could not comprehend the situation. He thought he could meditate and the cancer would go away. He was very intelligent but refused to have surgery. I drew on a lot of techniques, talking to him and taking him to a performance and book readings – anything that would motivate him to want to keep living.”
In desperation, Kalahar threatened to 5150 the client (have him involuntarily committed to a mental institution), at which point the client told Kalahar that it was his body and no one had a right to make him have surgery. “I told him, ‘You can do what you want to do, but I can’t just let you die.’ And then I quoted Nietzsche: ‘He who cannot obey himself is commanded.’ We got into a long philosophical argument about when someone has the right to intervene in someone else’s life. Finally, by listening and just being there for him, I got him to agree to trust the doctors. The procedure saved his life. It is all a matter of establishing trust and figuring out what motivates people.”