One day he went up in the mountains and encountered an abandoned eagle nest, that is, with just one little eagle chick left. The little boy was overwhelmed and consumed with compassion, and took the chick with him to grandma’s ranch. There he released it among the other chickens in the henhouse. The eagle chick grew up just like the rest of the chickens. He started to act like a chicken. He developed the same language as the other chickens. He ate like a chicken e.g.

One day there was a voice in his heart crying out “Look Up – Look Up!”

The eagle chick looked up. What he saw was without compare! He saw a creature soaring in majesty and power. A creature he had never seen before. When the other chickens saw that that creature up there infatuated the eagle chick, the other chickens flocked around him saying in unison: oh, do not make any high pretensions; you will never be that way, nevertheless become that way. Do not dream just be like us, a chicken.

Yet, the voice in the eagle chick’s heart cried out again “Look Up – Look Up”

Again, the eagle chick looked up, and again the completely chicken family flocked around him attempting to discourage, divert and de-motivate him. Yet in the heart of the eagle chick, curiosity awoke. He felt he strong desire to become like that mighty creature up there.

The eagle chick began to look at himself wondering why he actually looked different from all the other chickens. He started to spread his wings and felt that when he waved them, a power that he could not see where it came from or where it was heading was lifting him up. Suddenly he started ferociously flapping with his wings, instantly experiencing detachment from mother earth. More and more he distributed strength to his wings and found himself rising higher and higher. Suddenly he had ascended to such a height that he began to soar. Once he soared with the other eagle, he found out one important thing: being a chicken was not his real identity and nature.

He was an eagle!

Remember, we eat chickens never eagles!

The story about the eagle embodies in many ways what empowerment is all about.

Empowerment is about finding and, tapping into hidden resources that lay within you.

Empowerment is concerned about aiding an individual with his or her search for strength, courage, problem resolution i.e.

So what is empowerment? What role can empowerment play in the treatment of families?

One truth we can establish concerning empowerment is the fact that empowerment is a process that challenges our assumptions about the way things are and can be. It challenges our basic assumptions about power, helping, achieving, and succeeding.

Due to the limited nature of this essay, one is not able to go in full depth on the subject of empowerment. However, I will attempt to say something about accountability, empowerment, and critical consciousness. Moreover, I will say something about what kind of function they can have in the healing/helping process of families.

This essay addresses two empowerment positions that I recognize as useful in working with family systems: the empowerment therapeutic position, and the empowerment radical position.

In working with individuals and- or family systems in crisis, we need to be aware of the fact that, working with families within a family therapeutic context, demands a high degree of mutual trust. This trust must be based on the individuals and- or families free choice to engage in a therapeutic context.

It often occurs that one or more members of a family system are hesitant and- or resistant to engage in therapeutic activity. Resistance often based on a fatalistic concept of self and, on the idea that nothing can, or will help no matter what. From this perspective, empowerment can make its constructive contribution, in that it can become a productive tool in the endeavor to generate and attribute meaning to the intervention process.

After my estimation, the empowerment therapeutic position is useful in this essay since family therapy, in many ways, is a non-directional approach. There is no power exercised on the family system from a family therapeutic stance and from a therapist position.

The therapeutic context does not shake in any shape-or-form the issue concerning the balance of power between the therapist and his client(s). An essential point from an empowerment therapeutic stance is to redefine the role of the therapist from being a directional-oriented therapist to a conversationalist, positioned at an equal level with his clients(s), Askheim & Starin (2007).

I consider the radical empowerment position in this essay as useful, since it focuses on the coherence between an individual’s life situation and societal, structural conditions. The radical empowerment position embraces the concept of praxis which means reflection and action, related to an individual’s or group endeavor to bring about change in the environment in which he or she thrives. Another fundamental anchor embraced by the radical empowerment position is the attempt to generate self-confidence, increased knowledge, an expansion of personal skills and, the obtaining of a more functional concept of self. The radical empowerment position is valued as important in working with family systems since it dismisses the idea that an individual’s position is hereditary, but that the individual’s position is the product of a historical human created process.

In working with families within a therapeutic context, both the therapeutic empowerment position and, the radical empowerment position are beneficial, and should be considerate as constructive contributions to the field of family therapy.

2.0 EMPOWERMENT, GOALS AND DILEMMAS

Empowerment is a construct that links individual strengths and competencies, natural helping systems, and proactive behaviors to social policy and social change (Rappaport, 1981, 1984). Empowerment aims at linking individual well-being with the larger social and political environment. Empowerment compels the individual and- or group to think in terms of wellness versus illness, competence versus deficits, and strength versus weakness. Empowerment focuses on identifying capabilities rather than cataloging limitations and social problems. Empowerment intervention seeks to enhance wellness and aims at ameliorating problems, providing opportunities for participants to develop knowledge and skills and, to engage professionals as collaborators rather than authorative experts (Perkins et al. 1993).

Empowerment is “an intentional ongoing process centered in the local community, involving mutual respect, critical reflection, caring, and group participation, through which people lacking an equal share of valued resources gain greater access to and control over those resources” (Cornell Empowerment Group, 1989). Another definition comes from Rappaport (1987); a process by which people gain control over their lives, democratic participation in the life of their community. Empowerment includes both process and outcomes, suggesting that actions, activities, or structures may be empowering, and that the outcome of such processes result in a level of being empowered (Swift & Levin, 1987). Empowered outcomes refer to operationalizations of empowerment that allow one to observe the consequences of empowering processes. Individual empowerment outcomes may include situation-specific perceived control and resource mobilization skills (Perkins et al. 1993).

Yet another definition comes from Guiterrez (1990, p. 146, op. cit.): “A process of increasing interpersonal or political power so that individuals can take action to improve their life situation”. This last definition is interesting since it defines empowerment on three levels: the individual, group and political level. This implicitly means that aiding through empowerment is appropriate on all levels within the societal structure. With other words, empowerment addresses power dynamics in and between those three levels. Empowering processes for individuals may lead to participation in community organizations. At the organizational level, empowering processes might include collective decision-making and shared leadership. Empowering processes at the community level might include collective action to access government and other community services (e.g., media) (Perkins et al. 1995).</