Peter Lüssi

Peter Lüssi ( [lyːsːɪ] ; born February 3, 1946 in Stäfa , Canton of Zurich ) is a Swiss social worker and retired university professor. He is the founder of the term systemic social work and an early representative of the systemic conception of social work.

Life

Peter Lüssi studied law, theology , philosophy and depth psychology at the University of Zurich . From 1962 to 1969 he was involved in church youth work and during his studies he worked part-time as a teacher: at the Zurich vocational school (law and German) and at a psychiatric nursing school (depth psychology). In 1976 he received his doctorate. theol., with the book Atheismus und Neurose (published by Verlag Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1979).

From 1977 to 1990 he worked as a social worker, from 1982 as deputy head, in the polyvalent social service of the city of Wädenswil (youth and family counseling, official guardianship, general social counseling, social assistance, community work). In addition, he completed a two-year training course as a manager at the Institute for Management and Management Training in Zurich (Management Diploma 1982). In 1983 he and his colleagues founded the Association of Social Workers in Political Communities (SPG) and was its chairman until 1990. The association served the further training and the representation of interests of the social workers in the Zurich communities.

From 1990 to 2006 Peter Lüssi was Professor of Social Work Theory at the University of Social Work (HSA) of the Bern University of Applied Sciences in Bern . In 1991 his textbook Systemic Social Work was published by Verlag Haupt in Bern (6th edition 2008). In 2006, at the age of sixty, he retired.

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With Lüssi's book Systemic Social Work. Practical textbook for social counseling was the first time in 1991 in the German-speaking countries a fundamentally systemically conceived social work theory. The basis for this are the sociological system theories of Talcott Parsons and Niklas Luhmann . In contrast to the “client-centering” of the usual social work theory and practice, the systemic principle is paramount in Lüssi's social work concept - both for understanding social problems and for the methodical problem-solving action of the social worker. But client-centered moments are also built into his social work teaching, because he wants social work to be complete, i.e. H. explain in all essential aspects and recognize that the system model, even if it is the basic and comprehensive concept for social work, cannot cover everything that is essential for it.

Lüssi's textbook only deals with social counseling, ie social work in individual social problem cases, in which numerous people are always involved. Lüssi calls them “those involved in the problem”. The system orientation of his concept is shown, among other things, in the fact that the social worker should lead all those involved in the problem to clients (concept of multiple clients) and not to one, i.e. H. "His" (exclusive) clients may be fixed.

The work contains many new terms and constructs and places the main emphasis on the methodical action of the social worker, based on concrete professional experience. This fans out according Lüssi on social work in the six types of action consultation, negotiation problem, intervention, procurement, representation, supervision. The sixth edition of the book was published in 2008. It has also been translated into Hungarian and Latvian and is considered a "social work classic".

Web links

• Literature by and about Peter Lüssi in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Viktor Schobinger , Alfred Egli, Hans Kläui : Zürcher Familiennames. Origin, distribution and meaning. Zürcher Kantonalbank, Zurich 1994, p. 161.