The Gift of Service

Abstract

To what extent does the client see professional service as a gift: Should he or she receive it as a gift, and if so, what difference would it make to the quality of professional practice? These questions are pertinent when we consider the tendency for compliance to grow and moral sensitivity to decline as features of the relationship between professional and client. Compliance is, as I have said, an essential ingredient of good practice for which the client should be grateful. However, it is not sufficient if the client and the professional are to have the sort of relationship that each recognizes to be personal and morally creative. The mark of a grateful person is that he or she both gives and receives graciously. The vocation of the professional is willing to give his or her services to the client for their mutual well-being and the overriding interests of society at large.