Making Professionals into "Persons"

Abstract

What happens to people who are assuming a master status for which audiences have discrepant expectations, when socializers also emphasize that recruits take the desires of all audiences into account? A participant observation and in-depth interview study of ministry students in a humanistically oriented seminary revealed that these students received discrepant expectations for the professional identity from organizational personnel (the humanistic role) and members of the wider community (the traditional role). By advocating personal and egalitarian involvement with clients, socializers taught recruits to care about outsiders' expectations. As a result, recruits called into question the meaning of the professional identity, effected "double role distance," and took on an "ambivalent" identity. Students in humanistic schools of the personal service professions may experience a similar dilemma.