THE ELABORATION OF CHOICE IN A PROGRAM FOR HOMELESS PERSONS LABELED PSYCHIATRICALLY DISABLED

In the United States, those street-dwelling homeless persons who suffe r from serious psychiatric disabilities often reject the dependency ge nerated by treatment modalities. Psychiatric and/or psychosocial rehab ilitation, which emphasizes client choice, resonates with recent empow erment perspectives in community psychology, consumer-run mental healt h alternatives, and nontraditional homelessness programs. However, few of these approaches have been analyzed. This article examines critica lly how client choice, as a driving principle and idiographic concept, was constructed in a program for street-dwelling homeless persons lab eled mentally ill by service providers. The cultural underpinnings of individualist choice are traced. This article analyzes the paradoxes o f applying an idiographic framework, which favors case-by-case approac hes over universally applicable rules, in a larger context of normativ ely oriented service organizations upon which the program depended for desired resources. Finally, it demonstrates how the emergence of a co llectivity within the program redefined the outer limits of individual choice.