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This article presents a specific analytical perspective on social work focusing on the relation between social workers and their clients both engaged in a service relation. Such a perspective allows the researcher to study the contents and the quality of service received by the clients of social services. The analysis of empirical data shows that due to the public’s call for help, the professionals encounter difficulties in maintaining their position in the service relation. Those difficulties are softening when social workers succeed in mastering their emotions in the frame of the interaction. In order to do so, they develop relational abilities and resort to some of the tools offered by social work.