The Relationship Between Social Work and Psychoanalysis: The Future Impact of Social Workers

Because social workers are likely to have a more expanded role within organized psychoanalysis than previously, it seems timely to consider the numerous challenges and opportunities ahead with respect to social workers’ impact on the practice of psychoanalysis. For those who become social work psychoanalysts, in particular, a pivotal issue is the degree to which they retain their core identity as clinical social workers. It is important for them to integrate and balance the diverse aspects of their dual identity, to participate in our social work organizations, to contribute to developing psychoanalysis, and to work to keep the teaching of contemporary psychoanalytic theories alive in social work education.

The History and Status of Social Workers in the American Psychoanalytic Association

Historic changes within the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA) in the 1980s eventually allowed social workers and other non-medical professionals to train in clinical psychoanalysis as regular “candidates”. The steps to work through organizational resistance to this change are traced. The present level of activity of those analysts who began as social workers is discussed, with numeric data showing expansion of involvement in training and organizational life. Analysts with a background in social work are beginning to make significant positive contributions to APsaA. There is a more rapid pace of inclusion of analysts from social work in the governance side of APsaA than the educational. The ultimate impact on the organization is difficult to anticipate.

When Social Work and Psychoanalysis Meet

In this paper I share my personal journey from agency social worker to psychoanalyst. I show how I have brought to my psychoanalytic work the teachings of such well known social workers as Mary Richmond, Bertha Reynolds, Gordon Hamilton, and Florence Hollis as well those of such contemporary social workers as the late Gertrude and Rubin Blanck, Nancy Bridges, and Eda Goldstein, among others. In the presentation, I also consider how social work values, social work ethics and social work attitudes have influenced my approach to the practice of psychoanalysis. The attitudes which I refer to, include flexibility, beginning where the client is; an appreciation of the importance of understanding a patient’s cultural background and a recognition of the importance of the relationship in the therapeutic encounter. These were not standard for psychoanalysts at the time I began to practice. Today however psychoanalysis has largely caught up with social work, and this paper affirms how those of us who have had a social work background are well prepared for psychoanalysis in the 21st century.

“A New Sort of ‘Salvation Army’”: Historical Perspectives on the Confluence of Psychoanalysis and Social Work

No profession in the United States has a broader perspective on human needs than social work. Bold but also functional, social work distinctively places the pursuit of social justice on a par with the clinical treatment of individuals, pairs and families. Yet for much of the twentieth Century, proponents of the “macro” and of the “micro” approaches to practice have challenged each other’s commitment to social progressivism and humanist values. Interestingly, this on-going debate has hardly changed the core “person-in-environment” psychoanalytic paradigm at all. It is time to set aside this hidebound dispute, I argue in this article: social work is not two institutions folded into one but one profession that must be understood dialectically. Drawing on the history of the early psychoanalyst’s intense social activism and their commitment to treating the poor and working classes, I show how psychoanalysis shares in the transformation of civil society and helps restore individuals and communities alike to self-regulation and productivity.

Use of Self in Relational Clinical Social Work

Since the inception of social work social workers have noted the importance of relationship in practice. More recently clinicians and other social workers have developed the term “use of self” to indicate important aspects of the professional relationship. How that term is defined rests on how one conceptualizes “self.” The authors suggest that from a relational perspective the concept of self changes from the notion of self as separate and constant to self as process in interaction. They demonstrate on a theoretical level as well as through a case example how defining self as process in interaction might affect clinical social work practice.

Toward an Integration of Ideas About the Self for the Practice of Clinical Social Work

This paper presents ideas for understanding the self that is responsive to contemporary trends in professional practice. In addition to psychosocial factors, which have been associated historically with the practice of clinical social work, the paper integrates neurobiological factors into the discussion. The intent of the paper is to offer practitioners a conceptual framework for thinking biopsychosocially about clients. The framework underscores diagnostic understanding as the basis for the choice of specific interventive modes and techniques, and the centrality of a therapeutic relationship as the vehicle through which a new sense of self may emerge for clients.

Pathways to the Clinician’s Experience of Empathy in Engaging Single Mothers at Risk for Physical Abuse of their Children

Based upon an analysis of interviews from a qualitative study with twelve agency-based clinical social workers, this paper recounts three “situational pathways” through which these workers were able to experience empathy in the process of engaging low-income single mothers whose presenting picture involved physical aggression toward their symptomatic children who the workers were also seeing for therapy. The paper describes and utilizes self-psychological and intersubjective concepts to understand the therapeutic contexts that may enhance the worker’s potential for experientially understanding the client’s viewpoint. The relevance of the findings for practice and training is discussed.

Fighting Corruption on the Transdnistrian Border: Lessons from Failed and New Successful Anti-Corruption Programmes

In 2007, both Moldovan and Ukrainian authorities took firm steps to reduce corruption along the Transdnistrian border. This paper—aimed mainly at anti-corruption practitioners and scholars in public administration—discusses the background and underlying principles guiding the anti-corruption work being adopted by both governments in order to facilitate discussion about optimal anti-corruption programme design. This paper presents a set of tools used during the planning phase of the anti-corruption programme—outlining the methodology used to assess the extent of corruption on the Transdnistrian border, the problems of legislative transplants, a “contract test” for defining corruption offenses, a method of risk analysis, and a model of optimal anti-corruption programme organizational design.

Clinical Social Worker as Patient Advocate in a Community Mental Health Center

As a profession, social work has always advocated for clients. Yet clinical social work settings often ignore this important aspect of practice. For mental health services in public agencies, patient advocacy is a particularly vital element because these systems are not always responsive to the individual client. The clinical social worker, trained in advocacy, systemic intervention, and psychotherapy, is the professional most qualified to fill this role. The author summarizes the history of advocacy, provides a conceptual framework for the clinical social work advocate, and provides examples from 20 years of experience as a patient advocate in community mental health.

Attachment-informed Supervision for Social Work Field Education

Supervisory relationships present a new population for the application of attachment theory, and conceptualization of attachment-informed supervision training offers a new direction for study. This paper presents an 8-month model of supervision training for social work field instructors of MSW students. The training’s design incorporates primary attachment concepts with an understanding of the supervisory working alliance and parallel process. An overview of the in-person and on-line pilot training is presented, including perceptions from the participants regarding the training’s usefulness. This training program has implications for effective social work field education, and recommendations are suggested for future attachment research on supervision.

Efficient nonanthropocentric nature protection

This paper analyzes nature protection by a social planner under different ‘utilitarian’ social welfare functions. For that purpose we construct an integrated model of the economy and the ecosystem with explicit consideration of nonhuman species and with competition between human and nonhuman species for land and prey biomass. We characterize and compare the efficient allocations when social welfare is anthropocentric (only consumers have positive welfare weights), when social welfare is biocentric (only nonhuman species have positive welfare weights) and when social welfare is nonanthropocentric (all species have positive welfare weights). Not surprisingly, biocentric social welfare calls for suspending all economic activities. It is more important, however, that both anthropocentrism and nonanthropocentrism make the case for nature protection through different channels, though. Our analysis suggests that one may dispense with the concept of nonanthropocentric social welfare provided that in the anthropocentric framework the consumers' intrinsic valuation of nature is properly accounted for.

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Shame,the Affective Side of Secrets: Commentary on Barth’s Hidden Eating Disorders

This paper expands on the ideas presented by Barth’s article on hidden eating disorders. The topic of eating disorders continues to be an important focus of clinical work. Applying constructs related to the experience of shame, I explore the way that feelings of shame may impact an exploration of eating disorders by the patient and clinician.

Winnicott,Tomkins, and the Psychology of Affect

Donald Winnicott’s work is rather well-known to most clinicians, and many of his concepts––e.g., facilitating environment, spontaneous gesture, going-on-being, impingement, annihilation, True and False Self––are utilized clinically and theoretically. Silvan Tomkins and his colleagues provide a profound understanding of the psychology of affect, and their work furnishes a lens through which Winnicott’s ideas can be further appreciated. The author suggests such an integration is crucial not only to deepening our understanding of Winnicott’s concepts, but also to enhancing the clinical dimension of affect theory. This discussion also has important implications for social work with respect to both treatment issues as well as prevention and early intervention programs.

Social Enterprise in the United States and Europe: Understanding and Learning from the Differences

Since the 1980s both the United States and Europe have experienced a simultaneous expansion in social enterprise. However, little has been written comparing and contrasting American and European conceptions of social enterprise resulting in difficulty communicating on the topic and missed opportunities to learn and build on foreign experience. To address this need, this paper compares and contrasts American and European social enterprise through an extensive review of literature from the two regions and discussions with social enterprise researchers on both sides of the Atlantic. It outlines the definitions of social enterprise used by American and European academics and practitioners, identifies historical factors promoting and shaping different conceptions of social enterprise, and highlights the differing institutional and legal environments in which it operates. It concludes by identifying what Americans and Europeans can learn from each others’ experience with social enterprise.

Voice and Cure: The Significance of Voice in Repairing Early Patterns of Disregulation

This paper illustrates the value of the analyst’s awareness of the importance of her voice with its various intonations in the telephone treatment of a patient with early infant/mother attachment patterns of disregulation. The authors describe the significance of a particular kind of pervasive verbal intrusion by the patient’s mother and how through the use of voice pattern, tone, and rhythm in an extended period of telephone therapy, the patient was able to solidify a more secure attachment. Finally, the authors demonstrate how the verbal music in the analyst/patient and the mother/child dyads enhances self and interactive regulation.

Failures in the Development of Potential Space in a Group

In this paper I shall use Winnicott’s concept of potential space to discuss the impasses, which arises when failures occur in the development of group potential space. Because clinical social work is a service usually provided by public bodies with limited economic resources, unstable social and political realities are driving many social workers to search for methods of responding to the needs of many without compromising the quality of the service provided. This requires the acquisition of increasing knowledge in the field of group therapy, in order to help our clients, who often suffer from disabling conditions, to become functioning community members. The paper reviews Winnicott’s concept of potential space and Ogden’s formulation of the psychopathology of potential space, and describes various manifestations of impasses in group work and group development. Three clinical examples describing therapeutic groups led by clinicians in various public frameworks, are used to illustrate three different forms of group collapse following a failure in the formation of potential space. A fourth type of collapse is also discussed.

The Monster Within: Countertransference Reflections on a Gay Adolescent’s Struggle with Sexual Identity

This paper concerns the author’s countertransference reflections on her work with a gay adolescent who identifies with powerfully destructive internal objects, including Hitler and the Monster. The author describes her countertransference inquiry through which she experiences her own potential destructiveness in order to help accommodate her adolescent patient’s rejected and disowned self states.

Chinese Property Law (Rights in rem) in the Civilian Tradition

The legal transitions of private ownership from being admitted limitedly to being protected equally with public ownership, and of the peasants’ right on rural lands from a contractual right to the right in rem, are almost the same process of social reform. And in the interaction of social development and legislation, the law has taken on an increasing role in social transition.