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.

Clinical Social Work and Psychoanalysis: Introduction to the Special Issue

As clinical social work developed in America it was highly influenced by the concepts and techniques of psychoanalysis and many of its practitioners became interested in seeking psychoanalytic training. More and more psychoanalysts are now coming from a background in clinical social work due to the development of a network of interdisciplinary training institutes and the opening of the Institutes of the American Psychoanalytic Association to non-medical candidates. This special issue considers how psychoanalysis may be affected as more of its practitioners and contributors come from a background in clinical social work. This introduction reviews the history of the development of clinical social work and outlines the issues related to “lay analysis” in this country.

Self-Employment,Work–Family Fit and Mental Health Among Female Workers

We used the 2002 National Study of the Changing Workforce to investigate the effects of work type on women’s lives. Specifically, we hypothesized that self-employed women have better work–family fit than organizationally employed women. We also hypothesized that as a result of better work–family fit, self-employed women would report better mental health than organizationally employed women. The analysis shows limited support for the hypotheses. Of the different dimensions of work–family fit, self-employment directly influenced only job to home facilitation. Work type had no direct influence on mental health. It appears that work type may indirectly influence work–family fit and mental health through higher job satisfaction and increased autonomy.

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.

Working at the End of Life: Providing Clinically Based Psychosocial Care

Social workers who provide end-of-life care do not always see themselves as clinicians. This paper identifies what is clinical in work with the dying. Social workers routinely elicit sources of cultural and psychological ways of coping, tolerate difficult and painful affects, and balance hope with compassion. They work in multidisciplinary teams and on every level (individual, family, and systemically) to avoid splitting or blame. Further, dying is a relational event. Social workers who work with the dying often stand in the most intimate spaces and therefore use themselves intersubjectively. This work requires considerable courage and self-care.

Myths of Women and Their Reflection in a Therapy Group

One essential dilemma for modern clinical social work involves the relationship between the processes taking place inside the self and the social, cultural, and political developments affecting a person from the outside. The group-analysis approach focuses on four levels of relationships and communication within the group, among others a primordial level of shared myths, archetypical images, and the collective unconscious as an important component of psychotherapy. This article describes group-analysis therapy with women, analyzing a therapeutic process that used social myths to explore the formative institutionalization processes participants had undergone, thereby expanding themselves, growing, and changing.

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.

Agreeing on more than chicken soup: Intra-household decision-making and treatment for child psychopathology

Using a large, U.S. dataset it is shown that children are more likely to receive needed mental health specialty treatment when women have greater decision-making power, as measured by an index of wife-favorable divorce laws and by the sex ratio at the time of marriage. Stratified analyses show that this effect is modified by the degree of marital conflict. Marriages characterized by high conflict conform more closely to the unified household model. The paper then presents a model of household decision-making consistent with these results that incorporates both objective determinants of bargaining power as well as the role of violent coercion in maintaining otherwise unsustainable equilibria. Implications for improving children’s access to mental health treatment are offered.

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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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.

Organizations in Movement: An Ethnographer in the Spanish Campaign <Emphasis Type="Italic">Poverty Zero</Emphasis>

During the year 2005 many organizations took part in Poverty Zero, a campaign that aims to reach the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals for 2015. Based on participant observation and open ended interviews, this paper describes the origins, development, and evaluation of Poverty Zero in Andalusia (Spain). It examines, by means of ethnography, how DNGOs (Development Nongovernmental Organizations) create social movement networks, and explores the limits and possibilities of their advocacy activities. The paper concludes that DNGOs tend to generate centralized social movements with reduced questioning of the global system. Nevertheless, as shown in the case of the Andalusian Alliance against Poverty, the more decentralized a movement, the deeper its transformational potential.

Psychosocial Correlates of Interpersonal Sensitivity: A Meta-Analysis

This meta-analysis examines how interpersonal sensitivity (IS), defined as accurate judgment or recall of others’ behavior or appearance, is related to psychosocial characteristics of the perceiver, defined as personality traits, social and emotional functioning, life experiences, values, attitudes, and self-concept. For 215 independent studies reported in 96 published sources, higher IS was generally associated with favorable or adaptive psychosocial functioning. Significant mean correlations were found for 27 of the 40 categories of psychosocial variables; these categories covered many different personality traits, indicators of mental health, and social and work-related competencies. Moreover, many additional studies that fell outside these conceptual categories also showed significant positive relations between IS and numerous other psychosocial variables. Taken together, the results support the construct validity of IS tests and demonstrate that IS is associated with many important aspects of personal and social functioning.

Engaging Absent Fathers in the Treatment of Children

Absent fathers are often excluded from the treatment of their children for various reasons. They are often marginalized by mothers, and unintentionally excluded by clinicians. Absent fathers are also excluded from treatment in fear that their presence might undermine the competencies of single mothers, which social service agencies serve to empower. This article will discuss the potential benefits of including absent fathers in family therapy, and how to work with them once engaged in treatment.

Spillover Impacts of a Reproductive Health Program on Elderly Women in Rural Bangladesh

This paper extends the program evaluation literature by investigating intra-household externalities generated by a reproductive health program, administered as a quasi-control experiment in rural Bangladesh. Although the program targeted only mothers and children in randomly selected treatment areas, using a reduced form demand approach and data from Matlab Health and Socio-economic Survey of 1996, we found a significantly positive spillover impact of this reproductive health program on the health of the never-targeted elderly women.

Affirmative Action Can Increase Effort

Previous theoretical work examining labor tournaments concluded that an affirmative action program will always reduce the effort supplied by agents, thereby reducing output and profit for the tournament administrator; however, experimental results sometime contradict this conclusion. In the context of a labor tournament I demonstrate that there exists an affirmative action program that induces both types of agents to provide greater effort. In some instances the effort maximizing affirmative action program will also give both types of agents an equal chance of winning the tournament.

A Calmly Disruptive Insider: The Case of an Institutionalized Advocacy Organization at Work

Through a case study of a leading service provider organization in Philadelphia, this paper explores the advocacy work of a publicly funded, professionalized, institutionalized nonprofit organization. In this article I relate how in the spring of 2002, staff at the organization responded to a recurring political issue: local business groups were again calling for official action against “aggressive panhandlers” in the downtown district. I use ethnographic and historical data to show that the organization’s institutionalization and ties to the public sector have allowed staff to develop resources and skills for being both contentious claim-makers and influential actors in the institutional political arena.

Disrupting Power and Privilege in Couples Therapy

Power disparities underlie many of the issues that couples bring for therapy. People in relationships are not equal; often one partner is systematically conferred unearned advantage and dominance. This article synthesizes results from three qualitative research studies to propose a social justice approach for clinical practice with couples. Interventions are suggested to keep issues of power and privilege a central focus while addressing the ordinary issues partners present for therapy.

The scoring rules in an endogenous election

Plurality rule is mostly criticized from being capable of choosing an alternative considered as worst by a strict majority. This paper considers elections in which the agenda consists of potential candidates strategically choosing whether or not to enter the election. In this context, we examine the ability of scoring rules to fulfil the Condorcet criterion. We show for the case of three potential candidates that Plurality rule is the only scoring rule that satisfies a version of the Condorcet criterion in two cases: 1) when preferences are single-peaked and, 2) when preferences are single-dipped.

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