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.

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.

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.

“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.

Shame and Worker Activism: Emotional Dynamics in Face-to-Face Encounters

Shame – a feeling of social inadequacy and (the anticipation of) public humiliation – may inhibit worker activism. This article discusses the role of shame, as an emotion and a behavioral disposition, in face-to-face confrontations between workers and employers, embedded in an authority structure marked by patron-clientage and personal dependency. It explores how shame may function as an obstacle to face-to-face confrontations and claim-making, and how workers and leftwing activists try to overcome this hurdle.

From Global Cities to the Lands’ End: The Relocation of Corporate Headquarters and the New Company Towns of Rural America

Since the 1970s, a number of major corporations have located their corporate headquarters in rural and non-metropolitan areas. I interrogate this phenomenon, based on a case study of Lands’ End, a global apparel firm in Wisconsin. Much research has exposed how firms insulate themselves from claims made by workers and communities through organizational and spatial distance (i.e. global sourcing, casualization of employment structures). Corporate headquarters relocation presents a paradox, bringing key decision-makers in the global economy into new, face-to-face relationships with workers and communities. Negotiated against a radical transformation of local class structure, I argue that new forms of social regulation are emerging—in particular, a hybrid version of the Fordist-era company towns.

The Ethical Challenges of Field Research in Conflict Zones

Drawing on 26 months of field research in El Salvador during the civil war, I analyze some ethical challenges that confront field researchers working in conflict zones. After briefly summarizing the purpose and general methodology of my research, I discuss in detail the research procedures I followed to implement the “do no harm” ethic of empirical research. I first analyze the particular conditions of the Salvadoran civil war during the period of research. I then discuss the procedures meant to ensure that my interviews with people took place with their fully informed consent—what I understood that to mean and how I implemented it. I then turn to the procedures whereby the anonymity of those interviewed and the confidentiality of the data gathered were ensured to the extent possible. Throughout I discuss particular ethical dilemmas that I confronted, including issues of self-presentation and mistaken identity, the emotional challenges of field work in highly polarized settings (which if not well understood may lead to lapse in judgment), and my evolving questions concerning the researcher role and its limitations. I also discuss the dilemmas that arise in the dissemination of research findings and the repatriation of data.

Into the Dark Heart of Ethnography: The Lived Ethics and Inequality of Intimate Field Relationships

In response to critiques from feminist, existential, and postmodern qualitative researchers, the idea of maintaining objective and distant relationships with research subjects gave way to the belief that researchers could and, in some cases, should become intimately connected to research participants. These traditions opened the door for contemporary field workers to unapologetically forge close relationships to setting members. Several ethical evaluations have emerged from this intimate literature warning researchers of the harm that can come when we “go to far” in the quest for intimate familiarity. In this paper, I reflect on some of the debates regarding intimacy and exploitation by examining my experiences of dating, marrying, and eventually divorcing my key informant. I trace the way that, despite my attempts to follow the existing ethical guides, I reinforced several larger inequalities in my intimate stance. Using my failure to avoid or mitigate harm, I argue that our discussions of intimate methods and immersion in the field have failed to accurately note how we reinforce or resist structure in our research endeavors. Viewing ourselves as “doing structure” in the field would lead us to stop debating whether intimacy is better than objectivity, celibacy is better than sex, disclosure is better than silence, or conventional behavior is better than deviance in the field. Instead, we should locate how our behaviors, research roles, or discursive choices enact structures and the effect this enactment has on the people who we research.

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.

The Decomposition of Firm-size Wage Differentials

No completely satisfactory explanation for the persistent and well-documented large-firm wage premium has been found. I use a novel adaptation of the Oaxaca/Blinder wage discrimination model to examine the firm-size wage differential which allows the wage differential to be decomposed into the portions attributable to (1) differences in employee endowments, (2) how the firm values these endowments, and (3) residual differences. Small firms actually pay higher wages based on how they value their workers’ endowments, but this wage premium was overshadowed by the superior endowments of workers in large firms and a residual differential in favor of large firms.

The Heterogeneous Effect of the Passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act on Stock Returns

I analyze how stock prices reacted to the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) of 1970. Previous studies focus on accounting measures or actual OSHA violations, and my work complements the literature by examining how shareholders expected OSHA to affect firm profitability. Returns fell around the OSH bill’s release to the House floor and its eventual passage, and average market value dropped by $1.5 million over the 3 days surrounding House Rules Committee release. Durable manufacturing and mining industries were hardest hit in OSH passage, losing $2.6 million and $5.7 million in average market value, respectively. I also find that larger firms with poorer working conditions sustained more negative returns, and market power, not union density, explains variation in expected profitability. Furthermore, future penalties appear unrelated to shareholder expectations about compliance costs.

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.

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 Influence of Social Supports on Employment for Hispanic, Black, and White Unmarried Mothers

This study considers the relationship between social supports and employment and how this relationship may differ for Hispanic, non-Hispanic Black, and non-Hispanic White unmarried mothers with young children. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, this article examines how various perceived and received social supports influence later employment outcomes. Multinomial regression analyses indicate that family, individual, and family background supports promoted employment while community supports were associated with lower employment levels. Race-specific analyses indicate that supports were related to employment to a much greater extent for Hispanics and non-Hispanic Blacks than for non-Hispanic Whites. Results suggest that unmarried mothers’ unique needs and supports must be taken into account to accommodate employment.

The Unbearable Fatigue of Compassion: Notes from a Substance Abuse Counselor Who Dreams of Working at Starbuck’s

Current research has determined that a larger percent of social workers and other counselors are affected by PTSD types of symptoms when working with traumatized clients than the general population. While much of this research addresses workers in specific trauma areas like sexual assault centers or child welfare agencies, little specific thought has been given towards the special stress that working with Substance Abuse Disorders (SA) and trauma may present. This paper takes a brief look at the issues of vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue with SA practice and describes future investigation pathways toward this goal.

Appropriating the city: space,theory, and bike messengers

Over the last 30 years, social theorists have increasingly emphasized the importance of space. However, in empirical research, the dialectical relationship between social interaction and the physical environment is still a largely neglected issue. Using the theory of structuration, I provide a concrete example of why and how space matters in the cultural analysis of an urban social world. I argue that bike messengers—individuals who deliver time-sensitive materials in downtown cores of major cities—cannot be understood outside an analysis of space. Specifically, I connect the cultural significance of messenger practices to the emplacement of those practices inside the urban environment.

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“Me and the Law is Not Friends”: How Former Prisoners Make Sense of Reentry

This article examines how former prisoners of color conceptualize their political, social, and economic futures and how these conceptualizations relate to the racialized social structural obstacles encountered upon reentry and decisions to re-engage criminal labor. I find that, presented with similar post-prison challenges, excarcerated men take several approaches when reentering society. I argue that the differences among their approaches lie in their varying interpretations of how they can act as individuals against and within their social structural limitations. Their decisions to rejoin or forfeit participation in criminal economies are thus shaped by experiences confronting the limitations of material conditions but also emerge from their critiques of racialized structures.

Organizational Environments, Framing Processes, and the Diffusion of the Program to Address Global Climate Change Among Local Governments in the United States

Few researchers have examined how organizational environments and framing processes simultaneously influence the diffusion of organizational practices. This article combines insight from major perspectives on the diffusion of organizational innovations and from social movement studies, and shows that the adoption of a program to address global climate change by U.S. municipalities is shaped by social contagion and organizational linkages, as well as by the actions of change-promoting agents. The findings emphasize the potential as well as the limitation of the strategic efforts on the part of innovation promoters to frame adoption in a way that will appeal to potential adopters.

How Living Wage Legislation Affects U.S. Poverty Rates

I investigate how living wage legislation affects poverty. I find evidence that living wage ordinances modestly reduce poverty rates where such ordinances are enacted. However, there is no evidence that state minimum wage laws do so. The difference in the impacts of the two types of legislation conceivably stems from a difference in the party responsible for bearing the burden of the cost.