Campus 1980—The Shape of the Future in American Higher Education,Edited by Alvin C. Eurich and the Staff of the Academy for Educational Development. New York,Delacorte Press, 1968. 327 pp. $6.95 Paperbound

Abstract

Harry Specht's argument against private practice is really an argument against social work's involvement in psychotherapy. He says it's not social work, despite the fact that social work provides more psychotherapy than any other profession in the nation, and more professional social workers are involved in it than in any other method of intervention.     

Socially Responsible Roles of Professional Ethics: Inclusivity,Psychotherapy and ‘the Protection of the Public’

The remit of the apparatus of professional ethics in the field of psychotherapy can be appropriately expanded so as to make the profession more socially responsible and thereby contribute to the ‘protection of the public’ that is said to be the main purpose of statutory regulation. Using ideas culled from the sociology of the professions, political theory and ethical discourse, it is proposed that ethical psychotherapy cannot take place if its overall social framework is itself profoundly unethical. Inclusivity and diversity are reframed as ethical professional practices. Questions of wealth, gender, sexuality and ethnicity are not only ‘social’ or ‘political’—they are also part of a morally imaginative expansion of what we mean by professional ethics. Attention is paid to the dangers of self-righteousness and moral tyranny.     

What's Wrong with Subjectivity Anyway?

In this paper I look at the current trend toward positivism in the practice of psychotherapy. I use the term psychotherapy throughout, to remind family therapist readers that the problem is not ours alone. I offer a brief, critical literature review. I suggest that the trend towards positivism offers little of therapeutic value and compromises the ethical practice of psychotherapy. The origins of the trend lie in economic rationalism (demonstrated by the sorry state of the profession in the USA), philosophical error (the belief in certain knowledge) and a misplaced faith in method (simple algorithms exist that can transcend even the most complex circumstances). I dispute the validity of these influences and draw upon David Smail's suggestion that the pursuit of objectivity is an attempt to avoid the awkward necessity of making moral judgements. In the last section of the paper I briefly examine a philosophical framework that could serve as a guide to the subjective practice of psychotherapy and I offer a simple subjective metaphor drawn from a work of literary criticism.     

Psychotherapy with Deaf and Hard of Hearing Individuals

ABSTRACT

This qualitative study explored the subjective experiences of deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals in psychotherapy. Which culturally syntonic considerations are necessary for effective psychotherapy with deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals? The findings support the literature on multiculturalism and deafness that entail effective communication, empowerment processes, cultural sensitivity, therapist role flexibility, the imparting of information, and the development of a positive therapeutic relationship. The data focuses on the experience of communicating rather than focusing solely on the acquisition of content as well as the understanding the clinical dynamics of the transcultural relationship in order to make effective use of the social work relationship in treatment. The findings of this study add richness and depth to the existing literature on psychotherapy, with emphasis on the experiential processes of treatment.     

Critical social work and competency practice: a proposal to bridge theory and practice in the classroom

Social work education in North America is increasingly focused on competency criteria and micro skills training for future practitioners. Market forces are transforming the nature of social work practice in Canada, and social work regulators are concerned about the lack of evidence-based competencies in social work education. Since the Controlled Act of Psychotherapy was proclaimed in 2017, social work practitioners are in a position to offer psychotherapy services; as a result, universities are under greater pressure to shift to competency-based learning that meets the requirements of a regulated profession. This has raised concerns about the narrowing focus on critical social work theory in preparing students for practice. The divergence between anti-oppressive and direct practice schools is widening with the result that many students have difficulty bridging the gap between critical theory and competency-based practice. This paper attempts to integrate both traditions by offering students a course that directly links critical analysis of structural barriers and client centered interventions. The course is part of a developing critical competency curriculum that focuses on methods of facilitating empowerment and change in the helping process by articulating key relational components between service user and practitioner from a critical-competency perspective.     

Time,Knowledge, and Power in Psychotherapy: A Comparison of Psychodynamic and Cognitive Behavioral Practices

Time has long been recognized as a marker of professional control and a tool for the organization of work. Yet we know less about how temporality intersects with experts’ epistemic goals. This article illustrates how the patterning of time in psychotherapy shapes the construction of knowledge about mental illness and how this relationship is mediated by patients’ own interventions. I focus on psychodynamic and cognitive behavioral therapeutic practices and draw on data from ethnographic observations in an outpatient psychiatry clinic and in-depth interviews with psychotherapists. The article details the constitutive relationship between two dimensions of temporality: first, clock time, namely the length of treatment, the length and frequency of sessions, and the flow of the therapy hour, and second, the temporal epistemics of illness, its construction as a phenomenon with a past, present, and future. Clinicians in the two orientations attempt to construct particular temporal landscapes by integrating these two facets of their work. Yet they must always do so in response to patients’ own temporal interventions. By attending both to the organization of professional work and the temporality of illness, this article brings together two largely distinct literatures within medical sociology, namely scholarship on the profession of medicine and social scientific understandings of the temporal dimensions of illness. It shows that temporality is constitutive of how knowledge and power are negotiated in expert work.     

The social worker as psychoanalyst

This paper examines the development of social workers as psychoanalysts to determine whether psychoanalysis is a legitimate function of social work. Historically, social work has found psychoanalytic theory helpful. However, it is generally understood that for the caseworker to competently practice psychoanalytic psychotherapy, advanced training is necessary. Although many social workers have availed themselves of this opportunity, the profession continues to believe that the practice of psychoanalysis is incompatible with social work. This is based upon an inaccurate conception of psychoanalysis. Since the social work psychoanalyst is concerned with the client's adaptation to the environment, his or her practice can easily be defined as clinical social work.     

THE NEUROBIOLOGY OF AFFECTIVE INTERVENTIONS: A CROSS-THEORETICAL MODEL

The integration of information from neuroscience with the practice of psychotherapy presents with numerous challenges. However, neuroscience research can guide practitioners in the purposeful use of the therapeutic relationship to enhance clinical outcomes. This article reviews such research pertinent to mental health and psychotherapy, and presents an a-theoretical model of intervention, guided by this information that can be incorporated into various therapeutic orientations.     

Treating Juveniles in a Sex Offender Program Using Adventure-Based Programming: A Matched Group Design

ABSTRACT

This case describes bodily experiences that appeared to cue child sexual abuse memories during psychotherapy by a woman who was amnesic for her childhood and suffered from chronic dissociative states. Though corroboration was unavailable, she became increasingly confident about her returning memories. Special efforts were made to avoid making suggestions. The article proposes the theory that integrates the construct of the self with the relationship between bodily experiences and memory narratives. It suggests that: (1) amnesia and recovering memories involve normal and abnormal memory mechanisms; (2) remembering during psychotherapy is complex; (3) psychotherapy need not be suggestive; (4) inaccessible memories may act as constraints on suggestibility; and (5) narrative recall may depend on the connection of bodily experiences with self-reflection.     

As others see us: Differing perceptions of public relations in Nigeria among practitioners and the general public

This study investigates the extent to which there exists a relationship between the perception of professionals and members of the general public regarding image of public relations (PR) profession in Nigeria. Four operational hypotheses were tested using Chi-square cross tabulation. The result shows that members of the general public and professionals perceived PR messages as credible. However, members of the general public, unlike professionals, perceived the loyalty of PR professionals to be more on the side of employers and clients; the role of PR was perceived as basically oriented towards media relations; and PR profession was perceived more as a tool for repairing damaged organisational image. Appropriate recommendations are offered.     

Representations of Social Work in the Australian News Media

How the news media constructs social work has been an area of great concern for the social work profession for several decades. It is a discussion within the professional literature that has been dominated by the assumption that the media has portrayed an unfairly critical representation of the profession. To address a significant dearth of knowledge surrounding this highly discussed but poorly researched topic, this article presents the findings from a study that analysed 12 months of social work coverage in Melbourne, Australia. The findings indicate that coverage was not necessarily unfairly critical, but rather relatively absent. Furthermore, the analysis found that existing reporting constructed the profession as being highly diverse in fields, practice methods, and worker demographics. The findings have significant implications for how the professional community understands the relationship, challenging dominant assumptions, but also informing future action and engagement with the news media.     

Cost-containment,computers and confidentiality

The profession of social work has clear standards to follow in protecting confidentiality when a client discloses information in a psychotherapy session. These standards are examined in relation to an ever-increasing diresrefard for privacy as staff of managed care for mental health services and employee assistance programs gather and store information in computer databases, with the overall objective of cost-containment. Ethical principles are discussed and suggestions are made for safeguarding, the client's right to privacy.     

Bringing the Outside In: Field Interaction and Transformation from Below in Political Struggles

This article applies field theory in order to build an understanding of aspects of social movements practice. It argues that the way social movements are positioned within their various fields of practice and the way these fields inter-relate with each other can help explain how movements arrive at their strategies and ideologies. The relationship between the fields within which social movements operate also provides a means to explain how movement participants can become agents for change.

The article discusses the case of British Jewish Israel-critical groups, an example of a movement suspended between several different fields of practice – both local and distant. The internal movement debate around boycotting Israel illustrates how movement activities are channelled by the local fields within which they contend. Their relationship with the distant Palestinian field demonstrates the importance of the influence of external fields in forming social movement ideology. This model views social movement actors – especially those within distant issue movements – as translators between various fields of practice. This provides a mechanism to explain how challengers within a field can overcome the limitations of internal field habitus and become agents for field transformation.     

Ambiguity of gender identity fantasies and aspects of normality and pathology in hypopituitary dwarfism and Turner's syndrome: Three cases

Three cases of short stature females are presented, two with, gonadal dysgenesis and one with hypopituitarism, all about the same age, social class, and intelligence. One of the subjects with gonadal dysgenesis was normally functional; the other depressed, but she became functional after psychotherapy. The patient with hypopituitarism was poorly adapted and failed to change on brief effort at psychotherapy, discontinuing treatment. Evidence is drawn from transference and observational material that disturbances in the mother‐child relationship may lead to persistence of unreasonable wishes to grow physically. This leads to a split in the ego which prevents adaptation to small stature because it is not acceptable to the patient. In the case which was successfully treated, it is shown that the acceptance of the defective self led to restoration of ego functions adaptive to small stature.     

The influence of gender on the Self-Perception of disturbed children

This investigation examined the relationship between gender, psychopathology and self-perception. The sample consisted of 24 boys and 24 girls involved in psychotherapy. Self-perception was measured using The Self-Perception Profile (Harter, 1985). Results indicated that boys and girls both reported relatively high levels of self-esteem. It was found, however, that the various components of self-perception were strongly interrelated for girls and not for boys. Furthermore, girls did not appear to value those competencies which they possessed while holding in high regard those that they felt they lacked. From these results, it was concluded that self-concept in girls is more tenuously constructed.     

On the place of reality in social work and psychoanalytic theory

This article reviews the theoretical concepts involving reality as these were used in orthodox psychoanalytic theory and concludes that purely empiricist thinking of the type common in Freud's time has contributed to problems experienced within the social work profession. It proposes the consideration of a view of meaningful reality as constructed through interpersonal transactions based on the model of the transitional object. This model may hold promise for better understanding of the relationship between the person and the situation, of some aspects of the treatment relationship, and ways in which to measure treatment effectiveness.     

Professions in periods of social change: the case of architectural discourse and design

This article examines how professions behave in periods of social change. The article considers whether professions take positions vis-à-vis broader social discourse, and explores the relationship between the professions’ positions and those of the government. The article examines these questions through the case of the Israeli architectural profession’s behavior after the 1967 war in both the newly occupied territories, over which Israeli control is under dispute among Israeli Jews, as well as the pre-1967 areas, in which Israeli sovereignty enjoys a consensus among Israeli Jews. The article traces both design and construction activities, as well as the discourse that followed in their wake. The article’s conclusion is that changes in professional discourse are a way to understand the profession’s position regarding a given set of social changes. We argue that the transition from an inward-facing professional discourse to an outward-facing professional discourse that addresses the larger society is both an indication of that profession’s condition as well as the condition of the social group to which it belongs.     

Psychotherapy and Schizophrenia: The Mirror of Countertransference

The relationship between psychotherapy and schizophrenia has undergone pronounced changes over the last several decades. The advent of psychiatric medication led to remarkable breakthroughs that obscured the existential issues inseparably tied to the lived experience of illness and overshadowed the role of psychotherapy in the treatment of schizophrenia. Recent years have brought renewed scrutiny of the place of psychotherapy in the treatment of persons with major mental illness but much less attention has been shown to matters of countertransference. The complex legacy of loss and grief assumes a special dimension in the therapeutic relationship and touches the lives of client and clinician alike. Both travel a common path and share privileged moments. It is the intersection of these life experiences, and how their confluence shapes the course of therapy that is the focus of this essay.     

Stranger to Desire: Entering the Erotic Field

Founded in infancy but continuing throughout adult life, subsymbolic body patterns form a crucial, unconscious element in the infrastructure of our intimate and erotic lives. Viewing the psychoanalytic relationship, at its foundation, as a somatic dyad, this essay explores the life of the body as well as that of the mind in a psychoanalytic exploration. Drawing from the clinical literature of body-centered psychotherapy and the work of Wilhelm Reich, this article presents a detailed case discussion to illustrate the use of body-centered interventions within a psychoanalytically informed psychotherapy.     

A pilot qualitative study of the under-representation of Hispanics in public relations

This pilot study explored the under-representation of Hispanics/Latinos in the public relations profession by conducting focused interviews with Hispanic practitioners. The study found that public relations was not the Latinos’ initial career choice, identified three barriers to Hispanics entering the profession, elicited practical suggestions to attract more Hispanics, and also revealed opportunities for future scholarly research to address the under-representation of Hispanics in public relations.