NCJ Number
242914
Date Published
1979
Length
256 pages
Annotation
This book intends to make psychoanalysis understandable to the social work student and to the social-work practitioner.
Abstract
The first chapter presents an overview of the rise and fall of Freudianism in social work by reviewing the history of social work's relationship to psychoanalysis. The book then develops the argument that it is important for the social-work practitioner and student to understand and apply concepts from psychoanalysis that are most pertinent to social work. The second chapter explains the psychoanalytic view of the personality and discusses how psychoanalysis explains the etiology of neuroses, psychoses, and character disorders. The third chapter reviews the major psychoanalytic treatment concepts, such as free association, dream analysis, transference, counter-transference, and resistance. The fourth and fifth chapters explain how certain concepts from psychoanalysis can be applied to the assessment and intervention processes in social work. The final chapter reviews some of the research results from psychoanalysis and discusses how certain psychoanalytical procedures can be used in social-work research. This chapter notes that in effective psychotherapy and social-work treatment, the client achieves gains that are subjective and usually cannot be quantified. These gains include interpersonal competence, mastery of life situations, and associated increments in self-esteem. These gains enable social workers to better work with clients in addressing the practical problems they are confronting. Approximately 233 references and a subject index