Psychodynamic Social Work

Abstract

JERROLD R. BRANDELL: Psychodynamic Social Work. Columbia University Press, New York, 2004, 474 pp., $58.00, ISBN 0-231-12636-0. The author of this book, a professor of the graduate concentration in interpersonal practice at Wayne State University School of Social Work, has written an ambitious, compendious guide that offers its readers a broad-based view of the field of psychoanalysis and psychodynamic social work. As the author acknowledges early on, psychoanalytic theory has emerged from a body of literature that is vast in scope and is composed of multiple models and schemata. As Freud's ideas and influence took hold in this country, social workers, at least by the late 1920s, incorporated many of his theories into their practice, thus bringing about a general recognition that there were significant limitations to the reliance upon advice giving, moral suasion, and the manipulation of the environment and that, in its stead, psychoanalytic theories could open vast opportunities for understanding and treating psychologically troubled persons by delving into their developmental histories and unconscious mental processes. The author periodically puts aside the historical role and unique contributions of the profession and discipline of clinical social work in order to explicate the broad history of the psychoanalytic movement, explain and critique its various and sometimes contending theoretical schools, and in a highly interesting way, discuss the most formidable criticisms that have persistently surrounded psychoanalytic theory and practice (for example, that, allegedly, it is not empirically valid, that it is antifeminist, that it pathologizes clients, and that it is not sufficiently appreciative of the role of the environment). The author deserves much credit for the balanced, temperate, and disinterested approach he uses in dealing with these controversial and sometimes volatile issues. The author returns to the subject of social work practice when he discusses the beginning, middle and ending phases of psychotherapeutic treatment. Here he justifiably credits traditional social work practice with stressing the importance of psychosocial study and the relationship between clients and therapists as a precondition for effective clinical work. In examining the therapeutic process from a phasic viewpoint, he offers practitioners the opportunity to recognize and understand the salient and critical differences between one time-segment in the history of the treatment from another. The chapters on the treatment of children and adolescents provide much needed information about dealing with youthful clients. I thought the author's discussion about the role and value of the storytelling process to be especially enlightening. Also, while recollecting my own work with young children in my early career, the author's references to the powerful and mercurial countertransference reactions of therapists to highly pathological children resonated exactly with my own clinical experience. …