The Case of Psychosocial Work: The Pedagogic Discourse of Psychosocial Education in Sweden 1938–1989

Abstract

This article examines the pedagogic discourse of The Mental Hygiene Course (1939–1970) and the subsequent Training in Social Treatment (1971–1989), in Stockholm. The aim is to investigate the development of the psychosocial concept in Sweden; how it was expressed when adapted to the changing discourses of psychiatry and psychoanalysis and to the regulative discourses of social policy during the time. The interpretation is undertaken through the guidelines of critical discourse analysis and Bernstein's structural model of the discourse of education. The outcome of the textual analysis showed that the psychiatric and regulative discourses were transmitted into the local context of social work by a technique of case writing, and the social worker/client relationship of the cases was, throughout the period, congruent with current scientific assumptions and predominant social policy. In conclusion, the concept of psychosocial work from the 1980s, which is still in use, is a mixture of psychiatric and psychoanalytic assumptions and political demands, certifying both the function of social work and the status of the client. Finally, the problems of psychosocial work attached to the dependency of social policy and psychiatric knowledge are discussed in relation to the outcome of the investigation.