The Case Worker's Aim in Treating Family Discord

Abstract

T HE legalistic method of enforcing family status, and the use of various means of supplying deficiencies in the budget of family needs and services has been accepted as the traditional technique suitable for dealing with domestic difficulties. This is giving way to an attempt to base treatment upon a careful diagnosis of the social and psychological factors involved. The case practice upon which Professor Groves bases his generalizations may be related to similar efforts of Mental Hygiene Clinics, the practice of psycho-analysts, and others. All of these apply, in various forms and interpretations, the organized experience of the social sciences, psychiatry and biology to a solution of the patient's problem. The social case worker upon whose viewpoint this discussion is premised, similarly employs various hypotheses and techniques, depending upon the range of his experience and knowledge. The treatment of domestic discord is an open field, far from standardization and organization. As a developing practice it must continue to be experimental and tentative, imbued, however, with the spirit of research and equipped with research facilities. In this discussion it might be of interest to relate present social work theory and practice to the suggestions presented by Professor Groves, who approaches the problem as a sociologist. The methods of the social worker in domestic discord are related to the customary practices of case analysis and treatment, which in their turn rest upon developed methods of observation and study of the individuals and families who bring their problems to the attention of social agencies. Case work is based on theoretical presuppositions of the family as a social institution, the traditions and mores of contemporary family life, the legal aspects of individual responsibility in family relations, and the physiological, psycho-sexual, and psychological aspects of individual behavior. It might be said that the social worker is emphasizing at the present time the importance of psychological factors, which includes an attempt to understand the personal motivation in its relation to the situation of family disorganization which is being treated. While the social worker has integrated in his underlying assumptions various generalizations offered by anthropology, sociology, and psychiatry, as a practitioner the social worker seeks variable details rather than types. The social worker wishes to understand the total personality and total situation rather than the critical event. Each family problem, therefore, must be visualized in terms beyond existing theories and generalizations, even though such generalizations aid in the interpretation of the personal situation which is being studied. A family relationship, similar to all other expressions of human behavior, cannot be conceived of as a single instance of general patterns of conduct or behavior types. Neither should the concept of family organization itself be considered as a fixed abstraction. As Professor Groves has pointed out, discord as a by-product of the interaction of individuals in the family group is the inevitable accompaniment of family relationship. It is the coefficient of the close relationships of persons differing in sex, age, temperament and in other attributes,