Thinking about Feelings in Group Care

Abstract

The influence of psychoanalytic theory on social work practice has declined dramatically over the past 15–20 years. While playing a more important part in social work theory and training than in actual practice, doubts have always existed about the alliance of social work with a fundamentally intrapsychic theory with a predominantly therapeutic mode. The powerful sociological and political critiques of the late 1960s and early 1970s have indeed argued that, so formulated, social work becomes a part of the state apparatus that makes a positive contribution to the maintenance of inequality and social injustice. The equally powerful arguments of the new right have made their own mark in the late 1970s and early 1980s (Brewer & Lait, 1980). Even the therapeutic mode itself has moved away from a psychoanalytic base, with alternative theories that seem to offer more readily accessible explanations of human behaviour and more easily acquired techniques of intervention. Poor teaching and supervision have played their part as well. The effect of all of this seems to have driven psychoanalytic thought very much into the background and history of social work. This has been accompanied by an exodus of those with a continuing interest in its application out of social work and into the analytic and therapeutic professions.