Clinical Sociologists Research Articles

Clinical Sociologists as Guardian ad Litem

This article posits that clinical sociologists have ideal expertise to serve courts as a Guardian ad Litem. It explains what these court appointed representatives provide the court, their qualifications, and how they can advocate for the best interests of children in divorce, custody, shared-time, and other caregiving situations. Often decisions are made by judges with a adult-focused legal lens. Clinical sociologists have a background in both macro and micro issues that impact the wellbeing of children. They are able to contribute and integrate their scholarly and practical knowledge to make better informed decisions that the court can use. Common challenges that Guardian ad Litem face are identified, with insights on how clinical sociological expertise can overcome them.

Activist Scholar-Practitioners in the United States and South Africa

This article discusses the lives and impact of leading activists whose work is highlighted in the histories of clinical sociology in the United States and South Africa. The four scholar-practitioners from the United States discussed here are Jane Addams, W.E.B. Du Bois, Charles Gomillion and James Laue. The South African clinical sociologists whose lives are profiled are Harold Wolpe and H.W. van der Merwe. Based on the career experiences of these six individuals, concluding comments are made about five topics in relation to activism: employment, sufficient time for effective activism, handling criticism, reasons for becoming strong activists, and factors that may discourage activism.

The Social Determinants of Health in a Community Context: Lessons for Sociological Practice

Much of the research on the social determinants of health has been done at national or international comparative levels. Findings from these studies highlight the importance of macro social factors that affect health outcomes, such as limited and unequal access to health care and the effects of racial discrimination, economic inequality, and patriarchy. However, such macro-level research provides limited information about how applied and clinical sociologists can address local social determinants of health and improve the well-being of individuals and community residents. Results from a county-level public health survey shed more specific light on how interpersonal networks, social activities, and neighborhood characteristics affect people’s physical and mental health. The results can be utilized by clinical and applied sociologists who counsel individuals and work to invigorate neighborhoods, and by public health officials who develop and reform community-level health policies and programs.

Professional Responsibility and Opportunities for Applied and Clinical Sociologists

Professional Responsibility and Opportunities for Applied and Clinical Sociologists

Sociology at Work

Sociology is often viewed as a change-the-world discipline, and indeed, AACS members and other applied and clinical sociologists continually demonstrate how the practice of sociology— sociology at work—can effect beneficial social change at micro, meso and macro levels. Unfortunately, too many sociology students complete their programs without ever learning how they can use their new knowledge to make a difference, or, worse, to make a living. This address discusses the disconnect between what sociology students learn in school and the real world that awaits them when they graduate, and calls on members to join AACS in working to mentor a new generation into the practice of real-world sociology.

Helping the Poor or the System? Examining My Participation: Observation in Social Service Organizations

In this article I examine my experiences of practice and research in the social service field, which may be relevant to applied and clinical sociologists who work beyond academia, as well as academic ethnographers in general. Although the researcher as a person from a particular background profoundly impacts the data collected, examining the role of the researcher in everyday situations (at some research site) sheds light on important social processes. I provide three examples from my study of social service organizations, emphasizing how critically examining my own responses to role conflicts during ethnographic research provides crucial insight into the ways in which well-meaning social service workers end up regulating and disciplining the people they purport to serve. I conclude by urging academic sociologists to consider the benefits of applied work for sociological knowledge and encouraging applied sociologists to examine their own emotional topography in their frontline work as a research method in itself.

The Expanding Role of Clinical Sociology in Australia

This paper introduces clinical sociology as a humanistic, multidisciplinary specialty seeking to improve the quality of people's lives. It traces the emergence of clinical sociology in the United States in 1931, and in Australia in the late 1950s in the context of the pioneering clinical sociology research into social transformation at Australian society's margins by Neville Yeomans. A contemporary illustration is given demonstrating how a biopyschosocial model of health is now being implemented as world best-evidence-based practice within the Australian health care delivery system. Further arguments, citing national and international evidence based on sociotherapeutic models of intervention, support a proposal for the Australian Sociology Association to engage in dialogues with health care agencies with the view of establishing clinical sociologists as an integral part of the Australian health-care delivery system.

Pour une conception clinique de la notion de stress: la prise en compte des dimensions collectives

In France, more and more employees, whether they are employed by state-owned or private enterprises, readily admit they suffer from stress. Although subjected to both deep and difficult transformations, post office counter clerks do not use the word. A three-year research study with counter clerks of La Poste, led by clinical sociologists from the viewpoint of clinical sociology, invites us to question the notion of stress. To begin, the paper takes the opportunity to clarify the use that a clinical sociologist makes of this English notion usually connected with individual psychology. It then shows in which circumstances the counter clerks, including those who work in offices considered ‘calm’, are in fact confronted with working conditions that qualify as stressful. Finally, through clinical cases, the paper contests the North American view of stress by showing that it is essentially founded on an individual understanding of this pathology and that it abusively overlooks the collective dimension of work in its account of a real suffering.

Monographic Section: Health vs. illness, normal vs. pathological dimension in society – some problems for clinical sociologists

Monographic Section: Health vs. illness, normal vs. pathological dimension in society – some problems for clinical sociologists

Certification of Clinical Sociologists: Benefits for Practitioners and Academics

Recently, a major software developer called me. He had heard that I was a sociologist who could help him understand some basic social dynamics that would help his clients improve their relationships with customers. In the course of the conversation, he asked me about my background and experience. I described my academic training and consulting experience, and then I told him I was a certified clinical sociologist. ‘‘What is a clinical sociologist?’’ he asked. I explained that some sociologists are practitioners of sociology. I went on to describe sociological practice as a kind of ‘‘umbrella’’ term that includes clinical sociology on one side and applied sociology on the other—two distinct but related fields. Clinical sociologists are social scientists who use sociological theories and methods to develop interventions that aim to change behavior. Sociological theory informs or ‘‘drives’’ the clinician’s work. On the other side of the ‘‘umbrella’’ of practice are applied sociologists, who deal with research questions that are real-world problems. Applied sociologists use both qualitative and quantitative research methods in their work. Their findings inform and provide direction for the clinical sociologist who is the change agent (or for clients who wish to implement their own change efforts). Often, the clinician will call on the applied sociologist to do a postintervention assessment to answer the following question: Was the intervention effective? Did the client (individual, family, agency, community) change in the desirable way? Through this interplay of assessment, change, and evaluation, the practitioner works to understand and change behavior.

Psychanalyse, sciences sociales, sociétés... Pour une mise en perspective

Michele Bertrand, Bernard Doray, Psychoanalysis, Social Science and Society : A Global Perspective A broad consideration of psychoanalysis and the social sciences in France can be seen as a labyrinth formed by five different approaches : the freudologues, the clinical sociologists, the structuralistic shortcuts, the psychograph and the psychoanalysts who carefully avoid therapeutic concerns. Today, the incentive to bridge the gap between psychoanalysis and the social sciences has almost disappeared. There are, however, new poles of initiative such as the new clinic in the study of pauperization, which is informed both by sociology and psychoanalysis.

Inmates as Clinical Sociologists

In spite of considerable research in the area of adolescent delinquency, there continue to be few viable delinquency prevention programs operating within the criminal justice system which draw upon substantive social scientific theory. This article reports on a dynamic inmate run delinquency preventative program currently in operation at Auburn Correctional Facility. In addition to briefly describing several of the innovative clinical sociological techniques which have emerged in this program, this article suggests some of the weaknesses which this, and similarly geared delinquency preventative programs face.

Clinical Sociology and Correctional Counseling

Criticisms of the efficacy of psychotherapy and the failure of criminal rehabilitation call for continued attempts to develop successful intervention modalities. During the past decade, the clinical sociology of the 1930s has been revived and may be effectively applied to correctional counseling. Since theorizing concerning criminal etiology is primarily sociological in nature, treatment paradigms should be grounded in sociological theory. Clinical sociologists may utilize cultural “vital features” such as ethnicity, stratification, age, family and sex roles, change, and everyday metaphysics in the correctional counseling relationship.

Sociology for Our Times

The remarks I prepared for this occasion are not intended to be a scholarly dissertation that will break new ground, or roll back the frontiers of sociological knowledge. What I have in mind is a kind of informal homily, a conversation among ourselves as southern sociologists who are enthusiastic about our life's career, supportive of our professional organization, but most of all concerned about the people who are the subject and content of the sociological enterprise. For ourselves we worry about the shrinkage of the academic marketplace, about retrenchmenrt of research funds, about more employment opportunities in noncampus settings. But we worry also about a wealthy society in which people are unemployed and hungry and homeless, about a democratic society where there is still vast injustice and violence and discrimination. In all my communication with members, officers and subcommittees of sss,I tried to bring alive this year's theme: for Our Times, and I came to the realization that subtle changes have occurred in our Society. We have gradually switched from a campus-centered association of sociologists to a federation of special interest groups. The program of this annual meeting lists special group sessions for the Radical Caucus, the Clinical Sociology Association, Sociology in Small Colleges, Association for Humanist Sociology, Sociologists for Women in Society, and Policy Research and Application. All the committees I appointed this year are representative of the subcategories: noncampus sociologists, women, minorities and members from small colleges. When I look back at the annual programs over the years I see that our concerns have evolved. In the early years we paid most attention to race and minorities: then the emphasis shifted to women's liberation, where it is still strong, and this year it is predominantly on noncampus sociologists who are in for-profit employment. The activities of special interest sociologists are recognized in the number of sessions listed on the program as being cosponsored by sws, by clinical sociologists, by radicals, by small college groups.