Editorial

Welcome to the first issue of 2024. This general issue presents articles focused on topics ranging from psychoanalytical and systemic theories in the fields of organisational systems, supervision and professional identity to the importance of social and cultural contexts in understanding complex social problems.

The first article by Cathleen M. Morey offers a conceptual framework that synthesises contemporary psychodynamic theory with systems theory in order to advance understanding of clinical social work practice within complex organisational systems in US mental health settings. This psychodynamic systems approach understands organisations in terms of four mutually interconnected levels of a socially constructed system. The first two levels are the individual patient subsystem and the individual clinician subsystem. The third level is the intra-staff subsystem, which includes the interactions between staff. Finally, the fourth level is the wider organisational subsystem that relates to sociocultural dynamics including power, authority, privilege, oppression and racism and how these are structuralised through the organisational culture, mission and procedures.

The article goes on to discuss how the clinical phenomena of transference, countertransference, splitting, projective identification and enactment are actualised within these organisational systems. Drawing upon a composite clinical example, the ways in which these phenomena manifest themselves within organisation are illustrated.

The integration of psychoanalytic and systemic theories continues with the second article by H. Smith, l. Parish-Mackin and R. Wise, which presents an evaluation of a psychosocial model of reflective supervision used with newly qualified social workers in the UK. The model integrates Kleinian object-relations and systemic theory, and supervisors undertook training using a community of practice model. The study found that supervisors welcomed the approach, particularly as it enabled supervisees and supervisors to bring their own selves into the supervision sessions through exploration of relationships, identity and emotions. The model did provoke some organisational challenges in the form of resistance expressed through social defences that denied the emotionality and subjectivity of the work, but this was mitigated by the community of practice model used in training the supervisors which modelled the supervisory relationship.

The role of the self in professional development continues in the next article by Tanya Moore, which examines how social workers’ own emotional experiences influence their approach to continuing professional development. The study used psychoanalytically informed free association narrative interviews to examine how social workers’ personal biographies influenced their approach to learning. The study found a clear relational dimension to learning and developed a biographical narrative model of the pedagogy of CPD, the Learning Response model. This model explains how social workers’ scripts for their engagement with learning can be set by early experiences. Two contrasting case studies are used to illustrate the complex influences that experiences can have and how they can be replayed in adulthood. While the inner emotional voice created by these early experiences remains constant, their responses as adults can be to repeat or rescript these narratives in their approach to learning.

The importance of organisational issues continues with the next article by Fiona Robinson and Nick Midgley, which focuses upon how child psychotherapists integrate their professional identities when working within a social care setting in the UK. The authors present an ethnographic study that combines participant observation of professional meetings and everyday ‘office life’ with individual interviews with psychoanalytical child and adolescent psychotherapists to understand their role within multi-disciplinary and multi-agency services. The data were analysed using grounded theory and the key findings were that child psychotherapists balanced three elements of their professional identities: their identity as child psychotherapists, as team members within a child and adolescent mental health service and their identity within the child’s care network. Being effective requires psychotherapists to successfully integrate the different elements of their professional identity.

The next two articles focus upon the importance of social and cultural contexts when understanding complex social problems. The first article, which examines the under-reported phenomenon of the stigma of male survivors of intimate partner violence, is written by Wai Hung Wallace Tsang, Tak Mau Simon Chan, April Chiung-Tao Shen and Jwu Shang Chen. The study undertook interviews with survivors in Hong Kong and Taiwan to explore their perceptions of anticipated stigma and stigma internalisation, the interaction between hegemonic masculinity and cultural stigma and their personal journey moving from living in stigma towards transforming stigma. The research found that societal worldviews based on hegemonic masculinity mean that survivors face oppression and their journey from living in stigma to a proactive deconstruction of stigma identity involves a transformation of their masculine identities.

The final article of the issue describes a study of a parenting programme for families with children living in disadvantaged remote Aboriginal communities in Australia and is authored by Carolin Christa Stock, Maggie May Kerinaiua Punguatji, Aileen Tiparui, Kate Louise Johnston, Carmen Rose Cubillo and Gary Robinson. The research project was a collaboration between two community-based Aboriginal staff members and two visiting practitioners during the period of the COVID-19 lockdown. The study aimed to identify critical skills and supports that staff needed and found three key factors. Firstly, experiential and reflective learning, which enabled the ‘unlearning’ of expectations about professional roles and developing new approaches. Secondly, partnership and collaboration that acted as a critical enabler and promoted support and joint decision-making. Finally, increased self-efficacy based upon prior knowledge and understanding, past performance and experiences and support and encouragement.

We would like to thank all the authors for sharing their work and insights with us and we are very appreciative of their excellent contributions to this issue.