SYSTEMIC AND PSYCHOANALYTIC IDEAS: USING KNOWLEDGES IN SOCIAL WORK

Abstract

Social work has a complex relationship to knowledge, and to its own production and ‘use’ of knowledges. This paper is about the use of systemic and psychoanalytic knowledge, and it maps selected ideas that are most relevant to social work. From systemic thinking, the core parameters of context and relationship sit harmoniously with social work commitments. Some more particular conceptualisations of multiple relationships are useful in moving beyond individualised understandings of the intimate experience of self and relationship. From psychoanalytic thinking, the whole idea of the unconscious and unconscious communication can be added to the more specific sets of ideas of attachment, transference and countertransference and projective identification, and restraints on the capacity to think. These ideas all address the relational context of intrapsychic experience. Though the map of systemic and psychoanalytic ideas is the ‘substantive’ exploration, this paper is nonetheless framed by an interest in the way in which social work relates to knowledge. The use of systemic and psychoanalytic knowledges thus becomes a case study that serves as a source of secondary reflection on knowledge in social work.

Keywords:

• systemic
• psychoanalysis
• social work
• knowledge
• transference
• projective identification
• attachment
• relationship

Notes

1. This section is essentially a commentary on systemic therapy: it represents my own reading of a body of knowledge and practice. For this reason, there are few specific references cited. However, in the interests of transparency, I would like to give readers a ‘sample’ of contemporary texts which offer representations both similar to, and different from, my own: see Dallos and Draper (2000), Goldenberg and Goldenberg (2004), Gorrell Barnes (1998), Jones (1993), Hoffman (2002) and Vetere and Dallos (2003).

2. A small sample set of writing reflecting this trend could include (from the UK) Mason and Sawyerr (2002); and (from the US) McGoldrick (1998).

3. Sample background reading for ideas in this first list could include: for general family therapy textbooks: Breunlin et al. (1992), Carr (2000), Dallos and Draper (2000), Goldenberg and Goldenberg (2004), Gorell Barnes (1998) and Vetere and Dallos (2003); for discussions of social and political contexts: Burck and Speed (1995), Mason and Sawyerr (2002) and McGoldrick (1999); for the broad use of narrative ideas: Papadopoulos and Byng‐Hall (1997) and Flaskas et al. (2007); and for narrative therapy: Morgan (2000) and White (1991, 2000, 2002).

4. Much of the background reading offered in the footnote for the first list also serves for ideas in this second list. However, I will also specify: for curiosity, neutrality, the sense of symptoms and reflexivity: Jones (1993) and Vetere and Dallos (2003); for strengths and resilience: Walsh (1998); for structural ideas: Colapinto (2000); for positive connotation: see previous systemic texts; for externalisation: see previous narrative references; and for sequences: see Breunlin et al. (1992).

5. This entire section relies heavily on ideas previously published in Flaskas (2002a), especially Chapters 7, 8, 9 and 10, and Flaskas (2005a).