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The therapies employed in social work have these facts in common: they all are actual therapies of the unconscious; they are based on borrowings from
psychoanalysis; they usually avoid calling by name the dynamic element in the relationship between worker and client—the transference. Their borrowings are so selected and distorted as to misconceive the true nature of the transference and evade effective perception and management. So far, training and experience of social workers has not prepared the workers for unsupported therapy of the unconscious—neither for the accurate diagnosis of the transference, nor the delimitation of treatment goals, nor for the evaluation of treatment results from the psychoanalytic frame of reference. The natural sphere of further development in social work lies in experimental collaboration with psychoanalytically experienced psychiatrists who have had experience with case work methods and whom the social worker should consult early for intensive coöperation. The value of this paper lies in the extremely clear analysis of social work as a psychological field and the specificity of reasoning about the coöperation between social worker and psychoanalyst.