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The first edition of this book was published thirteen years ago. The jacket on the second edition states that the material 'has been fully rewritten. More than half … is completely new.' Since publication of this edition, the author, well known in national and international social work circles, has been named Associate Dean of the New York School of Social Work, which is now affiliated with Columbia University. Formerly this school had been an integral part of a private family agency, the Community Service Society of New York. It is only natural that the author acknowledges her special indebtedness to this agency and particularly to Miss Anna Kempshall, until recently Director of the Family Service Division. She is credited with having checked the entire text against current practice in that agency.
It is particularly pleasing that the author gives in her preface a frank statement of her changing perspectives in the past decade. At the time of the first edition 'casework had not felt the impact of ego psychology' (Preface, v) and 'functional casework had not become a definitive school of thought' (Preface, vi). With these two statements there can be no quarrel. However, one might question her statement that at that time psychotherapy was not distinguished from psychoanalytic procedure. I believe that many of our senior psychoanalysts would differ with this as their highly specialized techniques were evidenced earlier than ten years ago. It is revealing to have an author place her own growing pains before us. 'I still believe, as I did then, that principles of psychoanalysis can be appropriately adapted for the use of many professions, but this does not mean that casework any more than psychology or education or other disciplines should take over a diluted sort of psychoanalysis as its own procedure' (Preface, v). The