A Specialized Method in the Treatment of Parents in a Child Guidance Clinic*

Objectives, procedures, and techniques in social case work are at present undergoing considerable reevaluation and change brought about in large part through a widespread interest in dynamic psychiatry and an increasing emphasis on the emotional life of the individual. While the effort to redefine social service functions, and to examine techniques critically represents a mark of progress, clear formulations have not as yet emerged. Much confusion has resulted from controversial points of view and from a rather wholesale and sometime uncritical application of dynamic psychiatry to various social service functions. Two general trends are observable: (1) a more or less radical discarding of some of the more usual procedures in social work for new ones; (2) an adaptation of established procedures with selective departures as dictated in cases by the accumulated knowledge of the emotional life of the individual client and the particular needs of the respective family as a whole.

This second trend, the traditional method in the application of psychiatry to social case work, describes in general what has taken place at the Institute for Child Guidance. Through the application of dynamic psychiatry to the more usual practices, a specialized method in the social treatment of parents designated as “Attitude Therapy” and thus far limited to mothers, is being experimentally developed under the direction of Dr. David M. Levy, Chief of Staff. The method, applied as yet to only a small number of cases, has grown out of a research effort with a larger number of parents, treated with a wide variety of methods over a period of five years.

The techniques used in Attitude Therapy involve those used by the social worker in any interview treatment with clients and specifically with mothers who bring their children to a child guidance clinic. Common among these techniques are: allowing the client to elaborate spontaneously, giving her reassurance, interpretations of