The Professional Identity of the Social Work-Psychoanalyst: Professional Affiliations and Future Prospects

This is the concluding installment in a series of reports on the “dual professional identity” of the social work-psychoanalyst based on findings from the “MPI” Project, an empirical study conducted at a large psychoanalytic training institute. The “MPI” study was designed to answer two questions: Do social work-psychoanalysts demonstrate the attributes of membership in the social work profession? Are social work-psychoanalysts distinguishable from their fellow psychoanalysts in psychology? The professional affiliations of the social work- and psychologist-psychoanalysts in the “MPI” sample were investigated. Component features of professional affiliation that were examined include organizational memberships, patterns of self identification, socialization networks, referral relationships, reference groups, journal readership, and attitudes toward proposals to license psychotherapists, to license psychoanalysts, and to establish psychotherapy and psychoanalysis as autonomous professions. The data revealed that social workers and psychologists were both highly affiliated with the profession of psychoanalysis. Psychologists, however, were far more highly affiliated with their profession of origin than were social workers. The implications of these findings for social work-psychoanalysts and for the social work profession as a whole are discussed.