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Goldstein, E. G., Miehls, D., & Ringel, S. (2009). Advanced Clinical Social Work Practice: Relational Principles and Techniques. New York: Columbia University Press, 238 pages. $89.50 hardcover/$35.00 paperback.
Despite all attempts to pronounce the end of psychoanalysis’ influence on the social work profession, each year finds new volumes and papers, empirical and theoretical, making their way into the hands of social work students, researchers, and practitioners. While some in the field envision psychodynamic theory and practice as no longer relevant, students in the top graduate schools of social work eagerly subscribe and oversubscribe classes and workshops, apparently lacking sufficient insight that Freud's legacy is unimportant. Even more unexpectedly, for the past 10 years the cumulative work of psychodynamic psychotherapy research has been taking its place alongside the positive empirical findings of cognitive, behavioral, and other evidence-based practice approaches (Borden & Clark, 2011). Indeed, the Nobelist and neuroscientist, Eric Kandel, has proposed that many core ideas of psychoanalysis can square nicely with the neurobiology of memory and behavior, with the caveat that psychoanalysts and neuroscientists must learn to work in concert (Kandel, 2006).
In their volume aimed toward social work clinicians who are using or interested in learning about psychodynamic theories and methods, Eda Goldstein, Dennis Miehls, and Shoshana Ringel make the argument that the contemporary “relational perspective” that has moved psychoanalytic approaches from “one-person” to “two-person” psychological models is entirely compatible with the central concepts and concerns of the social work profession. In fact, the authors emphasize in their first chapter, which reviews the relational core of social work practice, that “it is crucial for clinical social workers to operate with the concepts of person-in-situation and relationship as major organizing principles of their practic