THERAPEUTIC CRITERIA IN SOCIAL AGENCIES: Section Meeting, Chicago, 1938

This article presents an overview of the 1938 section meeting of the American Orthopsychiatric Association which was held in Chicago. Social work at the present time is in a state of transition from private to public agencies. The justification for the existence of the private agencies is the freedom for experimentation and the opportunity for intensive work with the clients. The public agencies carry greater loads and the workers have to deal with the more expedient problems of their clients. Such a division of function is not a natural division. It is purely temporary pending the development and growth of the public agencies, and also the length of time during which private sources will continue to finance their own agencies. There is no question that with the development of public agencies, more experimental techniques will be developed which will benefit a great deal, not only social work, but perhaps the whole field of psychotherapy. The greatest need in the development of psychotherapy is to evolve methods for dealing with serious problems more effectively than the old methods, but less painstakingly and less expensively than psychoanalysis. It has been apparent for a long time that psychiatrists as such will not be able to deal with the emotional problems of clients of social agencies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)