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Unfaithful Angels: How Social Work Has Abandoned Its Mission. By Harry Specht and Mark Courtney. New York: Free Press, 1994. 210 pp. $22.95.
When this book came out, I was eager to read it, especially because the lead author has helped define social policy analysis and community practice for generations of social work students, myself included. An expose of how social workers have been co-opted, misled, and/or manipulated away from our mission(s) promised at least a good read and perhaps even a provocative assignment for some of my therapy-oriented students. Always seeking ammunition to promote social activism in social work, I was a bit intrigued with the notion of a community-oriented original mission.
In general, the book delivers. It very sharply delineates the differences between individual therapy and social problem solving. It traces, in helpful detail, the dual histories of social work and the psychotherapies. Finally, it supports alternatives for practitioners, particularly those who entered the field with a sense of mission but who have been unable to find a place for themselves in settings that are called social work but seem very embedded in the status quo.
The tone of Unfaithful Angels has a sense of urgency, arguing forcefully that our precious human service resources must be used more appropriately. According to Specht and Courtney, psychotherapy and communal work are mutually exclusive because the former ignores "the concerns of the community." Government should subsidize approaches to social problems that bring people together rather than separate them and thereby address the real causes of those problems. "Social work's original objective...to enable people to create and use a healthful and nurturing social environment" requires us to work to improve society rather than perfect the individual.
Needless to say, these are extreme views that urge social workers to eschew rather than accommodate psychotherapy. Is the polemic justified? If one is persuaded that many private and salaried practitioners who utilize psychotherapy tend to avoid other modalities (Specht and Courtney say 40%), that extended and "macro" systems are important, and that most private troubles reflect public issues, the neglect of which amounts...