PSYCHIATRIC SOCIAL-WORKERS AND THE EARLY DAYS OF PRIVATE-PRACTICE

In this article, I examine the efforts of psychiatric social workers to create a private practice during the 1920s and 1930s out of their desire to independently practice psychotherapy. The limited scope of private practice before the late 1940s is shown to be more a function of economic pressures than professional rejection. A consideration of the growth of private practice as a manifestation of social workers' attempts to gain professional autonomy and middle-class clients, rather than as a response to the needs of social work's traditional clientele, provides a historical context to the debate surrounding private practice.