ABSTRACT
Beginning in the 1920s during “the psychiatric deluge” (Woodroofe, 1971), Freudian psychoanalytic theory began to have a deep impact in the US, not only on the emerging field of social work, but on education as well. Although Freud’s name was most closely linked to the prevailing theories that touched both social work and education, the ideas of Sándor Ferenczi and his closest colleagues also crossed the Atlantic. The aftermath of the First and Second World Wars, “shell shock”, and the newly formed child guidance clinics exposed social workers to these teachings (Goldstein, 2002a). Many of them entered into treatment and supervision with the rapidly growing community of European psychoanalysts who immigrated to the United States and often worked in the child guidance clinics (Aiello, 1998). Although his name was barely uttered alongside Freud’s except perhaps in apologetic whispers, Ferenczi already had a huge direct and indirect impact on some of the émigrés before their arrival. Those American social workers who travelled to Europe to study and be analysed were of course also exposed to Ferenczi’s thinking.
