ABSTRACT
Psychoanalytic social work is a more recent phenomenon, only possible after the development of psychoanalysis at the turn of the twentieth century and 1925 can be regarded as the year of its birth with the publication of two works. These include: the books Sisyphus or the Limits of Education by Siegfried Bernfeld and Wayward Youth by August Aichhorn. Whereas social work with adults was and remained right into the twentieth century almost exclusively an undertaking to alleviate material need, the public and church provision for children and young people took on a different aspect from the beginning of the nineteenth century, namely the tasks of supervision, care, and education. At the end of the eighteenth century in Hamburg a new approach to reform of the poor developed in which child and youth care was separated from the general care for the poor and turned into a working education.
