ABSTRACT
Social work and social work education have long been subject to rapid change and reform, including organizational and legislative reform, often in response to highly publicized (and politicized) failures in child protection policy and practice. This chapter begins with an overview of the changes and developments in social work and social work education, clearly very different from the context and culture of nurse training in the late 1950s—although yet sharing perhaps some of the complexities and emotional pain observed so acutely by Menzies Lyth. It focuses on projective identification before going on to document how projective identificatory processes emerged in our research studies. The chapter then provides a discussion of the context of wider social work anxieties, which impact upon and are played out by practice educators and social work students. It concludes with a brief discussion about containment and, in light of our discussion, considers possible ways forward.
