ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by considering the significance of the father from the perspective of oedipal theory. It continues the narrative of the case through a crisis and discusses the social worker's efforts to resolve the crisis in terms of her relationship with the family, using the concept of the transference. The chapter links the case discussion to some social work literature on reflexivity and on the function of professional structures. It shows how the family's ambivalence about a father figure came to be played out in the relationship to the social worker herself, albeit in a series of crises that had apparently nothing to do with this relationship. The social worker's understanding that the disrupted relation to herself was crucial guided her successful attempt to restore working relations with the family.
