ABSTRACT
The relationship between psychiatry and social work has been a close one for several decades during which psychiatrists have served as consultants in social agencies and as teachers in schools of social work. One of the major issues with which the Curriculum Study naturally had to wrestle was clarification of the theoretical base of social work practice. The study conceives of the goal of social work as the enhancement of social functioning wherever the need for such enhancement is either socially or individually perceived. Social workers and psychiatrists may hold different views about various aspects of the socialization process. Since ego psychology constitutes the core of the contribution of psychoanalysis to social work education, it is necessary to teach it in its dynamic aspects, hence, to show the relationship of the ego concept to the concepts of the psychogenetic development of man. Social work practice rests upon theories of somatic functioning and of social process.
