ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of Bertha Capen Reynolds’ contributions to social work theory and pedagogy. A leading social work theorist and activist from the 1920s to the 1950s, she integrated Freudian and Marxist concepts into practice and educational frameworks. She dedicated her career to helping the marginalized and excluded and took considerable intellectual and political risks. Reynolds frequently broke with conventional social work thinking and jeopardized her reputation by supporting radical social movements and political parties. This ultimately led to her professional marginalization and her later rehabilitation by a new generation of social work activists.
Reynolds recognized that social work practice and education were inseparable from the processes of individual, institutional, and social change. She challenged the false dichotomy between interventions that redistributed vital resources and power and those designed to enhance people’s quality of life. She examined the limits of the human spirit, the empowering and disempowering effects of clinical social work, and the ethics of involving clients in political action. She questioned how social workers could rationalize practice with individuals in an environment of persistent poverty and growing human need in which social workers would become agents of social control who preserved the status quo.
