ABSTRACT
The major psychoanalytic theories are the drive theory, ego psychology, object relations psychology, self psychology, and a theory of intersubjectivity. The psychoanalytic social worker, whether he or she be social worker proper, educator, or social psychiatrist, encounters a living subject as does the clinical psychoanalyst. In psychoanalytic social work what is in the foreground is the relationship to the client and the enhanced perception through countertransference analysis of the way the client shapes this relationship. Psychoanalysis developed in a clinical context over the treatment of forms of hysteria known in the language of psychiatry as dissociative disorders. In general it seems that the more psychoanalysts treated narcissistic, borderline, and psychotic disorders the more they gave a particular significance to trauma. From about the 1980s onward various psychoanalytic theories have been developed which emphasise a person’s relatedness to the other or others.
