ABSTRACT
This chapter is the best example of the author's concern with ending the dualities that have plagued the social work profession since its inception. It is also one of the first chapter in which he introduces the concept of analogic thinking and its application to social work practice. Traditionally, social work literature addresses issues of purpose in practice from a narrow perspective. Purpose includes the outcomes desired from professional interventions, and the intentions that motivate the professional act. Cause and function came to occupy an important niche in our professional literature when Porter Lee used these concepts to argue for the view that sequenced social reform and social practice in a cyclical, recurring, and seemingly inevitable progression. Porter Lee, initially, described what he viewed as a normal social process, the move from a cause sought and won to a function that realized in practice the intentions contained in the cause.
