Psychology for Social Work Theory and Practice

Paula Nicolson, Rowan Bayne

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781350312944
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This new edition from a trusted author team bridges the gap between psychological theory and social work practice. Revisited and re-structured to reflect the changing social work context, it provides an authoritative introduction to the key ideas, skills and research from psychology and highlights their role within effective social work practice. Whether you are a student or a practitioner of social work, this book is a vital and practical resource that will enhance your knowledge, skills and practice. New to this Edition:
- Includes content which is of relevance across a number of social work modules
- Contains new chapters on reflection and the psychological context of social work organisations
- A range of new pedagogical features that support the practical application of the book

PART I

Theory for Practice

The first part of the book explores the role of a variety of psychological theories in social work practice. It begins, in Chapter 1, by examining exactly what psychology as an academic, clinical and otherwise applied discipline really is. What do psychoanalytic ideas, behaviourism and cognitive neuroscience practices have in common? Is psychology more like biology or sociology? The answers might surprise you – so read on. To demonstrate the full extent of psychological research and practice we describe the different methodological approaches (from the experiment to the interview, from statistical to qualitative) and also the tools at the psychologist’s disposal. These include magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners for in-depth exploration of the human brain, attitudes scales, surveys, standardized tests (for such things as personality, motivation and intelligence) as well as open-ended interviews. What do social workers need to know about these methods and tools? As social work becomes more evidence-driven you will need to have a reasonably sophisticated knowledge of what counts as good and bad or indifferent research to make decisions about what might be relevant to your practice.

In Chapter 2 you will see a more detailed focus on the individual life-span which draws upon some of the theory outlined previously while adding greater depth to your understanding of its application. That chapter specifically explores attachment relationships and styles as well as the impact of trauma and grief on the course of human development.

The third chapter in Part I moves the focus from the individual to the group and the organization, looking at psychological approaches to understanding teams and organizations. We all work in teams and sometimes these teams work well focusing on the task of delivering for service users. Unfortunately some teams are dysfunctional and don’t manage to effectively engage with the tasks that are its reason for existing. This suggests that somewhere along the line the service user is disadvantaged, not from ill will but from poor practice within the system.

To look forward briefly, in Part II, Chapters 4 and 5, you will see how personality testing can be applied to the development of interpersonal and interviewing skills as well as self-care. Some of the theory introduced in Chapter 3 is developed further in Chapter 6 where we look at groupwork skills.

CHAPTER 1

Psychological theories

CHAPTER OVERVIEW

In this chapter we cover:

•The scope of the discipline of psychology with selected relevant examples.

•The variety of ways it continues to be studied, including through experiments, surveys, biological indicators, attitude scales, psychodynamic clinical case examples and in-depth interviews.

Psychology comprises a range of approaches to its subject matter and the methods it uses to make sense of the brain, social interaction, behaviour, development and emotions. Generally research findings across the discipline come together to make a coherent picture of the whole person, although research activities are frequently in separate spheres. Some evidence comes from neuro-imaging of brain activity and some comes from the associations made by listening and watching closely while people talk about their lives. All of this comes under the heading of psychology and all can claim a degree of influence over social work knowledge.

Introduction

Psychology itself has never been a unified discipline but combines different approaches and theoretical orientations to the study of the individual and the individual in a social context. Its origins as an academic subject area, the science of mind and behaviour, go back well over a hundred years, although the study of psychology is not as old as some other sciences. In its relatively brief history, however, there have been a number of crises or turning points, and although Western academic psychology is now well established, there are a number of areas of contention that have increased, exacerbated by competition for research funding. These include whether emotions are social or biological in origin and which methods are more likely to demonstrate an enduring truth about human nature.

The greatest acclamation that during the early years of the twenty-first century has been awarded to discoveries from cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary psychology and genetics has been criticized by many whose interest is in the social nature of human thinking and behaviour (Bentall, 2006; Bjorklund and Pellegrini, 2000). The UK Coalition Government has expressed an interest in understanding ‘happiness’, which some psychologists have argued is political and used to mask the effect of the economic recession and austerity measures (Layard, 2006). It is perhaps noteworthy that Richard Layard, who conducted the government study of happiness, is an economist rather than a psychologist. There is a current interest in positive psychology, emphasizing happiness rather than mental ill-health and depression, which has traditionally been of greater concern across the discipline.

Studies of happiness, for example, may be accomplished in several ways (questionnaires, interviews) but there are possible technological methods of identifying people’s ‘happy’ brains through using a MRI scanner, and one group of researchers at Harvard University have suggested that they discovered that a mind or mental state that lacks the ability to adapt to change is typically an unhappy one (Diener, 2000). We shall consider adaptation and responses to change in Chapter 2 when we look at the life-span in detail.

A debate currently rages around the so-called ‘hard-wiring’ of sex differences. This has been based on experiments with people on the autism spectrum, where discoveries by cognitive neuroscientists suggest clear differences in brain activity between female and male participants (e.g., Baron-Cohen, 2004).

The remit of psychology is so fundamental to all aspects of human life and society that it informs the theory and practice of several other diverse disciplines and professions as well as social work. These include neurophysiology, medicine, health care, psychiatry and broader mental health studies, nursing and midwifery, anthropology, sociology, town and urban planning, architecture, driver behaviour, communication studies as well as aspects of media and public relations work. The list is long and the increased recognition of the role psychology can play in understanding everyday life has come to the fore through reality television programmes, involving interpersonal competition and cooperation, which have reached a pinnacle in popularity. Psychologists, however, are divided as to how far this type of esteem for their subject is helpful to its development, but whatever their opinions, popular psychology has never been more popular!

In the following chapters we demonstrate that psychological knowledge complements intuition in making judgements during face-to-face encounters with service users and in long-term assessments of service provision. It is also valuable in the self-assessment and personal growth of the practitioner and for an understanding of social work organizations.

We want to stress that there is a world of difference between a socially competent human being, the friend with concern for others, and the professional social worker required to make judgements about someone’s behaviour based on previous knowledge of that person and a valid prediction of how they will cope in the future. Social workers have to do more than get along with other people – they seek to make objective assessments, interventions and take decisions that radically affect the course of other people’s lives.

The development of psychological theories for social workers

Academic psychology (the substance of research and teaching) draws upon several perspectives, although broadly speaking the focus is upon the individual. Social psychology is to some extent an exception to this rule, as it concentrates on the interaction between individuals and the impact of the social context on the individual. Academic psychology research favours the study of mental mechanisms and processes such as thinking (cognition) and perception, and how these processes relate to and are influenced by behaviour. Social work, emerging as a profession after World War II, increasingly identified itself with psychoanalytic psychology, and while this approach to understanding human thought, emotion and behaviour is invaluable, only exceptionally is it seen by academic psychologists as integral to their discipline.

Academic psychology prides itself on being a scientific discipline. This means that its theory and practice are based upon empirical evidence that is derived from observations rather than on opinions, beliefs, prejudice or argument. Scientific observations are reliable and repeatable according to a fairly strict set of rules. Measurement is crucial, and the data (generated by observations) have to be compiled in a systematic way. There are, though, inevitable problems for a discipline like psychology that requires the assessment of people by other people, and in order to meet the constraints imposed by the scientific method, the focus of energies has been upon the study and analysis of behaviour, often using the experimental method. Although this has ensured the rigour which science demands, it has also meant that the scope of the discipline has been limited in certain ways, at the expense of studying emotions and feelings in everyday situations. How does this benefit social work practitioners?

In the remainder of this chapter we identify selective issues from psychology theory that have relevance to practice.

Research on memory and eye-witness testimony

There is a tradition in experimental psychology of studying human memory and, more recently, its application to eye-witness testimony. Concern with prosecution in child abuse and child sexual abuse cases has led to a positive relationship between experimental cognitive psychology and the practical and emotional problems and benefits for children giving evidence against their abusers (Castelli et al., 2005; Goodman, 2006).

The pioneering work of Graham Davies and colleagues, begun in the 1980s, on the psychological processes connected with witness reports, memory and testimonies, demonstrated important ways in which experimentally based psychology has enhanced the procedures surrounding giving evidence in court, particularly for children who are victims of alleged abuse. Understanding the efficacy of children’s memories under stressful conditions (such as recalling abuse in detail when appearing in court) has had an important practical effect within the legal system where changes to the way children’s evidence is received have been of immediate practical importance to both psychologists and social workers. The data derived from this psychological research led to the Home Office’s commitment to the closed-circuit TV link to the courtroom. Without the child’s testimony there are problems in securing convictions against abusers and it becomes more difficult to make plans for the future of the child. Research demonstrated that the trauma of a courtroom appearance is potentially damaging as the original experience of abuse is re-created and the ensuing stress is likely to hinder memory as well as precipitate emotional disturbance (Davies, 1988; Boon et al., 1993). Thus giving evidence outside the court via closed-circuit cameras is not just something that is ‘more pleasant’ for children. It is demonstrably more effective in obtaining truth and accuracy of recall. Additional recommendations based on psychological research indicate the importance of a ‘trusted intermediary’ (probably a social worker known to the child) to be employed to assist in the questioning procedure rather than an unknown court official (Boon et al., 1993).

Helen Westcott (Westcott, 2003; Westcott and Kynan, 2004) has taken the evidence from this research further. She examined ways in which social workers apply methods of interviewing children through a story-telling framework. Westcott and colleagues are clear though that caution needs to be applied – you cannot just tell children a story and get them to complete or comment on it. They may not be able to distinguish between what is true, what is untrue and what they believe the questioner wants to hear. On the other hand it isn’t appropriate to use the same techniques on children as with adults.

Applying psychology to the impact of disasters, accidents and their aftermath

In addition to experimental techniques, academic psychology has developed a sophisticated approach to validated, reliable psychometric testing, which is using tests that compare the results of individuals with established norms developed through statistical testing. Victims of disasters react in a number of ways to their experiences, depending on their personalities, previous histories and the event itself. Psychologists have developed assessment methods to identify people who might be classified as having PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and varying degrees of related stress (Bisson, 2007; Busuttil, 2004) including domestic violence (Israel and Stover, 2009; Jones et al., 2001).

In work with victims of disasters, which could include a variety of harrowing events, expertise has grown to both identify and to help individuals who have survived traumatic experiences overcome them, minimizing subsequent psychological disturbance (see Clegg, 1988; Ehlers et al., 2003). Expertise in this kind of work has developed exponentially over the past thirty years as a consequence of the spread of conflict across Europe (in the Balkan States), the Middle East (in Iraq and Afghanistan), the ‘Arab Spring’ and Africa (in Somalia and Ruanda) in particular. A series of disasters that relates to technological and human failures on a large scale including motorway and aircraft crashes, and football stadium collapses have also been too apparent. Also there have been unexpected and devastating terrorist attacks such as those on the World Trade Center in New York City in 2001, the ‘7/7’ attacks on the transport system in London or the Omagh bombing in Northern Ireland in 1998 (Bonanno et al., 2006). People involved in each and every one of these different types of disaster experience fear for their own safety and lives, loss of loved ones, friends and colleagues and are inevitably the witnesses to horrific sights of suffering and consequent feelings of helplessness and guilt. Stories told by survivors of the Nazi Holocaust and death camps and of the atrocities in the Balkans have identified the different ways in which those who survived feel guilty for simply surviving and how some people cope by burying their experiences and others by telling the stories to themselves and others time and again. No one technique returns the person to the same psychological state as they were before any of the events they experienced took place. That is impossible – the trajectory of their life has already followed a pathway of no return. However, psychology and psychologically informed social care practice can support survivors in coming to terms with their multiple experiences, losses and fears in such a way that they can get on with the rest of their lives and not dwell forever on their traumas (see Bettelheim, 1979). This also applies to some aspects of grief, as you will see when you read Chapter 2 about the life-span.

Social workers may be faced with immediate emergencies, but commonly are tasked with the longer-term role of picking up the pieces. Psychological research has provided a ‘profile’ of the disaster victim’s experience indicating a ‘post-traumatic stress disorder’ (PTSD) which may prevent someone from being able ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Brief Contents
• Contents
• List of figures, boxes and tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: why study psychology?
• Part I: Theory for Practice
• Part II: Skills for Practice
• Part III: Theory in Practice
• Concluding remarks
• Appendix I: A note on counselling
• Appendix II: A checklist for analysing your counselling sessions
• Appendix III: Gordon Lawrence’s descriptions of the sixteen MBTI ‘types’ emphasizing motives and values
• References
• Index