Editorial

• Published in: Journal of social work practice 2018-12, Vol.32 (4), p.365-372
• Main Author: Steckley, Laura
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Behavioral psychology; Caregivers; Child care; Children; Cocaine; Crews; Evolutionary theories; Human nature; Learning; Psychoanalysis; Social learning
• ISSN: 0265-0533; 1465-3885
• DOI: 10.1080/02650533.2018.1503168

Welcome to this special issue on psychodynamic and systems theories perspectives on residential child care. Psychodynamic influences have been waning over the last several decades, both generally (Shaver & Mikulincer, 2005) and in residential child care settings (Mann, 2003; Sharpe, 2006). Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, has gone from being equated with Copernicus and Darwin in popular magazines of the 1950s (Menand, 2017) to currently being depicted as a cocaine-addicted charlatan who falsified his case studies in a current, popular biography (Crews, 2017). Behaviourism and social learning theory have become more prominent (Shaver & Mikulincer, 2005), both of which offer a more positivist interpretation of human nature (Moyn, 2016). Yet there is a strong, international consensus regarding the centrality of relationships in providing good residential child care (Kendrick, Steckley, & McPheat, 2011), and neither behavioural nor social learning theories offer much illumination for making sense of how mind-bogglingly difficult these relationships can be. Practitioners need support to ask and tentatively answer two, fundamental questions: 'what is happening for the young person in order to make this relationship work and what is happening for me, the carer in order that this relationship works?' (Sharpe, Daniel, & Degregorio, 2007). Psychodynamic and systems theories offer such support.