In the 1970s and 1980s, dramatic transformations in psychiatric science, psychotherapeutic modalities, and the contexts and value of psychiatric care triggered a biomedical revolution in the psychiatric professions. Unlike in psychiatry, where the biological psychiatrists and the psychoanalysts battled for control of the profession, clinical social workers adopted a pluralistic pedagogical and practical approach to mental health treatment. The changes in clinical social work theory and practice at the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration and surrounding psychiatric field sites in Chicago's South Side exemplify this structural shift in the profession. I use archival research and in-depth interviews to explore clinical social workers' experience of training and practice in this era and explain the effects of the biomedical revolution on clinical social work in Chicago.
Zoë Phillips (Thu,) studied this question.