Two great social workers

I have been reading, this week, the work of two great social workers – Virgina Satir and Clare Winnicott. Virginia Satir is well known in the field of family therapy; Clare Winnicott is not well known, but she played an important role in the development and publishing of her husband Donald’s theories. It is interesting to me that both women had pivotal roles in the development of therapy, but they are both outshone in academia – Satir to a lesser extent, but she does not seem to have devoted as much energy to promulgation of her method – or, perhaps, her method has been more difficult to promulgate (the Virginia Satir Global Network, form Avanta, seems to come close, but I'd never heard of them before I investigated).

What is the explanation for this? Neither contributed to the “literature” to the extent that others did. C. Winnicott seems to have been more involved in the practical world of child welfare than in academia, and she appears to have been content to support the publication of her husband’s writing.

Satir became well-known for her practice, having been featured as a “Wizard” by Bandler and Grinder’s Neurolinguistic Programming, and her videos circulate in widely among family therapy professionals. For this reason it surprises me that we don’t hear more about “Conjoint family therapy,” as we do about, say, Minuchin’s Structural Therapy (which seems to be the universal practice in child welfare agencies in NYC, based on my limited experience).

Is it right to group these two women, in part because they are women, and in part because they are both social workers? Over the next few weeks I’ll discuss more of their work as I continue to read through Satir’s Conjoint Family Therapy and explore the texts on a website about Clare Winnicott.

Meanwhile, any discussion or comments would be great. I’ll leave with a quote by Winnicott, MSW, from her article “Communicating with Children” (1977), that seems particularly relevant to social work involving children and the delicate balance of roles:

Perhaps the most valuable gift that we bring to work with children is our own capacity to remain vulnerable, while accepting our professional discipline and role. (Communicating with Children, 1977).*

More later of what I learned from her on talking to children, and other similarities I see in the perspectives of these two great social workers.

*Winnicott, Clare. (1996) Communicating with Children. Smith College Studies in Social Work, 66(2).