Even with Lila’s departure from the State of Michigan job, she communicated ambivalence about joining Bob permanently. Now firmly ensconced at IU, he was having none of that, restating an “ultimatum” given her about his timeline: “I’ve already held forth . . . that I won’t wait any longer than the end of the first semester of school here [in Bloomington].”49
As Ferrell grew increasingly uncomfortable with Lila’s reticence to reunite, letters flew back and forth, many from Lou to Bob.50 Unlike Lila who shared the practical side of her social work trials, Lou reflected on the theoretical. Annette Garrett, a former Smith College teacher of Lou’s, had come to Cleveland to speak on the “current trends in social work.”51 Lou responded positively to the message:
They’re finally realizing its senseless to wallow around in a lot of sexual and unconscious [Freudian] material unless you can involve the ego to do something about it. That is now known as ‘management’ as against the old ‘treatment.’ You have to help people control themselves, and in many of our situations there is danger of homicide. My latest client is in this spot.52
By this time, however, Ferrell had become firmly entrenched in opposition to psycho-social theories, what they could offer to social work, and as part of the larger constellation of social sciences and their application to history.53
Ironically, Ferrell’s belief that social work in the 1950s remained in the Victorian era a philanthropical paradigm (a dutiful Christian endeavor) underscored his ignorance of, and/or disregard for, what had transpired in the field during the twentieth century. Long before the future historian would meet either Lou or Lila, universities had created dozens of accredited social work programs across graduate and undergraduate schools in the United States, and their foundation was based on “scientific knowledge and research,” along with field work investigation, new techniques and technology, and increased focus on race and gender.54 Freud’s psychoanalytic theory provided a scientific base, and Lou’s letters to Ferrell clearly reflected this.55 Addressing immediate client needs and potential resources also were priorities as was mastering organizational insights, group dynamics, aspects of social policy, and research. A social work research journal, Social Service Review, began publishing studies by 1927 to improve practice.56 Balancing the broad interests of clients and public needs and expectations was (and is) crucial to social work success, and thus, the earliest academic instruction included a mix of economics, sociology, scientific methods and statistics, and labor and industry, all of which could be brought to bear on social issues and reform.57 To underscore the point, the American Social Science Association’s efforts beginning in 1870s were instrumental in promoting the study of social problems and their remedies, central to the social work mission.58 Adherence to public expectations and aims would become more pronounced as state and federal governments dictated through programs and funding the ends to be served.
At mid-century, Lila wrote her Bloomington beau about overstuffed casework files and overwhelming numbers of investigations and reinvestigations at the State of Michigan Department of Social Welfare.59 This was evidence of the scientific method applied in social work.60 To do such work, she and Lou prepared for a wide variety of tasks that awaited them through an eclectic set of program requirements. For example, to be admitted as a social work graduate student at Smith College, Lou completed “at least twenty semester hours in the social and biological sciences,” including “studies in sociology, anthropology, economics, government, history, and in related fields . . . psychology and physiology.”61 Lila had majored in both sociology and anthropology as an undergraduate at MSC. Psychoanalytic terminology such as “transference” based on client “identification” with a social worker and feelings of security and trust were examples of foundational concepts.62 The evaluation of results often centered around attainment of “satisfactory adjustment” and length of case work completion. Ferrell’s potential mates fit the dual tracks that aspiring social workers could take at the time. Lou completed a graduate degree; Lila, a baccalaureate. First track graduates headed principally to the private, nonprofit work world; Lila, as with others in the second track, found work at a public welfare agency.63
But early on, experts questioned the legitimacy of social work as a profession, that it lacked “definite and specific ends,” or “a clear line of demarcation about [its] respective fields.”64 In this, Ferrell and his tradition-bound colleagues studying U.S. history also signaled some internal discomfort by the 1950s and beyond. The respectability afforded emerging social sciences and their imprint on the methods, theoretical perspectives, and the work of historians caused part of the alarm. Social scientists engaged a broader critique of the past, encompassing a wider swath of voices heard, a diverse set of purposes served, and conflicting epistemological perspectives.65
As an approach to knowledge creation, empiricism drove the modernist conception of history (1800–1960), including Ferrell’s.66 More specifically, as historians have elaborated, it is
a simple, common-sense method of objectivity and fact-collection in which all knowledge has to be proven before it can be accepted. . . . It relies solely on experience (or observation and reading) of knowledge. When combined with inductive reasoning, it allows the scholar to move from particular bits of knowledge (cases) to generalizations (conclusions).67
These conclusions required “consistency” about what happened in the past. Writing the historical narrative was central and completed the process of constructing history. To maintain disciplinary respectability, the narratives had to pass muster with fellow historians (peer review), then be subjected to further scrutiny with colleagues who revisited the topics. As differences arose among historians, “relevant facts” and “plausible explanations” were evaluated and resolved. Professionalism was judged on the competent capacity to engage these processes.68
The rise of the social sciences and their application to history creation met with fierce opposition among Ferrell and modernist allies.69 The disagreement was rooted partly in disputes over what was considered credible historical knowledge and theoretical frameworks and partly over what should be the goals served by historians. Sociologists, political scientists, among other social scientists, focused on identifying and understanding rules that explained human behavior. These rules of behavior or generalizations would permit the development of models of the past, to explain, predict, and/or prophesize. Such purposes were antithetical to Ferrell’s beliefs, which encompassed the ‘reality’ of uniquely situated individual action, potential for heroism, human agency, and contingency as powerful forces directing and helping explain historical events.70 This, aside from the topical foci, likely underlay much of his repudiation of collegial proponents of Marxist history, the new social and cultural historians, and social work experts relying on Freudian theory.71 Sociology has been identified as the core of the social sciences, and thus, it is hardly surprising that Ferrell and colleagues treated it with such scorn.72 The IU historian’s attitudes toward the social and behavioral sciences may also explain why IU political scientists ignored Ferrell’s expertise in presidential history despite his successful scholarship well beyond his courtship phase—this in studies on Harry Truman, Woodrow Wilson, and Calvin Coolidge, among others.73
Strands of criticism directed at social work as a profession overlapped with those aimed at historians. One of the earliest critics of the former, Abraham Flexner (1915), identified six essential criteria to the work of physicians, lawyers, engineers, among others, that signified professional status: “intellectual operations with large individual responsibility,” the work “rooted in science and learning” and toward “a practical and definite end,” delivery of “an educationally communicable technique,” tendency toward self-organization, and an increasing shift toward altruism.74
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