Harry Lurie's Critique: Person and Environment in Early Casework Practice

Abstract

Through the use of primary source materials produced from the late 1920s through the 1930s, Harry Lawrence Lurie's position on the proper balance of concern in social work practice for the personal and social sources of people's troubles is presented. Lurie was an influential leader in social work, particularly Jewish social welfare, from the 1920s into the 1960s, but he is relatively unknown and unappreciated today. It was Lurie's contention that his contemporaries in social work were concerned with the "internal" aspects of their clients' problems to the virtual exclusion of powerful "external" factors. The article concludes with the question of the value of considering Lurie's position in the context of social work practice today.

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