Encyclopedia of Sociology

CLINICAL SOCIOLOGY

During the 1953–54 academic year, Alvin W.
Gouldner (1920–1980) was teaching in the Depart-
ment of Sociology and Anthropology at Antioch
College in Ohio. Before joining the faculty, Gouldner
had been a university teacher for four years and
then worked, for one year, as a consultant to
Standard Oil of New Jersey.

Gouldner offered ‘‘Foundations of Clinical
Sociology’’ at Antioch. The course was taught at
the highest undergraduate level, and students who
enrolled in the course were expected to have
completed the department’s course in social pa-
thology. The college bulletin provided the follow-
ing description of the course:

A sociological counterpart to clinical psycholo-

gy with the group as the unit of diagnosis and

therapy. Emphasis on developing skills useful

in the diagnosis and therapy of group

tenstions. Principles of functional analysis,

group dynamics, and organizational and small

group analysis examined and applied to case

histories. Representative research in the area

assessed.

The term ‘‘clinical sociology’’ first appears in
print. The first known published linking of the
words clinical and sociology was in 1930 when Mil-
ton C. Winternitz, a pathologist and dean of the
Yale Medical School, wanted to establish a depart-
ment of clinical sociology. After working on the
idea at least as early as 1929, he wrote about it in a
report to the president of the Yale Medical School
and the report was published in the 1930 Yale
University Bulletin. That same year saw the publi-
cation of a speech Winternitz had given at the
dedication of the University of Chicago’s new
social science building. The speech also mentioned
clinical sociology.

Abraham Flexner, a prominent critic of medi-
cal education and director of the Institute for
Advanced Study at Princeton, mentioned clinical
sociology in 1930 in his Universities: American,
English, German. Flexner did not approve of the
Institute of Human Relations that Winternitz was
establishing at Yale. In the pages of criticism devoted
to the institute, Flexner briefly mentioned clinical
sociology: ‘‘Only one apparent novelty is proposed:
a professor of clinical sociology’’ (Flexner 1930).

Winternitz continued to write about the value
of clinical sociology until 1936 when his last report

as dean was filed. One of Winternitz’s (1932) most

forceful statements in support of the field was the

contemporary-sounding statement that appeared

in his 1930–1931 annual report:

The field for clinical sociology does not seem by

any means to be confined to medicine. Within

the year it has become more and more evident

that a similar development may well be the

means of bringing about aid so sorely needed

to change the basis of court action in relation

to crime...

Not only in medicine and in law, but

probably in many other fields of activity, the

broad preparation of the clinical sociologist is

essential...

The first discussion of clinical sociology by a

sociologist was Louis Wirth’s 1931 article, ‘‘Clini-

cal Sociology,’’ in The American Journal of Sociology.

Wirth wrote at length about the possibility of

sociologists working in child development clinics,

though he did not specifically mention his own

clinical work in New Orleans. Wirth wrote ‘‘it may

not be an exaggeration of the facts to speak of the

genesis of a new division of sociology in the form

of clinical sociology’’ (Wirth 1930).

In 1931, Wirth also wrote a career develop-

ment pamphlet, which stated:

The various activities that have grown up

around child-guidance clinics, penal and

correctional institutions, the courts, police

systems, and similar facilities designed to deal

with problems of misconduct have increasingly

turned to sociologists to become members of

their professional staffs (Wirth 1931).

Wirth ‘‘urged (sociology students) to become

specialists in one of the major divisions of sociolo-

gy, such as social psychology, urban sociology...

or clinical sociology’’ (Wirth 1931).

In 1931, Saul Alinsky was a University of Chi-

cago student who was enrolled in Burgess’s clinical

sociology course. Three years later, Alinsky’s arti-

cle, ‘‘A Sociological Technique in Clinical Crimi-

nology,’’ appeared in the Proceedings of the Sixty-

Fourth Annual Congress of the American Prison Asso-

ciation. Alinsky, best known now for his work in

community organizing, was, in 1934, a staff soci-

ologist and member of the classification board of

the Illinois State Penitentiary.