When Helen Harris Perlman was a young woman, she had an epiphany that would alter her career path and illuminate her name as a pioneer in clinical social work.
She graduated cum laude in 1926 from the University of Minnesota with a bachelor’s degree in English literature, a subject that left her head and heart filled with its rich characters and complex stories, but without a job.
So she took a position as a summer caseworker for the Chicago Jewish Social Service Bureau.
“A whole world opened up to me,” she said in a 1996 article in the University of Chicago Chronicle, where she had been a professor emeritus.
“I had no idea of the kinds of trouble people had. I got a great deal of satisfaction from being able to help people. I found that in many cases, families faced the same kinds of problems and conflicts that one encountered in the great works of literature.”
Her 1957 “Social Casework: A Problem Solving Approach” advanced a new theory of practicing social work, fused a rift in the profession and became a key textbook for generations.
Mrs. Perlman, 98, died of heart failure Saturday, Sept. 18, in her Hyde Park home.
A Minnesota native, she entered social work when it was in many ways emerging, in part as a shadow of the growing influence of psychology.
She received a scholarship to attend the New York School of Social Work, which later became affiliated with Columbia University. She graduated as a fellow in psychiatric social work in 1934. In 1935 she married Max Perlman, also a social worker. He died in 1994.
She received her master’s degree in social work in 1943 from Columbia, studying under numerous psychoanalytically oriented psychiatrists.
By the time she joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1945 as an assistant professor, she had almost two decades of experience in direct practice, field teaching and administration as a social caseworker in myriad settings, from family services agencies and schools to a psychiatric hospital.
When she wrote her textbook, two rivaling approaches were dominating the field of social work: diagnostic, which melded Freudian psychology with environmental conditions, and functional, which stressed creating a collaborative relationship between the client and the social worker.
Her model, which came to be known as the “Chicago School” of social service practice, blended those two approaches with her own experiences. It emphasized the importance of identifying how individuals adapt to their social environment and that people experience problems in social functioning as a natural part of life.
“In her lucid writing style, she brought together emerging social science and psychiatric theories along with her own experiences to provide a dominant framework for social work practice,” said Jeanne Marsh, acting dean of the university’s School of Social Service Administration.
Together with later work by other colleagues, her model established the problem-solving approach commonly used and that has influenced generations of practitioners and educators around the world.
Her pioneer position in the field fit her personality, said her son, Jonathan.
“She was very strong-willed … and sure of her opinions. Her belief in how social work should be practiced was almost a religion for her–she was very eager to blaze new ground to treat people in a different way.”
In all, she authored eight books that were translated into numerous foreign languages. She taught and lectured around the world.
In 1969 she became the Samuel Deutsch Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration. She retired in 1975.
In 1996 the university established a visiting professorship in her honor.
She also is survived by a grandson.
A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Oct. 2 in Bond Chapel on the University of Chicago campus, 1025 E. 58th St., Chicago.
