Social Diagnosis Mary E. Richmond's (1917) scholarly work, Social Diagnosis, is a comprehensive 511-page approach to social work in the early 20th century. This book has provided a systematic framework for social work by formulating questionnaires covering almost every aspect of the profession for use at the onset of services. The author expressed the specific intent to provide common ground to all case workers so that they can “develop an understanding and mastery of these elements” (p. 5). While an abridged version of the book is certainly beyond the scope of this article, a brief summary is in order. Two appendices, a bibliography and an in-depth index complete the twenty-eight chapters of the book. Richmond has divided the book into three parts. The first part covers the history of social work surveys and discusses how workers collect the information used to decide who to provide services to, the second part discusses the process of interviewing candidates, gathering information from other sources, and how to reflect on the information . brought together in these processes to reach conclusions about client eligibility and planning. It also begins to address the philosophical foundations of social work. Richmond (1917) said: Individual differences must be taken into account in every field of activity, but the theory of the larger self, although obviously having other implications, appears to be the basis of social work. We have seen how slowly this work has abandoned its few general classifications and has instead tried to consider man in his totality. Even more slowly is the realization that the mind of man (and in a very real sense the mind is man) can be described as the sum of his social relations. (p. 368) In the third part, th...... half of the document ...... blocks grants. Richmond (1917) repeatedly admonished case workers to take a holistic approach in formulating a diagnosis that it would eventually lead to a diagnostic intervention aimed at helping consumers become self-sufficient. Awareness of the environment in which one was working was immediately evident from the encyclopaedic nature of the series of questionnaires provided. At the time this was not known as an ecological approach, but it certainly had all the characteristics of one. Although no one at the time would have used the term psychotherapy to describe the functioning of social work, behavioral goals were obviously part of the planning process, and the author could well have embraced many of those described in modern treatment planners (Wodarski, et al., 2001) used by social workers today. Thus, Richmond anticipated many of the issues that social workers face to this day.