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The time has come for an acceleration in the rate of professional development in the specialization of social group work. This calls, for a full and frank recognition in practice as well as in theory, that direct service to clients is the primary function of the group worker, as it is of the caseworker, and that therefore the quality of this service must be considerably improved. Improving the quality of direct service to clients would advance significantly the stage of professional development of social group work. It is further suggested that such an improvement in quality of service can be achieved in part by converting group work from a method guided largely by intuition into one which is methodologically sound, that is, which conforms to the principles of orderly procedure. Although specific goals often guide group work practice, they are frequently implicit, hence incommunicable to other practitioners. As a consequence no widely accepted specific goals exist in group work. This situation probably results from the fact that group work goals generally derive from empirical experience and are not related to tested theory.