http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/4766325

Social psychology

"This book has been developed from two main theses which justify my venture into the field of social psychology. The first is that the visceral-organic structure of man is basic to the understanding of psychology. However extreme the assertion may seem, I think it fair to say that the thinkers who have formed the knowledge of mind in its largest and truest terms have been those who have shown the relationship of drive, emotions, and intelligence to the structures of the body, and vice versa. The second thesis is that apart from his group a man is a mere potentiality. He is developed in a milieu that fosters, modifies, or destroys his capacities. And how that milieu works, the psychiatrist and physician has ample opportunity to witness. To explain the individual and discuss his psychology as something distinct from the psychology of the society that daily becomes more complex and ranges from the remote past far into the future is, as the anatomists would say, a false dissection, by which structures are isolated from one another artificially and their organic connection destroyed. Therefore I have begun with the structure and organic functions of the individual and have endeavored to show how social forces, like the gases of the environment, sweep in and out of him--taking command of his viscera and transforming their functions into approved deeds, and creating within him both the pleasures of conformity and the bitter, self-dividing struggle that results from the disharmony of individual capacity and desire with social authority. While the facts presented are not new, the emphasis and formulation of principles are to a certain extent original, and they merit appreciative attention. I make no pretense of having fulfilled my aim completely, the shortcomings of my work being as discernible to me as to any critic; but withal, I hope and even feel assured that both the visceral-organic and the sociological bases of social psychology are here given the emphasis they deserve"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).

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