Psychiatric and Social Processes

The nature of the forces which cause historical change has ever been one of the most crucial and challenging problems facing the intelligence of man. There are two main obstacles to the achievement of a real comprehension of the dynamics of history. The first is the intense subjectivism of social thinking which far transcends even that seen in connection with psychological and religious phenomena. For every man's welfare, his hopes for security or fame, his freedom or possible enslavement, his life or death are involved in the apparently fickle winds that propel human events. Because of this subjectivism, even the most objective and detached of men tend to confuse fantasy with reality when under the pressure of the powerful wishes and fears roused by the course of world shaking political events.

The second reason for this costly gap in man's knowledge has been the fact that moral, political and economic theories have been formulated with scant knowledge of the nature of the prime mover in history—the human mind. The observers and thinkers of the past have been like men who would discover and treat disease with no understanding of human anatomy, physiology, or pathology. This obstacle was inevitable until the Promethian genius of Freud arose to found an objective science of the mind. For the first time in history there is now available information as to some of the factors causing the varieties of attitudes, preferences, and desires which are the basis for social change. The discoveries of Freud await adaptation to social problems to create a real science of historical change.

In order to be scientific about social phenomena it is necessary to maintain a strictly objective and biological view of the nature of man. Man must be recognized first as a mammal, with powerful sensual cravings, and secondly as a predatory, carniverous primate, the only higher member of the primate order to give up the defensive advantages of arboreal existence and become transformed i