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It is very difficult adequately to review a book in a field which is as important, as complex, and as apparently removed from the immediate interests of the readers of this QUARTERLY as the one here under consideration. It is a treatise on social psychology which has great interest for psychoanalysts. A priori, it might be supposed to challenge in its entirety our particular point of view and our alleged tendency to ignore or minimize social factors. Upon closer examination, however, one will discover just the opposite. If social psychology is concerned with the effect of the group on the behavior of the individual and the effect of the individual on the behavior of the group, it is the more necessary that one be clear from the outset as to an accepted conception of the nature of the organism; how one is going to obtain knowledge of the organism and of the group, and how the behavior of the group and the organism are determined.
Dr. Brown follows the Gestaltists, as do presumably most psychoanalysts, in believing that the organism (and like it the social group) is not merely the sum of all its parts. Therefore, instead of gathering an endless number of facts and striving in a strained and competitive manner to classify them according to some ultimate basic concepts, social psychology needs to work out an "adequate theory of social behavior" as a whole which will make the accurate prediction of particular behavior more nearly possible. For such an approach, the author proposes the field theory in contrast to the class theory and classificatory activities of Aristotle and those who emulate him.
After a presentation of his methodological point of view, Dr. Brown proceeds to describe first society, and then the individual; in the former, dealt with in a sociological section, he discusses the individual as a member of various classes and the effect