Dollard, John. Caste and Class in a Southern Town. New Haven:  Yale University Press.

Dr. Dollard, a sociologist with technical training in psychoanalysis, is possessed of the fertile idea that sociology has much to learn from Freud, and psychoanalysis a good deal to learn from the study of cultures and class-organization. His latest book owes its vitality not only to his premises, however, but to the meaty array of facts and inferences with which he regales us, to the quotations in the footnotes from an extensive bibliography, to the pulsing vitality of his presentation, and to the skillful organization of his material.

“The aim of the study,” Dr. Dollard says, “is to grasp and describe the emotional structure which runs parallel to the formal social structure in the community.” He has chosen to study the formal and emotional structure of the white and negro castes in a typical town of the cotton belt. Three female and six male negro were selected for intensive studies. Free association, dreams, and other modifications of analytic techniques were utilized, instead of an interrogatory method. None of these informants, it is said, was aware of personality difficulties of importance. This part of the investigation was extensively supplemented by many interviews at gas stations and soda fountains, and with chance acquaintances everywhere, by talks with friends and officials, by jokes and newspaper items, by all available clues, however informal, to the special characteristics of the classes composing this town. Dr. Dollard's capacity to assimilate these casual impressions, to keep his intuitive eyes open, is apparent throughout the book. In the interpretations of his data, he takes account of biases, unconscious connotations, intonations, and other indications of emotional values, rather than restricting himself to a literal acceptance of the statements. The result fully justifies the intellectual courage of this worker in one of the less exact sciences, in thus adapting his technique to his material, rather than forcing his material to conform to imitat