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This volume is the result of the collaborative efforts of two social psychologists, one a Turk, the other an American. It covers certain phases important in the field of social psychology which have lain quite scattered and fragmented in the many professional journals and monographs devoted to this subject.
At the outset it is well to be clear as to what the book does not offer to the readers of this periodical. It is not a discussion of the relevant phases of clinical psychology or clinical psychiatry. It is not a volume helpful in the problems of psychotherapeutics. It is not, despite a rather misleading title, concerned with the problems of individual psychology as such, but only with the individual as he is influenced by and is part of the social group. The clinical psychologist and psychiatrist need seek no answers to the “why”, or further understanding of “depth psychology”, nor insight into motives operating on the deep-planes of the individual ego. Instead, he will be given the “hows”, the forms, the results of social interactions, interpersonal activities and identifications.
The sources of evidence are varied and come from the experimental laboratory, polls, questionnaires, public opinion surveys, observations on children and adolescents, sociological ethnological and anthropological data. The book, to quote the authors, is “chiefly concerned with the place of the ego in systematic social psychology”. To point up again the scope of the book, we can cite “behavior difficulties due to individual differences may be the concern of clinical psychology or therapeutics” but “for the social psychologists no matter how unique or colorful these individual factors may be, the main concern should be situational determinations of group interactions and the psychological properties that arise as a consequence in the individual members.” The social psychologist is concerned with the fact that the individual behaves differently in group situations. But the authors are at pa