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For more than three decades, psychologists have been saying that the problems of the world are not purely economic, but also partly psychological. They have been saying, in effect, that it is ill. And behind their words, there may have been a phantasy that it ought to come to them for treatment. At first there was no sign of the world recognizing its illness, or of accepting the implied advice. But, by degrees and especially since the Second World War, there has been an increasing tendency to turn to them with rather more attention. It is this new attitude of a society, now more than ever aware of its discomforts, which presents psychology with its present challenge.
The challenge may be felt both as an opportunity and as an embarrassment. We may feel that our bluff has been called, and that we have much less to give than we unconsciously imagined. But this is perhaps not our major difficulty; for it does not prevent us from giving what we can. A greater difficulty, at least in my view, is that the challenge seems to raise - and in an acute form - the old problem of the relation of science to ethics, and in particular to politics. The conflicts which threaten the future happiness, and even the existence, of society are ideological. How are we to intervene? If we use our specialist learning to defend our own ideals, have we departed from the narrow path of science? If we remain ‘scientifically’ neutral, have we evaded the challenge? I do not know how widespread this feeling is; but it may be sufficiently general to deserve some preliminary investigation. I will call it the psychologist's dilemma.