THE PRESENT PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 1
Many of the scholars who in their sectional meetings are at this moment running over the "present problems" of their respective sciences are in the enviable position of having only to point out certain stumps, bog-holes, thickets, and neglected fringes that mar the appearance of their well-tilled fields. It is, however, my unhappy duty, in reporting upon the problems besetting the pioneers of social psychology, to make what amounts to a resurvey of the territory allotted to my science. So much of it is unsubdued wilderness, so little is plowed field, that a review of the problems yet to be solved requires me to run afresh the boundary lines, to drive the corner stakes, to cruise the inclosed area, and to declare the whole domain, with the exception of cer- tain promising clearings which I shall take care to point out, open to entry and settlement.
Human Psychology may from one point of view be divided into General and Special, the former dealing with that which is common to all minds, the latter with the differentia which mark off one category of minds from another. General Psychology may in turn be divided into Individual and Inter-individual, the former concerned with mind as acted upon by things and experi- ences, the latter with mind as acted upon by other minds. The latter, embracing as it does every possible mode of association of human beings, belongs to Social Psychology. Special Psychology likewise falls naturally into two sections, the one determining the mental traits of anthropic varieties, such as races, sexes, ages, temperaments, and types; the other, of societal varieties, such as nationalities, classes, culture grades, etc. While there are some who would make Social Psychology coextensive with inter- individual psychology and confine it to studying the action of mind on mind, I believe it ought to include the differential
1 An address delivered at the International Congress of Arts and Sqience, Department of Sociology, September, 1904.
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