Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/677

 PROLEGOMENA TO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 657

as such, but only by reference to the group-life considered itself as a unity. Social psychology, then, if somewhat more strictly defined, has as its task to examine and explain the form or mechanism of these group psychical processes. It is an interpretation of the psychical processes manifested in the growth and functioning of a group as a unity. Whatever psychical phenomena may be regarded ^% pertaining to group-life as such are, therefore, the proper subject-matter of social psy- chology. As such phenomena we may instance, for the sake of provisional illustration, political revolutions, mob action, group action, and organization of all sorts, down even to the psychical adjustments which take place in small groups, such as a family or a committee. Whether these facts are properly classified among those of social psychology or among those of individual psychology we cannot here discuss : the logical delimitation of the facts with which the two sciences respectively deal, and a discussion of the problems therein involved, must be reserved for a later article.

It is here acknowledged, however, that if the abstraction of the individual from the group and of the group from the indi- vidual is an unjustifiable abstraction for any purpose whatsoever, as some may assert, then the creation of a separate science of social psychology is also unjustifiable. Again, it is conceded that, if individual psychology can explain all the phenomena of group- life, as some individualists maintain, social psychology as a science has little excuse for existence. But the individualistic hypothesis, it must be added, needs demonstration quite as much as its opposite, and as yet such demonstration seems decidedly wanting. Indeed, it is notorious that psychology has up to the present failed to furnish that aid in the solution of social problems which was expected from it a half century ago. It may be suspected that a reason for this is that psychology has been developed too much on its purely individualistic side, and has neglected the not less real psychical processes of group- life.

Here another possible misunderstanding must be guarded against. In emphasizing the importance of social psychology