Abstract

The relations between psychoanalysis and sociology pose a difficult problem. The complexity of psychoanalysis, the evolution of certain features of Freud's theories, the diversity of doctrines and interpretations encountered among its representatives (and this is often true even within the same country), on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the youthfulness, one might say, infancy, of sociology—that latecomer among the sciences of man, which derives its concepts and its methods from research itself and from the problems with which our civilization confronts it—all this would justify labelling as imprudent—even rash—any attempt to study their relationship and their prospects for collaboration. We readily accept the reproof. And yet, however rash it might be, this venture, in our opinion, is in no sense a concocted one. The necessity of attempting it is evident. For more than twenty years, the studies, inquiries, researches which we have been involved in concerning collectivities of men at work, the interpretation of their attitudes, of their reactions to new techniques and to the constraints of rationalization from “higher up,” as it evolved from Taylor through the diverse stages of so-called “scientific” organization, the attempts to measure their “satisfaction,” to explain the variations in their output, their absences, their professional fluidity, and, last but not least, their behavior when not at work, the forms and content of their “leisure” —all these experiments have continuously and increasingly stimulated our interest in psychoanalytical concepts and interpretations. Frequently this evoked in us the temptation to indulge in “unseasonable extrapolations,” utilizing analytical theories which, having been discovered in the field of individual psychology, ran the risk, at first glance, of not being transferable to the field of collective behavior.