4. The Individual and His Society

4 The Individual and His Society: DisagreementsBetween Sociology and Psychoanalysis RICHARD T. LAPIERE I Early in this century, Charles Horton Cooley observed that the individual and society are but two aspects of the same thing and that any attempt to understand the one apart from the other is artificial and certain to result in false conceptions. His view of the interaction between individual and society was at variance with the simple cause-and-effect theory then prevalent, especially in regard to human affairs. Consequently, Cooley's idea was generally ignored in favor of less complex and more doctrinaire ideas. Reflecting, no doubt, their ameliorative bent, sociologists tended for a time to favor the view that society is, on the one hand, designed for man's convenience and, on the other, designed by man, and thus subject to revision in the interests of man's welfare. They were usually rather vague concerning the nature of man himself, but they were inclined to accept uncritically a some what watered-down version of nineteenth-century rational psy chology. So, of course, did some psychologists, especially those who were interested in education. Nevertheless, many psycholo68 The Individual and His Society 69 gists and a host of pseudo psychologists clung to versions of biological determinism. The divine ..will concept of the origins of society had long since gone out of fashion in secular circles; but it had to a large extent been replaced by a naturalistic concept that was equally fatalistic.

The essence of biological determinism is that society is but a collective manifestation of the inherent characteristics of the members thereof. The various modern versions range from the simple racism of De Gobineau and his many successors, by which differences between societies were explained, to the explanation of specific aspects of a society in terms of the differential natures of the individuals involved (e.g., that class differences were social manifestations of differences in innate abilities, that the inferior status of women was a social consequence of their biological in.. feriority, and that criminals were born to crime). Although not all of them were forthright biological determinists, the psycholo gists tended to seek in the nature of the individual the explana tion for his conduct; few of them thought to turn their attention to the context in which the individual behaved.

It was a psychologist, William McDougall, who resolved the considerable confusion that prevailed early in the century by offering a simple doctrine of instinctivism by which everything-the conduct of the individual and the existence of society-could be explained. From the publication of his Social Psychology in 1908 until well after World War I, both psychological and socio.. logical thought was profoundly influenced by this metapsycho logical interpretation. Many versions of the central thesis were evolved: but whatever the instincts were called and however few (and generalized) or many (and specialized) of them were assumed, there was wide agreement that individual conduct stems from innate forces and that society is but the collective manifestation of such forces---that, in sum, the instincts of man are social. This simple and gratifying version of the relation between the individual and society was considerably weakened here in America by the infusion of Freudian theory in the early 1920's.

To some sociologists, the Freudian notion that the instincts of man are primordial rather than social provided a solution to the 70 Psychiatry and Responsibility difficulties that they were experiencing with the social-instinct interpretation (e.g., that if an instinct of mother love is the cause of maternal care, why do so lnany mothers neglect their children?). That this notion also left them with no explanation at aU· for the existence of society did not immediately become apparent. They became preoccupied, in a distinctly amateurish way, with the problem of how the socially repressed individual can make peace with himself without at the same time rebelling against society. And for a time there was mnch talk abou t the value of art, music, and literature as socially acceptable channels for the discharge of libidinous forces-an idea derived, perhaps, from the old cliche about music soothing the savage breast.

Not all the psychologists and sociologists of the early 1920's succumbed to instinctivism; in both fields there were men who, like R. E. Park, remained aloof from the pseudoscientific fashion of the day. By 1924, the vogue for instinctivist explanations had passed its apogee; psychology was taking off on a behavioristic spree, and sociology ,vas beginning to rediscover and then to refine the idea, long since so clearly expounded by Cooley, that the individual and society are but two aspects of the saIne thing. Contemporary sociologists come, of course, in many models. They have quite varying interests and, like all scientists, are prone to see the whole in terms of their particular speciality. It would, therefore, be quite unrealistic to state that modern sociologists believe this or that. There is, however, some consensus among sociologists regarding the nature of the individual, the nature of society, and the relations of the one to the other; and these I shall hereafter designate as the current sociological perspective.

In the first place, sociology has not been significantly influenced by the post-World War II revival of Freudian ideas. Few sociol ogists became enamored of the culture-and-personality cult that swept the ranks of the anthropologists; in fact, it has been evi dences advanced by sociologists that have in the main been responsible for the tempering of anthropological enthusiasm for this bit of dogma. 1 Even in the special field of criminology where concern with the antisocial individual tends to predispose the investigator to see society in individual terms-many socioloThe Individual and His Society 71 gists have held aloof from the easy answers provided by Freudian, neo-Freudian, and quasi-Freudian theorists. 2 As a consequence, the idea that the individual is an aspect of society-rather than a force counter to it-has persisted and has been both reinforced and refined by studies of many kinds. Any brief statement of the present sociological understanding of the nature and role of the individual will necessarily understate the complexity involved. Perhaps, however, the general nature of that understanding can be suggested. It has only an historical relation to early environmentalism. While sociology incorporates the idea that the personality (the sum total of the individual's predispositions to behave) is a product of experiences, it recog nizes that experiences may be widely varied within a common social context. Moreover, the effect on personality of any ex perience is a "product" rather than a simple consequence. Sociol ogy does not, therefore, perceive the individual as being a simple, passive recipient of socialization and as operating in society as an equally simple and passive functionary.

In the current sociological view, most members of any society are in most respects fairly well adapted by social training to the performance of their social roles. But society is not a machine. Individuals are not even faintly analogous to the tubes and other electronic devices from which computers are constructed. There fore, we needed the qualifiers "most" and "fairly well" in the preceding statement. Perhaps some members of any society, and certainly some members of our own, are very badly prepared in many respects by social training to perform as society requires them; they are the gross failures of the society, the individuals who contribute to the population of our penitentiaries and luna tic asylums. Some others, probably many others, are poorly pre pared in some respect or other to accept passively one or another of their social roles; from among these come our neurotics, our geniuses, and, one may suspect, our inventors, discoverers, and other men of enterprise-men who may contribute creatively to the society of which they are a part.

Moreover-and this is derived from current sociological under standing of the nature of society-it is now recognized that the 72 Psychiatry and Responsibility social roles of the members of society are, through a complex inter action of both social and individual factors, widely varied and subject to shift and change. We no longer see it as incongruous that a man should be kind and gentle with his children and yet harsh and demanding with his employees or that one slum boy should grow into an habitual criminal while his brother becomes a priest. Contemporary sociology accepts the idea that society is a can.. struct of man; it assumes, and not without considerable reason, that society functions toward the survival of the group and, hence, if only indirectly, toward the fulfillment of individual needs; but it perceives society as a vast and as yet largely incom prehensible system of interdependent structures, no one of which will function independently of the whole.

The idea that society is man-made need hardly be defended in this enlightened age. Indeed, what this idea most needs is rigorous qualification; for modern men are far too prone to believe that anything that they wish can be brought about by the enactment of laws and the establishment of a new governmental agency. Some few sociologists may subscribe to this popular view; but sociology as such does not lend support to it. We are not very clear about the actual processes by which social changes are achieved; there is, however, fair agreement among sociologists that forced changes-:-i.e., those imposed through government are of indeterminate and probably also transitory significance. The view that society is a functioning whole is both very old and fairly new; for convenience, if nothing else, the new version is usually accredited to the anthropologist Malinowski. 3 Neverthe .. less, American sociologists have-perhaps as a reflection of the American ethos--always been more rather than less functional in their outlook. Most sociologists are fully aware of the fact that functional equilibrium is an intellectual construct comparable to organic good health. The various forms of any given society will be more and less functionally integrated. We recognize that all societies are subject to change; that change may produce dysfunctions as well as functional improvements in the system; and that the components of any society, like the personality The Individual and His Society 73 attributes of any individual, are something of a hodgepodge in which functionally effective and dysfunctional elements may be equally cherished by the members.

II It is no doubt audacious for any sociologist to attempt to ascertain and to characterize the current perspectives of psychiatry regarding the individual and society. Psychiatrists come in even more varied sizes and more diverse qualities than sociologists; and, to a far greater degree than sociologists, they are inclined to be long to mutually exclusive and highly antagonistic schools. More over, their interest is therapeutic, and their focus is upon the individual; hence, their concern with society, if any, is quite incidental. It is often necessary, therefore, to infer either from their therapeutic techniques, their therapeutic goals; or their concept of the nature of the individual how they would conceive society were they to do so. Finally, many of those who belong to one or another wing of the Freudian persuasion will disparage anything a sociologist might say about them on the principle that "nobody can really understand what it [psychoanalysis] is all about without having been psychoanalyzed." 4 American, like English, psychiatry is dominated by psycho analysts of the Freudian and neo-Freudian (Horney, Fromm, Sul livan, et al.) orientation. Neither Adler nor Jung has much of a following here; and while there are many nonanalytical psy chiatrists, their contra-analytical views have been given limited attention within the profession and even less by the general public. On the other hand, Freudian and neo-Freudian concepts of the individual and-somewhat incidentally-of society have been widely publicized, have been Inore or less incorporated into American folklore, and have been adopted in some form or other by the clinical wing of psychology, by many anthropologists, and by most of the so-called "helping" professions.

There is little difficulty in ascertaining Freud's own ideas of the individual, of society, and of the relations between the two, even though Freud wrote so much over so many years, during 74 Psychiatry and Responsibility which his general theory underwent constant evolution, that it is always possible to quibble over matters of detail. One thing, at any event, held constant: concerned with individuals per seJ Freud derived most of his notions about the nature of the individual from observation of a very limited class of them who came to him as patients because they had failed to make adequate adjust .. ments to their life circumstances. Had he been content to limit his generalizations to persons of this special category, he might have advanced scientific knowledge of certain kinds of psychopathology, though he would not have become one of the major ideological figures of the century. It was in large part because he violated one of the major principles of the scientific method-that the findings derived from one "universe" must not be taken to be representa ..

tive of the universe-that he was able to come up with a meta psychology (some would say a "theology") that has been widely and persistently acclaimed as true or, at the very least, as a close approximation to the truth. Perhaps quite understandably, Freud-and this seems to be characteristic of psychiatrists of the psychoanalytic persuasion felt committed to the kinds of persons who came to him for help. He may have believed that their psychic well-being was the highest value and that society should be subordinated to it. Very recently, Jacques Barzun also pointed to the link between psy choanalysis and misplaced futile philanthropy: The talk of "education" where none is wanted or needed, or where something else is meant, is characteristic of our time. But even more illuminating is the identity suggested between education and psy· chology or psychiatry, two demisciences ridden by philanthropic moral· ism. The doctrine of pity and help, originating in the church, the settlement house, and the clinic, has found in the modern psychologies a convenient means of carrying abroad the war against Intellect.

Though the genius of Freud was unswervingly intellectual, it has given birth to a large progeny of adapters who, from generous as well as selfish motives, put philanthropy first. They mean to cure, or at least to "help," at any cost. They respect, certainly, no intellectual limits or principles, and one by one the chief elements of our culture have fallen within the area of their devastation. Thus, the school is not to teach, The Individual and His Society 75 but to cure; body and mind are not to use for self-forgetful ends, but to dwell on with Narcissus' adoring anxiety; the arts, not to give joy and light, but to be scanned for a "diagnosis" of some trouble, a solu tion of some "problem," or else exploited for the common good in occupational therapy.5 To Freud and to all his disciples, man is by nature presocial; and while man's primordial drives may be constrained by society, they never atrophy. The orthodox Freudian interpretation and therapy is based upon this premise; and the premise itself is an inference derived from the observation and examination of mentally disturbed individuals. It may generously be described as the universalization of an ad hoc assumption; but it was, and it remains, an assumption that is beyond empirical validation and must be accepted, if at all, on faith alone. Granted the premise, all else follows quite logically: the individual and society are dis crete, dissimilar, and, indeed, unalterably opposed; the individual may be kept throughout his life subordinated to social con straints and may even internalize them to a degree, but his libido -become manifest as his Id-remains at war with society and also, to a degree, with his Ego.

A remarkably acute rationalization of this general postulate re garding the inevitable and inescapable opposition between the individual and society is provided by Ruth L. Monroe in the con cluding paragraphs of her widely acclaimed Schools of Ps:ycho analytical Thought. She says, in part, "... it does seem probable that no significant evolutionary change in the biological structure of the human species has occurred within historical times. In historical times, the adaptive process has been mainly cultural, and we must firmly recognize that the biological equipment we inherit was functionally designed for a very different way of life." 6 Other students, however, will point out that if man is bio logicallyequipped for presocial(or precultural)life, how are we then to explain the existence of society and the patent inability of any human organism to survive without the supportive care of a society?

76 Psychiatry and Responsibility Freud did not, in fact, attempt to explain the existence of society; he accepted it as something that comes to us from out of the past and is transmitted from generation to generation through the mechanism of cowed but inherently presocial individuals. He did speak, in connection with some specific social patterns, of "phylogenetic memories of prehistory." Occasionally he referred to "the primal horde," which suggests that he did conceive of a time when man existed apart from society. But why-in view of the presocial nature of man-society came into being he never seems to have inquired. For him society was simply a given condi tion that the individual must somehow endure. There appears in various of Freud's writings the implication that society may be necessary for the survival of the human species; but very explicit throughout his writings is the view that this collective biological value is fulfilled only by the sacrificing of the psychic welfare of the individual members of society. From the individual point of view, which Freud invariably takes, society is nought but a system of frustrating restraints upon the biological imperatives which throughout life strive for fulfillment. Thus, Freud sees the individual engaged from birth until death in an unending and unresolved conflict with the society of which he is a captive member. Freud recognized that the individual acquires social attributes from social participation; but since these attributes conflict with his natural drives, they serve only to internalize his conflict with society.

Those psychoanalysts who explicitly reject the libido premise in Freud's system of interpretation~o£ten described as a class as "neo-Freudians" -have made a sort of unilateral truce with sociology. Or perhaps their revisions of the orthodox doctrine might be better described as a theoretical compromise with the evidences concerning the actual relation between the individual and society that have been advanced by anthropologists and so ciologists. Thus, Malinowski's report (1924) on the matrilinear family system among the Trobrianders, which cast considerable doubt on the universality of Freud's Oedipus complex, set off a long and tedious controversy over this particular Freudian conThe Individual and His Society 77 cept; and once the universality of the Oedipus complex came into doubt, the way was opened for critical examination of the libido premise itself.7 Perhaps the best known of the many American revisionists are Horney, Fromm, and Sullivan. Of these three, Sullivan seems to have had the greatest influence on practicing psychoanalysts .. while Horney seems to have been most instrumental in popUlarizing the psychoanalytic outlook. At any rate, Horney's concept of the need for security has become central in the thinking of clinical and child psychologists, and psychoanalytically oriented anthropolo gists, educators, and members of the helping professions. Horney explicitly denies the importance of specific libidinous needs in bringing the individual into conflict with his society. She con siders her interpretation of the nature of the individual less pes simistic than Freud's. Nevertheless, her individual is by nature an exceedingly delicate organism. He may not be, in the ortho ..

dox Freudian manner, unalterably opposed to life in society; but he is somehow so constituted that he takes to social life in fear and trembling, and, unless his society treats him with the utmost consideration, his sel1se of security is jeopardized, a basic anxiety becomes manifest, and he becomes neurotic. The sense of security, one gathers, is what the individual feels when no social demands are made upon him and society satisfies his every need-most particularly the need (presumably in her view, biological) for favorable social attention. "Basic anxiety" is the term by which she describes the consequences of this need. It is, she says, "the feeling a child has of being isolated and helpless in a potentially hostile world." 8 Horney does not accept the Freudian idea of libidinous im· pulses being repressed in the unconscious by the constraints of society. Nevertheless, she makes much of such concepts as hostility and conflict; and there runs through her writings an impression of the individual as constantly and fearfully cringing in the face of a world which he-neurotically, no doubt-conceives as essen tially opposed to his personal welfare. Society, in her view, may in reality be desirable as wen as necessary; she does not consider 78 Psychiatry and Responsibility it as inherently hostile to the individual. But all too often invariably, one might infer from her stress on insecurity-the individual has impressed on him in infancy that society, in the person of mother or other agent, is not favorably disposed toward him, thus arousing a basic anxiety from which he will never be entirely free during the course of his life.

The theoretical differences between Freud's and Horney's con cepts of the individual and society are considerable; but the implications are very much the same-so much so that some critics of psychoanalysis consider it and all other neo-Freudian conceptualizations as no more than quibbling variants on a com mon theme. 9 At any event, for Horney, as for Freud, the psychic welfare of the individual is always precarious; and while Horney may grant to the individual more chance for equanimity than does Freud, she considers him incapable of enduring stoically the presumed stresses and strains of ordinary social life. Only, one gathers, under the most favorable circumstances will he pro gress through life with that blithe spirit which some earlier philosophers considered to be the normal condition of man. Erich Fromm, with his somewhat different perspective, attempts to sketch the social conditions that would be favorable to the in dividual's psyche-a sort of psychoanalytic utopia. Like Horney and others who have taken their lead from Freudianism, he con ceives the individual as psychically weak and incompetent; but for him the conflict arises from the fact that the evolutionary individuation of the organism-which freed man from the shackles of nature-runs counter to his historical and individually ac quired dependence upon society. The individual would be free but cannot accept freedom. Modern society forces him into an order of freedom that is especially inimical to his psychic wel fare, for it demands of him self-reliance and personal fulfillment of his responsibilities but offers little in the way of social support.

Society makes man personally responsible for his own welfare and impresses ·upon him his "aloneness." The "sane society" would be one that would give the individual scope for free action but at the same time provide him with protective and reassuring The Individual and His Society 79 social support. 10 In such a society, the individual could, it would seem, eat his cake and have it, too: he could enjoy his freedom without jeopardizing his security. In sum, everything would be given to him, and nothing demanded of him in return. III That psychoanalytic concepts of the nature of the individual and of society and of the relation between the individual and society are completely at odds with those of sociology and with empirical evidences should now be obvious. They are the stuff of which ideologies are made, not the intellectual constructs of a science. There can be, of course, no objection to them simply on the grounds that they are not scientifically valid. Most of what men have believed and still do believe about themselves and the world in which they live is contrascientific, and their myths and other social definitions often serve socially desirable ends. It is possible, although the evidence is not impressive, that psychoanalytic interpretations of the individual and society are useful in the treatment of mentally disturbed persons.

Unfortunately, however, psychoanalytic ideas have not re mained the special province of the mental healer. They have been widely and persistently publicized; and in capsule form they have been incorporated into our folklore. Moreover, they have been made-especially the ideas of Horney-the basis for a variety of applied pseudo sciences. And finally, they have pro vided a ready rationale for those politicians, social reformers, and ordinary citizens who are bent on reducing our society to one grand "security" -dispensing system. The popularity of psychoanalytic notions here in America is obvious. Art, literature, the drama, and even music reflect or pretend to reflect psychoanalytic concepts and sentiments. The undergoing of analysis is a far more impressive status symbol than is the ownership of a Cadillac; and every really smart cocktail party resounds with complexes, fixations, insecurities, transfer ences, etc. All this might be passed off as just a vogue of the 80 Psychiatry and Responsibility moment, were there not also a great deal of very serious and no doubt well-meant effort to put psychoanalytical ideas into general social practice. Child psychologists have been teaching and preach ...

ing the gospel of the "permissive" home, warning against the psychically scarifying consequences of "authori tarian" treatment of infant and child, urging the utmost care and patience in such critical matters as weaning and bathroom training, prescribing for infant and child constant love and attention and complete freedom from discipline of any sort. ll Otherwise, it is said, the child's security will be shattered, and he will grow up to be a neurotic adult. The most progressive of the progressive educators have been advocating something called "the child-centered school," in which teachers will not attempt to teach but will, rather, concentrate upon the maintenance in the classroom of a "democratic atmosphere." On close examination, what they advo cate seems to be a continuation, on an institutional basis, of the same permissive and undemanding treatment that child psycholo gists ask of the home.

For a decade and more, sentimentalists-.-many of them profes sional psychiatrists..--have been trying, and with considerable success, to dull, if not actually extract, the teeth of the law-.-and this on the distinctly Freudian assumption that it is entirely natural for the criminal to act as he does and quite unreasonable for society to make him stand trial for being his antisocial self.I2 Many of the spokesmen for, and almost all of the teachers of, social work--as well as youth counselors, probation officers, etc. -have been propagating the view that the client is always right and should be treated accordingly. For the client is the unhappy and unwilling victim of a society that has failed to give him what he needs and has demanded of him what he cannot possibly do; for to their minds, as to the minds of all who accept as valid the psychoanalytic ideology, society should give and give and demand no reci proci ty.

Father Furfey, head of the sociology department at the Catholic University, repeatedly has called attention to this psychoanalyti cally supported prescientific "humanitarianism" in the scientific treatment of criminal conduct.

The Individual and His Society 81 Not all writers give exactly the same explanation, but all their ac counts do have one striking characteristic in common. All of them tend to shift the blame ftorn the offender himself. A poor home environment may be invoked to explain one case. Bad adjustment in school may be used to explain another. In a third instance the causation may be found deep in the offender's unconscious ...• Seldom is it admitted that the offender decided freely and in told blood to commit the crime. In this case, also, it is not obvious that the sociological view of crime is incorrect. Conceivably, it may be entirely justified. Yet it is worth noting that among those who disagree sharply with sociologists are a good many experienced police officers, judges, and attorneys who are familiar with criminals and their ways. It is worth noting, also, that sociological theories of crime and delinquency have not scored particu larly brilliantly on the pragmatic test when they have been applied by law...enforcement agencies.I 3 The enlightened psychoanalyst believes, unlike Freud, that society could be adapted to satisfy the needs of the individual members and So to lessen, if not entirely eliminate, conflict and suffering. Could it? Could a social system be evolved that would fulfill the needs of members who are made in the psychoanalytic image of the individual, men dependent, incapable of assuming responsibility, and enduring only under protest the presumed stresses and strains of active and fruitful social participation? It could only if we assume also, as psychoanalysts seem to do, that a society is something distinct from the individual; that, contrary to sociological understanding, the individual and society are not two aspects of the same thing but are two things, and that the latter-society-is independent of the former. For only if this were true could society provide a flow of goods and services to each of the individual members without securing in return con tributions from them.

NOTES 1. W. H. Sewell, "Infant Training and the Personality of the Child," American Journal of Sociology, LVIII (1952), 150-159, and "The Effects of Feeding, Weaning, and Scheduling Procedures on Childhood Adjustment and the Formation of Oral Symptoms," Child Development, XXIII (1952), 185-191.

82 Psychiatry and Responsibility 2. P. W. Tappan, Crime, Justice and Correction (New York, 1960), pp. 112-168. 3. B. Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (London, 1922). 4. G. Roheim, ed., Psychoanalysis and the Social Sciences (New York, 1948), p. 32. 5. Jacques Barzun, The House of Intellect (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959), pp. 23 £. 6. Ruth L. Munroe, Schools of Psychoanalytic Thought (New York: Dryden, 1955), p. 644. 7. R. Munroe, ibid., p. 138. 8. K. Horney, Our Inner Conflicts (New York: Norton, 1945), p. 41. 9. A. Green, "Sociological Analysis of Horney and Fromm," American Journal of Sociology, LI (1946), 533-554. 10. E. Fromm, The Sane Society (New York, 1955). 11. E. Erikson, Childhood and Society (New York, 1950). 12. F. Alexander and H. Staub, The Criminal, the Judge, and the Public (Glencoe, Illinois, 1957). 13. Paul Hanly Furfey, "Sociological Science and the Problem of Values" in Symposium on Sociological Theory, ed. by L. Gross (Evanston: Row, Peterson and Company, 1959), p. 523, and Furfey, "The Humanitarian Philosophy and the Acceptance of Sociological Generalizations," Ameri can Catholic Sociological Review, XV aune, 1955), 120.