146

vorite of Time that is as bountiful in

son long way toward making up for the limita-
giving it is swift in taking away.
as tions of his thought.
To the majority of our contemporaries HELMUT KUHN
Robert G. Ingersoll, orator, lawyer, poli- University of Erlangen
tician, is at best a resounding name. Yet
at the pinnacle of his career the noble LEWIN, KURT. Field Theory of Social
fervor of his eloquence set huge audiences Science: Selected Theoretical Papers.
raving with enthusiasm, and the nation (Edited by Dorwin Cartwright.) Pp. xx,
listened appreciatively to his fine phrases. 346. New York: Harper & Brothers,
So we are indebted to the great lawyer’s~ 1951. $5.00.
granddaughter, Eva Ingersoll Wakefield, for This collection of papers by the late
supplying valuable information on the man Kurt Lewin was intended by its editor to
and his work. In addition to a judicious be a companion volume on the theoretical
selection of letters, ordered according to side to Resolving Social Conflicts, which
topics and printed here for the first time, consists of papers by the same author but
the editor offers a biographical sketch. Her on the applied side of social psychology.-

purpose consists in presenting &dquo;some of the Fourteen papers, originally published from
materials upon which to base biographies 1939 to 1947 in scattered journals and
and appraisals by future students&dquo; (p. x), symposia, are put together into ten chap-
and she can be commended for reaching ters and an appendix. These papers treat
this limited goal. such diverse subjects as formalization, con-
But a study of both her biography and structs, and ahistoricity in social psycho-
the correspondence affords a further ex- logical theory; adolescence and changing
planation of the oblivion to which Ingersoll food habits as objects. of field theoretical
the orator has been consigned. He was study; the interpretation of learning and
a belated eighteenth century Aufklaerer: behavior in terms of field theory; and the
Fighting for progress meant to him com- elaboration of certain concepts previously
batting religion-&dquo;the superstitions of re- developed in field theory. There is more
ligion&dquo;-his admiring editor would have us unity to this volume than these topics sug-
say. But much of what, to a more con- gest, however; this unity is supplied by
servative judge, might appear to belong to the common thread of field theory itself.
the wheat is here gleefully burnt along with It cannot be said, on the other hand, that
the chaff. According to Ingersoll, God, field theory is advanced by the papers
Heaven and Hell, Trinity, Atonement, In- constituting this volume; that theory re-
carnation, and Church are among the many mains essentially in the same state in
&dquo;absurdities&dquo; invented by priests and dis- which it was first enunciated-in English,
figuring that true religion which &dquo;is em- at any rate-in Lewin’s Dynamic Theory
braced in the word Humanity&dquo; (pp. 275). of f Peysonality and in his Principles of
Ingersoll worships Voltaire and imitates Topological Psychology (both appearing in
the Voltairian sneer-the least lovable fea- the mid-thirties).
ture of his portrait. He is just as merci- We may seize on the appearance of this
lessly sarcastic at the expense of his father, collection of Lewin’s papers as an excuse
a minister, as his better-known contempo- for examining why field theory has thus re-
rary, Samuel Butler, used to be. In advo- mained static for fifteen years : In the first
cating the right to suicide (pp. 698) or in place, its concepts were from the very out-
denouncing the sacramental view of mar- set more in the nature of reverenced neolo-
riage as the &dquo;shield of vice&dquo; (pp. 672) he gisms than they were sharply constructed
can hardly be said to fight on the side of analytic devices-neologisms taken over
the angels. Nor is his prejudice in favor bodily from physics and mathematics and
of the commercial value free of vulgarity bearing with them more prestige than fa-
(cf. pp. 620). However, his innocence cilitation. In the second place, the intro-
of nationalist narrow-mindedness and the duction of esoteric mathematics-first &dquo;to-
global breadth of his political vision go a pology&dquo; and then &dquo;hodology&dquo;-was mainly
 147

humbug, for it added absolutely nothing to tion, for which there is certainly inade-
the analyst’s abilities to argue logically quate structuring in the concepts of field
from the known or demonstrated to the theory. It is little wonder then that field
unknown or hypothetical, but provided theory has had little influence on social psy-
only a pretentious device for didactic illus- chology as it has developed on the socio-
stration. In the third place what started as logical side.
&dquo;neo-Gestaltism&dquo; became with its rechris- On the psychological side of social psy-
tening as &dquo;field theory&dquo; the ideology of a chology the influence of Lewinian theory
cult like those of most of the other schools has been both considerable and commend-
of psychology and social psychology; the able. It has contributed a frame of refer-
faithful tended to freeze the original for- ence for situational analysis as opposed to

mulations into an orthodoxy of belief and simple S-R individualistic analysis. Lewin’s
theory. criticisms of the individual psychologists’
In assessing the impact of field theory it easy assumptions about learning and be-
is necessary to distinguish, as usual, be- havior are quite acute in Chapters IV and
tween the social psychology of psychology X of this collection. Much of the empiri-
and the social psychology of sociology. On cal work done by followers of Lewin has
the sociological side, there are few if any been excellent (though some of the best
of the concepts of field theory which do known of their work-such as that on
not have their counterparts in the terms authoritarian versus democratic situations
contributed by W. I. Thomas who antici- done here at the University of Iowa by
pated by nearly two decades the first Eng- Lewin, Lippitt, and White-has been as
lish publications of Lewin. For example, carefully and critically evaluated as it
Thomas’ &dquo;situation&dquo; is almost the precise needs to be). In fine, field theory brings
equivalent of Lewin’s &dquo;field&dquo;; Thomas’ &dquo;at- the social psychologist to a point where it
titude&dquo; and &dquo;value&dquo; express most of the ought to be much easier to effectuate a rap-
same ideas as do Lewin’s &dquo;goal,&dquo; &dquo;vector,&dquo; prochement with the social psychologist,
and &dquo;valence,&dquo; and both men had essen- provided of course that the field theorists
tially the same idea regarding &dquo;reality.&dquo; can manage to extricate themselves from
However, while Lewin’s ideas can be trans- their present zealous cultishness.
lated into the concepts of W. I. Thomas Meanwhile, whether or not this comes to
and those of other so-called &dquo;symbolic- pass, there is already considerable progress
interactionists,&dquo; this translating cannot be toward the construction of a general social
stood on its head. That is to say, there psychology-undistorted by &dquo;school&dquo; com-
are many concepts in symbolic interactional plexes-in the research and theoretical for-
theory (or self-theory as it is increasingly mulations of Stouffer, Merton, Lazarsfeld,
called) which have no counterpart what- Newcomb, and others. It is this develop-
ever in Lewinian theory. It is clear, for ment which offers the most hope for prog-
examples, that, while Lewin and his follow- ress toward dependable knowledge regard-
ers have a conception of the parts of per- ing human behavior.
sonality as belonging to an interdependent MANFORD H. KUHN
or &dquo;organized&dquo; whole, they seem to have University of Iowa
few if any clues as to what constitute these
parts or &dquo;subwholes&dquo; of personality-much EYRE, JAMES K., JR. The Roosevelt-Mac-
less any idea about the genesis of the struc- Arthur Conflict. Pp. xviii, 234. Cham-
ture which affords their organization. For bersburg, Pa.: Craft Press, 1950. $3.00.
the symbolic interactionist the meaningful The book deals with the relations be-
parts of personality are attitudes which de- tween the American and Philippine govern-
rive their organization and direction from . mints from the late 1930’s to the return of
the individual’s attitudes toward himself President Osmefia after the liberation of
(the &dquo;self&dquo;). These attitudes whether to- the Islands from the Japanese. The chief
ward self or others had their genesis in actors-Presidents Roosevelt, Quezon and
language and the process of communica- Osmefia, and General MacArthur-were de-