Sociology and Psychiatry

Datos Bibliográficos

ID5635898
AutoresWellman J Warner (autor de correspondencia)
Año1954
Volumen5
Número3
Páginas228
Fecha de publicación1954-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaBritish Journal of Sociology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0007-1315 • E-ISSN: 1468-4446
EditorialJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/587069
OpenAlexW2331841184
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas13

r NWENTY years ago J. L. Moreno published a book with the intriguing but unacademic title Who Shall Survive ? 1 It was an important book, > i as its sustained vitality in the succeeding years attests. It has now been republished with the original sections little changed but expanded by the addition of materials drawn from the stormy record of the intervening period. It is still an important book. First, let it be clear that Who Sha12 Sqxrvive ? does not fit any of the notions of that constitutes the conventional form of a study in a well-regulated discipline. It is not a systematic treatise threading its way from proposition to exposition with logical parsimony. It is a highly personal document. It brings together a collection of writings, spaced over half of a life-time, variously descriptive, narrative and commentative, editorially linked togethpr in the form of apologia, declaration of faith, polemic, case history, practitioner's observations, and theoretical formulation all encased in an autobiographical unity of advocacy and controversy. It will be the despair of the limited specialist with his horror of untidy academic housekeeping. Nevertheless, it is a mistake to assume, as is sometimes done, that this is mere disorder. It is true that Moreno plays the roles of the philosopher, the technician, the clinical practitioner, the scientist in succession wlthout stopping for labels. On the other hand, there are many who think of Moreno only as the inventor of such methodological procedures as the sociogram or the psychodrama. For any adequate appraisal, this is not enough. A careful scrutiny of his writings will reveal both how and in what degree each of these is woven into the development of a theoretical position which he identifies as his work. Each -of these roles is important to Moreno, the man, but it is possible, and it is clearly his intent that each of them is to be assessed in the light of its bearing upon and contribution to a theory of behaviour. As a preliminary to appraisal, it is useful to bring together as compactly as possible the position which this volume seeks to communicate. Moreno, like other innovators, is best approached in his omrn terms, and that means

Psychiatry · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology · Medicine · Psychology · Social Representations and Identity