The Social Engagement of Social Science
INTRODUCTION
The first Theme, A New Social Psychiatry: A World War II Legacy, is the foundation on which the concept of The Social Engagement of Social Science has been built. The second, Varieties of Group Process,
describes experience with the primary group, which was one of the first two fields with which the post-war Institute became pre-occupied. The other was the family - hence the Theme of New Paths in Family Studies.
Somewhat later, work under the fourth Theme, The Dynamics of Organizational Change, became salient. From this background projects emerged related to the fifth Theme, The Unconscious in Culture and Society. The range of social phenomena thus presented, is from micro to macro: the primary group; the family; organizations; the larger society. Different system levels are represented.
As explained in the Historical Overview, the source concepts which gave rise to the socio-psychological perspective are psychoanalytic object
relations theory, Lewinian field theory, the personality-culture approach and the theory of open systems. These have been drawn on to guide action-oriented projects of considerable scope and duration. The
experience of these projects has led to further conceptual developments. Usually more than one, sometimes all four, of the source concepts have
been drawn on in order to obtain a better understanding of what was taking place or what had to be designed. Though it would be preposterous to suggest that everybody did everything,
most staff members moved with some facility from one domain of inquiry to another and from one system level to another. An ideal was to keep alive in
one's experience the reality of the person, the group, the organization and the wider society, so that one could sense their interconnections. It was
also thought desirable to maintain contact with projects in more than one social sector - not, for example, to spend all one's time in industrial projects.
Because most of the projects were conducted in an action-oriented frame of reference, multiple aspects of the situation came into play. This compelled an holistic approach. Experiential holism reinforced cognitive
holism. New perceptions arose from this reinforcement. A generalist capacity was needed as a background for specific competence. What one lacked oneself could be supplied by a colleague,
since projects were carried out by teams. But communication in such circumstances fails without the common background of a shared perspective such as that provided by the source concepts.
The aim was to maintain a variety of experience, however much at a given time a staff member was focussing on a particular level or domain. Experiential learning provided a basis for conceptual advance. |
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