BIOLOGY IN HUMAN AFFAIRS 



it is that of the management of low-grade individuals with 

 weak resistances and strong temptations. The influence 

 of the approaches of modern psychology appears at every 

 phase of the social provisions for the guidance and treat- 

 ment of criminals. The modification of criminal procedure 

 presumably will proceed slowly as a consequence of the 

 heavy cost and inefficiency of established methods. The 

 institution of juvenile courts, which provide for intimate 

 case histories and examinations of the offenders under the 

 guidance of a psychiatrist who sits with and advises 

 the judge, the establishment of institutions like the 

 Judge Baker Foundation in Boston for the study of delin- 

 quency, form practical evidence of the growing con- 

 fidence in the psychological approach to the problems of 

 crime. ^ 



By such route we reach an extension of the psychological 

 disciplines in a significant direction, that of the social struc- 

 tures which men have instituted to express and satisfy 

 their mental needs. The data of social psychology are 

 ancient, their interpretation modern. Sociology grew to 

 an independent estate by staking a claim at the frontiers 

 of several sciences where their boundaries failed to meet. 

 Psychology thus includes not only mental processes but 

 mental products. 



With his characteristic insight Freud recognized early 

 that if the mechanisms whose issues he was then tracing 

 in the neurotic field had any claim to universal significance, 

 that claim must be justified by discovering the issues of 

 similar motivations in the cultural products of mankind. 

 In the same spirit of a psychoanalytic explorer, he found 

 complex expressions in wit and humor, in art and literature, 

 that could be translated into the Freudian formulae. Wit 

 was letting the cat out of the bag, or a self-betrayal; art 



1 See Healey, W., "Mental Conflicts and Misconduct," Little, Brown & Com- 

 pany, Boston, 1917. 



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