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The Social Neurosis: A Study in “Clinical Anthropology”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Trigant Burrow
Trigant Burrow*
Affiliation:
The Lifwynn Foundation, Westport, Conn.
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Extract

“The end of society is peace and mutual protection, so that the individual may reach the fullest and highest life attainable by man. The rules of conduct by which this end is to be attained are discoverable-like the other so-called laws of Nature-by observation and experiment, and only in that way.”

THOMAS HUXLEY

The present moment is a portentous one in the history of human relations. Only yesterday the armies of half the world were locked in a death struggle with the armies of the other half. And even now, as the representatives of the various governments gather together in attempts to organize an international State, the shadow of a weapon that threatens to end all life upon this earth lies athwart their deliberations. The moment with which we are faced is the more portentous because of the persistent hope man vainly entertains that a world of wholeness and peace will somehow issue out of these two warring and divided half-worlds. Even the student of behavior fondly believes that out of this divided world an undivided peace will come. Along with the rest of mankind even the seasoned psychiatrist fails to see that the overwhelming impetus to man's behavior—to his feeling and thinking—now stems from a social artifact of division. He does not see that, owing to a discrepancy in man's mental and social processes, the artificial world man has created is necessarily a world of conflict. In this hour of universal confusion and discord it would appear that we who study the problems of human adaptation are confronted with nothing less than a false, unilateral principle of motivation affecting the organism of man throughout.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , January 1949 , pp. 25 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1949

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Footnotes

∗

The material of this article has been drawn from various chapters of the author's forthcoming book, The Neurosis of Man, an introduction to phylobiology or the science of human relations.

References

1 “Warum die Völkerindividuen einander eigentlich geringschätzen, hassen, verabscheuen, und zwar auch in Friedenszeiten, und jede Nation die andere, das ist freilich rätselhaft. Ich weiss es nicht zu sagen.” Freud, Sigmund, “Zeitgemässes über Krieg und Tod,” Imago, 1915, Vol. IV, p. 12.

2 Burrow, Trigant, “Social Images versus Reality,” The Journal of Abnormal Psychology and Social Psychology, 1924, Vol. XIX, pp. 230–235.

3 Burrow, Trigant, “The Human Equation,” Mental Hygiene, 1941, Vol. XXV, pp. 210–220.

4 Burrow, Trigant, “Phylobiology: Behavior Reactions in the Individual and the Community,” Etc, 1946, Vol. III, pp. 265–278.

5 It must also be recognized, of course, that where there exists agreement between individuals or groups on the ground of mutual rights that are arbitrary the situation is no more stable or dependable than where there exists dissension between them on grounds of these same arbitrary rights.

6 Syz, Hans, “Phytopathology,” Encyclopedia of Psychology, edited by Philip Lawrence Harriman, 1946, pp. 519–523.

7 Burrow, Trigant, “Bio-physical Factors in Relation to Functional Imbalances,” Human Biology, 1938, Vol. 10, pp. 93–105.

8 Burrow, Trigant, “The Neurodynamics of Behavior. A Phylobiological Foreword,” Philosophy of Science, 1943, Vol. 10, pp. 271–288.

9 In his study of social units, the level of behavior envisaged by Kurt Lewin in his use of the term “group-dynamics” (“Frontiers in Group-Dynamics,” Human Relations, 1947, Vol. 1, pp. 5–40, 143–153) rests upon a broad and encompassing premise. It involves the application of physics and of mensuration to the problem of human relations. The sociological orientation of the physicist, John Q. Stewart, predicates a new branch of science he calls “social physics” (“Suggested Principles of ‘Social Physics’,” Science, 1947, Vol. 106, pp. 179–180), and there is here likewise the application of the laws of physics and mathematics to a broad aspect of human relations. Phylobiology, too, is concerned with the problem of human relations, but its emphasis rests rather upon the relationship of the organism's external to its internal behavior. It, too, is interested in physical processes and their measurement, but in phylobiology the reactions examined and measured are bio-physical. On the basis of adynamic anthropology, human behavior is seen as primarily functional, physiological. And the bridge over which man must pass to this behavioral level is necessarily phylic as well as physiological. It entails a transition from personal image or affect to a frame of reference that is phylobiological. For this transition is one that involves man's organism—the whole social organism—and not a merely symbolic or projective part of it. As I see it, this altered premise involves quite a step for man.

10 Burrow, Trigant, The Neurosis of Man—An Introduction to a Science of Human Behavior, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, Ltd.; New York, Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc., pp. xxvi + 428. (Now in press.) See also:

Burrow, Trigant, “Kymograph Records of Neuromuscular (Respiratory) Patterns in Relation to Behavior Disorders,” Psychosomatic Medicine, 1941, Vol. III, pp. 174–186.

Burrow, Trigant, “Preliminary Report of Electroencephalographic Recordings in Relation to Behavior Modifications,” The Journal of Psychology, 1943, Vol. 15, pp. 109–114.

Burrow, Trigant, and Galt, William, “Electroencephalographic Recordings of Varying Aspects of Attention in Relation to Behavior,” The Journal of General Psychology, 1945, Vol. 32, pp. 269–288.

Burrow, Trigant, and Syz, Hans, “Two Modes of Social Adaptation and their Concomitants in Ocular Movements.” To be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology.

Burrow, Trigant, “Emotion and the Social Crisis: A Problem in Phylobiology.”. Paper read at The Second International Symposium on Feelings and Emotions, The University of Chicago, October 29, 1948. To be published in the Proceedings of the Symposium.

11 Galt, William, “The Principle of Cooperation in Behavior,” Quarterly Review of Biology, 1940, Vol. 15, pp. 401–410.