Creativity, Culture and the Synagogue School

The structure of intellect.

Creativity and Culture

In this analysis I have attempted to show the integration of love with various types of social structures. As against considerable contemporary opinion among both sociologists and anthropologists, I suggest that love is a universal psychological potential, which is controlled by a range of five structural patterns, all of which are attempts to see to it that youngsters do not make entirely free choices of their future spouses. Only if kin lines are unimportant, and this condition is found in no society as a whole, will entirely free choice be permitted. Some structural arrangements seek to prevent entirely the outbreak of love, while others harness it. Since the kin lines of the upper strata are of greater social importance to them than those of lower strata are to the lower strata members, the former exercise a more effective control over this choice. Even where there is almost a formally free choice of mate-and I have suggested that this pattern is widespread, to be found among a substantial segment of the earth's societies-this choice is guided by peer group and parents toward a mate who will be acceptable to the kin and friend groupings. The theoretical importance of love is thus to be seen in the sociostructural patterns which are developed to keep it from disrupting existing social arrangements.

Race, ethnicity, and the achievement syndrome.

Conformity and creative thinking.

tion and the Society for the Advancement of Management should focus attention on the problem. Seminars and forums should develop the field. Above all, there should be an active effort to advance the scientific aspects of the field by research of the kind which current sociologists could not do without increased participation. There should be much greater circulation between industry and departments of sociology similar to the exchange which accelerated after I932 between government and universities. Joint committees of sociologists and of professional managers should sketch concrete details of courses of action. A greater emphasis upon industrialism as the dynamic core of our society would help to reorient and integrate much of the scientific materials of social pathology, criminology, employment, class, social power, folklore and personality, and would revitalize the roles sociologists play. It would encourage a heartier interest among sociologists in participation in the work of the world, which is so largely industrial and commercial in our society. The risk of loss of objectivity could and should be protected by close fraternity between the detached and the participating sociologists, and by circulation between the two roles. The current frustration easily observable among sociologists that they are not being consulted about matters they have spent their lives studying would respound to this therapy. A scientific understanding of relevant human affairs, and the citizen's ability to cope with the great current issues may both be increased, and less disasterous results than have been evident in recent decades may be expected to follow. Perhaps, a little later, sociologists and other social scientists may have added enough to their own professional stature and to the public's estimate of that stature that they may be entrusted with a role in such great affairs as the relations between states, where quite patently the course of history is made by the visible acts of men or more often by the failure to act.

Creativity, Culture and the Synagogue School

References

The structure of intellect.

Creativity and Culture

Race, ethnicity, and the achievement syndrome.

Conformity and creative thinking.

The Middle Class Male Child and Neurosis

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