AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY. By L. L. Bernard. (Allen
and Unwin. 18s.)-Social Psychology is a somewhat formless subject, and there is difficulty in assigning precise boundaries to its province. On one side it impinges upon psychology, on another it passes by almost imperceptible gradations into political theory, on another into biology. Professor Bernard in the present volume has solved the difficulty by extending to all possible candidates for inclusion the benefit of the doubt. He treats of education, abnormal psychology, racial differences, auto- suggestion and qualities of leadership, and he makes the somewhat ambitious claim that he has for the first time brought all these various _subjects into coherent relationship by ex- hibiting their dependence upon a central position. Whereas other writers have approached social psychology each from his own specialized point of. view, Professor Bernard- claims to be the first to have envisaged the subject as a whole. This, no doubt, is an admirable ideal, but the difficulty is to di what precisely Professor Bernard's position is. His de treatment of various subjects, as, for example, inslati children and heredity, is praiseworthy although not imp; but it cannot be said that he has thrown any new lick Social Psychology as a whole. His main thesis that individual's character can only be explained in terms of social pressure which is brought to bear upon him is iL platitudinous.
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