Citation

Dollard J. Am. J. Sociol. 1934; 39(5): 637-648.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1934, University of Chicago Press)

DOI

10.1086/216559

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

From the sociological point of view the psychotic person is one who has rejected the existing social organization and substituted a private version of culture which is organized and consistent, often even highly integrated and systematic. His expressions and reactions, seemingly bizarre and irrelevant, are attempts to state a real problem. To understand his attitudes and behavior it is necessary to examine his "inner" life; this points back to his past, to his outer world as it once existed. Each new situation in the past has added some element to this patterned "inner" life as we see it now. Elaborate life-histories are necessary in reconstructing this past. The approach is not that of the psychiatrist, but an attempt to determine how culture is transmitted and how, from the sociological point of view, the personality in question arose. The nice problem will probably prove to be the relative evaluation of the existing milieu, with its point of significant support and stress, and the force of highly fixed inner definitions tending toward pathological interpretations of existing situations and consequent pathological response.