Sociometry and the Cultural Order

Abstract

I have had the good fortune to develop three ideas. The first idea, a study of the godhead,' has remained cryptic and misapprehended. The second, a study of man called psychodrama, has aroused some hope that man can train his spontaneity to overcome many of his shortcomings. My third idea, the study of society called sociometry, has given the greatest promise that a measure can be developed for a deeper understanding of society and a key to the treatment of its ills. Many of my friends consider these three ideas one apart from the other. In my own mind, however, all the three ideas are of one piece. One has developed out of the other. The first idea initiates a cannon of the universe, the second a cannon of the individual, the third a cannon of human society. They give three examples of our cultural order, religion, drama and society. They present a set of opposite frameworks based on spontaneity, spontaneity training and sociometry, a trilogy upon which, as I envisaged, a new and more human cultural order can be established. There is a European half to my literary existence which is practically unknown to the American scholar. They are acquainted only with the latter half which began with my book on the Group Method in 1931 and with Who Shall Survive? in 1934. Who Shall Survive?, which has become for many identical with the beginning of sociometry is actually the end of a development which began in spring, 1914, just before the outbreak of the first world war with my publication Invitation to a Meeting. The first European half of my writing existence lasted from 1914 to 1925. These publications are written in German and are the background if not the backbone of the second, English half of my work published in the United States. Most of my European writings2 had one common aim: they were a systematic attack upon the framework of our cultural order. Mere analysis of the existing order of values, declaration of new values, seemed to me