ABSTRACT
It is obvious that we cannot expect to gain insight into the feelings, desires, thoughts, actions, and achievements of a fellow human being, unless we have considerable knowledge of his social surroundings: his family background, his class, his school, his work, and all the various other social institutions that influence him from the cradle to the grave. The choice to be made is not simply a matter of taste. It is a question of scientific validity. Human actions are determined by conscious and unconscious motives. It can hardly be denied nowadays that history is made by man, that historical events are the consequences of human activity. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses those conceptions and theories of Freud which the sociologist cannot dispense with if he is interested in what is going on inside the people of whose social behaviour he treats.
