ABSTRACT
The great influence of psychology is a characteristic of American sociology after time of Ward. This is true perhaps of the work of Albion Woodbury Small who founded the first sociological department at new University of Chicago. Small was a tireless propagandist of sociology in the United States. In 1895 he founded the American Journal of Sociology and he also helped to found in 1905 the American Sociological Society; the reports of its congresses, which he edited, provide almost a history of sociology in the United States. Man develops his own individuality, his own specific 'nature', only within society; it is not innate; he does not already possess it at birth. The ego is-as aptly illustrated in a simile Cooley uses in his book Human Nature and Social Organism, a simile which became famous-a 'looking-glass ego'. In his second and larger book, Social Organization, Cooley develops another concept which was subsequently become indispensable to American sociology, that of 'primary group'.
