ABSTRACT
Our ordinary experience in today's family, school, court, church, and nation is that authority of father, teacher, judge, priest, and president, is hard to maintain, if, indeed, it has not actually broken down. Almost two decades ago, sociologist David Riesman called our attention in his book The Lonely Crowd to a new type of man that he labeled "other-directed". Recently, the ACLU proposed that primary school children should have the right to take their parents to court. A popular writer on family life and teenage psychology insists that authority ought not to be obvious because then it provokes rather than soothes the child's temper. With the last expression we have made an important step toward understanding the nature and role of authority. Society consists of individuals and groups, the one as important and fundamental as the other. Authority, as distinct from the law, is exercised on bases different from sheer enforcement.
