ABSTRACT
A social psychological look at the problem of rationality from this standpoint sees it not as a given, inhering in human nature in fixed amount, but as a primarily social achievement and a social process. The model of man embraced by the traditional political philosophers of democracy, we remember, assumed generous components of rationality. Freud and psychoanalysis of course carried the dethronement much farther; ironically, when one considers Frued's personal devotion to rational values, his therapeutic and social goal of extending the boundaries of reality-tested critical awareness at the expense of blind impulse and its derivatives. As a determinant of rationality, thing-encounter is not specifically social, although it may be socially "programmed" and facilitated. But symbolic complexity, necessary condition for rationality that it is, also lays the foundation for irrationality. Irrationality arises by default in the absence of sufficient frustration tolerance and of the requisite knowledge and skill; it may be postively encouraged by example and reward.
