ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book suggests that psychology is a social science; if its findings have any real substance, then they ought to be applicable to the social problems. It begins with a look at the paradox of modern psychology; there are experimental psychologists using strictly scientific methods to investigate what to many people seem trivial and sterile problems, and there are social psychologists, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts who investigate what are clearly important and socially relevant problems, but who use methods and theories whose scientific rigour is doubtful at best. It continues with a look at a particular problem: the relation between personality and sex. Science is the expression of reason in its highest form, and science therefore is a person's one and only hope for survival.
