This book tells the little-known story of how some of the most renowned social scientists of the twentieth century struggled to elevate their emerging disciplines of cultural anthropology, sociology, and social and clinical psychology. Scorned and marginalized in their respective departments in the 1930s for pursuing the new and controversial theories of Freud and Jung, they convinced Harvard to establish a new department for their pursuits, promising to create an interdisciplinary science that would surpass in importance Harvard's "big three" disciplines of economics, government, and history. The leader of the group was famed sociologist Talcott Parsons, who believed they could develop a single theory to explain all human behavior. It is a lively narrative as faculty members Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (reborn as Ram Dass) became notorious for studying the effects of psilocybin on students. The Students for a Democratic Society infiltrated the teaching staff of the department's largest course in the spring of 1969, scandalizing both the department and the university. The history of Social Relations is a fascinating instructive tale of hubris, ego, and academic politics overlaid on Parsons's obsessive quest for an all-encompassing theory of social behavior - the white whale to his Captain Ahab.
Patrick L. Schmidt is an attorney and executive with diverse experience in Latin America and the Caribbean in the areas of renewable energy, finance, real estate, tourism, and infrastructure. He is the author of journal articles and commentary on international law and foreign policy issues including U.S. foreign aid, international human rights, internally displaced persons, and renewable energy in the Caribbean. Schmidt attended Harvard University as an undergraduate where he wrote on the topic of Harvard's Department of Social Relations in his 1978 senior honors thesis in Harvard's Department of Psychology and Social Relations, the successor to the Department of Social Relations. As part of his research, he interviewed 26 of the faculty members who played a role in the department's history, including founders Talcott Parsons and Henry Murray, and critics in the Psychology Department, such as B.F. Skinner, who closely observed the rise and fall of Social Relations.
Preface Acknowledgments Chapter 1Freud Arrives at Harvard: Disrupting the Disciplines Chapter 2Word War II Changes Everything: Interdisciplinary Research Emerges Chapter 3The Founding of the Department of Social Relations: A Determined Dean Acts Chapter 4The First Five Years: A Golden Age but Integration Proves Elusive Chapter 5The 1950s: A Decade of Disunity and Disappointment Chapter 6The 1960s: Drugs and Departmental Drift Chapter 7The Final Unraveling: Soc Rel 148-149 Disrupts and Sociology Departs Chapter 8Conclusion and Summary Index
