Mark A. May

A Retrospective View of the Institute of Human Relations at Yale

one part of a larger plan for coordinating the educational resources of Yale University. This plan had as its objectives the further development and closer integration of all the teaching and research at Yale that pertained to the study of man. It envisaged the establishment of a large center for professional education, research, and community service, including the Schools of Medicine, Law, and Nursing; the biological and social science departments of the Graduate School; and the New

WHAT SCIENCE OFFERS ON CHARACTER EDUCATION

∗An address delivered before the Mid‐western Conference on Child Study and Parent Education at the Palmer House, Chicago, February 16, 1928. This paper together with other proceedings and addresses of the Conference will be published also in a volume entitled Building Character, to be issued shortly by the University of Chicago Press.

THE CHARACTER EDUCATION INQUIRY, TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

∗From an address by Dr. Hartshorne at the Chicago Convention of the Religious Education Association, 1937.

Is There a Science of Human Relations

I is an acknowledged fact that social work in general and social case work in particular lack at the present time an appropriate scientific underpinning. Social work may be said to correspond somewhat to the clinical branches of medicine, but the preclinical bases of the various kinds of social work have not been clearly defined. We cannot say that there will be a common scientific base for all social work. It seems likely, however, that a common background exists potentially for social case work as conducted now under a variety of administrative designations such as family social work, child care, mental hygiene, visiting teacher, and probation work. Sociology is obviously not the pre-clinical basic science upon which social case work rests, for the average of many individuals rather than the single individual usually engages the attention of the sociologists. Neither can psychiatry be said to be the basic science, for it is now regarded as a branch of clinical medicine and not as a pre-clinical science. Psychoanalysis may meet the requirements more nearly, but can hardly be said at the present time to be a science. We may say, therefore, that social case work is the applied aspect of a science which does not yet exist, and the question which confronts us, if we are interested in the development of social case work, is whether a science of human relations can be developed to provide an essential foundation for the clinical practice of aiding individuals in their growth as members of society.