tinuous change from the early writings to the latest. Even in any particular year,
they vary widely among different publications. These reflect not only the cross
winds of political concerns and the fads, fashions and foibles of the era, but also
divergent theoretical and methodological assumptions regarding the nature of so-
cial life and how to study it. In the 1950s, the fearful era of Senator Joseph Mc-
Carthy bred a concern with conformity and resistance. It was followed, once the
crisis had passed, by a focus on topics like independence, counter-conformity, and
creativity. At one time leadership) was almost a mandatory topic, but it has waned
in popularity. It now appears in most textbooks, if at all, tucked into the comer of
some other category such as social influence, attitudes, or the social psychology of
organizations.

An especially ingenious or striking experiment or program of research can
mesmerize the field temporarily, introducing a new "required" topic; or at times
spread across several topics, to the degree that its basic issues are not readily ap-
parent.

There seem to be an endless number of ways of cutting up the subject mat-
ter of social psychology into "topics." Is this just an arbitrary matter of interest and
preference? Are some topics obsolete because of advances in knowledge? Or does
each topic include subject matter that requires different principles of explanation?
And if so, in the light of such fragmentation, where lies the justification for a unified
field of scientific inquiry called social psychology?

Kenneth Gergen, an eminent and controversial social psychologist, has ar-
gued that social psychology should not aspire to be a unified science, but rather a
field of historical inquiry, recounting and attempting to interpret the flow of varied
social phenomena, the ever-changing patterns of customs and activities within their
shifting cultural, social, and technological historical contexts.

An alternative perspective is that there are generic problems in the under-
standing of social persons and social living that date back to the beginnings of
human thought, for example: What is the nature of a social person? How does one
person's activity affect another's? What is the basis of organized social life?

To see social psychology as a whole, we must recognize the persistent,
universal issues reflected in particular phenomena or topics of social psychology,
because throughout its history they continue to reappear in novel guises with fresh
identities. Although emphasis on the cultural, situational, and technological con-
texts of social conduct is essential, it does not nullify the traditional aspiration of
social psychologists to construct a unified science. Rather, it presents a challenge
to be met and imperatives to be accepted in progress toward that objective.

Just as the experience of living makes us wiser, hopefully, in that we recog-
nize a recurrent problem and how we attempted to deal with it previously, so each
issue that reappears in social psychology presents a somewhat modified problem
and the potential for improved attempted solutions. In all of science and in social
psychology there is a continuous challenge to identify the persistent issues em-

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