Dr. Norbert Elias 1 University Street
London W.C. 1
3 June 38
Very Honourable Herr Doktor,
Thank you for your letter of 13 May and for the kind word about my work. Forgive me for the delay in my reply. I was on a rather strenuous lecture tour for six weeks and only now am I approaching settling down.
Let me come immediately to one of the central points of what you have said to me. There is a misunderstanding: apart from the introductory comments, which you know, the second volume of my work containes as little by way of methodological considerations as the first. As the first volume is in the main concerned with particulat concrete psychical processes, so the second volume deals with the concrete social processes which set the psychical in motion. It seems to me, that better than all methodological debates - of which, I am sure in this respect you and I have very similar views, we have had more than enough of in Germany - is practice, the concrete research work which we are all dedicated to. And I am a little surprised to see that you have doubts about my first volume in this respect. I would never have believed it possible to see in it an example of the 'idealist' conception of history.
I have to my great satisfaction seen on my Scandinavian trip that people who read this book with no prejudice against me, see immediately what my primary concern is: I wanted to find a clear method and unambiguous material which would overcome the hitherto dominant static conception of psychical phenomena.Whoever, like you and I myself, never loses sight of the image of clearly structured societal processes, cannot be satisfied with the kind of static conception of the psychical which currently still predominates the most modern of psychological currents. Whatever one might understand by 'dialectic', this word strives to grasp the order, the structure, the regularity of social changes. To show, that the construction of the psychical is subject to the same order, is the task of this first volume. This task has today been recognized by very few people - including, for example, Erich Fromm - not to mention tackling it. This is the reason why I have turned to with the request for a review. I was sure that you are one of the people competent to judge such a book. It is a misunderstanding if you believe that it is a work of cultural history and cultural historians are particularly able to understand it. There is already something in the distinction between 'civilization' and 'culture'. And I have examples of how cultural historians, used to seeing the 'essence' of history in the sphere of the spirit and ideas, have a very limited understanding for this attempt at a historical psychology, which discusses such simple things as eating, nose-blowing and the most elementary human drives. Above all I was not aiming - as is so often the case among cultural historians - at a simple collection of historical data, but at the demonstration of social-psychological structures, from which it is more unequivocally possible than ever to build the bridge to social structures.
So, once again: I would be very pleased if you could take the trouble to review this volume of my work in the 'Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung'. If you would prefer not to do so, we can leave the matter with you. I have been out of touch with Erich Fromm for some time. And you will understand, that under no circumstance would I want this book to be reviewed by an incompetent person.
I am
with warmest greetings
Your very sincere
Norbert Elias
[signature]
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