source: Norbert Elias and Process Sociology

1 University Street
W.C. 1 [London]
17.4.38

Honourable Herr Doktor,

I have taken the liberty of sending you a copy of the first volume of my work "Ueber den Prozess der Zivilisation" under separate cover. Gisela Freund wrote me that she had spoken to you about it. I would be very pleased - and it is somewhat my wish - to see the book reviewed by you in the Institute's journal.

I will say to you openly, that I have posed myself a rather considerable task with this book. Behind all the many materials and examples, which perhaps attract too much attention, but which were inavoidable if I was not to speak only in generalities, stands the idea that we can never understand the relation between the societal process and the 'psychical' as long as we see in the psychical only something static and unchangeable, as long as we do not also see the psychical as 'in process'. It leads nowhere, it seems to me, if from a marxist position one criticizes or opposes psychoanalysis or some other ahistorical form of psychology because of this or the other detail. Before us stands the more positive task of making the rukes of the historical change in the psychical accessible to our understanding. This is the contribution which this first volume seeks to make. Then it remains for us to investigate, step by step, which social processes are the motors of this psychical change. That takes places in the second volume, which is in press at the moment, although for external reasons we will unfortunately have to wait some time before it appears.

I cannot judge if I have succeeded in representing the problem I have posed myself clearly and convincingly. In hope, after a Scandinavian lecture tour which I am commencing now, to be able to pass through Paris, and I would be very pleased if I then had the opportunity of speaking personally to you about it. But because it appears that I will have to go to America in Autumn, it would be doing me a great favour if you could arrange for the review to appear before that.

In the meantime I am,

with best wishes

your

very sincere

Norbert Elias

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Benjamin to Elias

Paris, 13th May 1938

Very Honourable Herr Elias,

With thanks I acknowledge receipt of your work. I have read it with great interest. The material you presented was unknown to me; it illustrates your discussion very well.

If I have understood it correctly, you are initially concerned with an introduction to the problem. The general variability of the concept of civilization will become clear to the reader of your work. At times the evidence which you produce is extraordinarily gripping.

In relation to the underlying methodical question, which you develop on page XVII, you will, as you have written to me, develop an answer to it in the second volume of your work. You pose this question because you distance yourself from historical relativism and keep in view an order in historical change. Here it seems that for you the choice which presents itself is between the idealist conception of history and that of dialectical materialism. I presume that in the second volume you wull take up a position in relation to this methodical question.

It is the question which stands at the centre of my own interests. I would prefer, before I review your book, to await the development of your position, since I am not very competent in relation to the pragmatic accomplishments of your work. There are those those know the cultural history of the 16th-18th centuries better than I do.

In my view there would be no barrier to my reviewing your book later if the 'Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung' deals with the cultural-historical content of your work with an interim reviewer. It would hardly need my encouragement; otherwise I would gladly see it appear.

With best wishes

Your very sincere

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Elias to Benjamin

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

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Benjamin to Elias

Paris XV, 10 Rue Dombasle
the 12th June 1938

Very Honourable Herr Doktor,

Thank you very much for your detailed letter of 3rd June.

Nothing would please me more than to be able to follow your train of thought. But what one is to understand as social psychology, in my view is to be is determined first on the basis of a social theory, which has made its primary theme the opposition between classes - namely the form of exploitation of the work of the majority by a minority predominating in the existing society.

Contributions to such a social theory, founded on the materialist method, which differ from the so-called methodological studies, about which I share your low opinion, we have not had a surplus of here in Germany, nor do we have one today.

Not impossible, that my approach appears limited to you; but what I produce, including a review, has exactly this as a precondition.

With the best greetings,

Your very sincere

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