Ten fields in which America shows signs of popular insanity.

"Whenever a great movement sweeps through the civilized world, it generally starts from the recognition of a great social wrong and from the enthusiasm for a thorough change." -Hugo Munsterberg, Psychology and Social Sanity

"It has always seemed to me a particular duty of the psychologist from time to time to leave his laboratory and with his little contribution to serve the outside interests of the community. Our practical life is filled with psychological problems which have to be solved somehow, and if everything is left to commonsense and to unscientific fancies about the mind, confusion must result, and the psychologist who stands aloof will be to blame.

"The field which I have approached this time demanded a different kind of treatment from that in the earlier books. There I had aimed at a certain systematic completeness. When we come to the social questions, such a method would be misleading, as any systematic study of these psychological factors is still a hope for the future. Many parts of the field have never yet been touched by the plow of the psychologist. The only method which seems possible to-day is to select a few characteristic topics of social discussion and to outline for each of them in what sense a psychologist might contribute to the solution or might at least further the analysis of the problem. The aim is to show that our social difficulties are ultimately dependent upon mental conditions which ought to be cleared up with the methods of modern psychology.

"I selected as illustrations those social questions which seemed to me most significant for our period. A few of them admitted an approach with experimental methods, others merely a dissection of the psychological and psychophysiological roots. The problems of sex, of socialism, and of superstition seemed to me especially important, and if some may blame me for overlooking the problem of suffrage, I can at least refer to the chapter on the jury, which comes quite near to this militant question." -Hugo Münsterberg.

Preface I. Sex Education II. Socialism III. The Intellectual Underworld IV. Thought Transference V. The Mind of the Juryman VI. Efficiency on the Farm VII. Social Sins in Advertising VIII. The Mind of the Investor IX. Society and the Dance X. Naïve Psychology