Effect of skin diseases on attitudes and interpersonal behavior

Abstract

Our observations of psychosomatic dermatology, formed in liaison consultation within the Unit of Psychosomatics of the University of Florence Department of Dermatology, have led us to certain considerations along lines suggested to us by social psychology, a discipline that tends to consider all human phenomena from a viewpoint which is at the same time psychological and sociologic, rejecting the prejudice which relegates the psychologic to the sphere of the individual and the social to that of the collective. Social psychology was recognized as a separate discipline at the beginning of the century when, in 1908, two treatises that appeared within a few months of each other—one by an American, Ross, 1 the other by an Englishman, McDougall 2—were the first to use the title “Social Psychology.” With these began the period of scientific elaboration of social psychology. In 1924, another text, by Allport, 3 was the beginning of systematic experimental elaboration of social psychology. Freud 4 confirmed, in 1921, that the contraposition of individual and social psychology is really meaningless, since man is always, with rare exceptions, in relationship with others; therefore, individual psychology is also social psychology.