Community is a Process
M. P. Follett
1919
Philosophical Review
Known as the Early Journal Content, this set of works include research articles, news, letters, and other writings published in more than 200 of the oldest leading academic journals. The works date from the mid--seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. We encourage people to read and share the Early Journal Content openly and to tell others that this resource exists. People may post this content online or redistribute in any way for non--commercial purposes. Read more about Early Journal
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... ntent at http://about.jstor.org/participate--jstor/individuals/early-journal--content. JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary source objects. JSTOR helps people discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content through a powerful research and teaching platform, and preserves this content for future generations. JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not--for--profit organization that also includes Ithaka S+R and Portico. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. COMMUNITY IS A PROCESS. COMMUNITY is a process. The importance of this as the fundamental principle of sociology it is impossible to overestimate. Physical science based on the study of function is today a study of process. The Freudian psychology, based on the study of the 'wish,' is preeminently a study of process and points towards new definitions of personality, purpose, will, freedom. If we study community as a process, we reach these new definitions. For community is a creative process. It is creative because it is a process of integrating. Phe Freudian psychology, as interpreted and expanded by Holt,' gives us a clear exposition of the process of integrating in the individual. It shows us that personality is produced through the integrating of 'wishes,' that is, courses of action which the organism sets itself to carry out. The essence of the Freudian psychology is that two courses of action are not mutually exclusive, that one does not 'suppress' the other. It shows plainly that to integrate is'not to absorb, melt, fuse, or to reconcile in the so-called Hegelian sense. The creative power of the individual appears not when one 'wish' dominates others, but when all 'wishes' unite in a working whole. We see this same, process in studying the group. It is the essential life process. The most familiar example of integrating as the social process is when two or three people meet to decide on some course of action, and separate with a purpose, a will, which was not possessed by anyone when he came to the meeting but is the result of the interweaving of all. In this true social process there takes place neither absorption nor compromise. Many of the political pluralists believe that we cannot have unity without absorption. Naturally averse to absorption, they therefore abandon the idea of unity and hit upon compromise and balance as the law of association. But whoever thinks I I am indebted to Professor Holt's very valuable book, The Freudian Wish, for the references in this paper to the Freudian psychology. 576
doi:10.2307/2178307
fatcat:b53nem4nanh77nr52p4fv6hx7e