THE PLACE FOR SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY IN GEORG SIMMEL’S WORK

Abstract

The article debates the theoretical locus of social psychology in Georg Simmel’s writings. The text intends to approach this problematic in four  ways: I) a general reconstruction of the place of social psychology in Simmel’s work; II) an appreciation of the link between the emergence of modern culture and the psychological  energizing of individual experience; III) a reconstruction of how he took similar theoretical pathways in his value theory, in which subject and object differentiate themselves by the distancing between enjoyment and its object; IV) lastly a recollection of how Simmel concerned himself with  understanding the dialectics of subject
and object from a point of view  capable of relating cognition and drive. We expect this discussion to help to illuminate the sociological meaning of  his interest on psychology by means of his theory of cultural development, of genesis of values, and of personality.