THE SAGA OF SOCIOMETRY

Abstract

Sociometric tests have come of age. They go back as far as 1910, to the romantic "Kingdom of the Children" in the Viennese Augarten, when the children at a family picnic were asked by J. L. Moreno to designate whom they wanted as their parents, regardless of bloodties. This, the original "parent test," at which the children moved towards those adults they designated as their choice, was a more-than-mild shock to many a parent, for here they experienced dramatically their offspring's overt rejection or admission of mutuality of choice. Some parents found themselves joyfully surrounded by large hordes of children-their own among them; others were amazed to have acquired "sociometric oflspring'-not their own flesh and blood, but the children of other parents, while their own were having a fine time with their newly adopted parents; again others found themselves entirely without children- a premature foretaste of things to come!