"One of the main theses of the Marienthal study was that prolonged unemployment leads to a state of apathy in which the victims do not utilize any longer even the few opportunities left to them. The vicious cycle between reduced opportunities and reduced level of aspiration has remained the focus of all subsequent discussions." So begin the opening remarks to the English-language edition of what has become a major classic in the literature of social stratification.

The Peper Harow residential community was founded in 1970 and gained international repute for its pioneering work with disturbed adolescents. For over 20 years, this remarkable establishment provided a therapeutic environment for teenagers who had often suffered appalling abuse, and yet for whom the state's only remedial provision until then had been in the punitive form of the approved schools. In Transforming Hate to Love Melvyn Rose, the community's founder, assesses Peper Harow's success in managing disturbed behaviour, and offers views on areas where the establishment could have responded more effectively to the needs of its residents. His study is complemented by the testimony of ex-residents helped by Peper Harow to overcome their fears and abandon their disruptive behaviour. The overwhelmingly positive outcome indicates the need for a review of current social policy towards deviant youth and shows how society as a whole would benefit from a psychodynamic view of the causes of criminality and mental ill-health among the young.

"One of the main theses of the Marienthal study was that prolonged unemployment leads to a state of apathy in which the victims do not utilize any longer even the few opportunities left to them. The vicious cycle between reduced opportunities and reduced level of aspiration has remained the focus of all subsequent discussions." So begin the opening remarks to the English-language edition of what has become a major class in the literature of social stratification.

The study on which "Marienthal" is based was conducted in 1930 in Austria, at the time of a depression that was worse than anything experienced in the United States. But the substantive problem is still very much with us, although our focus is now poverty rather than unemployment. In Austria, the institutional response to mass unemployment was the dole. Unlike the work relief programs of the New Deal, the dole system left workers destitute and idle. The essential finding of this research is that when people are deprived of work, there is a breakdown in the personality structure of a group.

"Marienthal" represents a colossal breakthrough in social research. It provides a combination of quantification and interpretive analysis of qualitative material-an approach that remains in the forefront of present-day research design. The work combines statistical data at hand, case studies, information on historical background of those being studied, and questionnaires combined with solicited reports that enhances a sense of daily life without intrusion by investigators. The work provides a unique insight into how creative innovations can assist in overcoming collective deprivations.

The work of Marie Jahoda, Paul F. Lazarsfeld, and Hans Zeisel was sponsored by the then newly created Psychological Institute at the University of Vienna. Each of the authors went on to extraordinary professional careers. Jahoda held positions at New York University, Brunel University, and the University of Sussex. Lazarsfeld spent the better part of his career from 1933 to his death at Columbia University in New York City. Zeisel came to the University of Chicago after the rise of Nazism.

This book was first published in 1982. Unemployment is perhaps one of the most serious social problems. In economic terms the cost of unemployment, both to the individual and to the collective, is extremely high. But unemployment has other effects too. In this book Marie Jahoda looks beyond the obvious economic consequences, to explore the psychological meaning of employment and unemployment. The book is an accessible and nontechnical account of the contribution which social psychology can make to understanding unemployment and clearly reveals the limitations of an exclusive concentration on its economic aspects. Professor Jahoda shows that the psychological impact is hugely destructive, throwing doubt on the popular diagnosis that the work ethic is disappearing. She also analyses the experience of unemployment in the context of the experience of employment and argues that one of the socially destructive consequences of large-scale unemployment is that it detracts from the need to humanise employment.