Since that first edition, symbolic interactionism has become increasingly important to the discipline of sociology. Its criticisms of traditional sociology have made an impact. Its research studies have increasingly become a part of sociology. Its practitioners are some of the leading officers, journal editors, and researchers in the discipline. I vividly recall my discussion with Eleanor VanderHaegen and Mary Zimmerman in Walter Library more than 25 years ago.
Social psychology is a very broad area of scholarship in both sociology and psychology.
Social psychology is much more than just symbolic interactionism. The essence of the human being is that we interact with one another, and that social interaction leads to society, who we are as human beings, and who we are as individuals. We may have now gone beyond George Herbert Mead, Herbert Blumer, and Erving Goffman, but this essence remains critical to what symbolic interactionism is, and this essence remains the message that this perspective brings to the student. Each time I attempt to improve on what I have written before, it brings a certain humility to my work. After revising each edition, I wonder how in the world I could ever have written what I had previously.