Dennis Wrong

Wrong described his 1994 book The Problem of Order as "a sequel to, or enlargement upon" his 1961 article. The book considers a number of theorists and writers, including Hobbes, Rousseau, Freud, and Parsons. In his discussion of Freud and in particular Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents, Wrong observes that one may "accept the substance of Freud's emphasis on conflict and ambivalence" while rejecting some of Freud's formulations in Civilization about "nature" versus "culture". Nature and culture are both "riven with conflicts that cut across one another, so the simple dichotomy of nature versus culture so often represented as the essence of Freud's social theory is not tenable."

In 1979, he published Power: its forms, bases, and uses which was widely reviewed. For example, Jennie M. Hornosty criticized the book for its lack of discussion of class conflict, digression into peripheral issues, and weakness on the social-structural variants of power.

In 1968 Wrong began to write on power (social and political) with a contribution to American Journal of Sociology. The article argued that power is not asymmetrical except in cases of physical violence. It distinguished power from control and potential from possible powers. He cited Bertrand Russell (1938) Power: a new social analysis and Nelson W. Polsby (1963) Community Power and Social Theory.

Wrong was best known for a 1961 article in the American Sociological Review called "The Oversocialized Conception of Man in Modern Sociology." His 1994 book The Problem of Order (see section on Work below) was an enlargement on the 1961 article. In 1999, he reissued his 1976 essay collection Skeptical Sociology under the title The Oversocialized Conception of Man.

Wrong's 1961 article, "The Oversocialized Conception of Man in Modern Sociology," criticized the limitations of structural functionalism employed by Talcott Parsons. Parsons, in Wrong's view, had eliminated "the resistance...to the demands of society offered by the Freudian id and even by the rational calculating ego."

Dennis was the son of Humphrey Hume Wrong and Mary Joyce (Hutton) Wrong. He first studied in Toronto, then in Washington and Geneva where his father was a diplomat. He harvested wheat during WWII (a foot condition having kept him out of active military service) and earned a bachelor's degree from University of Toronto in 1945. During graduate study at Columbia University he was influenced by C. Wright Mills and Robert K. Merton, gaining the Ph.D. in 1956. He lived in Greenwich Village, NYC, socializing with novelists and other intellectuals and publishing in various journals.

Dennis Hume Wrong (November 22, 1923 – November 8, 2018) was a Canadian-born American sociologist and emeritus professor in the Department of Sociology at New York University.