Given the centennial of the publication of the first two textbooks in social psychology, the one by William McDougall and the other by Edward Alsworth Ross, the author stresses that it is an auspicious time for reflection. It is a time to reconsider the movements into which these volumes were secreted, and the resulting trajectories of scholarship. The author argues that while both these classics attempted to link psychological process with social behavior, neither proved successful. The author contends that, when the problem of forging a social psychology is examined in terms of discursive traditions, one finds the attempts of both McDougall and Ross to be fundamentally misconceived. In this article, the author considers briefly the challenge confronting these early authors. He discusses the concept of social psychology and argues that social psychology as a composite discipline--uniting the study of mind and the social world--leads to a conceptual impasse. (Contains 3 footnotes.)