For this reason, strangers are not really conceived as individuals, but as strangers of a particular type: the element of distance is no less general in regard to them than the element of nearness.

Toronto: University of Toronto. In the triad group there is a possibility of a dyad forming within the triad thereby threatening the remaining individual’s independence and causing them to become the subordinate of the group. This is because there is a belief that the Stranger is not connected to anyone significant and therefore does not pose a threat to the confessor’s life.

Simmel's most famous works today are The Problems of the Philosophy of History (1892) The Philosophy of Money (1907) The Metropolis and Mental Life (1903) Soziologie (1908 inc. Both Simmel and Weber's nonpositivist theory would inform the eclectic critical theory of the Frankfurt School. The Stranger The Social Boundary The Sociology of the Senses The Sociology of Space and On The Spatial Projections of Social Forms) and Fundamental Questions of Sociology (1917).