The Social Relations Department will continue to exist despite the proposed departure of sociologists from it.

Robert F. Bales, professor of Social Relations and a one-time proponent of an independent social psychology department, now is backing a plan which would keep the non-sociologists of Soc Rel together.

The Bales proposal provides for three sub-departments within Soc Rel: social psychology, developmental and personality psychology, and social anthropology. "These areas would have as subdepartments the autonomy de jure which they have de facto as wings already," John W. Whiting, professor of Social Anthropology, said yesterday.

"Social psychologists are no longer pushing for a separate department," Bales said yesterday.

Bales's ideal preference is a proposal made last weekend by Edward L. Pattulio, director of the Center for the Behavioral Sciences, which would set up a Division of Social Relations, with sociology and the three sub-departments of the Bales plan under the division as departments.

But the Pattullo plan faces apparently insurmountable opposition from sociologists intent on attaining total autonomy. "It comes pretty late in the game, at a time when we've built up considerable momentum," Harrison C. White, professor of Sociology, said yesterday.

Sociologists sent to Dean Dunlop on Monday their plan for an independent department. The Soc Rel faculty approved this department on March 6, and the Faculty will vote on it on May 20.

"Without sociology the division idea doesn't make sense," Jerome Kagan, professor of Developmental Psychology, said yesterday.