To understand how the sociological imagination works, you must first understand the distinction between these two terms. Private problems occur when it is only an individual and his or her immediate social environment that is affected by an upset. A problem is seen as a personal matter; they only occur when an individual feels that his or her values ​​are threatened (The Sociological Imagination, 1959). Typically, private problems carry the stigma that it is usually the individual's fault if they are in trouble; that the individual somehow didn't do enough to keep their values ​​safe, and now it's just up to one person to fix what went wrong. An example where this has occurred many times is that of unemployment; from the outside it seems that an unemployed person is lazy and therefore cannot find a job. This in turn places emphasis on the individual and their immediate social circle, but does not actually influence others in the grand scheme of things (The Sociological Imagination,