Sigmund Freud and History

Abstract

Freud’s own formal efforts at applied psychoanalytic work covered an enormous range after the early period of incubation. Only music did not interest him. Just two of his books touched directly on questions of leadership: Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921) and, with William Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study (1966 [1932]).¹ Leadership, if somewhat more broadly considered, however, was a major concern of Freud. His extensive theoretical writings on the Oedipus complex in a sense describe the psychological process of leading and following in a family. A study like that of Leonardo da Vinci in 1910 focuses on a major leader in the world of art. Totem and Taboo (1913) argues that the origins of civilization lay in the struggle with the clan leader of primitive cultures. Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) explores the complex mechanisms of guilt and repression in modern life that fuel the dynamics of mass behavior. And, finally, in his grand study of Moses, Moses and Monotheism (1939), Freud returned at the end of his own life to a leader who helped shape the beginnings of western civilization.