Abstract
It is fashionable to date the beginning of psychohistory in 1958 with William Langer’s Presidential speech, “The Next Assignment,” to the American Historical Association, and with the publication in the same year of Erik Erikson’s Young Man Luther.1 In one sense the year marked an important change, with the call of the president of the historical association to professional historians to consider motivation in a psychohistorical context and with the publication of what was undoubtedly the first good psychobiography, one that was based in the historical sources and was well written and intelligently conceived. The field since then has sprouted subfields, competing journals, and organizations and has gained some sense of its method. It has influenced the teaching of history at a number of institutions of higher learning and separated itself decisively from its origins as an incidental activity of psychoanalysts after hours. And, finally, psychohistory itself has perhaps influenced culture and politics. A certain psychological self-consciousness pervades contemporary political discourse.
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Notes
William Langer, “The Next Assignment,” American Historical Review, 53 (1958), 283–304
Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (New York: Norton, 1958).
Frank E. Manuel, “The Use and Abuse of Psychology in History,” in Historical Studies Today, ed. Felix Gilbert and Stephen R. Graubard (New York: Norton, 1972), p. 212.
Heinz Kohut, “Beyond the Bounds of the Basic Rule: Some Recent Contributions to Applied Psychoanalysis,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 8 (1960), 567–586
Robert Waelder, “Psychoanalysis, Scientific Method, and Philosophy,” Journal of American Psychoanalytic Association, 10 (1962), 617–637
Heinz Hartmann, “The Application of Psychoanalytic Concepts to Social Science,” in Psychoanalysis and Social Science, ed. Henrik Ruitenbeck (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1962)
John E. Mack, “Psychoanalysis and Historical Biography,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 19 (1971), 143–179
Charles Hofling, “Current Problems in Psychohistory,” Comprehensive Psychiatry, 17 (1976), 227–239. To get a sense of how different historians summarize the field of psychohistory, see, for example (and there are many more)
Richard L. Schoenwald, “Using Psychology in History: A Review Essay,” Historical Methods Newsletter, 7 (1973), 9–24
Gerald M. Platt, “The Sociological Endeavor and Psychoanalytic Thought,” American Quarterly 28 (1976), 343–350; and two essays by
Cushing Strout, “Ego Psychology and the Historian,” History and Theory, 7 (1968), 281–297 and “The Uses and Abuses of Psychology in American History,” American Quarterly, 28 (1976), 324-42.
Kurt R. Eissler, Medical Orthodoxy and the Future of Psychoanalysis (New York: Basic Books, 1965), p. 164.
Fred Weinstein and Gerald M. Platt, Psychoanalytic Sociology: An Essay on the Interpretation of Historical Data and the Phenomena of Collective Behavior (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), I, 1.
In 1979 Charles Strozier edited a special issue of The Psychohistory Review, 7 (1979), entitled “Non-psychoanalytic Ventures in Psychohistory.” The issue includes articles by Peter C. Hoffer, “Is Psychohistory Really History?,” J. Harvey Asher, “Non-Psychoanalytic Approaches to National Socialism,” Ur Wernic, “Cognitive Dissonance Theory, Religious Reality, and Extreme Interactionism,” and William Merrill Downer, “A Psychological Justification of Anarchism: The Case of Paul Goodman.” The issue also includes a bibliographic listing of non-psychoanalytic psychohistory put together by William Gilmore.
Louise E. Hoffman, “Psychoanalytic Interpretations of Adolf Hitler and Nazism, 1933–1945: A Prelude to Psychohistory” The Psychohistory Reivew, 11 (1982), 68–87.
Minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, ed. German Nurnberg and Ernst Federn, 4 volumes (New York: International Universities Press, 1962), I: 167f, 259-69, and 267-68.
This definition represents Charles Strozier’s adaptation of Faye Grosby’s definition. See Faye Grosby, “Evaluating Psychohistorical Explanations,” Psychohistory Review, 7 (1979), 6–16.
Donald B. Meyer, “A Review of Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History,” in Psychoanalysis and History, ed. Bruce Mazlish (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1971), pp. 178–79.
Harold D. Lasswell, Psychopathology and Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1930).
Walter C. Langer, The Mind of Adolf Hitler (New York: Basic Books, 1967 [1943]).
Bruce Mazlish, In Search of Nixon: A Psychohistorical Inquiry (New York: Basic Books, 1972)
Eli S. Cheson, President Nixon’s Psychiatric Profile (New York: Peter H. Wyden, 1973)
David Abrahamsen, Nixon vs. Nixon: An Emotional Tragedy (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1976); and most recently
Fawn Brodie, Richard Nixon: The Shaping of his Character (New York: Norton, 1981).
Lawrence Kubie, Neurotic Distinctions of the Creative Process (New York: Noonday Press, 1977).
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Strozier, C.B., Offer, D. (1985). Introduction. In: Strozier, C.B., Offer, D. (eds) The Leader. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-1838-6_1
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