Overview

What contributions can psychology make toward understanding the course of individual lives and the flow of historical events? After an introduction which reviews the intellectual and institutional history of the field, chapters by distinguished contributors explore the uses of psychoanalysis, neo-analytic theory, and academic psychology in historical interpretation. Substantive examples range from Joseph Stalin to Alice James, sexuality in Victorian England, the U.S. Continental Congress, and advances in psychohistorical studies of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. The conclusion re-examines the conceptual foundations of psychohistory, outlining its differentiated internal structure and its relationships to adjacent fields such as psychological anthropology, historical sociology, and political psychology. The volume as a whole is intended to advance and deepen the debate about the relationships between psychology, biography, and historical interpretation.