ABSTRACT
Psychohistory is currently crystallizing as a vital method of historical research and conceptualization. This volume is conceived as a contribution to an emerging synthesis between the disciplines of history and psychoanalysis. The papers it contains represent over a decade and a half of exploration of the frontier between the humanistic, social, political, analytic, and narrative crafts of history and the clinical art of psychoanalysis. I believe psychohistory to be the most powerful of interpretive approaches to history because (1) it is the only model of research that includes in its method the countertransference phenomenon—the emotional and subjective sensibility of the observer—and (2) it enriches the historical account of political, social, and cultural-intellectual events with a perception of latent or unconscious themes, of style, content, and conflict, that integrate apparently discordant data from a specific historical locus.
