ABSTRACT
"Love has to be reinvented," said Rimbaud. History too needs to be reinvented by every historian and each generation. The task of this generation has been to dilate the traditional meanings and definitions of historical research to include the behavioral and human sciences. Psychohistory, one of the newest methods of historical research, combines historical analysis with social science models, humanistic sensibility, and psychodynamic theory and clinical insights to create a fuller, more rounded view of life in the past. The psychohistorian is aware of the dynamic interaction of character, society, and human thought and action. This is consonant with the historian's traditional commitment to the unity of man and culture, of life and ideas, in past and present. For historians have always recognized the existence of the non-rational and the irrational in history, but their categories of explanation have too often been limited to the utilitarian, materialistic, or intellectual rationality of motives. Now we have enlarged and refined concepts of explanation of human conduct to include the emotional and unconscious basis of historical thought and action.
