ABSTRACT
By now, we are all familiar with the effort to use a man's writings to illuminate his personal, psychological development. Erik Erikson's Young Man Luther and Gandhi's Truth are in this genre, although they go beyond it by also relating their subjects to larger historical events. In each case, a historically important man is analyzed in terms of psychobiography or psychohistory, and his words, so to speak, are used against him. Less frequently is the direction followed by Arthur Mitzman, in which a great thinker's personal, psychological development-in this case, Max Weber's-is used to illuminate the meaning of his theoretical writings. I (The movement from the writer's personality to his creations is, of course, more common in literary studies.)
Since Marx, the sociology of knowledge has been recognized as an accepted discipline. We are all alerted to the need to search for the material and social basis of a man's thought. But the "psychology of knowledge," if I may coin the phrase, is only now coming into its own. Under this rubric, we look for the psychological, especially psychoanalytic, basis of a man's conscious thoughts. How do his personal defenses and adaptations affect the way he views the world? What transferences does he bring to his perception of men and events? As usual, Erikson has pioneered in analyzing some of these problems. Moreover, he has also concentrated on the role of the psychohistorical investigator himself, as illustrated by his article "On the Nature of Psycho-Historical Evidence: In Search of Gandhi."2
