ABSTRACT
The contribution of political psychology is immediately evident if we conceive of the past that Marx was talking about not in terms of objective history, but rather as a psychological past, going back to infancy, comprised of layers of experience that Freud compared to an archeological dig. Political psychology studies the inXuence of this psychological past on the present. In particular, political psychology studies how groups of people come to share a psychological past that they draw on to make a collective world. This world is no less real because we make it out of our hopes, dreams, fears, and desires. However, unless we understand where this world comes fromdeep inside the minds of men and women who live in it-we will never be in a position to awaken from the nightmare that is (all too often) human history.
