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This book is part of the series Studies in the Psychosocial, edited by Stephen Frosch, Peter Redman, and Wendy Hollway. These three scholars, all British academics, define their mission thus: “to investigate the ways in which psychic and social processes demand to be understood as always implicated in each other, as mutually constitutive, co-produced, or abstracted levels of a single dialectical process. As such, it can be understood as an interdisciplinary field in search of transdisciplinary objects of knowledge. Studies in the Psychosocial is also distinguished by its emphasis on affect, the irrational, and unconscious processes, often but not necessarily, understood psychoanalytically” (p. ii). (The disclaimer at the end of this statement, regarding unconscious processes, frankly puzzles me.)
Stepping up to the challenge in this volume is Karl Figlio, Professor Emeritus at the University of Essex, Senior Member of the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Association of the British Psychoanalytic Council, and an Associate of the British Psychoanalytical Society. He further establishes his bona fides by acknowledging Robert Hinshelwood as a friend and colleague, as well as Ronald Britton, “who has informed every level of my thinking” (p. vii). By creating this link to two prominent neo-Kleinians, we are assured that Figlio will have done his psychoanalytic homework in tackling the task at hand.
In his introduction, the author argues that historical consciousness is the common denominator of psychoanalysis and history and that the two are thus “rooted in the same soil” (p. 1). Moreover, despite their significant differences, both contend with the subjectivity of the historical actor,