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This is a broad survey of the field of psychohistory: the application of psychoanalytic theory to the understanding of history. The book is reasonably well organized, easy to read, and covers a lot of ground. After a brief introductory chapter, Szaluta presents the fundamentals of Freud's psychoanalytic theory. This description is clearly meant for the non-analyst. Szaluta's explanations of analytic theory—both in this chapter
and in other parts of the book—are accurate enough as far as they go, but I do not think that they go far enough. There is too little space devoted to analytic theory in this book, and the explanations are overly condensed and leave out many details. This should not be a problem for analysts, but probably will be for the non-analytic readers, to whom this book is also addressed. An omission in the chapter on Freud is that the distinction between the primary and secondary processes, and the manner in which they function, is not explicitly presented.
The third chapter, “Psychohistory: For and Against,” was very stimulating. Szaluta lets the critics and supporters of psychohistory speak for themselves as he traces the growth of the movement. As one might expect, there have been criticisms of the reductionism, and of the difficulties in verifying psychohistorical interpretations. However, historians have been critical of the whole idea of attempting a theoretical understanding of history. History, in this view, is a narrative and descriptive discipline, enlivened perhaps by a dash of common-sense psychology. This view has striking similarities to the descriptive psychiatry that reigned in the field before the introduction of psychoanalysis, and that seems, in the last few decades, to be making a strong comeback. It is unthinkable that a physicist, for instance, would attempt to impose an atheoretical or anti-theoretical stance on her science. As one comes closer to the study of humankind, this stance seems to become more acceptable, and infact th