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The Leader: Psychohistorical Essays. By C. Strozier & D. Offer. New York: Plenum Press. 1984. Pp.
Historiography & Causation in Psychoanalysis. By Edwin R. Wallace. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press. 1985. Pp. 285.
'I believe psychohistory to be the most powerful of interpretive approaches to history because (1) it is the only model of research that includes in its method the countertransference phenomenon—the emotional and subjective sensibility of the observer—and (2) it enriches the historical account … with a perception of latent or unconscious themes … that integrate apparently discordant data.' So says Loewenberg at the beginning of his book of essays, Decoding the Past, but soon adds that 'Programmatic statements on psychohistory, however valuable they once were in opening the field, are not enough. It is time for psychohistorians to demonstrate how they work and to practice their craft in concrete historical research' (p. 7).
Despite this, there follows 'An overview of the field' and one or two rather inconsequential essays on problems of graduate education and intellectual conflict before the volume settles down to what most people now regard as the natural subject-matter of psychohistory: biographical studies, in this case of Theordor Herzl, Victor and Friedrich Adler and Freud's 'Dora', (now known to have been Ida Bauer, sister of Otto Bauer, according to the author 'the personification of the ambivalence of Social Democracy in the 1920's and 1930's' (p. 161)). He refutes the claim that 'Freud was insensitive to social factors' and adds that 'The "Dora" case in particular has a richness of insight into the patient's social, family and interpersonal environment which is a great aid to the historian of her family' (p. 188); finally, he concludes with essays on 'The unsuccessful adolescence of Heinrich Himmler' and 'Psychohistorical origins of the Nazi Youth Cohort'.
The cover of his book proclaims it to be 'a provocative defence' of psychohistory, and