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Most of the papers that make up this volume were first presented in 1982 at a conference on History and Psychology at Stanford University. Six years separated the book's publication from the conference, but the book nonetheless has managed to retain much of the atmosphere typical of such academic gatherings—the clubbiness, the gentlemanly salutes of mutual recognition, the long-windedness, the sense of serious mission and even more serious missionariness.
Like a typical conference, this one opens with a call to the colours by the editor. Psychohistory is old enough now to have a history, and one is offered by William McKinley Runyan. There is nothing psychohistorical about his Introduction, however. Rather, it is a bibliographic tour, a recap of newsworthy intellectual debates among historians and psychologists, and a cliometric study of how many books and dissertations in psychohistory have been published since the 1920s. The point is that the field of psychohistory is lively and competitive with other fields in the page count productivity stakes. When this heavy-handed pep talk is over, the master of ceremonies lets the real business begin with gusto: 'Without further ado, I invite readers to plunge into the diverse viewpoints and examples discussed by the distinguished contributors to this volume …' Readers would be better advised not to plunge, however, for the shallows are unmarked. Safer to go from room to room, as at a conference, sampling.
Readers will find that most segments of the book feature a lecture and a response or discussion. There are three exceptions. One is a piece by Jean Strouse on her Alice James biography. This, apparently, is the token woman's piece on a token female subject. A magnificent revolution in historiography and biography writing has taken place in the last decade, and it has been brought about by feminist scholars, many of whom are informed by psychoanalysis. Not a whisper of either appreciation or anxiety about this r