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This collection of essays, New Directions in Psychohistory, is based on the conference held at Adelphi University in October 1977, honoring Erik H. Erikson. Each essay is written by an outstanding academician and is “intended to be a statement about the state of the art of psychohistory in two areas: the problem of theory and empirical works in the field.” The book purports to demonstrate that psychohistory has risen above the simplistic, reductionistic use of psychoanalytic theory. Except for one or two papers, the essays fulfill this goal and appear to embrace the recent theoretical developments in psychoanalysis. This is an excellent book for those interested in broadening the application of psychoanalytic concepts and integrating these concepts with the fields of sociology, political science, history, literature and biography. For the practicing psychoanalyst, the essays offer little in the way of direct clinical application.
The short forward written by Erik H. Erikson is notable for its warning that “new fields defined by hyphens can all too easily lack some of the rigor of the traditional fields” and particularly in the area of psychobiography they may “perform premature post-mortems.”
The book is divided in two parts. Part I deals with Theory: Psychology and History; Part II covers Psychohistory: Literature, Biography and Social History. Fred Weinstein, a professor at the State University of New York, writes an introductory scholarly chapter on the social function of intellectuals, a critique of Marx and Freud, and the role that the work of Erikson plays in advancing our understanding of human behavior. The two chapters by Joel Kovel and Talcott Parsons focus on the relevance of Marx, Weber and Freud on the field of psychohistory. The next two authors focus on recent advances in psychoanalytic theory by Kohut, Kernberg and Schafer and their applicability to psychohistory. Ernest S. Wolf writes an elegant chapter on the applicability of psychoanalytic self-obje