Freud and Cultural History

It is well known that Freud was interested in history, and not only as a hobby. In his work he tried to uncover the past of his patients, using the method of what is now known as ‘oral history’. Psychoanalysis has been described as ‘an art of memory’ (Hutton 1993, p. 66). The attention he paid to significant details in his Psychopathology of Everyday Life and elsewhere was inspired by the work of the Italian art historian Giovanni Morelli (Ginzburg 1986, pp. 98-101). The parallel between historians and psychoanalysts extends to their concern with narratives and their interpretations, and it has even been argued that history books remain popular among the general public because reading them is therapeutic (Kennedy 2002, pp. 14, 122-6).

This paper is concerned with the other side of the parallel, with three questions. Can historians make use of Freud's ideas? Have they done so in the past? Should they do so in the future? In attempting to answer these questions I shall begin with my own career, as emblematic of a group of cultural historians (a minority, it should be admitted) and then raise more general questions about history and psychoanalysis—including in the discussion some heretic Freudians as well as a few references to alternative psychologies.

I began to be interested in historical psychology or psychohistory when I was a student at Oxford in the late 1950s and had an essay to write about Archbishop William Laud, one of the most powerful men in England before the civil war and generally perceived as close to King Charles I. Laud was also perceived as an arrogant man. He was of low birth (relative to the court milieu, since he was the son of a cloth merchant) and low stature, leading me to wonder whether he might have suffered from an inferiority complex. True to my historical training I did not want to assume that Laud was insecure; I wanted documentary evidence of the fact.