Psychoanalysis and History

While the disciplines of psychoanalysis and history have much in common, the application of psychoanalysis to problems of history has been casual and often unsatisfactory. The main reason for this is that psychoanalysis requires the coöperation of a living person. The fragments of factual information or of products of the imagination available to the historian are never a substitute for the tremendous wealth of material that is unearthed in an individual psychoanalysis. Though, basically, this is an insurmountable difficulty, some valuable results could be achieved if workers in the field of history would become familiar with certain typical gestalten known and understood by psychoanalysts for, often, they will find the same gestalten in historical material. In this way they could arrive at an understanding of unconscious motivation in history. It is also suggested that historians avail themselves of the help of psychoanalysts in studying significant typical gestalten in history such as that of the political murderer which, up to now, have not been the objects of general psychoanalytic investigation.

There are those who, like Kenneth Colby, consider psychoanalysis a branch of natural science and will find it difficult or even impossible to accept this method as scientific. Colby excludes