The History and Meaning of California: A Psychoanalytic Inquiry

Psychoanalytic contributions to the study of sciences outside the field of clinical analytic work strictu sensu—that is, contributions to the sharpening of our understanding in the domains of anthropology, biology, sociology, prehistory, archeology, biography—are well known. In the words of Ernest Jones, Freud 'was all his life engrossed with the great problem how man came to be man' (4), and Jones attributes to this Freud's lifelong interest in the early history of mankind. We also have Freud's personal testimony on this in a letter to Stefan Zweig in which he writes: 'I … have actually read more archeology than psychology' (2).

In my papers pertaining to applied analytic research (6), (7), (8) I have attempted to demonstrate that psychoanalysis can indeed contribute to the understanding of historical phenomena, including geographical and archeological pursuits and sociopolitical developments. Rarely, however, has an attempt been made to explore a specific regional historicogeographical entity along psychoanalytic lines. In this communication I shall examine analytically the special position that California holds in the psychological, social, and cultural fabric of the history of North America and, in fact, the civilized world. In so doing, I wish to emphasize that attention will be focused on factors of an unconscious yet analytically accessible nature; those factors that refer to economic, political, religious, and other determinants, though not underestimated, will be omitted from this brief communication.

California offers, with unusual clarity, an example of certain psychodynamic forces that go into the making of history. Its very name and existence, as far as civilized man is concerned, originated in the imagination of one individual, the Spanish writer Garciá Ordóñez de Montalvo, to whose work I shall return presently. But there were notable psychological influences operative long before