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As has been indicated, the Center is an interdisciplinary group, a fact from which it draws its strength. In this mix of psychoanalysis, diplomacy, history, psychiatric nursing, and internal relations, what is the contribution of the psychoanalytically trained historian? I'll outline what it is I think I do under three headings with appropriate examples. It is important to know that these are not assigned tasks, for there are no assigned tasks within the group.
My contributions as a historian grow out of the situations in which we may find ourselves. And what I have to offer from my alleged expertise might be useful. My colleagues are well read in a variety of fields, and on any particular issue may know more than I do! But when making whatever statements I do about any issue I seek to stimulate an exchange of ideas more than to offer any definitive, immutable insight.
In history as in psychoanalysis there are many stools. The historian is minimally a three-legged one, with one leg firmly rooted in chronology, another in geography, and a third in what we can call biography. We know that history is also often written by the winners, while the losers slink off to create myths as they lick their wounds.
In the work of conflict resolution, what we often hear is history as it is passed through an emotional filter. It is a highly charged version of history, but one that is nevertheless firmly grasped and held on to and believed in. In these situations history is not something read for enjoyment; it is didactic. Not a hypothesis, but proof. The psychoanalytically trained historian must separate out the kernel of truth from the chaff of emotion, or vice versa, while treating both with respect, for both are evidence, and evidence is the raw material of the historian just as productions from the couch are the raw material of the analyst.
At this point, the historian and the psychoanalyst ask the same question: I have evidence, but what is it evidence of? Let me give one example o