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In the current collaboration of history and psychoanalysis, Clio benefits more than her partner. The historian for his part can offer material that seems to justify faith in the psychic unity of mankind; a close view of a twelfth-century individual, for example, can support the notion that medieval people were not so different from ourselves as to be incomprehensible. If the material is particularly rich, it may even be possible to test—in an impressionistic way, to be sure—whether a given analytic theory is extensible in time, just as anthropologists test theories in other living cultures. History can greatly increase the range, if not the depth, of case studies.
In this study of the development and personality of Guibert of Nogent, who is unmatched among medieval authors for what he tells of his own childhood and his feelings about his parents, the historical material is arranged in a pattern which owes much to Freud and Erikson. The test of the applicability of this pattern is whether it leads to a richer understanding of the subject's life and works than have previous patterns based on different preconceptions, particularly whether it makes sense of otherwise unrelated details and provides an explanation of uncommon behavior. Historians have long agreed that this obscure monk, known only