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The following essay by Richard Hutch is a psychohistorical examination of Ralph Waldo Emerson—an examination which Emerson himself would have encouraged. For Emerson,4 the scholar must explore the secrets of the mind and in this exploration he must be unlimited and unconfined by the fashion of the times. “Free should the scholar be—free and brave.”
Though related to psychobiography, psychohistory is different from it. Whereas a psychobiography is a biography of a person emphasizing the psychic components of the person, psychohistory goes further—it attempts to connect these individual psychic elements with the cultural group to which the individual belongs. This kind of approach focuses on several areas. First, a historical event in the life of an individual is presented. Second, after an extensive factual description of this event, an inquiry is made into its relation and importance to the particular stage of life in which the individual is at the time. Third, the significance of the event is usually connected to its childhood determinants. And finally, after the establishment of the importance of this event in the individual's life, it is related to the history of the community in which the individual lives.
Freud,7 in his psychoanalytic study of Leonardo da Vinci, initiated this interest in historical figures, and Erik Erikson,5, 6 through his studies of Luther and Gandhi, has provoked much new research, so much so, in fact, that, to some, psychohistory has now become, in Emerson's words, the “fashion” of the times. However, as Bruce Mazlish9 has recently pointed out, psychohistory is under attack from professionals in both psychology and history, and its validity and efficacy are still under debate.
These criticisms, some of which have been recently enunciated by Robert Coles,2, 3 are from varied perspectives and of varying worth. The most important criticisms revolve around what mental processes should be examined: the “pathological,” the “creative,” or the “norma