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Too many works in the field of psychohistory have been hybrids of second-rate history and second-rate psychoanalysis. A puzzling aspect of this phenomenon is that it seems to matter little whether the investigator is a historian or a psychoanalyst, or whether the investigators' prior studies in their own fields have been excellent or otherwise. One prominent facet of these works appears to have been an overweening and indiscriminate enthusiasm for this new application of psychoanalysis.
Friedländer, a professor of contemporary history at Tel Aviv University, examines this lusty new field with a critical scholar's eye. There is a deceptive brevity to his small book. It consists of an introduction, three chapters (1. The theoretical framework, 2. Is psychoanalytic biography possible?, 3. Collective phenomena) and a conclusion as well as a separate section of notes, a bibliography, and a brief index. The author writes that, “The aim of the present book is simple: to examine the extent to which the present-day historian can already go beyond the description of psychological facts and attempt a theoretical interpretation that seems objectively necessary for historical research and that appears, in principle, realizable” (p. 2).
For those of us who have been concerned about the present unacceptable state of the art, such a task is hardly simple. It is Friedländer's attempt to organize and establish adequate professional standards for this difficult interdisciplinary discipline that makes his book such a significant contribution.
Early in his book, he reviews some of the current criticisms of psycho-history (with a particular focus on those expressed by Jacques Barzun), acknowledging their merits and their deficiencies. He then goes on to develop and propose four “verification criteria” that he considers to be essential for acceptable psychohistorical explanation. “One must look for convergence of proofs, for significant structures, for comparability and for quantitative conf