Saul Friedländer - History and Psychoanalysis-Holmes and Meier Publishers (1975)

\
HISTORY AND
PSYCHOANALYSIS
By the same author
Pius XII and the Third Reich
Knopf, 1966
Prelude to Downfall: Hitler and the United States, 1939-1941

Knopf, 1967
Kurt Gerstein
Knopf, 1969
Reflexions sur I'avenir d'Israel

LeSeuil, 1969, 1971
L'Antisemitisme Nazi: Histoire d'une psychose collective

LeSeuil, 1971
With Mahmoud Hussein:

Arabs & Israelis: A Dialogue
Holmes & Meier, 1975
HISTORY AND
PSYCHOANALYSIS
An Inquiry into the Possibilities
and Limits of Psychohistory
by Saul Friedlander
translated by Susan Suleiman
Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc.

New York • London
First published in the United States of America 1 978 by
Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc.
30 Irving Place
New York, New York 10003
Published in Great Britain by:

Holmes & Meier Publishers, Ltd.
Hillview House
1 , Hallswelle Parade, Finchley Road
London NWllODL
English translation copyright ® 1 978 by Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc.

Originally published as Histoire et Psychanalyse: Essai sur les
possibilites et les limites de la psychohistoire
Copyright ® 1 975 by Editions du Seuil
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Friedlander, Saul, 1932-

History and psychoanalysis.
Translation of Histoire et psychanalyse.

Bibliography: p.
1. Psychohistory. I. Title.
D16.16.F7413 1978 155 77-18524
ISBN 0-8419-0339-5
Manufactured in the United States of America

Contents
Publisher's Note vi
Introduction 1
1. The Theoretical Framework 9
2. Is Psychoanalytic Biography Possible? 43
3. Collective Phenomena 81
Conclusion 121
Notes 125
Bibhography 151
Index 167
Publisher's Note
When Histoire et psychoanalyse was completed in the spring of 1975, many

recognized this work as a significant study in a field that was fast becoming one
of the most important avenues of interdisciplinary research. As a result,
Holmes & Meier undertook to translate Saul Friedlander's work for the
English-speaking world.
The remarkable proliferation of psychohistorical inquiry over the past two

years testifies to its potential for incisive explication of historical events. This
makes Saul Friedlander's overview of the methodological problems, limita-
tions and innovations of psychohistory increasingly important. More than
shedding new light on traditional problems, Friedlander envisions the future of
this growing discipline, anticipating problems and exploring guidelines for
subsequent study in a work which is certain to provide historians with a

conceptual and methodological model for years to come.
To the memory of my students
Shaul Shalev andAvi Shmueli,
fallen in the Yom Kippur War
Introduction
Despite the recent growth of a kind of history that is oriented more toward the
—
study of material conditions than of human motivations that is, despite the
recent appearance on the scene of a "history without people"— the great
majority of historians concur with Marc Bloch's statement that "historical
still
facts are in essence psychological facts." In reality, the importance accorded

to the historical study of psychological phenomena is increasing at the same
time as the other aspects of what can henceforth be considered as an attempt to
attain a "total" history. But to recognize the importance of a domain is not
enough; one must also agree on a method of investigation, a way of proceeding.
As far as the history of psychological phenomena is concerned, two divergent
attitudes are possible: one can limit oneself to description alone, or one can go
a step further and aim for theoretical explanation.
In his Combats pour Lucien Febvre launched an eloquent and
I'histoire,
often-cited appeal in favor of the theoretical study of psychological pheno-
mena: "If we maintain," he wrote, "always and above all, a contact with the
research done by psychologists and with the results they obtain; if we make it a
rule never to engage in such psychological research applied to history, or in
history attempting to reconstitute the evolution of psychological principles,
without first familiarizing ourselves with the latest state of research on the
question; ... if we and from the beginning, on the latest results
rely heavily,
obtained by the experimental and critical labor of our colleagues the psycholo-
gists—then we shall be able, I think, to undertake a series of works that we are
greatly in want of; and as long as we are in want of them, there will be no
history worthy of the name. "* Yet, if one reads the works of Lucien Febvre or
Marc Bloch, example, one is struck by their strictly descriptive character.
for
In his Luther, furthermore, Febvre treats psychoanalysis with a sovereign
sarcasm, even though he obviously lacks famiharity with the subject. The
number of contemporary historians who follow in this tradition is legion.
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

2 History and Psychoanalysis
facts and attempt a theoretical interpretation that seems objectively neces-

sary for historical research and that appears, in principle, realizable.
Where psychological phenomena are concerned, the interpretation favored
by traditional historians implies a recourse to intuition, to empathy, to
"common sense." The fact is, however, that as soon as we are faced with
complex psychological problems, as soon as we abandon the domain of
rationality, our intuition risks abandoning us too— or worse still, risks leading
us to the most foolish platitudes. As Frank Manuel recently wrote, Dilthey's
interpretation of Schleiermacher's religious thought has universal impHca-
tions, but his analysis of Hblderlin's madness smacks of musical comedy.^
Indeed, some of the most curious fantasies are occasionally paraded as "ex-
planations." Lucien Febvre holds up to ridicule Abbe Velly, who "explained"
the fall of Childeric in a well-turned phrase: "Bom with a tender heart, he
abandoned himself too much to love; it was the cause of his downfall."
"Poppycock," adds Febvre.' Poppycock, indeed, but is it very different from a
recent "explanation" of the expansion of Christianity, the popularity of the
Crusades and the explosion of modem nationalisms as the result of ... a
snowball effect produced by the initial success of a small group?" "Common
sense" is all too often the hallmark of Bouvard and Pecuchet; and even if it
were that of La Fontaine or La Rochefoucauld, it would still not be capable of
explaining the phenomenon of collective murder or even the relationship
between master and slave.
It might be objected that no character is more complex than the heroes of
Dostoevsky or Proust, and yet neither of these authors reUed on any kind of
systematization or, a fortiori, on any specific psychological theory. Why
should the historian not emulate them? Because, I would argue, the pro-
cedures of literary or artistic creation are totally different from those followed
by the historian: in the former, the creative imagination dominates, giving rise
to affective states that are not subject to documentary analysis or textual
(factual) constraints; in the latter, the dominant mode is necessarily that of
rigorous, rational, and critical progression.^
Let me not be misunderstood: I am in no way suggesting that we banish

"everyday" psychology and intuition from the field of historical investigation.
The observation of human beings has been going on for thousands of years; to
say that focused his interest on the complexity of human behavior well
man
before the rise of scientific psychology would be a simple truism.* Contem-
porary psychologists would certainly admit that one part of their theories is
essentially no more than an abstract classification of the unmediated facts of
experience and of behavior. But it is precisely this classification, this striving
for abstraction, that necessary for pattems to become perceptible, for
is
—
general hypotheses to be formulated in short, for the development of a
conceptual framework utilizable and applicable not only by psychologists
themselves, but by all those who are engaged in disciplines bearing on the
study of man. It is not a question ofeliminating description and intuition; it is
a question of carrying them through, of completing them.
The theoretical arguments that buttress the possibility of systematization in
Introduction 3
the historical study of psychological phenomena can be traced back to one of

the positions in the "great debate" that has dominated modem historiography
since the end of the 19th century— since the time when the German critical
school sought to establish a fundamental difference between the sciences of
man and the natural sciences, between the idiographic sciences and the
nomothetic sciences. Let us, in what follows, simply make our own position
clear.
We should note first of all, with Jean Piaget, that more and more of the new
scientific disciplines are related, by their subject matter as well as by the
concepts they employ, both to the natural sciences and the social sciences.''
One can go even further by adopting— and at the same time slightly modifying—
the argument advanced by Carl Hempel, according to which the logic of any
explicative undertaking is necessarily the same in the physical sciences as in
the social sciences, especially in history.* According to Hempel, any propo-
sition concerning an event can, on the one hand, be deduced from proix)sitions
concerning previous or contemporaneous events and, on the other hand, be
inferred from certain general laws that are empirically verifiable. Now, if we
replace the "general law" by a number of more or less probable causal series,
and if instead of concentrating on the universal character of the general law we
limit ourselves to studying certain observable regularities endowed with
varying coefficients of probabiUty and manifesting themselves in specific
sociocultural contexts, then we have moved from the domain of physics to that
of the social sciences.' The historian thus arrives at the partial explanation of
Complementing what Paul Veyne has called "weak
partial series of events.
explanation," which does not go beyond the narrative level, we find— again in
—
Veyne's words the possibility not of determining laws o/ history, but of ad-
mitting laws in history.^''
It is true that not all aspects of historical inquiry lend themselves equally
well to the imphcit or explicit use of generalizations: the historian's work
includes sequences with "weak explanation," which are essentially descrip-
tive and in which no significant generalizations are to be perceived, and
sequences with "strong explanation," in which such generalizations are
perceivable. When the historian "explains" Hitler's attack on Russia in
1941-to cite an example used by Raymond Aron to cast doubt on the validity
of the Hempelian model"— he relies on "weak explanation"; but if he turns to
the Wall Street crash of 1929, it is the "strong explanation" that appears.
Many have argued that it is the aims of the historian that distinguish him
fi-om the physical scientist and the social scientist: the natural and social
sciences attempt to discover laws, whereas "the aim of the historian is not .
.
.
to abstract fi-om the real world the variables necessary for establishing general
laws, but rather to grasp each concrete process in all its complexity, and
consequently in its irreducible originality."'- On this point everyone is
doubtless agreed, but it does not at all follow that, in order to describe the
"irreducible originality of an event," the historian cannot or must not

have
recourse to a whole series of generalizations whose bases the social sciences

are capable of providing him. Besides, the uniqueness of a
phenomenon
—
cannot logically be conceived except in relation to a generalization; under-

standing the one necessarily implies grasping the other.''
Thus, the method that the German critical school assigned to history
namely, the exclusive use of intuitive \xndQrsXand\ng {Verstehen) as opposed
to explanation (Erkldren) — is not really applicable. In fact, the attempt to rely
exclusively on the method of "intuitive understanding" has led its proponents
to irresolvable contradictions or else to the formulation of totally unverifiable
hypotheses — such as postulating, for example, the unconscious hereditary
transmission of experiences accumulated over several generations, or in-
voking the existence of an "objective mind." If the "objective mind" is
invariable, it cannot explain how we understand what is particular and

changing; if it is variable, then,it cannot enable us to have an intuitive grasp of
the past, ...''*
The position we have been defending is not at all new, and many historians
accept it without qualms: a recourse to economics, demography, or sociology
for the enrichment of historical explanation presents no problems for them.
—
But the minute one turns to psychology especially to psychoanalysis, for as
we shall see the other branches of modem psychology do not lend themselves
—
well to historical investigation one finds that strong reservations are ex-
pressed. To be sure, changes in outlook have occurred here too in recent
years,** but the opposition to systematic psychological history, and especially
to the use of psychoanalysis, can still count on a vast and determined majority.
When William L. Langer, then president of the American Historical
Association, declared in 1957 that the integration of the principles of modem
psychology (i.e., psychoanalysis) into historical investigation was the "next
assignment" that historians must undertake,'^ the only reaction he encoun-
tered was astonishment. And when Sir Lewis Namier had recourse to psycho-
analytic concepts in seeking to understand the behavior of certain English
political figures of the 18th century, or Dodds used these concepts
when E. R.
in elucidating the mentality of vast strata of Greek society during the
Hellenistic period,'"' historians simply shmgged their shoulders. Why?

The reticence of historians as far as psychoanalysis is concemed has been
attributed variously to ignorance or to an exaggerated sense of professional
pride, the latter being but a growing feeling of insecurity in
smokescreen for a
the face of the expansion of more prestigious disciplines in the contemporary
academic world.'* The application of psychoanalysis not to history but to
historians is too easy a way, however, of overcoming an opposition based on
more ground than that of a hypothetical clannish jealousy.
solid
It is possible, first of all, that many historians have simply found unsatis-
factory a few historical studies written by well-known psychoanalysts such as

Erikson, for example." Similarly, the efforts of a small number of historians
working in this field may have produced no better an impression. Some his-
torians refuse to grant any scientific validity to psychoanalysis itself— without
always having very clear notions on the subject. But there is more to it than
that, and Jacques Barzun recently summed up, in a caustic article, the
essential grounds for opposition in the profession against the application of
Introduction 5
psychoanalysis to history— in other words, against the discipHne that is

coming to be known as psychohistory— as a new direction in historiography.^"
According to Barzun, psychohistory is in no way a novelty; it is but "the
latest in a succession of waves that began with historiography itself," every
one of which claimed, from Plutarch to Lytton Strachey, to furnish a syste-
matic explanation for the human behavior that it is the task of the historian to
describe and explain.^' A curious argument, which in fact reinforces the posi-
tion of psychohistory: does not the existence of these diverse waves, from
Plutarch to our own day, prove that, since during all this time historians have
felt the need for a systematic explanation of human behavior, they can never
be content with mere description? But the fact that Plutarch attempted to
explain the behavior of his heroes does not mean that his implicit theories had
the same scope and import as Freud's. As for Strachey and the "new
biographers" of the 1920's, they were influenced by psychoanalysis, and in a
sense the rise of psychoanalytic biography can be traced to the years im-
mediately following the First World War; in a limited sense only, however, for
many historians consider Lytton Strachey and his imitators to have been, first
and foremost, writers of fiction. Is Elizabeth and Essex a work of history? No,
it is a novel.
Barzun works of psychohistory that contain hardly any other
cites certain
explanations than those one finds in historiography in general, the only differ-
ence being in their use of a few technical terms. The examples he chooses are
not very representative, however, and it is not the presence of a technical
vocabulary that matters. Psychohistory can, as we shall see, open up avenues
that simple common sense would have difficulty in discovering. Barzun him-
self recognizes this, even while using it as one of his principal arguments
against psychohistory. He writes: "Suppose a more intensive and systematic
application to history of Freudian ideas about motive. ... If this were
done ... we should have to say that we had in hand, not a piece of histori-
ography of a new kind, but a piece of psychology— or sociology or anthro-
pology. The method of the discipline would have yielded its proper fruit: the
formulation of a determinism. The novelty of the effort would be in having
established a generality with historical instead of living material.""
The above argument leads straight back into the polemic concerning the
nature of history— indeed, Barzun's concluding pages address themselves
directly to that polemic— and affirms the extreme traditionalist position. But
the fact that a successful application of Freudian notions to history would
is
not give rise to a new determinism and would not produce a work of psy-
chology rather than of history; rather, it would (to repeat once again) lead to a
partial explanation of a partial series of events. It would, in other
words,
enrich, not hinder, history in its chronological narration of concrete events

(to
cite the terms in which Barzun defines history in general).
Two fundamental questions remain: how is the historian to choose between

the multiple theories of contemporary psychology? How can one make
sure
that psychohistorical explanation is verifiable, that it does not replace facts by

hypotheses or by fiction?
As early as 1941, Sidney Rattner noted that the multiplicity of contemp-

rary psychological theories doubtless discouraged many historians.^^ Barzun,
basing himself on Woodworth and Sheehan's textbook of psychology, men-
tions the existence of seven different schools.^" By grouping some of the latter
together, one could arrive at what Carl Rogers saw as the three main orienta-
tions of American psychology in the early sixties: experimental psychology,
theories basically psychoanaljîc in inspiration, and finally a third direction,
that of phenomenological or existential psychology."
It is evident that contemporary psychology is not a unified disciplined^ It is
equally evident that, beneath the apparent chaos of multiple theories, one can
find overlapping areas —
and Unks of various kinds between psychoanalysis
and phenomenological psychology on the one hand, and between both of these
and experimental psychology on the other.
The problem of psychohistorical explanation and of its verification criteria
remains, however, and it is a major one; indeed, it is one of the central issues to
which the present work will address itself. But many other questions exist as
well, questions that Barzun did not even come close to perceiving. . .
The preceding pages may have given the impression that we ourselves have
no doubts about the possibilities offered by the application of psychoanalysis
to history. In fact, however, the present study much concerned with
is as a
critique of psychohistory as with an examination of the new perspectives it
could open up. The "objective limits" of this discipline become apparent
rather quickly, and we shall have to define them clearly: they are the limits of
psychoanalytic explanation in general, but also of psychohistorical explan-
ation in particular, bothon the level of theory and on the more concrete levels
of biographical interpretation and the analysis of collective behavior.
The lacunae of psychoanalytic theory have often been noted, and we shall
refer to them throughout our study. They are especially apparent outside the
therapeutic context, and it is a great temptation to reject the whole body of
Freudian theories because of their most evident shortcomings. For those who
consider, however, that Freud's contribution remains sufficiently rich and
coherent to be used despite its weak points, the problem will be that of selec-
tion, adaptation, and synthesis. Now a great many psychoanalysts— regard-
less of the "school" they belong to — consider their interpretation of Freud's
thought to be an unimpeachable, monolithic whole, and any attempt to be
selective is met with a ferocious opposition more appropriate to the members
of a religious sect than to the representatives of a still-evolving scientific
discipline.
The task of the historian must in fact be to reexamine psychoanalytic
theory in the light of historical evidence, not to overlook the historical givens
for the sake of preserving intact all the elements of the theory. Perhaps the
historian will even be able to suggest certain theoretical innovations, as the
anthropologists did in their time, thanks to the accumulation of convergent
documentary data. In any case, whenever psychoanalytic theory proves insuf-
ficient, the historian will be obliged to complete his explanation by means of
Introduction 7
description and intuitive evaluation. Let us repeat once again: systematic

explanation must not exclude the intuitive process, it must give it a framework.
The problem of proof, or of the verification criteria of psychohistorical
explanation, is directly linked to the preceding question: the ambiguous and
metaphoric character of many
psychoanalytic concepts, as well as certain
inconsistencies within Freudian theory in general, allow one— especially out-
side the clinical context — to formulate divergent and even contradictory
explanations for the same series of events. If we add to that the fact that any
explanation in psychohistory must, by its very nature, be founded essentially
on a theoretical construct that the historical facts cannot directly confirm, we
become aware of the irresistible attraction of imaginary constructs. One is
reminded of the Sempe cartoon which shows a tourist standing before the tiny
remnants of a classical column and reconstituting in his mind a temple over-
flowing with people, the forum where they are greeting Caesar, the roads
covered with marching legions, the whole city as well as the hills surrounding
it,and fmally, pell-mell, the Discus-thrower, the Apollo of Belvedere, and
Diogenes in his tub! One will easily admit therefore that the problem of
verification criteria in psychohistorical explanation becomes fundamental.
These criteria must be defined, and their application demonstrated at every
stage of the investigation.
The application of these criteria leads necessarily to a reexamination of the
relativeimportance of the various subjects treated by psychohistory; this
reexamination should arrive, notably, at a more critical conception of psycho-
analytic biography, which has until now been the piece de resistance in this
new discipUne. As for the psychohistorical analysis of collective phenomena,
we shall have to reconsider its whole field of application.
Finally, we must emphasize the general methodological stance that a
study such as ours seems to impose: in the debate concerning the position of
history in relation to the natural and the social sciences, we have cleariy opted
for the unity of the scientific domain and the integration of history with the
social sciences; but today, the very term "social sciences" generally implies
the use of quantitative methods and, as far as possible, experimental rigor.
Psychoanalysis cannot claim to possess such verification criteria. (We shall
discuss the reasons for this in chapter 1 .) Traditional historians will therefore
criticize psychohistory for its schematicism and its tendency toward syste-
matization, while the social scientists will reject it for its lack of rigor. Never-
theless, one can envisage a method founded on the systematic search for
coherent structures, verified by a comparative study of cases. The rapid rise of
structuralism, despite all its hazards, is a good indication of the possibilities of
a middle road, which psychohistory can also follow. (This is not to equate
structuralism and psychohistory, however, for in the case of the latter, a
genetic— therefore historical— demonstration tends to confirm the validity
and the compatibility of the structures as they are defined. We will return to
these questions later.)
Due works devoted to psychohistory,"
to the absence, to date, of general
particular to the problems we have mentioned, the present book
has
and in
8 Histon and Psychoanalysis
been cast in a rather systematic mold. We hope that even if the answers are
only tentative, the questions at least will have been clearly formulated. We
hope above all to present enough material to enable one to formulate a judg-
ment about the possibilities and the limits of this new discipline.
1. The Theoretical Framework
Psychohistory, then, is the utiUzation of a systematic psychology— in this

instance, of psychoanalysis — in the framework of historical investigation.
Such a method implies the possibility of demonstrating that a certain con-
figuration of historical facts is susceptible to psychoanalytic interpretation
outside a therapeutic context. It is evident that the very definition of psycho-
history raises a series of major questions, of which the first is obviously this
one: Why, given the great number of modem psychological theories, should
the choice have fallen on psychoanalysis? Is the latter a sufficiently solid,
sufficiently "scientific" theory to allow the historian to rely on its hypotheses?
The Choice of a Theory
In considering the range of contemporary psychological theories, the historian

soon realizes that he must limit his choice to the domain of theories of the
personahty. Physiological psychology concerns him only to the degree that it
gives rise to certain psychiatric concepts; the applicability of the latter is
extremely limited, however, unless they form part of a general theory of the
personality. Phenomenological psychology has its most significant applica-
tion in the theories of the personahty derived from it. As for the various
hypotheses of experimental psychology, be it in the field of experimental

social psychology, learning theory, motivation theory, etc., the phenomena
they deal with occur on the level of elementary processes that are extremely
far removed from the complex situations that preoccupy the historian. Certain
of these hypotheses are relevant to political science or the study of inter-

national relations, but for the historian, whose field of inquiry is not the im-
mediate present and who cannot have recourse to questionnaires or laboratory
experiments, their relevance is at best secondary.'
We should also mention Piaget's genetic epistemology, which Robert
Coles recently argued must be integrated into psychohistory.^ It is difficult to
know how an argument. Piaget's thought, fascinating

to respond to such
though it be, analyzes the birth and development of categories of human
understanding in a way that does not allow one to go from the general demon-
stration to the kind of concrete application that interests the historian. But as a
general system, genetic epistemology confirms on certain points the notions of
psychoanalysis, notions that by definition are applicable to specific cases.'
Turning to the various theories of the personality, one is faced with yet
another choice; in making his choice, the historian must logically rely on the
following criteria:
1. In its fundamental concepts, the theory must be compatible with the
basic modes of historical investigation, and must be in harmony with the
historian's project. The evolutionary — —
and therefore historical character of
the theory is particularly important.
2. The theory must be applicable to problems of human behavior that are
sufficientlycomplex and many-faceted to permit the investigation of the major
psychological questions encountered by the historian.
3. The theory must form a sufficiently consistent and structurally coherent
whole to be utilizable."
Now an acceptance of these criteria just about excludes the choice of one of
the theories of personality based on experimental psychology —
both for the
aforementioned reasons and because such theories are fundamentally ahis-
torical. This is particularly true of the method of factorial analysis developed
by Eysenck and Cattel; in addition, the questiormaires and other measures

that this type of research requires are not applicable to the study of people who
are no longer alive. Similarly, it is their ahistorical, nonevolutionary character
that disqualifies, from our point of view, the theories of Kurt Lewin or that of
Gordon AUport: Lewin's principle of "contemporaneity" and Allport's prin-
ciple of "functional autonomy" exclude the application of their conceptions of
the individual to a domain where the emphasis must be placed precisely on the
different stages in the development of the personality and on the origins of
diverse kinds of motivation. The theory proposed by Sheldon, based on the
correlation between physical characteristics and personality traits, satisfies
neither the first criterion (it is ahistorical) nor the second (its simple, not to say
simplistic, categories allow one to deal only with elementary traits, and that in
a totally static manner); the same can be said, on the whole, of the theories of
La Senne.*
A very different criticism applies, on the other hand, to the theories of
Murphy and Murray, two researchers who come in fact quite close to psycho-
analysis: their conceptions of the personality contain so many heterogeneous
elements and are so lacking in structural coherence that the historian will most
probably find them unusable in practice.
Our summary rejection of theories of the personality not based on psycho-
analysismust not be misunderstood, however; our purpose is to "do history,"
and according to our chosen criteria these theories do not lend themselves to
the work of the historian. That does not mean that they cannot be used on
occasion in an auxiliary way, or that they are in themselves unimportant: we
1
The Theoretical Framework 1
have shown the contrary to be true in the case of Sheldon (see note 5), and
could have done Ukewise for Murphy and Murray. In fact, psychohistorical
investigation must be constantly on the lookout for new explanations, whether
they occur in the field of psychological theory or in those of genetics or
neuropsychology.* Nevertheless, it would seem in the last analysis that only
the psychoanalytic (or psychoanalytically influenced) theories can furnish
psychohistory with an adequate general framework, for these theories are the
only ones that satisfy the criteria which/or r/ie historian are fundamental.
Psychoanalysis itself and the theories influenced by it also constitute a vast
domain whose limits, furthermore, are difficult to trace exactly. One finds
within the different variants of Freudian thought, the theories of Adler and of
it
Jung, the conceptions of existential psychologists such as Rollo May and

Binswanger, as well as— at the outer limit— existentiaHst theories that have
only one point in common with psychoanalysis: their name. Sartre's thought is
a case in point.
We ourselves have opted for Freudian thought in its broadest sense, for
subjective reasons no doubt and also because an absolute eclecticism would
give rise to total confusion. But even though, taken as a whole, the obscure and
often mystical character of Jung's notions makes them unappealing, and even
though an existential psychology like Sartre's, which rejects the notion of the
unconscious, seems unacceptable,'' a certain eclecticism will be nonetheless
—
necessary especially on the level of applied psychoanalysis as long as —
psychoanalytic theory proper remains lacunary and incomplete.
It has often been pointed out that the fundamental aim of history and that of
psychoanalysis are identical: to discover human motivations, whether in the

individual or in a group.* In fact, the process is similar in the two cases, for the
psychoanalytic method by its very essence, historical. The notions of

is,
"time," "development," and "memory" play a primary role in it. Is not the
fundamental principle of analytic therapy that one understands a patient by
gradually getting to know his past? It is impossible to separate psychoanalytic
theory from the "case history" and psychoanalytic concepts have, for the
most part, a temporal dimension: they seek to describe either the development
of a process or a crucial stage in human existence.'
For a historian, the situation and the interaction of events in time consti-
tute the very content of his discipline; for the psychoanalyst, the situation and
the interaction of events in the course of the evolution of the personality
through its various stages constitute the essential basis of his investigation.
For the one as for the other, the evolution of man is determined by the past. It
has often been noted how much Freud was fascinated by the weight of the past
in the evolution of the personality, by the unalterable impact of a memory
buried in the deepest unconscious: "Our hysterical patients suffer from
reminiscences. Freud italicized this passage, notes PhiHp Rieff, and he

. .
."
adds: "He intended the model of time to become of central importance to his
readers. The emphasis is all on reminiscence. History, the memory
of
existence in time, is the flaw. Neurosis is the failure to escape the past, the
burden of one's history. Neurotics 'cannot escape from the past' . .
.
Freud
was fascinated and horrified by the power of the past. The whole uniqueness of
man, the cause of his agony, his anxiety, is that man is a historical person, the
mask of his history."'"
The parallel between the aims and procedures of the historian and those of
the psychoanalyst was worth emphasizing; it seems superfluous, on the other
hand, to demonstrate here the vaUdity of our other two criteria: certainly no
reader is unaware that psychoanalysis represents a theory concerned with
extremely complex aspects of human motivation that are likely to interest the
and that it is a structurally coherent theory, whatever
historian, its conceptual
shortcomings may be .
If it is not difficult to justify the choice of psychoanalysis as a theory suited

to the historian, it must still be shown that the theory in question can claim a
convincing scientific status, or rather that it is capable of furnishing acceptable
explanations for the phenomena that belong to one would
its domain. No
suggest that psychoanalysis can arrive at the precision of physics or even of
econometrics; accepting that as a given, can we say that psychoanalytic
explanations are, despite their lacunae, the most satisfying psychological
interpretation we have of the most complex human behavior?
The controversies concerning the scientific status of psychoanalysis have

dogged Freudian doctrine since its beginnings, and the polemic remains to this
day extremely sharp. Critics have noted that Freud drew his conclusions
without having recourse to the most elementary criteria of empirical control.
For the philosopher of science Karl Popper, psychoanalytic theory is as
solidly grounded as Homer's mythology.'^ The mathematician and theorist of
science Anatol Rapoport, on the other hand, considers Freud's theory as the
richest of all the contributions to the science of human behavior.'^ In the face of
such starkly opposing judgments, can one hope to reach a few reasoned
conclusions?'"
Certain empirical arguments are frequently mentioned in discussions on
the subject. The controversy centers on the conclusions one can draw, as far as
the status of psychoanalysis is concerned, from the latter's therapeutic results,
from the validity of the clinical material, from psychoanalytic prediction, and
finally from the independent experimental confirmation of psychoanalytic
concepts and hypotheses.
Let us begin by considering the therapeutic criterion. Can it be proved that
psychoanalysis or techniques related to it have cured more neurotic or
psychotic patients than totally different methods? The survey conducted in
1952 by the British psychologist H. J. Eysenck, involving several thousand
patients, indicates that the number of cures obtained by psychoanalysis is no
greater than those obtained by other methods, or by no treatment at all.'' It is
true that, as Hilgard has noted, statistics on the order of Eysenck's are very
hard to interpret, for one would need to establish a consensus on the
seriousness of all the cases studied, as well as on what one means by "cure."'*
Despite Hilgard's arguments against Eysenck's approach or other research of
the same type, the latter serve at least to show that there is no convincing
Statistical proof establishing the superiority of psychoanalytic therapy over

other methods; this criterion does not, therefore, allow one to prove the
validity of psychoanalytic theory itself.'"'
As concerns the second criterion, how can one evaluate the confirmation of
the theory by means of the "clinical material" furnished by patients during the
treatment? The principal objection to such an attempt is obvious: the con-
flicting hypotheses of Freud, Jung, Adler, Homey, and Fromm all draw their
confirmations from the "material" brought by patients in treatment with a
therapist belonging to one of the schools in question. The explanation that
immediately comes to mind is that psychoanalysts unwittingly elicit from their
patients the proofs that will confirm their theory.'* More exactly, the analytic
situation perhaps provokes the reinforcement or the elimination of certain
responses by the patient, according to the best behaviorist tradition; the
correspondence between the therapist's theory and the clinical material would
thus be, in a sense, produced by means of suggestion."
The arguments used by psychoanalysts against the theory of suggestion are
not lacking; they maintain, notably, that when an interpretation is confirmed
by a convergence of various dynamic manifestations in the patient, one can
assume that it is objectively valid.^" In addition, it is argued, the evolution of
psychoanalytic theory has produced a considerable diversity of control
methods available to the analyst, thus excluding more and more the possibility
of tautological reasoning.^' Despite all this, however, and just as in the case of
the therapeutic criterion, one cannot accord an overriding importance to the
role of the clinical material.
The value of psychoanalysis as a method for predicting the development of
the personality— and especially of its neurotic characteristics— is equally
uncertain, and Meehl's comparative studies on the accuracy of clinical prog-
noses versus statistical prediction show that the latter have a slight edge over
the former." Here whole range of possible counterarguments exists."
too, a
But, once again, we do not have a decisive criterion for the verification of
psychoanalytic theories. That leaves only the fourth possibility: independent
experimental confirmation.
The reader will not be surprised to learn that, in this instance as in the
con-
previous ones, the results are not unequivocal. Certain psychoanalytic
experiments;
cepts and hypotheses have been confirmed by independent
contradicted by
others are not verifiable experimentally; still others seem to be
the experimental results." In reality, the question is whether a
system such as
terms and
that of psychoanalytic theory can be translated into behaviorist
it, both
tested by independent experimentation. One can very much doubt
not identifiable
because of the nature of psychoanalytic concepts, which are
because of the
with the observable facts of behavior and of experience, and
inherent complexity of the interactions in any specific case."
As Robert
Waelder has noted:
A middle-aged person may suffer from depressions.
We may approach this
viz., the idea that depres-
study with ideas gained in prescientific experience,
sions may hang together with severe frustrations
and disappomtments, and we
may look for them in this person's life. There may be many — in his marriage and
family life; disappointments with his children or with their attitude towards him;
disappointments in extramarital love relationships; a decrease of sexual prowess
or of attractiveness; illnesses or a general feeling of aging; disappointments in
work, career, or social recognition; or financial worries. All this may be com-
plicated by organic, perhaps involutionary processes. Then there are the factors
suggested by psychoanalytic theories that would have to be considered, such as,
e.g., the loss of an object, abnormal forms of object relationships in terms of
introjection and expulsion, loss of love from the superego, aggression turned
against oneself, or a feeling of discouragement, fatigue, and defeat. . . . Several
of these factors will probably be present in any one case, and many of them can
be found in people of the same age group without depressions. In our search for
the etiological importance of any one of these factors, or any other factor that
may be suggested, we are not able to isolate it, while keeping all others
unchanged, and so to study its consequences alone. We will always have many
more unknowns than we have equations, so to say, so that no conclusion can be
made without the exercise of judgment which may be considered arbitrary.^*
The range and importance of the conclusions one can draw from these various
empirical arguments appear very limited: the experimental criterion, as we
have just seen, is not really applicable to the situations with which psycho-
analysis deals; the therapeutic criterion is not considered significant even by
psychoanalysts; the ability to predict is as spotty in psychoanalysis as in the
other social sciences, due to the interaction of many different factors; finally,
the divergences in cUnical confirmations are no from the divergences
different
in interpretation that one finds in sociology, political science, or even in
economics and demography. The discussions concerning the logical frame-
work of psychoanalysis and the nature of its concepts seem, on the other hand,
to be more significant from the start.
— —
The logical and at first glance decisive argument directed against the
scientific nature of psychoanalytic theory and of its concepts was first formu-
lated by Karl R. Popper and has often been repeated since in a great many
different forms. The inherent weakness of psychoanalysis consists, according
to Popper, in the fact that its concepts allow one to justify any hypothesis
whatsoever, and that no event seems capable of refuting a single one of its
propositions: "Every 'good' scientific theory is one which forbids certain
things to happen; the more a theory forbids, the better it is."^''
Although it is cited everywhere in relation to psychoanalysis, this argument
is false on certain specific points and is logically flawed. As far as the specifics
are concerned, one can empirically define a whole series of psychoanalytic

concepts that obviously forbid certain things to happen. More generally, as
Abraham Kaplan has convincingly shown, Popper confuses "contrary" things
with "contradictory" ones. The contrary of black is white, but some objects
are neither black nor white; the "contradictory" of black is "non-black." If
psychoanalysis could in every instance prove both a fact and its "contra-
dictory," then its nonscientific character would be clear — but in reaHty the
nature of its reasoning only allows it occasionally to prove both a fact and its
"contrary"; that means that a third datum might prove both hypotheses false
in a given situation, and that precisely the criterion that Popper cites as the
is
sine qua non of a scientific theory. The attachment of a child to his mother, for
example, attests to the reality of the Oedipus complex; the manifest hatred of a
child toward his mother is sometimes explained as a reaction formation
against a love that the child feels for many reasons to be dangerous, and the
Oedipus complex is again confirmed. But these two contrary hypotheses do
not exclude a third possibility which would be total indifference, the absence
of any emotional relation of a child to his mother; this third situation would
disprove the theory of the Oedipus complex,^* or at least dispute its universal
character.
Kaplan's reply eliminates Popper's formal objection. As for the fact that
psychoanalytic theory sometimes permits the affirmation both of one thing
and its merely a reflection of certain obvious psychological
contrary, that is
realities: every reader of Dostoevsky knows that Rogozhin hated Prince
Myshkin but loved him too, and that every one of his actions could be inter-
preted as a sign of his love or of his hatred. We are no longer unaware of the
fact that most feelings are ambivalent. The question is whether we must blame
psychoanalysis for its lack of logic, or whether it is human behavior that is
loaded with paradoxes. In other words, which is the logic that must prevail?"
Granted all this, it is still true that psychoanalytic formulations are at times
so metaphorical and vague that it is a practical impossibility to decide whether
an explanation really follows from the theory or whether it is linked to the
theory only because someone made a haphazard association between one
element and another. ^'^ This lack of precision is only partly a result of the
nature of the phenomena being analyzed, and there is no doubt that an evolu-
tion of the theory in the direction of greater conceptual refinement is possible.
What are we to conclude?

The empirical arguments for or against the scientific status of psycho-
analysis are not decisive in either one sense or another, and, as we have seen,
their pertinence is in the last analysis quite limited. As for the logical argu-
ments of the opponents of psychoanalysis, they are refutable. It is undeniable,

however, that even the most farfetched and absurd theories can point to
"facts" that confirm them; and that a religious shrine may boast of as many
cures (if not more) as the couch of the psychoanalyst. For a strict
positivist,
and
there can be no difference, in logical terms, between psychoanalysis
any kind of religious belief.
So be it. What nevertheless leads us to adopt the psychoanalytic theories as

convic-
working hypotheses is a series of observations— or, if one likes, of
that an exclusively
tions. It seems to us, first of all, as it does to many others,
the explana-
experimental psychology is, and will be, necessarily restricted to
tion of only the simplest kinds of human behavior. We have
already alluded to
definition, the
the reason for this: the existential situation of man excludes, by
and significant psychological experimentation, except
possibility of controlled
in some very Hmited areas. But— and here is where
a second observation
experimen-
comes into play-as soon as one leaves the area of the strictest
tation, psychoanalysis alone allows one to explain
some extremely complex
fonns of behavior and to apprehend man "in situation," even while main-
taining an empirical basis accessible to observation. Furthermore, psycho-
analytic theory founded on a series of hypotheses and concepts that permit a
is
progression toward greater precision and rigor: the theory can evolve in the
light of new empirical observations." Finally, Freudian theory is applicable,
"as if were true.
it
We do not, and cannot, know whether all of the somewhat "mechanical"

system used by Freud to explain human behavior has an objective reality. The
relations between the ego and the id are not experimentally demonstrable, and
neither are sublimation or reaction formation. On this point at least, could
Karl Popper be right (at least for the sake of argument)? We are perhaps
dealing with a mythology — but with a mythology that functions as a valid
paradigm. Human beings behave "as if Freud's theories were on the whole
correct. The Freudian paradigm, whatever its objective validity, is to date —
the most complete explicative paradigm we have of human behavior, and, up
to the present, no important fact or clearly definable anomaly has challenged
it. Of all the arguments concerning Freudian theory, this one, it seems to me, is
the only really significant one, after the refutation of Popper's thesis that
psychoanalysis proved both a thing and its opposite.
These general remarks obviously concern the utilization of psychoanalysis
in history. A recourse to Freudian theories in this domain opens up per-
spectives, forces us to ask questions and gives rise to inquiries that, in them-
selves, considerably enlarge the "territory of the historian." (We shall return
to these themes later.)
At this point in our discussion, we must ask ourselves which branch of

Freudian thought most adaptable to psychohistorical investigation.
is the
Without undue hesitation, we can opt for what has been called, over the past
few years, the domain of "ego psychology." In the context of orthodox
—
Freudian thought, ego psychology" whose foundations were laid by Freud
himself as early as the 1920's —concerned with the vicissitudes of the
is less
instincts than with the adaptative and structuring function of the ego. This shift
in emphasis allows for the integration of most of the culturalist theses;
generally speaking, the attention it focuses on the mechanisms of interaction
between the ego and the surrounding reality and between the ego and others,
allows one to integrate the structure of the personality and the social structure
into a unified context. This kind of integration is a necessary condition for any
psychohistorical investigation that seeks to avoid an extreme reductionism.
The choice of ego psychology is justified by the needs of our object of study,
and is in no way indicative of a polemical position as regards the theoretical
validity or the therapeutic effectiveness of various contemporary Freudian
schools. Although the contribution of Jacques Lacan, for example, is of con-
siderable importance, I would argue that psychohistory requires other methods
of investigation.
On the other hand, let us recall that the historian can allow himself an
eclecticism that the therapist or the strict theoretician would doubtless reject:
7
thus, even though Jungian theory and existential psychoanalysis appear on the
whole unacceptable, each of them can shed light, for the historian, on
problems that Freudian theory has not, up to the present, been able to treat in a
satisfactory maimer.
Due to its own development in a relatively
uniform and stable social
context, Freudian theory is unable, for example, to explain the effect of
sudden upheavals in the environment on the adult personality, especially in
the case of extreme situations such as imprisonment, emigration, etc." Ego
psychology offers perhaps an adequate conceptual framework, but its applica-
tion remains, for the moment, doubtful. By looking at the problem from
another angle, existential psychoanalysis sheds light on this kind of situation.
A phenomenological observation of individual behavior makes clear the
fundamental need of every human being to safeguard his "self." But this is a
fact thatcarmot be explained in terms of narcissim or of ego ideal, nor even in
terms of Erikson's notion of identity, which relies too heavily on instinctual or
cultural components; it is a phenomenon that existential psychoanalysis
describes without attempting to reduce it to elements devoid of meaning. Now
one characteristic of extreme situations is precisely that the external circum-
stances tend to make the human being lose that feeUng of the integrity of his
"self — sometimes to such a point that the subject loses all sense of his
individual existence. We know that such psychic frustration can accelerate the
process of physical debilitation and lead to illness and death. The exis-
tentialist notions allow us to come close to a phenomenon from which the
analytical reasoning of Freudian theory might risk cutting us off.'"
The same is true of certain kinds of psychosis, notably of schizophrenia.

Applied to this kind of disturbance, Freudian psychoanalysis can appear too
schematic and seems at times to mask the abyssal fall into madness; existen-
tial Ludwig Binswanger, allows us— thanks to a
analysis, especially that of
phenomenological approach using very broad and polyvalent concepts— to
"feel" and to "understand" the case, both in its irreducible complexity and in
its poignant simplicity.'^

Freudian theory is equally inadequate in its approach to the psychic pro-
cesses that appear in the latter part of life, at a time when the adult, in our
Western context, has more or less resolved his material problems and begins
meaning of his existence— a search he undertakes with all the
to search for the
more anguish the closer he gets to the reality of death. In Erikson's schema
these last phases are not forgotten, but they remain empty spaces: \Chen
applied to the stages after adolescence, Erikson's thought loses all substance
and fails to be convincing. On the other hand, the second half of a man's life
was a subject that particularly interested Jung, and his "process of individuali-
zation" is not incompatible with Freudian psychoanalysis, especially not with
ego psychology.'^
It is the historian's task to contribute to the refinement of certain
psycho-
by contributing elements he finds in his own domain. He

analytic hypotheses
can also make use of his knowledge to answer certain questions on which
psychoanalysis remains astonishingly vague. But this qualified optimism does

not yet allow us — far from — to it! resolve the second major problem con-
fronting psychohistory: what are the foundations and the limits of psycho-
historical explanation?
Psychohistorical Explanation
Does psychohistorical research lead us to something other than the fantasies

provoked in the historian by what he is describing or interpreting? This is not a
discussion of the problem of the historian's subjectivity, for in the case of a
social or political historian, even if one allows for selectivity and subjectivity,
certain "objective" relations are evident in the field under study, relations that
are independent of personal interpretation: the relations between demography
and the economy in the French rural world of the seventeenth century, or
between the Dantzig question and the German attack on Poland in 1939, are
objective relations that have Uttle to do with the historian's subjectivity." In
psychohistory, the situation is different.
In order to understand the unconscious meaning of a phenomenon, the
historian can only proceed Uke a psychoanalyst: he must exclude nothing and
overlook nothing. A "floating attention" will allow him to be on the lookout for
the slightest detail until certain significant relations became apparent, which
are subsequently confirmed by a growing number of elements. This recep-
tivity of the observer, his opeimess to all the possible meanings of a text or an
event, necessarily implies a countertransference effect according to the model

of the actual analytic situation: the historical text or event will provoke some
more or less perceptible unconscious reactions in the historian himself. But
this fact itself can lead to two conclusions, which appear at first glance
contradictory.
One can conclude, in fact, that all "applied psychoanalysis" — and psycho-
history in particular — is but a more or less interesting testimony relating to the
unconscious tendencies of the observer, in this instance the historian. We
would have, in that case, a kind of closed system not unlike the philosophical
—
system of Bishop Berkeley. Indeed, is it not along these lines but in a wholly
positive way —
that Jacques Hassoun interprets Theodor Reik's writings on
Jewish religious rites? Hassoun writes: "The pleasure that Reik seeks to
communicate to us comes, therefore, from his allowing himself to let others
know what the practice of couvade, the puberty rites of primitives, the Kol
Nidre, or the Shofar were able to arouse as echoes in his own discourse,
recognized and provoked by that famiHar 'elsewhere.' "'* Presented in this
way, applied psychoanalysis refers to no reality other than the mind of the
observer himself.
For Alain Besanpon, on the other hand, "the fantasy induced in the psyche
of the historian is in a direct relation — one that can go as far as imitation or
duplication — with the one that underlies the reality being studied."" Thus, the
fantasy provoked in Michelet by the contemplation of Valentine de Birague's
9
tomb "was [probably] never consciously formulated by anyone in the 1 6th

century, but the fact that it appeared in Michelet's mind shows that it existed
unconsciously, combined with an infinite number of others that might re-
appear, if the occasion presented itself, in the framework of a fantasy system
other than Michelet's. We are therefore led to suppose that every man
possesses, in virtuality, a complete register of the imagination, and that it is
this which allows him to establish with the imagination of others a communi-
cation operating through the correspondence of fantasy to fantasy."'"'
In reaUty, there is no difference between Alain BesanQon's position and that
of Hassoun; one adopts Besanpon's thesis, then Reik's way of interpreting
if
the Kol Nidre, for example, corresponds to one of the fantasies provoked
by that prayer in the distant past when it was first formulated. Conse-
quently, Reik's interpretation uncovers for us certain aspects of an uncon-
scious objective reality, as would any other interpretation. This relativism
of psychohistorical interpretation risks putting its very foundation into
question. Granted that the tomb of Valentine de Birague provoked certain
fantasies in the historian Michelet; these fantasies throw light on Michelet,
not on the 16th century. But then, how are we to grasp certain uncon-
scious problems of French society in the 16th century? Not by using
countertransference fantasies as our guide, but by attempting to place them
between parentheses.*^ We must pay careful attention to the signs transmitted
by the individual, the society or the culture we are observing, under the
assumption that these signs have a decipherable meaning, subject, in an
absolute sense, to innumerable variations, but whose specific sense can be
objectively understood if they are replaced in their precise historical context.
There are as many different versions of Oedipus as there are individuals;
everyone goes through this decisive phase of his evolution in his own way, and
regardless of the nature of the countertransference, it is this idiosyncratic
experience, as it was lived, that the analyst must discover.

Another question: are the psychic processes identified by the psycho-
analyst invariable, not only from one culture to another but from one period to
another— in the midst of what can be called a single culture? Here we are
confronted with the famous debate that theoretically divides the orthodox
Freudians and the neo-Freudians.
In the beginning, the "orthodox" Freudians emphasized the universal and
determined character (as far as the development of the personality was con-
cerned) of the instinctual traits in human beings and of certain stages in their
evolution, as well as of certain psychic conflicts from which no one was
exempt; the neo-Freudians or "culturalists," on the other hand, affirmed the
relativity of unconscious psychic formations and of the modes of
individual
development, according to the form and orientation of various human cultures.

Today, this debate is at least in part outdated: few psychoanalysts, no
matter how orthodox, would deny the crucial influence of sociocultural factors
on the elaboration of the family practices development of
that determine the
the child as he goes through the stages of instinctual maturation. The

orthodox
and the culturalist theses have been brought closer together as a result both of
psychoanalytic practice and of a double scientific evolution: on the one hand,

the emphasis placed in contemporary anthropology on certain characteristics
common to all human beings, as opposed to the cultural differences that were
emphasized during the preceding decades;"*^ on the other hand, the acceptance
by "orthodox" psychoanalysts of more abstract and more polysemic —
formulations of certain basic concepts such as the Oedipus complex/^
Finally, the development of ego psychology reinforces even more the points of
convergence between Freudian "orthodoxy" and its one-time opponents, the
culturalists. The differences between the two camps have not entirely dis-
appeared, but henceforth certain syntheses are possible; indeed, they are
essential for the psychohistorical investigation of collective phenomena, for
they make possible, in the study of what we designate as homogeneous groups,
the utilization of a schema that establishes a direct relation between culture
and personality, while at the same time preserving what is essential from a
—
Freudian point of view namely, the existence of developmental stages and
instinctual conflicts that are universally valid. These stages are lived through
in different ways, according to the influence of a given social structure or
cultural milieu.
These remarks allow one to envisage the possibility of psychohistorical
explanations based on general psychic elements that can ostensibly be found,
in various forms, in all cultures and all periods. But the road is long from the
principle to its concrete application. In fact, cultural variations in relation to
the theoretical or abstract norm are little known to the historian.
In his famous study of the mores of the Trobrianders, Bronislaw Malinowski
discovered a definite variation on the Oedipal constellation that Freud had
found in Western societies: according to Malinowski, the biological father
plays an effaced role in the Trobriander family; since it is the maternal uncle
who plays the central m.ale role, it istoward him that the emotional ambi-
valence of the Trobriander child is directed."" Nevertheless, despite the sound
and fury aroused by the controversies on the subject, there is not the slightest
doubt that Malinowski's findings do not put into question the universality of
the Oedipus complex as such, but only the universality of the specific Oedipal
relations that exist in the Western family. A broader definition of the ternary
structure that characterizes the Oedipal situation allows one to include the
Trobriander phenomenon as a possible variation on a fundamentally stable
type of relationship. But in order to arrive at this conclusion, one must know
the meaning of the Oedipal problem from a theoretical point of view, be
familiar with its manifestations in the West and with its "deviant" mani-
festations among the Trobrianders.
Posed in these terms, the problem does not exclude the psychohistorical
study of societies far removed from ours, on condition that the mores and
be known in sufficient detail; that way, one can
institutions of these societies
be in a position to discover "deviations" such as the one we have just
mentioned.
Finally, however, the problem of psychohistorical explanation as such can
be formulated as follows: how can one make sure that the psychohistorian
1
does not end up by explaining anything and everything— thanks to concepts

that are sometimes vague and polyvalent, and despite the apparent impossi-
bilityof identifying with certainty the nature of unconscious processes outside
the therapeutic frame v^ôrk— in terms of a code that is wholly arbitrary?
Psychohistorical explanation is constantly exposed to the danger of the
double "as Let us consider the classic example, the paradigm of psycho-
if."
historical explanation (without taking into account, for now, the factual errors
that have been discovered in it, nor the specific problems of psychoanalytic
biography): Freud's essay "Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His
Childhood. ""5
Simply summarized, Freud's hypothesis consists of two distinct yet inter-
related propositions: as an illegitimate child raised without a father during the
first years of his life, Leonardo was coddled by a mother on whom all of his
precocious sexuality would be fixated; the result was a passive homosexuality,

but also various inliibitions in his artistic career. On the other hand, his
scientific curiosity could develop unhampered, since as a child he was never
exposed to the repressive rigor of paternal authority.
We need not linger over the remarks concerning Leonardo's inhibitions in
the domain of painting, remarks based on the observation that some of his
paintings remained unfinished. The same was true of many other masters of
the period.'** But how about the relation between the fixation on the mother
and homosexuality, or between the absence of the father and Leonardo's
adventurousness in the most varied kinds of research? On these two points,
psychohistorical explanation proceeds in two complementary stages: ( 1 ) the
formulation of a general principle, in this instance the relation between a
fixation on the mother and homosexuality, or between the absence of the
father and the development of scientific curiosity; 2) the apphcation of these
general principles to the particular case of Leonardo da Vinci. This manner of
proceeding is characteristic of all scientific explanation, but in the case of
psychohistory we up against a double approximation: the
find ourselves
general rule is often neither clear nor certain, and furthermore the historian
lacks the means that would allow him to affirm that the known elements of the
particular case coincide exactly with the necessary conditions of the general
rule.
That the general rule is often not certain is demonstrated by Freud's second
hypothesis: no clinical experience has confirmed the relation established by
Freud between the absence of paternal authority and intellectual audacity. On
the other hand, one could argue, the first hypothesis is amply confirmed by
cUnical experience: the relation between homosexuality and fixation on the
mother has often been noted. That is true, but formulated in this way, the
not sufficiently clear. First of all, this type of fixation
is
general rule is
that one can
qualitative and it is only through the analysis of a concrete case
of
decide whether the fixation was powerful enough to prevent any possibility
question.
heterosexual ties; one therefore runs a strong risk of begging the
is generally admitted that it is
at the stage of the
Secondly and above all, it
disruptive
resolution of the Oedipal conflict that such a fixation can have a
effect. In Leonardo's case, however, the story of his early y ârs is extremely
vague. We know mother between the ages of three and five
that he left his
years and went to live with his father (remarried in the meantime), who in a
sense readopted him. In all probability, therefore, he entered on the Oedipal
stage far from his mother, in a new family environment. One may well suppose
that the attachment to the lostmother was more intense than the attachment to
a mother who was present would have been, but that is only a conjecture. In
fact, in a case such as this one only the clinical context could furnish the
necessary details; and we are far from that. The indeterminacy of the
particular context is thus added to the imprecision of the general rule, whence
the existence of a double "as if."
Having arrived at this point in the discussion, the historian may decide to
go no further. And yet, the difficulties are surmountable both through a —
growing precision in the formulation of psychoanalytic hypotheses and
through the elaboration of criteria that would endow with greater validity the
application of the general rule to the particular context. The margin of
indeterminacy would persist, but it would perhaps be possible to reduce it to
acceptable proportions.
Four principal criteria seem to be necessary:
First, the criterion oi convergence, which is one of the fundamental criteria
of any scientific explanation. As Kaplan writes: "What counts in the valida-
tion of a theory, so far as fitting the facts is concerned, is the convergence of
."'*''
the data brought to bear upon it, the concatenation of the evidence. . .
This criterion obviously implies, in psychohistory, the principle of docu-

mentary noncontradiction, or more exactly of a convincing degree of non-
contradiction (on this latter point, only the intuitive judgment of the historian
can provide an answer); it also corresponds to a fundamental psychoanalytic
notion, that oi overdetermination.
Overdetermination, according to the authors of The Language of Psycho-
analysis, means that "formations of the unconscious (symptoms, dreams,
etc.)can be attributed to a plurality of determining factors. This can be
understood in two different ways: a) The formation in question is the result of
several causes, since one alone is not sufficient to account for it; b) The
formation is related to a multiplicity of unconscious elements which may be
organized meaningful sequences, each having its own specific
in different
coherence at a particular level of interpretation. This second reading is the

most generally accepted one.""**
For the psychohistorian, the concept of overdetermination is essential:
"Overdetermination does not mean," write Laplanche and Pontalis. "that the
dream or symptom may be interpreted in an infinite number of ways. Freud
compares dreams to certain languages of antiquity in which words and
sentences appear to have various possible interpretations: in such languages
ambiguity is dispelled by the context, by intonation or by extra signs. Nor . . .
does overdetermination imply the independence or the parallelism of the

different meanings of a single phenomenon. The various chains of meanings
intersect at more than one 'nodal point,' as is borne out by the associations; the
symptom bears the traces of the interaction of the diverse meanings out of
which it produces a compromise. '""
Weare clearly dealing here with a concept familiar to the historian: from
his point of view, the outbreak of the World War in August 1914 is an over-
determined phenomenon, the end point of various causal series, each of which
unfolds at its own level but not independently of the others. The causal
sequence constituted by the economic factors of the war is not independent of
the one formed by the arms race or even by the rise of nationalisms. Their
points of intersection are identifiable.
This additional parallelism between history and psychoanalysis gives the
criterion of convergence a privileged position in the verification of psycho-
historical explanations; it forms in a sense the basis of verification.
The second criterion is not unrelated to the first, even though it derives
essentially from psychoanalytic theory itself. (This fact does not make our
argument tautological, for we are supposing that the fundamental notions of
psychoanalysis are generally accepted and can consequently be used to
support certain verification criteria of psychohistorical explanation.) Clinical
experience shows that ultimately there are only a limited number of plausible
forms, or Gestalten, which can account in a coherent manner for the manifest
elements of a given individual or collective behavior, for the unconscious
impulses behind it, and, sometimes, for the identifiable facts or fantasies from
which it originates.
For certain psychoanalysts, the manifestation of a formal pattern, in which
all the elements of a case fall into place like the pieces of a puzzle, represents
in itself a definitive proof of the only correct solution. ^^ Some have even
chosen this single criterion as a basis on which to found the possibility of the
application of psychoanalytic theories to history: a particular structure of
manifest data and their repetition, be it on the individual or collective level, is
taken to indicate the underlying unconscious constellation, thus allowing for a

precise psychohistorical explanation.*'
Now the fact is, as we shall see when we discuss the problem of psycho-
analytic biography, that a single plausiblepattern exists only very rarely. It is,
however, true that the number of coherent explanatory structures in a
particular case is always limited, and this limitation is in itself a verification
criterion from the psychohistorical point of view.

Let me cite a concrete example ofGestalt in the sense in which I am using it
here. In this instance it is perhaps even possible to speak of a single pattern: I
am referring to the case of Woodrow Wilson as it was analyzed by Alexander
and Juliette George."
We
need not consider here the characteristics of Wilson's behavior in his
"search for power." Once he acquired power, on the other hand, whether as
president of Princeton, as governor of New York State or as president of
the
United States, he repeated, after a certain time, the identical pattern of self-
destructive behavior: as soon as he encountered opposition on a subject
that
seemed to him important, he became rigid, lost all capacity for negotiation,
endowed his own action with the character of a moral crusade and refused, in
the name of absolute principles, any compromise with the enemy, which he
soon identified with a specific individual. A strategy of flexibility and com-
promise would have allowed Wilson to get out of the impasse and eventually
achieve his aims, but he insisted on maintaining his aggressive intransigence,
wishing for only one thing: the absolute submission of his enemies. He ended
up by guaranteeing his own defeat and provoking the ruin of his ambitions.
This pattern of repetitive behavior was so clear that even Wilson's "tradi-
tional" biographers noticed it; Arthur S. Link, for example, who is the most
eminent contemporary specialist in this field, writes about Wilson's attitude
while he was president of Princeton:
The years of the Princeton presidency were among the most important in
Wilson's life. The Princeton period was the microcosm of a later macrocosm,
and a political observer,had he studied carefully Wilson's career as president of
Princeton University, might have forecast accurately the shape of things to come
during the period when Wilson was president of the United States. What striking
similarities there are between the Princeton and national periods! During the
first years of both administrations, Wilson drove forward with terrific energy and
momentum to carry through a magnificent reform program, and his accomplish-

ments both at Princeton and Washington were great and enduring. Yet in both
cases he drove so hard, so flatly refiased to delegate authority, and broke with so
many friends that when the inevitable reaction set in he was unable to cope with
the situation. His refusal to compromise in the graduate school controversy was
almost Princeton's undoing; his refusal to compromise in the fight in the Senate
over the League of Nations was the nation's undoing. Both controversies assume
the character and proportions of a Greek tragedy. ."
. .
A repetitive structure of behavior like the one we have been discussing clearly
indicates an unconscious ambivalence toward the exercise of power: on the
one hand, a practically limitless thirst for power, refusing the slightest con-
cession that might appear as a limitation of power; on the other hand, a self-
destructive attitude that lays bare the presence of strong guilt feelings as far as
the possession of power is concerned — feelings that can only result in ruin (my
own interpretation here is slightly different from the one proposed by the
Georges). An interpretation of this kind is itself supported by certain con-
spicuous facts in the development of Wilson's personality, notably by the
nature of his feelings toward his father: respect, devotion and unlimited love
on the surface, but also, no doubt, a repressed hostility toward a man who,
more than once during the crucial years of childhood, humiliated the future
president.
The facts concerning Wilson's childhood are, in this instance, merely a
supporting hypothesis, and we will have occasion later to see just how
uncertain the biographical reconstruction is. The important thing is the con-
vincing nature of the repetitive form of behavior that is observed, and, from the
point of view of psychoanalytic theory, the practically obligatory character of
the explanation that comes to mind.^"*
It is in relation to the third criterion, that of comparability, that the
preceding criterion takes on a new dimension: when, in an individual, a para-

doxical attitude toward others manifests itself in the same form at different
periods in his life, as is the case with Wilson, this Gestalt suggests the
existence of an unconscious psychic constellation that psychoanalytic theory
allows us to identify. But this criterion will take on added significance if the
historian observes a manifestation of the same form
whole category of in a
personalities linked to each other by other univocal common denominators
(revolutionary personalities, religious reformers, etc.). This double compari-
son can be considered as a practically empirical demonstration of the validity
of the proposed explanation; in effect, if for a single personality the possi-
bilities of comparison are limited, they are less so in a larger category, and one
can always consider an additional case that will confirm (or weaken) the
hypothesis.
The three criteria we have enumerated so far pertain either to the exhaustive
study of a single case or to the comparative method, both of which are methods
that the historian practices frequently and almost exclusively, and which the
specialist in the "hard" social sciences will not reject either. The fourth
criterion allows us to establish an even closer link with the current metho-
dology of the social sciences: it is the criterion oi quantitative analysis, which
allows one to confirm psychohistorical hypotheses with the help of statistical
analyses whose conceptual framework is more or less independent of psycho-
analytic theory. This type of verification not always possible or significant,
is
and it requires in any case a separate investigation, one that is extremely

precise and detailed. It can be applied to biographical studies as well as to the
study of collective phenomena; one can use the content analysis that Alfred
,- or have
Baldwin was among the first to apply to the study of personality
recourse to Schneidman's recent work on the logical idiosyncrasies present in
all individual speech; finally, one can take as a model McClelland's
statistical
studies of certain collective motivations. It is the quantitative method as such

that matters in this instance, rather than certain of its technical aspects,
which
are subject to change.^*
diverse verification criteria of psychohistorical explanation apply
to
The
both
biographical studies as well as to the analysis of collective phenomena; in
cases, one must look for the convergence of proofs, for significant structures,
and
for comparability and for quantitative confirmation. But even an integral
margin of
simultaneous application of these four criteria leaves a greater
indeterminacy than the one confronting the traditional historian.
There has been a great deal of discussion about the problematic and
sub-
jective nature of historical explanation in general, but there is

no historian (and
not including the philosophers of history) who is
here I am unaware that, in
links"
most fields of history, the discovery of new facts or of "missing
of a phenome-
gradually leads to a more precise understanding of the causes
non, whether it be the fall of the Roman Empire, the Puritan revolution or the
First World War. Our understanding of the fall of the Roman Empire is
valid interpre-
different from Gibbon's, but it is not a question of two equally
tations: today we are better informed than Gibbon was.
Now this cumulative
process, this narrowing of the margin of error, will less easily find a place in
psychohistory, even if psychoanalytic concepts are made more precise and the
theory is further refined; for research concerning unconscious processes,
whether individual or collective, outside a clinical context, can never by —
definition —
be anything but indirect. Typological comparisons and statistical
investigations may indicate various plausible correlations, but the explana-
tion of these correlations will still not be definitely established. Thus, para-
doxically, to a greater extent than the other kinds of historical investigation,
psychohistory will have not only to make systematic use of Erkldren —
explanation as it is envisaged in the social sciences — but will also, and
simultaneously, have to continue relying on Verstehen — intuitive compre-
hension. To repeat what we have said before: by itself, intuitive compre-
hension can lead to absurdities; combined with explanation, it is not only
justifiable, but is essential in a domain such as this one.
The Document
For the psychohistorian, a document whatever reveals the psychic pro-

is
cesses of the individual or group under study. That is a broad definition, but
one that traditional historians would doubtless not reject. It was Henri Marrou
who wrote any source of information that the historian can use in order to
that
know the past represents a document; consequently, a restrictive definition of
the historical document is impossible." A conception so broad, matched by
the method of psychoanalysis itself, which seeks a meaning in the most
massive symptoms as well as in the slightest word or deed, should, at least in
principle, make psychohistory an excessively rich domain, teeming with
possibilities.
But the between excessive richness and confusion is a narrow one,
line
especially if one takes account of a fact emphasized by Alphonse Dupront

namely, that psychoanalytic history, like psychoanalysis, is as interested in
what is not said as in what is said, in what is not done as in what is done. What
Dupront says about history in general is true above all of psychohistory: "We
now know that silence itself speaks, if to no other efTect than to make us aware
of what has been destroyed and thus to oblige us to diversify our approaches in
order to attain the lived reality of a period."** The meaning of a text's silence,
or of an individual's or group's inertia, can only be judged in relation to certain
words or certain actions whose obviousness and necessity strike us only after-
ward. But how much place that leaves for purely subjective interpretation!
We must also note the opposite difficulty: in biography as in the study of
collective phenomena, a crucial piece of documentary evidence is often
missing, concerning the childhood of the individual or a particular kind of
family life, or else the mothering and child-raising practices of a whole group.
Biographers fall prey to the temptations of generalization and analogy, and as
Dominique Fernandez has noted, their interpretation is speedily reduced to an
art of conjecture. *' One can cite, in this context — even if it belongs only
.

marginally to the domain of psychobiography— Sartre's attempt at a purely
imaginary reconstruction in his biography of Flaubert, due to a lack of
documents concerning the young Gustave's family life.^" Above all,
sufficient
one can cite the "model" psychobiography, with its arbitrary inferences
founded on manifestly insufficient documentation. In his study of the young
Luther, Erikson literally invents Httle Martin's relation to his mother, using as
a basis (as a "document") the behavior of Luther the man. Erikson writes:
has been surmised that [Luther's] mother suffered under the father's per-
It
sonality, and gradually became embittered; and there is also a suggestion that a
certain sad isolation which characterized young Luther was to be found also in
his mother, who is said to have sung to him a ditty: "For me and you nobody
cares. That is our common fault."
A big gap exists here, which only conjecture could fill. But instead of
conjecturing half-heartedly, I will state, as a clinician's judgment, that nobody
could speak and sing as Luther did if his mother's voice had not sung to him of
some heaven; that nobody could be as torn between his masculine and feminine
sides, nor have such a range of both, who did not at one time feel that he was like
his mother; but also, that nobody could discuss women and marriage in the way
he often did who had not been deeply disappointed by his mother — and had
become loath to succumb the way she did to the father, to fate. And if the soul is
man's most bisexual part, there we will be prepared to find in Luther both some
horror of mystic succumbing and some spiritual search for it, and to recognize in
this alternative some emotional and spiritual derivative of little Martin's "pre-
historic" relation to his mother.*'
This enough to make the most well-disposed historian shudder.

is . .
Erikson, one could argue, merely reconstructed a possible Gestalt on the

basis of elements available to him, and the example in question shows the
weakness of the verification criteria of psychohistorical explanation. In fact,
that is not the case. Erikson does not interpret a repetitive behavior on young
Luther's part in terms of an unconscious dynamic; he jumps from a presumed
characteristic of the Reformer to the inferential reconstruction of essential
data about the latter's family environment. We have here, instead of the
legitimate confirmation of an outline whose essential shape is already traced,
the creation of a quasi-arbitrary drawing. The virtuosity of the artist does not
make the proceeding more acceptable.
If the absence or the paucity of documents is, in the last analysis, only a
practical problem which at the very worst can force the historian to abandon
his project, the ambiguity and polysemy of documents that do exist is. on the
contrary, a complex problem inherent to psychohistory. Admittedly, even
political texts, economic statistics, and workers' demands are subject to the
most diverse interpretations; what are we then to say of a myth, a dream, an
acte manque, a convulsion or some other crisis in behavior, whether on the
individual or the collective level? What we to say of a fantasy? Let us take
are
as an example a famous passage in Dostoevsky— Raskolnikov's dream in
Crime and Punishment, in which the novel's hero sees himself as a child
watching a drunken muzhik torture and finally kill a mare by forcing her to
pull an overloaded cart. The mare is not able to go forward, the muzhik whips
her all the harder: he whips her on the eyes, then exchanges the whip for a
wooden shaft and the shaft for an iron crowbar, with which he finally finishes
off" the animal.*^

For an interpretation of Dostoevsky's work and personality, Raskohiikov's
dream seems to have a crucial importance. In A Writer's Diary, Dostoevsky
recalls having witnessed, at the age of fifteen, a somewhat similar scene on the
road to St. Petersburg: a drunken ministerial courier struck his coachman, and
the coachman took vengeance on the animal.
This disgusting scene [writes Dostoevsky] has remained in my memory all my

life. Never was I able to forget it, or that courier, and many an infamous and
cruel thing observed in the Russian people, willy-nilly, I was inclined for a long
time thereafter to explain obviously in a too one-sided sense. . . . This little scene
appeared to me, so to speak, as an emblem, as something which very graphically
demonstrated the link between cause and effect. Here every blow dealt at the
animal leaped out of each blow dealt at the man. In the late Forties, during the
period of my most unrestrained and fervent dreams, it suddenly occurred to me
that should I ever happen to found a philanthropic society, I would by all means
engrave this courier's troika on the seal of the society, as an emblem and warning
sign.*'
May we then interpret Raskolnikov's dream as a kind of summary of the way

Dostoevsky perceives Russian society in its entirety? Certainly, but this text
can also be the expression of deeper obsessions. Thus, again in the Writer's
Diary, Dostoevsky reports the same scene with a slight modification, but that
modification is crucially significant. In Raskolnikov's dream, three figures
give the scene its whole meaning: the drunken muzhik, the nag, and the
terrified child looking on. In the other scene, Dostoevsky replaces the mare by
the muzhik's wife, retaining the other elements unchanged:
He muzhik] is getting excited; he begins to savor the thing. Presently he

[the
becomes wild and this he realizes with pleasure. The animal shrieks of the
woman go to his head as liquor. ... At length she grows quiet; she shrieks no
longer; now she merely groans wildly. Suddenly, he throws away the strap;
. . .
like a madman, he seizes a stick, a bough, anything, and breaks it over her back
with three last, terrific blows.— No more. . . .The little girl . . . trembling on the
oven in the comer tries to hide: she hears her mother shrieking."
Here Dostoevsky recounts an event that really took place and which he
again,
read about in the newspapers, for the muzhik's wife hanged herself. But the
details of this scene and those of Raskolnikov's dream are practically identi-
cal: the use of the whip, then of the piece of wood, the terror of the child. One is
tempted to seek, beneath the social meaning of this description, a more

personal meaning, or perhaps an even deeper link to identical themes in
dreams described by other Russian writers, thus moving from unconscious
individual structures toward certain fundamental themes of a collective
unconscious. This latter transposition is precisely what Alain BesanQon
accompHshes in his excellent essay, "The Function of Dreams in the Russian
Novel.""
As for the personalmeaning of this scene, it seems evident by its obvious
sexual symboHsm, by what we know of Dostoevsky's hatred of his father— the
man the muzhiks called "the wild beast," and whom they eventually mur-
—
dered and by the circumstances of the child Fiodor's first epileptic seizure:
"We know that when he was seven years old," writes Dominique Arban,
"Fedia was woken up one night by cries and shouting, and ran to his parents'
room. What spectacle met his eyes? He fell down, unconscious. We know no
more about it, but isn't that sufficient?""
The interpretation of Raskolnikov's dream is thus fraught with uncer-
tainty.*^ But perhaps we are dealing here with an example of the process of
overdetermination. In effect, the basic personal conflicts of the writer, his way
of experiencing a problematic Russian reality, as well as the reactions that
these attitudes provoked in the face of more immediate social problems, all
seem to be imbricated dream. Understood in this way and submitted to
in this
a much —
more detailed exegesis notably by comparing it to other dreams
described in Dostoevsky's novels — such a document, however imprecise its
meaning appears at first, could become a key piece of evidence for the under-
standing of the writer and of the fundamental themes of his work.
Paradigms of Psychohistory
There is no such thing as one generally accepted paradigm for the application
of psychoanalytic theory to historical research. If, as far as biography is
concerned, a generally acceptable model can be easily formulated, the study

of collective behavior presents immediate difficulties. On this level, the "re-
ductionist" paradigm used by Freud himself and by numerous psychoanalysts
after him is unacceptable. We shall briefly discuss its shortcomings and then
present three partial schemata, each of which is applicable only to some of the
phenomena that interest the psychohistorian: the paradigm of psychoanalytic
structuralism, the paradigm of culture and personality, and the paradigm of the
internalization of social norms.
One can framework of psychobiography— in other words,
infer the general
the application of psychoanalytic concepts to biography— from the basic
hypotheses of psychoanalysis: on the one hand, every personality forms a
whole whose elements are linked to each other, and the observation of one
aspect of the personality leads the way to an understanding of the dynamics of
the whole; on the other hand, the individual speaks a series of languages (the
language of words, that of nonverbal behavior, that of somatic reactions, etc.)

whose manifest content masks a latent content. The manifest content of these
of the
languages generally provides enough perceptible indices to inform us
As for this latent content, it is in large part
nature of the latent content.
determined both by the typical and the idiosyncratic development of the

individual, especially by the unconscious intrapsychic conflicts that charac-
terized that development. The aim of the biographer, like that of the therapist,
is to discover — when such an investigation is possible — the key to the latent
content of the various languages, by relating the manifest elements to each
other and by studying the knowable aspects of the individual's evolution.
The therapeutic context is not essential to the decoding of the manifest
content of an individual language. The historian, working at a distance — on
defunct beings — can obviously not count on the verification of his hypotheses
through the analytic dialogue, but he has other advantages that the analyst
lacks: an overview of the subject's life, the availability of testimony by
others,** as well as, possibly, the content analysis of texts or other quantitative
means of verification.
The simpUcity of the psychobiographical model should not mislead us,
however; we shall see in the next chapter how difficult and uncertain its
concrete application can be.
one wishes to apply psychoanalysis to the historical investigation of

If
collective behavior, one must first of all reject the Durkheimian argument ac-
cording to which social behavior is exclusively the province of sociology. The
opposition thus established, although it must be mentioned, is hardly con-
vincing. In fact, when in his Durkheim sought to demonstrate
study of suicide
the uselessness of a recourse to psychology, he was not able, without that
very psychology, to explain his sociological diagnosis.*' And how are we to
explain without psychology the relation between a Calvinist upbringing and a
high degree of individual aggressivity, or between the system of the concen-
tration camps and the victims' imitation of their tormentors, or again between
a slave society and the infantile behavior of slaves? How can we explain
without psychology the relation between the social structure of the Third
Reich and the "final solution"?
The strict Durkheimian tradition was never followed (and for good reason)
by Durkheim himself. According to Marcel Mauss, Durkheim was "always
ready to accept the progress of psychology;" Mauss notes, furthermore, that in
Suicide Durkheim was forced to refer to the rudimentary notions of "sthenia
and asthenia, courage and weakness in the face of life."'"' For Marcel Mauss
himself, a recourse to psychology in the explanation of "facts of collective
consciousness" was essential;^' but how can one dissociate the facts of
collective behavior from Claude Levi-Strauss''- em-
facts of consciousness?
phasizes this tendency in the thought of his teacher, and although he himself
reacts against the excessive psychologizing of a certain kind of American
social anthropology, he nevertheless recognizes the necessary complemen-
tarity of the two disciplines.
Turning to the domain of "pure" sociology, one notes that Talcott Parsons
is attempting to discover the connections between social structure and the
structure of the personality;" one also notes that Neal Smelser, after having
1
been tempted by the purely sociological explanation of collective behavior,''*

is becoming one of the most convincing theoreticians arguing for the
necessity
of integrating sociology and psychology in order to arrive at a satisfactory
explanation of the behavior of human groups." "An adequate psychological
theory is not possible unless it is, at the same time, social; and an adequate
social theory is not possible unless it is, at the same time, psychological,"
writes Smelser.''^* Now
Parsons and for Smelser (and also for Mauss,
for
considering the time when he was writing), the term "psychology" refers not to
some vague discipline, but, quite clearly, to psychoanalysis. What sociology is
tending to admit in this domain, the historian must also, a fort ion, admit: no
historical explanation of collective behavior is possible, unless history assimil-
ates psychology.
Having said this, we must still ask what model of appHcation we can use.
The situation here is not as clear as in the case of biography. We may mention,
first of all, Freud's own way of proceeding, which we shall call "reductionist,"
using that term in its etymological sense rather than in a pejorative sense.
Reduced to its simplest expression," Freud's analysis implies the direct trans-
position to the collective level of mechanisms observed on the individual level,
as well as the hypothesis, implicit or explicit, that these mechanisms allow one
to explain the behavior of the group as of the individual, without the necessity
of distinguishing between different levels of analysis. Freud is quite clear on
"No one can have failed to observe," he writes at the end of Totem
this point:
and Taboo, "that I have taken as the basis of my whole position the existence
of a collective mind, in which mental processes occur just as they do in the
mind of an individual."''* More emphatically and more specifically, he writes
in Moses and Monotheism: "Early trauma defence— latency — — outbreak of

neurotic illness — partial return of the repressed. Such is the formula which we
have laid down for the development of a neurosis. The reader is now invited to
take the step of supposing that something occurred in the life of the human
species similar to what occurs in the life of individuals: of supposing, that is,
that here too events occurred of a sexually aggressive nature, which left behind
them permanent consequences but were for the most part fended off and for-
gotten, and which after a long latency came into effect and created phenomena
similar to symptoms in their structure and purpose."'" The same sweeping
transposition occurs in The Future of an Illusion, where religion is identified
as a collective obsessional neurosis,*'' and in Civilization and Its Discontents,
where sublimation seems to function on the level of humanity as a whole
according to the same rules one can discern on the individual level.
Freud arrives at this type of transposition by means of an inductive reason-
ing oriented toward the observation of individual phenomena. He reaches the
conclusion that certain aspects of individual behavior can be explained by the
hereditary effect of an ineradicable collective experience, whence the possi-
bility of going from one level to another, from the collective to the
individual
and vice versa: "The behaviour of neurotic children towards their parents
in
he writes,
the Oedipus and castration complexes abounds in such reactions,"
"which seem unjustified in the individual case and only become intelligible
phylogenetically — by their connection with the experience of earlier genera-

tions."*' Phylogenesis thus determines and explains ontogenesis.
As we know, this conception implies the hypothesis of an actual traumatic
event occurring in the archaic past (the murder of the father of the primitive
horde by his sons united against him) and the hereditary transmission of
—
acquired characteristics a kind of unconscious biological memory of the
human species.
Weneed not repeat here the quasi-unanimous objections that have been
raised against these hypotheses. Many psychoanalysts reject these hypo-
theses as well, for they are superfluous. It has been pointed out, for example,
that the transmission of unconscious psychic material from generation to
generation is conceivable without the necessity of postulating a biological
memory, given the effect of a whole array of sociocultural institutions, whose
possibilities include much more than the oral tradition mentioned by Freud.*^
As for the intensity of the Oedipal and of the castration complex,
hostility
which has often been demonstrated clinically and which is often inexplicable
in terms of the objective relations between father and son, one can suggest that
the beginnings of sexual maturation in the child, the intensity of his un-
conscious incestuous desires and the obvious difference in strength between
father and son, are in themselves sufficient to account for it on the ontogenetic
level. The explanation becomes even more convincing if one accepts the
theory according to which the child's fear of castration is but the projection of
his desire to castrate the father.*^ In either case, a recourse to phylogenesis is
useless.
The reductionism of many psychoanalysts who have attempted to interpret
collective phenomena of the past does not, therefore, necessarily follow from
an acceptance of Freud's notions in this domain, but is due rather to the
overall procedure that consists of explaining complex social and cultural
phenomena by projecting on the large screen of society a few psychic
mechanisms observed on the individual level, without distinguishing the two
levels of analysis: the socialand the psychological. Thus Geza Roheim gives
us an explanation of the origins of monarchy based on the libidinal circulation
between the phallus and the rest of the human body,*" and he interprets the
birth of agriculture in terms of Oedipal attitudes and castration anxiety.** As
forWilhelm Reich, he, like Freud, reduces religious feelings to a neurotic
symptom: more exactly, he attributes it to guilt feeings caused by mastur-
bation. In this context, the belief in God is but a "sexual excitation that has
exchanged its goals and content."** In the same vein, Norman O. Brown*''
offers us an excremental theory of capitalism — and so on.
Roheim's extrapolations are harmless, compared to Harms Sachs' thesis
concerning the nondevelopment of a machine culture in the Roman Empire,*'
or to Kurt Eissler's delirious idea that the birth of the State of Israel was a
direct consequence of the (unconscious) psychological effect of Freud's
Moses and Monotheism. ^^ This last example is an aberration, even from a
"reductionist" point of view.
The reductionist thesis was stated unequivocally by Raymond de Saussure,
when he wrote that in every civilization the relation between the individual and
the society is identifiable with the relation
between the individual and the
father, according to a kind of measurable index one could call the "libidinal
index of a civilization." This index would ostensibly allow one to evaluate the
force of the superego in a given cultural entity, and deduce from that the
specific manifestations of the libido. Thus, for example, the greater the
severity of paternal authority, the greater will be the homosexual tendencies in
the society in question,'"
Obviously, one cannot absolutely prove that the reductionist position is
false, but every historian knows that a social phenomenon must above all be
analyzed in its own terms of reference, as a social phenomenon, not as the

resultant of individual actions or as the projection of psychic conflicts
observable only on the individual level. Such is the argument of the "two
levels of analysis," formulated in particularly lucid termsby Talcott Parsons.
Parsons emphasizes that our present state of knowledge concerning social
systems does not allow us to consider them as the resultant of individual
motivations, especially given the fact that there no simple correspondence
is
between the structure of personality and the structure of institutions. Because

of this, the problems of motivation must be treated in the framework of their
relation to the overall social structure, taking into account the forces that
tend to maintain or to transform the latter.'^
In other words, the study of a social phenomenon, in any perspective what-

soever — including the perspective of psychological analysis — requires, first of
all, that one examine the sociological factors in order to arrive at an explana-
tion of the phenomenon according to its "natural" rules of interpretation. Only
after that can one undertake the psychological investigation which, in the
majority of cases, is an indispensable complement to the sociological study.
The distinction between the two levels of analysis is essential, with one
exception (and here is where the second paradigm of the psychohistorical
explanation of collective phenomena comes into play)— that of "psycho-
analytic structuralism," which in principle is conceivable only on the level of
psychological analysis, since its domain is that of symbolic relations.'^
According to psychoanalytic structuralism (as I propose to call it), a
cultural and social phenomenon can express, through its symbolic manifes-
tations, a singular pattern, a specific structure that can also be found
in the
symbolic expression of other phenomena belonging to the same sociocultural

entity. These structures reveal a specific unconscious model
of the socio-
cultural entity in question.

The "genetic" explanation of these structures is impossible, and one can
or to certain
therefore not reduce their origin to a particular type of family
can-
primary institutions of the group. Consequently, psychoanalytic history
not claim to provide causal explanations, since even the exact
sequence of
and the
events is not available to it; it must first of all identify the pattemings
context,
transformations of constant psychic elements in a specific historical
and, above all, interpret the meaning of these symbolic
patterns, be it a m
culture, a religion, or an ideological system.'' These symbolic patterns can in
principle correspond to the most varied unconscious constellations, but one

particular pattern occupies "a dominant strategic position": it is the Oedipus
complex. Only the resolution of the Oedipal conflict makes possible the
socialization of the individual, the passage from the family triangle to the
society; it is in the universal context of Oedipus that the historian's uncon-
scious will encounter that of the men he is studying; finally, Oedipus provides
the model for the relation between man and authority, whatever its nature
religious, ideological, or political.^''
Psychoanalytic structuralism differs radically from the reductionism of the
preceding paradigm; its justification is the same as that of any structuralist
analysis. One must note, however, that its field of application is quite specific,
for the analysis of symbolic networks is when it is applied to a
possible only
culture considered in its totality, or else to a limited phenomenon envisaged in
its relation to the surrounding culture and to its most general mode of
expression.
We are thus dealing here with a paradigm of macrohistorical explanation.
It can be used for the analysis of collective mentalities, for the study of a
culture as a total phenomenon, or possibly in studies seeking to discover in a
national character certain underlying characteristics. It can be used, but
prudently, for — as we hardly need point out— psychoanalytic structuralism is
faced with the same theoretical and methodological problems that confront
any structuralist undertaking.
We shall not attempt here a discussion of structuralism in general; it is
beyond doubt, however, that in order to be convincing, any structuralism

must be absolutely rigorous.'^ Now the fact is that, from this point of view, the
concrete applications are sometimes aleatory. Levi-Strauss has been criti-
cized for the often approximative character of his demonstrations, as well as
for his rather arbitrary handling of examples (not to mention his choice of
examples itself).'^ Yet, due to the fact that he concentrates on purely formal
relations between elements rather than on interpretations of content,^'' Levi-
Strauss's structuralism probably more rigorous than psychoanalytic struc-
is
turalism. It is perhaps dangerous to use in psychohistory a method of analysis

that would reinforce the indeterminate character of psychohistorical explana-
tion. Nevertheless, the attractiveness of this kind of approach is undeniable.
Those who reject Freud's "reductionism" and recognize that the applica-
tion of psychoanalytic structuralism is at best limited might turn to two other
paradigms, which in fact are those wemost often in this book:
shall refer to
the paradigm of culture and personality, and the paradigm of "continuous
internalization."
In a very simplified way, one can say that society influences the develop-
ment and the behavior of the individual personality in four principal ways:
through the influence of "primary institutions" on the child; through the constant
adaptation of the ego to its environment; through the internalization through- —
out the existence of the individual, on the level of the superego as well as on
that of the ego— of the
basic social norms; finally, through the reactions that
are provoked on the level of the individual unconscious by the
symbolic
systems adopted by the society.'^
Conversely, in the interaction between the society and the individual, the
latter exerts an influence on his environment through his emotional
invest-
ment or disinvestment in the existing norms and institutions, through the
creation of new symbolic systems (cf. the influence of religious or artistic
expression on social evolution, and vice versa) and through the creation of
new norms (cf. the influence of charismatic personalities in politics or in
religion).
The schemata I shall present in the pages that follow are but the ela-
boration of these basic kinds of interaction. I shall concentrate only on
the socialization of the child through the mediation of the primary institutions
and on the models of internalization, for the other types of interaction are in a
sense obvious. But it is important to emphasize that these diverse kinds of
interactions function simultaneously, in stable or temporary homogeneous
groups as inheterogeneous ones. There exist only differences in degree. I
shall merely outHne here in a very general way a type of analysis whose
specific aspects and variations I shall treat in detail in chapter 3.
What do we mean by "homogeneous" and "heterogeneous" groups? The
homogeneous group is characterized by a relative absence of social differ-
entiation, by a high degree of isolation from the outside world, or else by the
unifying role of an ideology, a collective obsession, a "total institution"" or a
personality. If the homogeneous group has control over unified primary insti-
tutions (mothering and child-raising practices, etc.), it can be considered
stable; if not, then such a group is generally temporary. As for the hetero-
geneous group, it is socially diversified, in permanent contact with other
groups, and primary institutions are not unified.
its
The paradigm of interacdon between culture and personality— the one, in

other words, that places the greatest emphasis on the socialization of the child
by means of the primary institudons— applies essentially to stable homo-
geneous groups as the dominant paradigm.'"" It goes without saying, how-
ever, that, except for the temporary homogeneous groups in which primary
institutions seem to play no role whatsoever, this same paradigm functions, in
a more diffuse but nevertheless real way, in heterogeneous groups as well. We
may summarize the paradigm as follows:
The culture and the social structure of a group determine in a specific
manner the evolution of the personality of the members of the group, on the
level of conscious attitudes but above all on the unconscious level. This
unconscious development derives from the manner in which the ego of the
members of the group integrates the elements of the surrounding culture and
society into each stage of the development of the personality— ihe various
stages of childhood as well as the ulterior phases, notably that of adolescence.'"'
The personality thus shaped by the specific interaction between the culture
of a group and the attitude toward the world of its members at the various
stages of their development will in turn influence the social structure of the
group through the way in which the each of its members are
roles assigned to
fulfilled; the individual personality will also influence the culture of the group
through various practices as well as through the works of members of the

group. This interaction, which appears circular, does not at all exclude the
diachronie dimension, as we shall see.
Given the fact that in adolescence the crucial phases of the individual's
evolution are already completed, it is obvious that it is the family structure
characteristic of a group, its various mothering, toilet-training, and general
disciplinary practices (its "primary institutions") that determine the forma-
tion of certain typical unconscious aspects of the personality of the members
of the group— their "basic personality." "The basic personality," writes
Mikel Dufrenne, "designates a particular psychological configuration charac-
teristic of the members of a given society and manifesting itself in a certain
on which individuals imprint their own particular variations. The

style of life
combination of traits that compose this configuration (for example, a certain
aggressivity combined with certain beliefs, with a certain suspiciousness
toward others, with a certain weakness of the superego) may be called the
basic personality — not because it constitutes, strictly speaking, a personality,
but because it constitutes the basis of the personality for the members of the
"^"^
group, the "matrix" in which character traits are developed.
For Kardiner and Linton, as for Erikson, the typical unconscious traits of
the members of a sociocultural entity are reflected on the level of the group's
"secondary institutions" (according to Kardiner's terminology): thus the
religious rites, the matrimonial practices or the behavior in war of the Alorese,
the Comanches, the Sioux, or the Yuroks are the result of the specific shaping
of the individual by the primary institutions of the group, which influence his
unconscious development. Formed by the primary institutions, the group's
basic personality determines certain essential characteristics of the secondary
institutions.'"^
Let us take the example of the Alorese studied by Kardiner and Linton (and
especially by their collaborator, Cora DuBois).**"' One of the dominant char-
acteristics of Alorese society consists most of the agricultural
in the fact that
work necessary for the subsistence of the community is done by women. One
important result of this is that the mother cannot take care of the newborn
child: around two weeks after giving birth, she goes back to work. The child is
left to the "care" of his brothers and sisters, who feed him irregulady, tease
him, maltreat him, and on the whole behave toward him in the most arbitrary
manner. There is no discipline, no systematic upbringing, not even a coherent
mode of punishments and rewards. The child grows up with an attitude of
generalized distrust, doubt, and shame.
basic personality of the Alorese will be characterized by passivity, the
The
absence of curiosity, the absence of initiative and of any capacity for organi-
zation, but also by a profound distrust of others and by sudden, sporadic, and
violent outbreaks of aggressivity. The secondary institutions bear the trace of
this typical personality.
The Alorese male has perfected an extremely complex but totally unpro-
ductive financial system, and his life is spent in exchanges and barters whose
sole objective is to acquire,by means of a totally fictitious wealth, a certain
prestige that will compensate for his ftindamental feeling of frustration and
inferiority. The initial hostility toward the mother is reflected in the relation
between the sexes: it is the women who do the courting in Alorese society, and
the divorce (or infidelity) rate is particularly high. Finally, the Alorese religion
also bears the traces of distrust: nothing is expected from a rather ill-defined,
supreme divinity, and "the spirits of the dead are but impatient creditors who
must be nourished through sacrifices that are brought to them with a great deal
of reluctance: so poor is the balance between frustration and reward, so great
is the distrust. Naturally, there is no question of assuring the favor of the gods
through moral behavior: in fact, the Alorese do not possess a moral

conscience."*"*
The notion of basic personality has not been confirmed beyond a doubt
knowledge
empirically,'"* but the reason for this could be our lack of sufficient
concerning certain crucial aspects of the first stages of human development,
whence the diversity of interpretations regarding the interaction between the
individual and society through these stages. Thus, despite the generalization
of the Eriksonian "model" relative to the first stage of the relations between
the child and his environment, a more orthodox Freudian conception is also
possible, and so is a Kleinian conception of the same stage. But whatever
option one chooses, the conclusions will be too general not to affect the
empirical studies; it is actually about "the nature of the child's tie to its
mother"'"^ that we must seek to arrive at a firm and unanimous judgment, one
that will allow us to analyze with precision the interaction between a certain
type of maternal care and a certain type of evolution in the child. The current
lack of precision in this domain does not affect the value of the "culture and
personality" paradigm as an ideal type, nor its possibilities of general or
partial application. One must simply keep in mind that one is dealing in this
instance with a heuristic schema, rather than with a model whose various
elements are all empirically confirmed.
One can go a step and introduce a diachronic dimension into this
ftirther,
apparently static context. A significant change in the social structure, due to

endogenous and exogenous factors, will doubtless provoke changes in the
family structure and eventually in the primary institutions; consequently,
certain characteristics of the basic personality will be modified, and so on.
We thus dispose of a quite simple model of change, adaptable to crisis
situations— those involving sudden changes— by considering the following
sudden change in the family structure is accompanied by
alternatives: either a
case we
the adaptation of individual development to the new context (in that
have a return to gradual evolution), or else there is a continued inadaptation
between the relations existing inside the family group and the changes
devel-
occurring in the environmental structure. In the latter case, individual
opment remains arrested at the previous stage and a serious long-term crisis
occurs; it will be resolved either by the belated adaptation of the family and the
individual to the new social structure, or by a social restructuring that will
signal a kind of return to the status quo ante.

This model of evolution is obviously very rudimentary, and there exists in
fact a large number of variations on it. The major on the concrete
difficulty
level comes from the differences in rhythm that one finds between the
evolution of the social structure, the evolution of the basic elements of the
culture of the group and the evolution of the family structure. It would seem
that basic cultural elements and family structure evolve more slowly than the
other components of the social structure; the result is a series of syncopations
whose influence on the development and on the socialization of the individual
is difficult to determine. But here again, the paradigmatic value of the
proposed model is evident, despite the technical difficulties in its application.
The primary institutions are the model we have been
key element in the
discussing. The model is dominant in the study of stable homogeneous groups,

inapplicable to the study of temporary homogeneous groups (in which the
primary institution plays no role), and has only a supporting explicative role in
the case of heterogeneous groups where the primary institutions are diversi-
fied and where it is difficult to determine their common characteristics. This is
why the study of heterogenous groups requires that one have recourse to a
different explicative model, which the socialization of the child by
one in
means of the primary institutions is secondary and where the individual's

internalization of the norms of the group becomes essential. One can observe,
in fact, that the individual internalizes certain social nonns throughout his
existence, not only through the channel of the superego but also through that of
the ego, given the interaction between the total personality and the social
environment.
—
Freud already glimpsed this possibility, but to be perfectly frank— there
is no thesis one cannot prove by invoking a few chance remarks he let fall. . . .
It is Talcott Parsons who stated the most convincing case for an enlargement
of the areas of interaction between the social structure and the structure of the
personality (including, incidentally, the id among the components of the per-
sonality subject to the direct influence of the social structure — a hypothesis
difficult to accept in theory and impossible to demonstrate empirically, given
the nature of the id).'°* Parson's theses were adopted and elaborated on the
basis of ample psychoanalytic material by Fred Weinstein and Gerald M.
Piatt,"" who demonstrated that certain essential aspects of the psycho-
analytic study of collective phenomena were otherwise impossible.
On the static level, this model requires no other explanation than the one
implicit in the very definition of internalization, namely: "all those processes
by which the subject transforms real or imagined regulatory interactions with
his environment, and real or imagined characteristics of his environment, into
inner regulations and characteristics.""" On the other hand, an interpretation
of social change based, on the psychological level, on the notion of inter-
nalization, is not as self-evident as the processes of change that occur in
homogeneous groups. In this regard, one can propose the following points:'"
In a heterogenous group, certain fundamental norms essential to the

existence of the group as such are internalized by the majority of the members
of the group, by means of a constant between the social structure
interaction
and the structure of the individual personality, on the levels of the superego and
of the ego. The emotional investment linked to this internalization is trans-
posed, and is integrated into the symbolic system that expresses the norms in
question. The fact that one symbolic system is adopted rather than another is
due to its conformity with the social context, but also with the affective
needs" ^ of the members of the group.
A transformation of the symbolic system without any change in norms
represents a reordering, not a transformation, of the social system. In order to
be adopted, a new symbolic system must conform to the new social situation,
but it must also satisfy the affective needs of the majority of the members of the
group. A transformation of the fundamental norms themselves represents a
transformation of the entire social system. The new norms, emerging from the
old system or from one coexisting with it, will impose themselves according to
the evolution of the social system and according to the ease with which they
are internalized by the members of the group, depending on their fundamental
affective needs.
According to this model, the essential causes of the reordering or the trans-
formation of a social system are social, not psychological, in nature. How-
ever, the integration of a new symbolic system (in the case of reordering) or of
new norms (in the case of transformation) into the society in question depends
not only on social factors, but also on the affective reactions of a majority of
the members of that society— facts that are interpretable only in psycho-
logical terms.
Determinism and Individual Freedom in Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalytic theory is compatible with the notion of individual freedom.

Why should we, in concluding this outline of the theoretical framework of
psychohistorical investigation, insist on this particular point,
when on the
funda-
whole we have left it up to the reader to become acquainted with the
is fraught
mental aspects of Freudian thought? First of all, because this subject
historians conceive of
with confusion, but also because the "traditionalist"
reject its utiliza-
psychoanalysis as inexorably deterministic, and for that reason
tion in a context which, according to them, still implies the active presence of
free choice.
psychoanalytic
The imprecisionthat surrounds the concept of a free ego in
"ideological" premises
theory is due in large part to explicit or implicit
unless its field of
according to which no discipline can be considered scientific
the representatives of
study is subject to the laws of a strict determinism. For
totality of the field of
experimental psychology, the necessity of reducing the
according to
human behavior to quantitative sequences is not open to doubt;
them, it is only by this means that psychology can escape from metaphysics
and become one of the exact sciences."^
The preponderant influence of Fechner's and Briicke's deterministic
theories on Freud's thought has often been mentioned, and it was only after
1923, with the publication of The Ego and the Id, that Freud seems to make
some allowance for an autonomous ego. On the whole, however, the position
of the founder of psychoanalysis may be defined as deterministic in the fullest
sense of the term; and the great majority of psychoanalysts follow in his path.
Ernest Jones, for example, admits the possibility that "the irruptions of spon-
taneous and unrelated phenomena supposedly emanating from 'free will' would
make nonsense of its [psychoanalysis'] scientific pretentions.""'* Consequent-
ly, for many psychoanalysts "the autonomy of the ego is strictly relative,""'
and human being's sense of free will does not correspond

in the last analysis the
to any objective reality."*' Even Erik H. Erikson's use of these terms lends itself
to confusion, and one has the impression — at least in the theoretical part of his
work — that free will is nothing but a purely subjective experience on the part of
the individual. Thus, in discussing the various aspects of the second stage of
the development of the personality, Erikson states that it is at this time that a
"sense of self-control without loss of self-esteem is the ontogenetic source of a
sense of free-will.""''
The same is not true of the works of Heinz Hartmann and especially of
David Rapaport, the two outstanding theorists of "ego psychology." Heinz
Hartmann describes the autonomy of the ego in the following terms:
Not every adaptation to the environment, or every learning and maturation

process, is a conflict. I refer to the development "outside of conflict" of percep-
comprehension, thinking, language, recall-phenomena,
tion, intention, object
productivity, to the well-known phases of motor development, grasping,
crawling, walking, and to the maturation and learning processes implicit in all
these and many others. ... I propose that we adopt the provisional term
"conflict-free ego sphere" for that ensemble of functions which at any given time
exert their effects outside the region of mental conflicts."*
Later, Hartmann qualified these functions as "autonomous functions of the

ego.
The enumeration of the autonomous fianctions of the ego offered by
Hartmann does not indicate whether, outside the cognitive, mnesic, and other
processes, the ego can also escape from the determinism of the unconscious in
the use of its selective —
and creative functions in other words, whether an
autonomous will is conceivable. In fact, an examination of Hartmann's work
as a whole confirms the impression that in his conception of the ego there is a
place for the exercise of will as an autonomous function, even though the term
"free" is never used, chiefly for semantic reasons.
It was above all David Rapaport, however, who undertook to integrate the
notion of a free ego into the framework of psychoanalytic theory. "The
behavior of man is determined by the instincts he harbors within him, but he is
1
not entirely at their mercy: he possesses a certain independence in relation to

them," writes Rapaport, and he goes on:
We refer to this independence as the autonomy of the ego from the id. The most
common observation which necessitated this conception was the responsiveness
and relevance of behavior to external reality. But this dependence of behavior on
the external world and on experience is not complete either. Man can interpose
delay and thought not only between instinctual promptings and action, modifying
and even indefinitely postponing drive discharge, he can likewise modify and
postpone his reaction to external stimulation. This independence of behavior from
external stimulation we will refer to as the autonomy of the ego from external
reality. Since the ego is never completely independent from the id nor from
external reality, we always speak about relative autonomy. [And Rapaport
concludes:] While the ultimate guarantees ofthe ego's autonomyfrom the id are
man's constitutionally given apparatuses of reality relatedness, the ultimate
guarantees of the ego's autonomy from the environment are man's constitu-
tionally given drives."'
Rapaport' s conception does not actually exclude the acceptance of psychic

determinism in a very general sense: a free act, in effect, is not an unex-
plainable act without a cause; it is a voluntary act that implies the existence
of choice; ex post facto, however, this choice can be explained, and its cause
can be found. Free acts are not imposed on one by a psychic compulsion, but
'^^
that does not mean that they have no cause.
Interpreting Rapaport's theses a bit, one can consider the elements of
unconscious determinism studied by psychoanalysis as limits imposed on the
activity of a creative ego which, within the framework of its limits, remains a
sovereign entity, even though it is subject to causality. It follows that the more
"neurotic" a personality is, the more restricted is the field available to the free
ego. In the case of psychosis this field disappears altogether, and the human
being wholly under the sway of unconscious forces over which he has no
is
control. The opposite situation, one in which the impact of unconscious

determinism would be reduced to zero and where the whole person would exist
in a state of unlimited possibilities where his creative freedom could exercise
itself with no obstacles, is inconceivable. One can suggest, however, that in
extreme situations, in experiences of total possibility— the "peak experi-

ences" that Abraham Maslow speaks about' ^'— the individual approaches a
state of this kind. It matters little to us where the free ego originates— indeed,
all speculation on this subject is useless— but we postulate that it is not a
subjective illusion without any corresponding reality.
Such a conception is in fact easily integrated into the developmental model
proposed by Erikson and into his hypotheses on the formation of identity,
notably in the course of adolescence— this despite the ambiguity of some of
Erikson's statements concerning the reality of individual freedom.
For the author of Childhood and Society, the identity of the self corre-
sponds to an internal feeling of continuity and cohesion, which the individual
also hopes to make perceptible to others. Now in their quest for identity,
42 Histoiy and Psychoaiwlysis
adolescents elaborate what Erikson calls their "internal life design."'" That is
a key term. In effect, even if Erikson' s writings are ambiguous, so that one can,
ifone wishes, conceive of individual identity as a simple resultant of solutions
elaborated in the previous stages of development, is it not more convincing to
think of the "internal life design" as a free project, a necessary axis of individual
identity, without which identity itself cannot be achieved? Nevertheless, this
internal life most mature and most
design, this choice, will not find its
meaningful formulation unless the individual has succeeded in resolving the

problems that marked the previous stages of his development, and in inte-
grating the positive solutions with the unconscious options available in the
course of each of these stages.
2. Is Psychoanalytic Biography Possible?
Of all the fields of historical research, that of biography seems at first glance to
be best suited to the utilization of psychoanalysis. It is here that psycho-
analytic theories are most often applied, and here that psychohistory has
claimed its —
most far-reaching results but it is also here that the aspirations of
psychohistory have most often been questioned.
From the very beginnings of the psychoanalytic movement, the lives
of "great men" have provoked considerable interest. The "Wednesday semi-
nars" conducted by Freud and his closest collaborators were often devoted to
the biographical analysis of famous writers: Lenau, Wedekind, Jean-Paul,
Konrad Ferdinand Meyer, Grillparzer, and Kleist, to mention the best known
ones.' It was at one of these seminars, in 1909, that Freud presented his
interpretation of the personality of Leonardo da Vinci; his paper, published the

following year,^ constitutes his major contribution to psychobiography (save
for his later biography of Woodrow Wilson, written in collaboration with
William Bullitt^).
The naive self-assurance of the first psychoanalysts, the apparent ease with
which they could, on the basis of a few key pieces of evidence and a few key
theoretical concepts, arrive at original "discoveries" concerning the people

studied, as well as the total absence of historical training on the part of the
analysts— all these factors made the psychobiographies of the heroic period
(and many psychobiographies as well) no more than dilettantish studies,
later
superficial at best.'' As for Freud himself, his remarks on "Dostoevsky and
parricide" are too short and too casual to warrant criticism; his interpretation
of a childhood dream of Leonardo, on the other hand, is for the most part
based on an error: a wrong translation of the name of a bird, which plays a
major role in the interpretation.*
Recently, controversies have again come to the fore with the publication of
the Freud-Bullitt biography of Wilson and various studies devoted to King

George III of England; these controversies, moreover, concern more than just
the studies in question. In the case of George III, for example, it is not only
43
Guttmacher's psychobiography* or some other psychoanalytic interpretation

of the king's illness that has been challenged; rather, once again, it is psycho-
analysis as a whole that is being rejected.'' The debate, then, goes on.
Psychobiography, its critics might argue, eliminates the social dimension

and has all the pitfalls, comic and otherwise, of the "stories of great men."
That, of course, is not true. Anyone who has followed our discussion until now
can be no explanation of individual behavior without a
will realize that there
constant integration of the latter into a social context, one that marks the
individual not only in childhood (through the socialization of the child in the
framework of the primary institutions), but that molds the personality through-
out one's lifetime — both during the crucial period that determines the forma-
tion of the individual personality, and in later periods through the permanent
internalization of social norms. Conversely, the individual influences the
society, especially if he creates new symbols or new norms. He then plays a
major historical role. One cannot study Luther without investigating the social
—
and religious context that produced him but can one study Protestantism
^without studying Luther, or Bolshevism without Lenin, or Nazism without
Hitler?
Still, why can't one simply study the work
whether it be an artistic
itself,
creation, a political decision or a set of new social norms? What is the im-
portance of biography as the study of a life? The answer is simple: the work is
not comprehensible independently of the personality that created it. The
personality is a single entity: the study of the work and of the personality forms
a single whole. The work, which and the personality, is at
reflects the society
the same time the expression of something that transcends both the one and
the other.
The aim of the biographer will be to discover the link between the
personality and the work, to rediscover the coherence that characterizes any
personality and its creation — and to do this not only on the synchronic level
but also through time, in the genuinely historical dimension. The demon-
stration of the cohesion of the personality is essential to the demonstration of
the coherence of the work.
The conception of the personality as an identifiable, coherent whole is, in
itself, not open to doubt. Personal experience or introspection demonstrates
its and psychoanalytic theory confirms it, as does experimental psy-
validity
chology. Experimental studies on child behavior, for example, bear out the
astonishingly permanent character of an individual personality "style," even
during the phase of development where everything is transformed: "As one
notes behavioral alterations from infancy to . . . later pre-school ages," write
Heider and Escalona, "one knows that not a single behavior has remained the
same, yet one is struck with the inherent continuity of behavioral style and of
the child's pattern of adaptation."* Psychoanalysts discovered, quite early,
this unity of style or of type in the neurotic personality,' but in so doing they
were simply restating a very old theory concerning the "styles" or "types" of
personality in general. A report in the British Journal of Psychology shows
Is Psychoanalytic Biography Possible? 45
that recent experimental and statistical studies have led to a classification of

individuals into types that correspond exactly— leaving aside the differences
in terminology — to Galen's medieval classification. '°
We shall come
back, at the end of this chapter, to the problems raised by
typological studies; for the moment, it is the question of the relation between
the typical and the idiosyncratic that must be considered. Here again, one
might ask, should biography not yield to a different kind of study, one that
seeks to discover "styles" or "types" as such? The answer, as one might
suspect, is negative. A style and a type are probably determined by certain
similarities in hereditary traits and in environment. But every individual
represents a variation in relation to the type, and if the latter provides a general
pattern, the idiosyncratic variation denotes a specific one. Even if the
individual life project cannot ignore certain limits imposed on it by the social
framework and by the typical elements (in our present sense of the term), it
nevertheless remains unique, even while assimilating certain social and

typical constraints. The biographer studies the interaction between the free,
individual life project and the determinisms that shape it.
These general remarks do not, however, indicate the difficulties encoun-

tered by psychobiography on the concrete, practical level.
Some Problems and Pitfalls of Psychobiography
Let us take the case of Adolf Hitler. The biographer will have no difficulty
sketching in the relevant social context. A typical pattern will also appear,
even though certain of elements will be contradictory. The "paranoid"
its
style generally attributed to Hitler is in fact selective: if, toward the Jews, his
attitude reveals the presence of psychosis, his paranoid tendencies diminish
considerably in the face of a concrete political or military situation, and are
replaced either by a flexible and realistic evaluation of the situation or by an
obsessional impulse to action, a feeling that time is short and that one lightning
strike has to follow anotherthe decrees of Providence are to be fulfilled. The
if
internal coherence of behavior is there and can be identified, but the usual
typologies risk leading one astray, due to their too facile schematization.
The however, lies elsewhere: the biographer will not be able
real difficulty,
to avoid interpreting one of the dominant elements in Hitler's mental
universe,
namely his anti-Semitism. The biographer will describe it but will also attempt
in psycho-
to explain it, and, according to the usual way of proceeding
biography, he will try to indicate its origin by referring to certain
known
is a
elements in the development of Hitler's personality. The case of Hitler
the results of a
particularly good example, because it allows us to compare
series of interpretations of a single phenomenon.
an indirect one: in the chapter o{ Childhood
and
Erikson's explanation is
Nazi anti-
Society entitled "The Myth of Hitlers Youth," he explains
to the
Semitism in terms of the identity crisis, without, however, referring
Fiihrer's personal motivations." According to Gertrud M. Kurth, on the other
hand, Hitler's murderous anti-Semitism was an unconscious reaction to

powerful incestuous impulses which were themselves obviously repressed but
which provoked an intolerable feeling of guilt and were projected onto an
external figure: the Jew. Hitler's life manifests some notable quasi-incestuous
relations; in his writings, the Jew is associated with incest; during his
adolescence, the Jewish doctor Bloch took the place of the father next to his
beloved mother, thus estabhshing, according to Gertrud M. Kurth, the link
between Hitler's incestuous tendencies and the figure of the Jew. She writes:
"The connection I am bold enough to believe I have estabhshed is the para-
doxical conclusion that the torrent of apocalyptic horrors that engulfed six
million Jews was unleashed in the futile endeavor to exterminate that inces-
tuous, black-haired little monster that was Adolf Hitler's Mr. Hyde."'^
Georges Devereux, in turn, presents a quasi-rational theory to account for
Hitler's exterminating orders: "Let us recall," he writes, "the way Genghis
Khan and Hitler recruited some of their cadres. Their absolute loyalty, like
that of the Mau-Maus, was guaranteed precisely by the fact that their initiation
involved such hideous crimes that in executing them they 'burned their
bridges' behind them, thus making it impossible for them to re-enter society
except as absolute victors."*^ Admittedly, this "political" exploitation of the
murder of the Jews does not exclude the possibility of profoundly irrational
motives. It is the latter that are emphasized by Gustav Bychowski, according
to whom Hitler's pathological anti-Semitism was related to a deep psycho-
sexual conflict and probably represented the effect of a projection of frustrated
sexual desires on the part of the dictator.'"
We may mention briefly the study by Rudolph Binion in which Binion
concludes that Hitler identified his mother's fate (in his mind she was poisoned
by the Jewish doctor's harmful injections) with his own poisoning by gas in
1918. His aim therefore became to avenge that double poisoning, with which
the Jews were directly associated.'-'
With Walter Langer, whose study was written during the war for the
American Secret Service but was only recently published, we return to a very
general explanation in which Hitler's hatred of the Jews is interpreted broadly
in terms of projection: all of Hitler's undesirable characteristics were pro-
jected onto the Jews —
among these characteristics, Langer mentions in
particular a tendency toward feminine passivity and sexual perversion.
Through the effect of projecdon it was the Jew who came to symbolize sexual
perversion, and if Hitler felt poisoned by his perverse self, it was the Jew who
became the poison. "In his treatment of the Jews we see the 'Identification
with the Aggressor' mechanism at work." writes Langer. Hitler, in other
words, applied to the Jews in reality the treatment he feared he would receive
from his victors in fantasy. This brought him several kinds of gratification.
First, he could appear in the eyes of the world as the pitiless brute he imagined
himself to be; second, was a way of proving to himself that he was as brutal
it
and merciless as he wanted to be; third, by eliminating the Jews he felt

unconsciously that he was ridding himself, and Germany, of the poison that
lay at the source of all their troubles; fourth, as the masochist he was in reality.
7

he obtained a "vicarious" pleasure from the suffering of others, with whom he
identified himself; fifth, he could express his deep hatred and scorn for the
worid in general by using the Jews as scapegoats: finally, his action brought
him considerable material benefits, as well as serving him greatly in terms of
propaganda.'*
Robert G. L. Waite finds in Hitler all the general traits of the anti-Semite,
but he adds to these a series of specific traits: first of all, Hitler's hatred of the
Jews was a projection of his intense self-hatred, as well as of his guilt feelings.
For Waite, in effect, as for Gertrud Kurth. Hitler projected on the Jews his
violent incestuous impulses as well as his tendencies toward sexual perver-
sion (of which Waite, like Walter Langer, offers us a detailed description).
Furthermore, Hitlers morbid attachment to his mother, his hostility toward
his father, the identification of the latter with the Jewish doctor who took care
of the mother during her last illness, notably by administering numerous
injections — all this indicates the "Oedipal" character of Hitler's anti-Semitism
and brings us back both to the theme of incest and to that of poison. Waite also
emphasizes the compensatory character that the extermination of the Jews
—
had for Hitler it acted as a compensation for his own physical inadequacies,
for his feelings of doubt, as well as for his conviction that the war could not be
won, a conviction that became virtually a certainty for him around the
beginning of 1942; it is at that time, according to Waite, that Hitler made the
final decision to exterminate all the Jews.'"' Finally, Waite invokes the
plausible hypothesis that Hitler believed he had Jewish blood in his veins;
considering all the other factors, that belief was enough to provoke in him the
most extreme destructive whereby he sought to deny any possibility of
fury,
being himself infected in some way by Jewish blood.'*
In my own study of Nazi anti-Semitism I devoted a chapter to the anti-
Semitism of Adolf Hitler, the conclusions of which can be summarized in
three essential points. The general aspects of Hitler's hatred of the Jews are
linked to a deep psychosexual conflict whose Oedipal character appears
obvious: the Jew is identified with the hated father, all the more so since Hitler
seems to have been informed relatively eariy of the latter's possible Jewish
origin; the psychosexual conflict was in this case intimately linked to a violent
identity conflict: was Hitler "German" or "Jewish?" In order to extirpate the
Jew he bore within him. Hitler undertook to eliminate the Jews around him.
pursuing them to the ends of the earth: as for his fantasy identifying the Jew
with an element of pollution of the blood, of sexual pollution linked to bio-
logical infection— /70/aZ)/v to syphilis— \i can be explained both in terms
of the
Oedipal conflict and its analogical corollaries implying a pollution of the

blood, and in terms of a more specific hypothesis based on the young Hitler's
strange sexual abstinence, reported by all those who knew him during his
Viennese years. It is plausible to infer that a fear of the father inhibited the
development of a normal sex life, but that the humiliating inhibition was
often men-
rationalized and attributed to the fear of syphilis, which Hitler
tioned. Now since the father was himself identified with the Jews, it was the
Jews who, through syphilis, threatened the health and the life of non-Jews.
The Jews and syphilis, or infection in general, soon became one and the same
thing.''
The various interpretations we have mentioned most part, on
agree, for the
one essential fact: the psychosexual origin of Hitler's anti-Semitism. For
anyone who has studied the subject, there can be no doubt on that score. But
the statement as such is too general to be meaningful. Once one admits the
psychosexual origin of Hitler's anti-Semitism, one must necessarily look for
specific causes in the childhood or the young manhood of the future dictator.
All of the studies did in fact search in that direction, and that is where the
divergences began. Why? Because of the absence of significant biographical
information, certainly (this despite Hitler's own recollections, as well as those
of his supposed childhood friends — Kubizek, Greiner, Hanisch — and despite
the few more or less exact reconstructions attempted by postwar historians);
but above all because the facts we do possess can be related to each other and
to subsequent events in various ways. What we cannot know is how Hitler
experienced the events we know, and what fantasies they evoked in him. We
have seen, for example, that most interpreters accord a great importance to the
fact that after the death of Hitler's father, during the mother's last ilbess, it
was a Jewish doctor, Dr. Bloch, who in a sense took the father's place; great
importance has also been attributed to Bloch's method of treatment, which
seems to have consisted in injections of morphine. On the surface. Hitler felt
nothing but gratefulness toward Bloch: he wrote to him several times, and
much later, after the annexation of Austria he authorized him to leave for the
United States. But how can we ever know the unconscious fantasies that
became associated with Bloch's role and with his status as a Jew?
Whatever hypothesis one chooses, one can find a way to integrate it into a
total context that will appear coherent, for the possible variations are ex-
tremely numerous. For each hypothesis, one can find sufficient proof in the
huge mass of Hitler's writings, speeches, and conversations, the texts of which
have been preserved. One could conclude that this is precisely the problem of
the verification of psychohistorical explanation and that all of the criteria we
discussed in the preceding chapter prove to be inapplicable to a concrete
biographical case: in this instance several Gestalten are possible, each one no
less plausible than the others; any explanation one chooses will be confirmed
by convergent elements, so that the overdetermination effect will appear. An
objective criterion for selecting the correct interpretation thus becomes diffi-
cult to find.
It is not psychobiography that isand the example chosen is an
at fault here,
extreme one because of the plurality of possible explanations to which it gives
rise. But we should nevertheless beware of this danger: certain cases present
limits that the biographer cannot hope to go beyond. One can define an
unconscious structure, both in its typical and its specific characteristics, but
its genesis is sometimes inaccessible to historical study.
The interpretation of childhood events represents therefore the most un-
certain aspect of biographical investigation, due to the idiosyncratic forms of
individual fantasy as well as to the obvious lack of sufficient documentation.
In adolescence, on the other hand, when the identity is formed, when the
various conflicts crystallize and when a crucial choice of cultural models takes
place, the psychic structure appears much more clearly. Often, in the case of
writers or artists, the first works— the Jwv'e/?/7/a that Mauron talks about— are
produced at this time.^° But end of this crucial phase that the
in fact it is at the
complex between the personality and the work (in the broadest sense
relation
of that term) develops, according to a dynamic whose mechanism we shall
discuss in detail but which, in any case, excludes univocal correlations.
Whatever the nature of the work, it obeys an autonomous logic that intro-
duces into the biographical context a complementary element of indeter-
minacy.^^
Paradoxically, the biographer cannot escape from the opposite difficulty
either — that of a case where a manifest determinism exists, but whose impli-
cations caimot be exactly evaluated: the determinism of heredity or physio-
logical determinism in general. The pathological heredity of Van Gogh, for
example, is certainly recognized: Vincent's sister spent thirty-eight years in a
mental institution, and his brother Theo was himself the victim of nervous
disorders that hastened his death.^^ But only in rare cases is the genetic
influence as clear as this, and in most instances the biographer will not know
how to interpret elements that are less clearly marked but that nevertheless
play a preponderant role. One finds a sporadic instability in the Stephen
family, for example, but was it this instability— which never reached the stage
of madness — that accounted for the psychotic outbreaks of the most famous
descendant of the line, Virginia Woolf? Or were the perturbing events of her
childhood sufficient cause to explain her illness?" We
cannot go wrong by
affirming that there was a convergence of the two factors, but that is simply an
elegant way of masking our ignorance.
The degree of repercussion of physiological disorders on behavior is not
easy to determine. We may recall that McAlpine and Hunter attributed to
porphyria the behavior King George of England, while others explain it in

III
terms of psychotic attacks. It seems impossible to settle the controversy, and

there are many cases of a similar kind. To cite Hitler again, up to 940 we can
1
exclude the possibility of a pathological disorder as a decisive influence on his

personality, since detailed medical reports are available to us." After that
date, however, it is not impossible that the medications prescribed by
Dr.
Morell influenced the evolution of the Fuhrer's fantasies and behavior.--

Lord Moran's indiscretions have confirmed the role of illness in Churchill's
behavior.^*The repercussions of cerebral palsy on the last years of Roosevelt,
Lenin, and Wilson are evident, but we cannot say in what way exactly
or to
what degree. As concerns Wilson, for example, a study by Edwin Weinstein

and
seems to suggest that one can explain part of the behavior that Alexander
rather, of the
Juliette George attributed to the president's psyche as the result,
cerebrovascular system, the first signs of which
were
deterioration of the
outbreak of
supposedly discovered while Wilson was at Princeton, before the
president of the
the controversy that eventually provoked his resignation as
Wilson's
university." As Weinstein himself notes, the facts concerning
neurological illness do not exclude the possibility of a psychodynamic ex-

planation of his public behavior, but to ignore the organic factor is to risk
arriving at "unacceptable simplifications."^*
But in that case, can we
speak of psychobiography? Yes, but in the
still
conditional mode. The "yes" has just been demonstrated, in a sense, by a

reductio ad absurdum, enumeration of imprecise and divergent factors
for the
which all influence behavior in no way alters our initial statement: the
personality possesses a perceptible coherence which continues to exist despite
the most diverse influences, and it is this coherence that forms the theoretical
basis and justification of psychobiography As for the "conditional mode," it
.
is directly linked to the difficulties we have discussed, and it is clear that in
certain cases a psychoanalytic biography is impossible. In fact, if a successful

psychobiography finds its theoretical justification in the "principle of co-
herence," its success will nevertheless be due as much to fortuitous circum-
stances (as concerns, notably, the documentary sources) as to the keenessof the
methodology. The limits of the field are therefore visible, but the field is there.
We shall try to exploreby way of three distinct approaches: the relation
it
between the personality and the work of art (the psychoanalytic biography of
artists); between the personality and political behavior (the biography of
political figures); and between the personality and a change in collective

identity (the biography of charismatic leaders).
Personality and the Work of Art
The problem of the relation between the personality of the artist or writer and
his work has been at least as hotly debated as that of the nature of history, and
here too the opposing positions are categorical and often unreconcilable.
Thus, for T. S. Eliot, the attempt to correlate the artist's personality with his
work anathema: "Poetry," he writes, "is not a turning loose of emotion, but
is
an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape

from personality . . . significant emotion . . . has its life in the poem and not in
the history of the poet."" If we look for other expressions of the same view, we
think immediately of Paul Valery, of American New Criticism or of the
Russian Formalists. But opposite Eliot, we find Edmund Wilson and Lionel
Trilling; opposite Valery, we find Gide.
We might recall the famous polemic that broke out in France during the
1960's, concerning the so-called "nouvelle critique." A virulent pamphlet by
Raymond Picard posed the problem with perfect clarity, if not with perfect
fairness: the "new critics," claimed Picard, did not believe in the "specificity
of literature"; they smashed the traditional framework of literary works in
order to arrive at an anthropology or a psychoanalysis of the author, and they

did so by means of the most arbitrary comparisons and analogies. Yet, these
comparisons are necessary, as Serge Doubrovsky very justly pointed out in his
response to Picard: "There is no way of preventing meanings from drawing
1
other meanings to them, from proHferating: Raymond Picard's criticism is a

Malthusianism struggHng combat a semantic explosion."^'
in vain to
At the same time, the French new criticism in no way impHes a necessary
linking of the work to the personahty of its author. On the contrary— in
addition to the psychobiographical approach one finds various other ap-
proaches, all of which place the artist's personality between parentheses:
Lucien Goldmann's Marxist or para-Marxist method, for example, or the
various kinds of contemporary structuralism (which include, as we know, a
psychoanalytic structuralism). Once again, we shall limit ourselves to defining
our position concerning the two principal "anti-biographical" approaches,"
without going into the details of a controversy that is still in full swing.
Lucien Goldmann, reiterating Pour une sociologie du roman the themes
in
already present in his earlier book, Le Dieu cache (The Hidden God),
affirmed categorically that only a social group is capable of elaborating that
coherent "vision of the world" without which the work of art is inconceivable.
Sociology can discover the necessary link between a work and its social
context, but no psychology can possibly "account for the fact that Racine
wrote precisely the corpus of his dramas and tragedies, and explain why he
could in no case have written the plays of Comeille or those of Moliere"."
Without launching a full-scale critique of Goldmann's methods as a whole,
we can raise certain inevitable objections to it.
As concerns the monopoly presumably exercised by the group in the
formulation of a coherent vision of the world, how does one explain the fact
that so many creative personalities are "out of phase" with their society, and
that so many works of art have no discernible relation to the social context in
which they were produced?^" We can, as a matter of fact, borrow an example
from Lucien Goldmann himself: in The Hidden God, Goldmann gives us the
definition of a "tragic vision" found in Pascal and Racine, a vision whose
social bases he analyzes at length as a specific relationship between the
noblesse de robe and the monarchy. Now if there is a single other authentic
exponent of the same "tragic vision," it is certainly Kierkegaard. Yet, the
social context in which Kierkegaard's work and personality existed bears no
relation whatsoever to the one that Goldmann considered as the basis for the
"tragic vision."
Would not be more convincing to postulate the partial influence of the
it
social context, even though it is not always evident, together with the equally
partial influence of personality factors and of autonomous formal elements
inherent to a given artistic domain? The specificity of the individual person-
ality(more or less strong, depending on the artist in question) can give rise to
an "out of phase" relationship between the artist and his group, but since the
work itself will influence the sensibility of the group, it will be integrated into
the collective vision after a gestation period whose length will vary
with the
circumstances. As for the possibility of psychology's identifying and ex-

plaining the particular character of the work of Racine, Corneille. or Moliere,
we shall see a bit further on that it does exist, provided that certain essential
elements be present. But Goldmann, in a work subsequent to The Hidden
God, directs a more specific attack against the psychoanalytic method as a

means of explaining the work of art. He bases his critique on two main
arguments:
There exists almost no psychoanalytic interpretation of a great literary text

a)
which embraces that text in its entirety. Yet the unity of the text as a whole
constitutes an essential element of its literary significance.
b) Since the libidinal significance of any behavior is, according to Freud
himself, always consistent with the individual's biography and situation, we do
not see how a psychoanalytic interpretation can in its own terms distinguish —
between a work of genius and the delirious production of a madman."
The word "almost" in Goldmann's first proposition might allow us to suppose

that simply a question of perfecting the technique of psychoanalytic inter-
it is
pretation of texts, and that analysts have occasionally succeeded in furnishing

total interpretation. I don't believe that for a moment, but it would be easy
to demonstrate that sociological interpretation has had no more success in
understanding a text in its unity and its totality — indeed, that the search for a
total interpretation by a single method is a delusion, and that only a reading on
several levels will allow one to grasp the multiple meanings of a single text.
As supposed impossibility of distinguishing, in a psychoanalytic
for the
reading, between a work of genius and the delirious production of a madman,
given the necessary coherence of the relation between work and personality
according to the criteria of psychoanalysis, that impossibility disappears as
soon as one grants a central position to the various functions of the ego in one's
conception of the personality. These functions manifest themselves very
differently in the case of the madman, where the field of creative freedom is
reduced to zero by the afflux of libido, and the case of the genius, where the
ego shapes the Hbidinal material in order to give rise to a constellation of
totally new esthetic elements. As Ernst Kris points out, the productions of the
madman take on for him a wholly personal meaning that rapidly becomes
incomprehensible to others: "By his word the insane artist commands the
demons, and by his image he exercises magic control. Art has deteriorated
from communication to sorcery."^*
This brief critique of some of Goldmann's positions in no way implies a
denial of the influence of the social context on the artistic or literary work. But
one must recognize both the influence of the social context and that of the
artist's or writer's prsonality.
on the work and places

Structuralist analysis also concentrates essentially
the biographical element between parentheses. Yet, we shall see that even
Levi-Strauss occasionally attempts a synthesis between the structuralist
approach and the genetic one. For the moment, we shall consider only the
question raised by psychoanalytic structuralism, in relation to the problem of
the biography of the creative personality.
Psychoanalytic structuralism finds its inspiration in Freud. In the works of
art that he interpreted, Freud looked for variations on universal themes whose
intelligibility was based on their repetitive structure." Thus, it has been noted,
comparison of Oedipus Rex, Hamlet, and The Brothers Karamazov,
in his
Freud found in each work the theme of parricide motivated by sexual comp-
petition for a woman.
This kind of structuraUst analysis proceeds in two stages: first of all, it seeks
to discover in the work a particular organization of certain "psychic forms"
common to all human beings; this organization can be grasped independently
of any reference to the personality of the artist, to his social situation, etc. In
the next stage, the object is to determine the particular form or the style of this
organization, by considering once again only the elements intrinsic to the
work; this procedure is similar to that of the therapist, who— moving from the
examination of the libidinal content of a case to the patient's particular way of
relating to the world, his immediate object relations —
can understand a "life
style" without having recourse to a detailed anamnesis.^*
Due to the theoretical development of ego psychology and the importance
attached to object relations, analysts of individual works are naturally led to
shift their attention from the thematic content to the mode of expression. On
this particular point, therefore, the structuralist approach has nothing unique
about it. On the other hand, as concerns the bracketing of elements extrinsic to
the work, one runs up against a general difficulty that structuralism is
incapable of surmounting: namely, the absence of any verification criteria,
other than an element of internal cohesion. In fact, only a correlation between

the psychic structure expressed in the work and the psychic structure dis-
coverable in the artist allows for a certain degree of verification. Freud himself
clearly showed the way: most of his analyses apply both the structural method
and the genetic method. A common structure certainly appears in Oedipus
Rex, Hamlet, and in The Brothers Karamazov, but "in these three works
in
the Oedipal structure is manifested in different variants due to the differences
in historical periods, in the author's biographies and in the variation of
repression. Thus, according to Freud, there exists an undeniable link between
the murder of the father in The Brothers Karamazov and the fate of
Dostoevsky's own father, just between Shakespeare's life

as there exists a link
and the personality of Hamlet."^' In any case, even the most convinced
supporters of psychoanalytic structuralism end up by admitting that "intrinsic
analysis [of the work] can be enriched and confirmed by the use of historical
data, whether relating to the author's biography or to the esthetic movement
to
which the work belongs."*" Such a synthesis leads us quite naturally to the
biography of the artist, as we conceive of it in this book.
According to the paradigm of psychobiography which we discussed in the
last chapter, the problem here is that of the individual bases
of the artist's
language of symbolic transformation: can the historian interpret this language

terms
not only in terms of the manifest characteristics of the work, but also in
of the known elements of the artist's life? (We shall leave aside for
now the
assimilated
problem of scientific creation, which many people believe can be
to artistic creation— despite the absence of proof to that
effect— and which
is often explained as the consequence, on the

emotional level, of a basic
inability to establish interpersonal relations."') We must, in fact, attempt to
answer four essential questions:

1) What, generally speaking, is the relation between cêativity and the

unconscious?
2) What is the relation between the personality of the artist and the content
of the work (the subject, the musical theme, the choice of pictorial objects,
etc.)?
3) What is the relation between the personaUty of the artist and the form of
the work?
4) Finally,what is the relation between society and personality in the
elaboration of the work?
As concerns the first of these problematic relations — the one between

creativity and the individual unconscious — Freud's own position is clear: the
language of the artist replaces another one, which is the language of neurosis.
On the work of art is therefore a reelaboration
level of individual creation, the
of the artist's infantile fantasies. The forces whose convergence and/or
opposition lead to artistic creation "are the same conflicts which drive other
people into neurosis.""^ The work of art is a substitute for neurosis: the artist
escapes the paralyzing effects of neurosis thanks to his capacity for sublima-
tion and to the weakness of his repressions. For Freud, the work of art is thus
the expression of a psychic conflict which in most people would lead only to
neurosis, but which, in a few rare individuals endowed with a particular
capacity for sublimation, leads to creativity. At the same time, Freudian
theory maintains that a trace of the original conflict, in other words some
element of neurosis, remains in the artist's personality; often, therefore,
traditional psychobiography looks for the meaning of the work by studying this
"nonsublimated" aspect of the artist's behavior.
Most psychoanalysts accept Freud's basic notions on this point, even if
they reformulate them in a more refined way: the creative act corresponds, in
their eyes, to the solution of a conflict-laden intrapsychic situation. Thus, Jean
Delay speaks of the search for a new equilibrium provoked by the lack of
fulfillment that is the neurotic conflict;"^ Melanie Klein evokes the need for
"repairing the damaged object," a need provoked by the feeling of guilt
resultingfrom the destructive rage of the small child's depressive position, as
well as by the need for a sense of wholeness on the part of the subject; this
theme is also developed by Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel;"" Anthony Storr em-
phasizes the adaptive function of the creative act, whose aim is to reestablish
an internal order, to overcome the conflict-laden oppositions and dissocia-
.''*
tions and to establish a solid identity
We may note that for these authors, the creative act is, one form or
in
another, an attempt to restore a lack provoked in the artist's personality by an

initial intrapsychic conflict (the conflict itself obviously being the result of the
relations between the individual and others at certain initial stages of the
development of the personality). One can certainly accept this explanation,
just as one can accept Anthony Storr's data concerning the types of per-
sonality disorders frequently encountered in creative individuals. But is all this
sufficient?
First of all, the nature of the initial lack is not comparable, would seem, in
it
all artists. To come back to the notions advanced by Melanie Klein and
Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, it is not necessary to attempt to unify these
various hypotheses, as Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel tried to do: one can easily
imagine that, in some artists, the creative act aims to fill in the gaps of their
maturation at every stage of development in order to arrive at "narcissistic
completion,'"** aim is to arrive at the "reparation of the
v^^hile in others its
object" that Melanie Klein evokes in most of her writings. In each case, the
historian must attempt to determine the specific kind of lack, as well as the
particular mode adopted by the artist in order to make up for it. But ( and this is
where traditional psychoanalytic theory seems to me insufficient) neither the
idiosyncratic restoration of a lack, nor the ability described by Storr— to —
integrate the discordant elements of a personality, to submit to the impulses of
the unconscious and to assimilate them without neurotic collapse,*'' is identi-
fiable with the very essence of creativity or with the creadve act in its entirety.
The existence of an unconscious relationship between intrapsychic con-

flict, an and the creative act is conceivable, but it is only one
initial lack,
element of explanation. It would be dangerous to search in the themes or the

form of a work only for a direct and univocal reflection of the psychic conflicts
one may have identified in its author. This impossibility of reducing the work
to an exclusively biographical explanation (or, indeed, to an exclusively
sociological or cultural explanation) is very well stated by Jean Starobinski:
"The work is dependent both on a lived experience and an imagined future. To
choose only the dimension of the past (childhood, etc.) as an explanatory
principle is to treat the work as a result, whereas in fact it is often a means
whereby the writer anticipates himself. Far from being simply the product of
previous experience or of an original passion, the work must itself be
considered as an original act, a point of cleavage where the self, no longer
subject to its past, undertakes to invent both its past and a mythical future, a
configuration outside of time.'"**
Can we define evenprecisely this relation between the personality
more
and the work, this "dependence" of the work on the "lived experience" of the
creative personality? Once again, we can look to Jean Starobinski for a
possible answer:
documents are numerous enough to allow one to reconstruct a

If the
"probable" image of the author's empirical personality, then it becomes possible
to evaluate another distance: the one whereby the work
transmutes and
transcends the immediate facts of experience. In considering the distance

between the work and the life of the psyche we are no longer guided by the
of original
principle of emanation or of reflection, but rather by the principle
invention, of creative desire, of successftil metamorphosis. One must
know the
man and his empirical existence in order to know what the work is opposed to,
what constitutes its coefficient of negativity. It follows from this that psychology
work itself: it
will not directly elucidate the will allow us to understand the
movement toward the work, and if it remains incapable of explaining the work
in
gives us at least a glimpse of its necessary

terms of its sufficient causes, it
.'•'
causes. . .
56 His ton' and Psychoanalysis
The dialectical relation between the personality and the work, as envisaged by
Starobinski, does not exclude the "reflection" aspect of the work, but rather
transcends it. Some studies, which we shall cite later, evoke on the whole the
"reflection" stage of the work; as far as I am aware, there exist no studies to
date which show the interaction between the element of necessary dependence
and the element of creative transcendence; but the direction, at least, is clearly
indicated.
In good logical order, the first task of the biographer will be to identify the
repetitive elements in what constitutes the manifest structure of a work and of
a life. This is precisely what Roland Barthes has in mind when he states, in the
first lines of his book on Michelet: "... there is an order to follow. We must
first give this man his coherence." For Barthes, this means looking for a
thematics, an "organized network of obsessions."*"

This search for the unconscious coherence, for the "organized network" of
obsessions, will be more or less easy depending on the degree of subjectivity of
the creative personality. At the end of her study on Poe, Marie Bonaparte
proposed the idea of classifying writers according to their degree of sub-
jectivity —a
naive formulation for a correct view. In effect, in creative
personalities whose subjectivity is extreme, certain dominant themes of the
unconscious are reproduced almost and one can risk various hypo-
literally,
theses concerning the origin of the psychic constellation which influences their
life and their work. In the case of others, the unconscious material is more or
less completely reworked and is much more difficult to arrive at.'^
Let us take the case of Edgar Allan Poe. The obsession with the "dead
mother" dominated the work of the writer, through a series of obvious
symbols, just as it dominated his life: his marriage, his impotence, his
alcoholism, his final escapade. Even though it is often too schematic, Marie
Bonaparte's analysis is —
on the whole correct which does not exclude, of
course, the possibility of a more detailed interpretation, dealing perhaps with
biographical elements that she did not perceive, or with more general uncon-
scious problems revealed in Poe's work.
For the biographer, the death of the mother becomes the fundamental
absence, the narcissistic wound that Poe's life and work attempted to over-
come. The extreme subjectivity of this auteur maudit designates this central
theme in a convincing manner. But the insufficiency of the usual psycho-
biographical method becomes apparent as soon as one compares the case of
Poe with that of another writer, who was just as subjective, just as "explicit"
about the psychological bases of his creative quest, just as deeply hurt by a
maternal absence which, although benign and temporary thus not at all —
—
comparable to death nevertheless provoked an emptiness that the work
sought to fill: I am referring, of course, to Proust. The bedtime kiss, once it was
refused, became a wound perhaps as intolerable as the one suffered by little
Edgar, whose mother abandoned him by dying. From that moment on, writes
George Painter, "[Proust] sought everywhere for the infinite, unconditional
,""
love which he had lost. . .
The demonstration offered by Painter in his two fine volumes is impressive;

the proofs provided by Marie Bonaparte are convincing. In both cases, the
extreme subjectivity of the writers in question makes the central theme of their
quest evident— and yet, what a difference between the two men, the course of
theirHves and every aspect of their work! In the two cases, the fundamental
absence of the mother was experienced in a different "key," fantasized in a
different way and transposed into different symbols and forms. In this kind of
analysis, the particular setting up of relations, the specific structures, the
it is
individual nuances, and only they, that count: the historian must be able to
rely both on systematic explanation, which leads from the discovery of a
fiindamental lack to its transmutations, and on his intuition, which alone
allows him to evaluate the importance of each element; at the same time, he
must not attempt to establish an exclusive and univocal causal relation
between the psychic structure he has identified and the nature of the specific
symbolic transformation."
On the level of the search for an unconscious coherence of themes in the
work and their correlation with the biographical context, the historian can
study the life of artists by the same method as the life of writers. Thus, in his
study of Michelangelo, Dominique Fernandez interprets certain major themes

in the work as the obsessive echoes of fantasies provoked in the artist by the
death of his mother when he was six years old, by his conflict with his father,
and by a homosexuality whose roots are to be found in conflict and in absence.
When Michelangelo treats the subject of the Holy Family or the Madonna
and Child, it is always the same strange relation between the mother and the
child that appears: no bond, no tenderness, no mutual moving toward each
other. In The Holy Family ofDoni, for example, there is a kind of acrobatics
on the part of the Virgin, who throws the child backward toward the father; in
the Madonna of la Scala, there is a movement thrusting the child away from
her, "as if she wanted to put him out of her sight."*" The repetition is
significant. According to Fernandez, Michelangelo treated this subject a half
dozen times: in the "the Virgin, seated on the right with

Madonna ofBruges,
her son standing between her knees, stares straight in front of her, without the
slighest bend of her head, without seeing him or paying the least attention to
him, except for the fact that the fingers of her left hand are linked with the
fingers of the child's right hand "" One finds the same stare, "fixed, empty
and absent," in the Virgin of the reliefs known as Tondo Taddei and Tondo
Pitti. Finally, in the Virgin and Child of the Medici Chapel, the "tragic fixity
of the mother's stare is made all the more apparent by the fact that the child,
seated on her lap, twists himself violently backward, as if he wanted not only
to catch hold of the breast but to attract to his little self the attention of that
indifferent, impenetrableand distant face."** Still other examples confirm this

obsession with the "dead mother" or the "absent mother," and Fernandez
shows that in Michelangelo this absence was experienced and expressed as a
fantasy of abandonment of the child by the Mother and, perhaps once, in
Venus and Two Cupids, in the form of a reaction-formation: the abandon-
ment of the mother by the child."
We need not repeat here Fernandez' detailed discussion concerning the

relation between Michelangelo's work and the conflict with the father; it will
be enough to mention that Fernandez establishes a correlation between the
internal discord that this conflict entailed (the desire to attack the father versus
the prohibition against doing so) and the unfinished state of works representing
paternal figures. After citing a long series of examples of different works m
which the feminine or young figures are finished whereas the male paternal
figures are not, Fernandez adds: "The contrast is even more striking if one
compares the statues of a single series or a single group. Opposed to the old
and bearded Slaves of the Academy, which are unfinished, are the young,
finished Slaves of the Louvre. Opposed to the bearded, unfinished figures of
Day and Twilight in the Medici Chapel are the beardless, finished figures of
Julius and Lorenzo. Finally, it may happen that in a single group, such as
Victory, which includes two men, the young one has the polish of a finished
work, whereas the old one has the tremor of the nonjinito. So many examples,
spanning the whole career of the artist, cannot be simple coincidences; whence
the following law, which seems to govern Michelangelo's unconscious: each
time \iQgoes to work on a figure whose age or attributes make him appear as a
figure of paternal authority, he goes at it with incredible violence, a sacrile-
."'*
gious temerity atoned for by the sudden interruption of the work. . .
Michelangelo's homosexuality need no more be documented, as such, than

his conflict with his father; it is a fact that all his biographers have noted, and
Michelangelo himself admitted it. But what one looks for in his work is the
expression of the hidden fantasies that this homosexuality engenders. Now it
seems be the case that Michelangelo was dominated, because of his

to
tendencies, by a feeling of intense guilt which made him imagine the most
terrible punishments — a fact that would perhaps explain the persistently self-
punitive behavior that the artist inflicted on himself in his everyday life.
Dominique Fernandez illustrates this hidden dialectic between homosexuality
and fantasies of punishment by means of a comparative analysis of three
drawings: Ganymede carried off by an eagle, Tityus endlessly devoured by the
vulture, and Phaeton falling with his chariot.
The Ganymede/Tityus/Phaeton series offers three successive images of the

naked adolescent body, first upright, then lying on the back, then in a backward
swoon. According to Vasari, the three drawings were given in that order to
Tommaso [Tommaso Cavalieri, a young man with whom Michelangelo was in
love— S.F.]: Ganymede, then Tityus, finally Phaeton. The meaning of this
progression is easily deciphered. The rape of Ganymede, executed in an
ascending movement from bottom to top, symbolizes the stage of hope, of
illusion; the punishment of Tityus corresponds to the immobile continuity of
endless torture; the fall of Phaeton indicates the final catastrophe. The three
nudes are endowed
all with intense sensuality, like three images of the most
shameless abandonment and self-exhibition. At the same time, however, these
three poses constitute the punishment itself, according to the secret law which
makes Michelangelo condemn himself for the very thing that arouses his
passion. Ganymede with his legs spread apart represents an invitation to love,
the excitation of the first step, a provocative enticement, but also, at the same
time, the body pulled apart, imprisoned in the claws of the predatory bird,
mortally paralyzed. Tityus lying on his back represents the imminence of
pleasure, but also, at the same time, the eternity of punishment. Phaeton, in his
backward swoon, represents the climax of voluptuous ecstasy but also, at the
same time, the irrevocable engulfment by the waves."
Although widely practiced, the analysis of the thematic content of the

it is
work is perhaps of secondary importance. As Jean-Frangois Lyotard writes in

French translation of Anton Ehrenzweig's important study,
his preface to the
The Hidden Order ofArt, "Applied psychoanalysis has most often neglected
the choice or organization, whether conscious or unconscious, of the formal
constituents of artistic works, even though everyone knows that it is there,
rather than in the 'subject' (when there is one) that the artist's efforts are
concentrated."^" That is true, but the essential relation between the individual
unconscious and the form or style of the work requires a method of analysis
that it has not been possible, until now, to elucidate. We have seen that the
structural analysis of works of art attaches particular importance to the dis-
covery of a relation between the form of the work and certain general
structures of the unconscious evoked by the artist, without considering it
necessary to refer to the latter's biography. Other attempts, equally general in
nature, have been made to relate certain forms of artistic expression (poetic
rhythm^^ or kinesthesia, for example)" to certain unconscious processes. But
as far as specific relations on the level of psychoanalytic biography are
concerned, there has been nothing. The fascinating study by Anton Ehrenz-
weig— which attempts to show that the primary processes, far from being the
domain of formlessness and chaos, are a structured field from which all
genuine creation derives, thus constituting a substratum that encloses
artistic
the "hidden order" of art— contributes very little to the questions that concern
the biographer. When Ehrenzweig evokes the particular form of certain works
by Beethoven or Mozart, it is in the framework of a general demonstration, just
as when he analyzes works by Picasso, Jackson Pollock, or Bridget Riley. His
specific remark about Brahms' music ("this intransigent music pleased me

because of its virility. It seemed to harmonize with the forbidding and solitary
personality of Brahms"") is merely an aside. It is only in the last part of the
book, where Ehrenzweig takes up the great themes of the "dying god" or of the
"white goddess," that we find an attempt to relate these to specific works— but
at that point we are back to thematic analysis."
We might end by quoting Dominique Fernandez' concluding remarks in his
study of Michelangelo: contradictory alliance of opposing stylistic traits
"The
in Michelangelo's work, his 'movement without locomotion' (Panofsky),
his
'withheld leap of a dog' (Stevenson), the number and variety of 'compromises'

he opted for, his 'baroque' innovations (brutal distortion, serpentine S-shaped
line, contrapposto, contrast through symmetry), which art critics explain by
invoking either the culture ... or the artist's temperament ... all point per-
haps to a historical childhood situation, to the problems of the stepson obliged

to please both his father and his stepmother. Anything one can say on this
subject is purely hypothetical. . .
."" In this particular case, we must agree.
Yet, is this not a particular aspect of the psychoanalytic biography of artists
whose analysis will have to be attempted? Is this not what William Langer
would call "the next assigrunent?"
In his Art and Illusion,^^ the art historian E. H. Gombrich shows that the
artistdoes not copy an "objective" reality, but represents a stylized vision of
the world in the famework of conventional schemata current in the period and
in the culture in which he lives. This seems undeniable. But in that case, could
we not say that it is the social context which in large part determines the
conventional schemata that the whereas the individual varia-
artist relies on,
tions in relation to this "norm" are determined by the artist's personality, and
especially by the play of unconscious processes? We have here a possible
model of the interaction between society and personality as regards the
creation of works of art. An example borrowed not from Gombrich but from
Lucien Goldmann will make this hypothesis more concrete.
According to Goldmann, the economic and social structure resulting from
a laissez-faire economy produced, in literature, a certain type of novel: the
novel with a problematic hero. Since Malraux's novels were written toward
the end of this period,^^ he still used, necessarily as it were, the typical schema.
Goldmann stops there, but one can go a step further: if Malraux internalized
the conventional novelistic schema imposed by the social structure in which
he lived, his interpretation of this schema was very different from the inter-
pretation one finds in Roger Martin du Gard, Jules Romains, or Thomas
Mann. It is in the particular interpretation of the conventional schema, both on
the thematic and on the formal levels, that one can situate the influence of the
personality.*^
One can also come back to a variant of the classical model of culture and
personality, in which society influences the personality, notably in the frame-
work of the family. The family is both the mirror of a typical social reality and a
particular way of experiencing this typical context. In the Critique of Dia-
lectical Reason, Sartre shows this double aspect of the family milieu, as well
as the link — obvious, as far as we are concerned— that the family represents
between the general social structure and the formation of the artistic
personality:
The Flaubert family was of the semi-domestic type; it was a little behind the
industrial families which the father Flaubert cared for or visited. The father
Flaubert, who felt that he was "wronged" by his patron Dupuytren, terrorized
everyone with his own worth and ability, his Voltairian irony, his terrible angers
and fits of melancholy. We will also easily understand that the bond between the
small Gustave and his mother was never determining; she was only a reflection
of the terrible doctor. Thus we have before us an almost tangible cleavage which
will often separate Flaubert from his contemporaries; in a century when the
conjugal family is the type current among the wealthy bourgeoisie, when Du
Camp and Le Poittevin represent children freed from the patria potestas,
1
Flaubert characterized by a "fixation" on his father. Baudelaire, on the other

is
hand, bom the same year, will be fixed all his life on his mother. And this
difference explained by the difference in their respective environments.
is
Flaubert's bourgeoisie is harsh, new. (His mother, vaguely connected with the
nobility, represents a class of landowners in process of liquidation; the father
comes straight out of a village and wears strange, peasant clothing even at
Rouen— a goatskin in winter.) This bourgeoisie comes from the country; and it
returns there, too, since it uses its gradually won wealth to buy land. Baude-
laire's family, bourgeois, urban for many years already, considers itself in some
small way belonging to the new nobility (la noblesse de robe); it owns stocks and
bonds. Sometimes between two masters, the mother appeared all alone in the
glory of her independence. Later it was all in vain for Aupick to play at being the
"boss"; Mme. Aupick, stupid and rather vain, but charming and favored by her
period, never ceased to exist in her own right.^^
We need not be concerned here with the fact that Sartre establishes only a
"surface" relation between the particular family constellation and the writer's
personality; what matters, once again, is the encounter of the typical with the
idiosyncratic. In effect, the schema inspired by Gombrich's notion and the
one we have just illustrated by an example from Sartre dovetail with each
—
other and they do so, furthermore, in the theoretical context of the modes of
socialization of the individual, which we presented in the preceding chapter.
The example given by Sartre illustrates the socialization process of the child;
Gombrich's notion illustrates the internalization of norms which takes place
throughout one's lifetime. But that is not all.
In his admirable reading of the "Dinner in Turin" episode told by Rousseau

in his Confessions. Jean Starobinski notes that "... the three phases of
Mademoiselle de Breil's story correspond ... to an affective archetype of
Rousseau's, one that present in everything that bears the stamp of his
is
imagination: the actors' roles are distributed, furthermore, according to the

structural constellation of the myth of the 'forbidden princess.' (We may recall
here the story of Turandot, and the role played in it by the riddle that must be
solved.) We have the impression of encountering here the personal interpre-
."'"'
tation of an immemorial legendary situation. . .
First, Rousseau's Confessions and the "Dinner in Turin" episode in

particular could easily be placed into their sociological context. Next, the
ternary movement of the narrative allows one to develop an independent
structural analysis. Furthermore— and here we find a third level of analysis-
Jean Starobinski shows that this triple movement can be found in Rousseau's
other works, which suggests that one can "recognize in it one of the privileged
'structures' through which Rousseau interprets himself, interprets the
world
and his own situation in the worid.'"' This provides us with an essential key to
psychobiographical interpretation. Finally, the work in question also em-
bodies a deeper model: a particular archetypal constellation, that of
the
"forbidden princess."
The work thus bears within itself its own structural coherence, the imprint
as well as.
ofthe society around it and the imprint ofthe author's personality,
sometimes, the traces of fundamental archetypes whose source is in the

deepest unconscious. It is in the work itself that one can locate the integra-
tion which will point the way toward a veritable total history.
The possibilities opened up by the interpretation of the work as an essential
part of the biography, and the richness of the correlations one can thereby
establish, would appear to make the psychobiography of writers and artists a
privileged field of investigation. But, at least in principle, the biography of
political figures or charismatic personalities offers the same possibihties.
What the work is to the artist, the political decision is to the statesman and the
formulation of a new norm is to the charismatic personality. In discussing
these two categories of biography, we shall not enter into the same detail but
shall simply point out the particular problems posed by each. The possibilities
of a global context should, however, be kept in mind.
Personality and Political Behavior
If the language of artistic creation is fraught with a degree of irreducibility, the

language of poUtics, oriented as toward immediate communication and
it is
action, is more accessible to analysis. Nevertheless, the historian must

confront here, besides the general difficulties of psychobiography, a series of
specific obstacles, not the least of which is the classical problem of the relation
between role and personality.'^
In effect, if the work of the writer and of the artist can be considered from a
subjective standpoint, as the expression of a social situation to be sure, but not
as the fulfilling of a role strictly determinedby social expectations, the same is
not true of the behavior of political figures: by definition the politician must
act, at least in part, in response to the demands, expectations, and needs of the
group. Is it therefore necessary, in order to understand a behavior of this type,

to have recourse to psychological explanations founded on a theory of the
personality, or is it sufficient to analyze the role played by a political figure in
terms of social function, according to certain norms defined by the group?
Examples drawn from everyday life may give, at first, the impression that
the public role and the function create a new identity which it would be useless,
indeed impossible, to interpret in terms of personality: in order to understand
the gesture of the person in uniform who stretches his hand out to you as you
board a you don't need to look for personal motives, remarks Raymond
train,
Aron." That is true, but the example he cites is a special case which allows one
to explain only a limited sector of human activity, the sector in which "the
person wholly disappears behind the function."^'' This kind of case offers no
particular interest to the biographer. But the moment one attempts to deal with
more complex and more ramified functions which contain elements of uncer-
tainty and choice, one inevitably observes the relevance of personal motives.
Thus, in the case of political figures, the circumstances surrounding the
.

choice of a career are often crucial, for they contain a first concrete manifes-
tation of the personality: Hitler, as we know, first planned to become an
architect, and Trotsky had trouble choosing between mathematics and revo-
lutionary agitation.
Even more than the choice of a role, it is the creation of a new political role
that is determined by the personality in the case of the most famous political
leaders: Napoleon crowned himself emperor, Hitler proclaimed himself Fuhrer
at the death of Hindenburg, and of De Gaulle it has been written that "it is as if
he had chosen to tailor himself to his role in history from the very beginning of
his childhood, as if he had carefully selected from his heritage and his
personality those elements which would allow him to play the role to
perfection."^* Every leader can alter the model of a preconceived role, refuse
to submit to it, shatter the old system, and establish a wholly new system of
norms and expectations.''^
The moment that a role has a certain degree of complexity, there exist as
many ways of accomplishing it as there are individuals. Every politician often
finds himself grappling with role conflicts or with conflicts provoked by the
contradictions inherent in a single role. The personality determines the kind of
solution one brings to the conflict, just as it determines the choices one makes
when the role is ambiguous and — as is frequent in great national crises — when
the options available to those holding the top political posts are contradictory
and apparently of equal value. It is clear that British policy in 1938 would not
have been the same if Churchill had been prime minister, and that, on June 1 8,
1940, the politics of France would not have been what it was if De Gaulle, and
not Petain, had been chosen to head the government in place of Paul
Reynaud. . .
It seems evident, therefore, that just as one cannot wholly deny the
influence of the role on the personality, one cannot ignore the opposite
influence, that of the personality on the role. This obvious interaction, even
while it eliminates a first objection, leads straight to another problem: how can
the biographer distinguish the specific influence of the role from that of the
personality, in studying a particular decision for example? How is he to find,
beneath the mask imposed by the role, the idiosyncratic elements of the
personality?"
The answer can be briefly stated: by comparing the behavior of the same
individual in several different roles, one can attribute the characteristics that
change to the influence of the various roles, and the permanent characteristics
to the influence of the personality.
The rate of success is no higher in the domain of political psychobiography
than it is in that of psychobiography in general. Simplistic interpretations are
found side by side with traditional biographies, which may themselves use a
few psychoanalytic concepts, thus adding very little to an understanding of the
personality studied.''^ Even more than in the case of writers and artists, there is
obviously a great temptation to analyze according to the criteria of psycho-
history the behavior of political figures who are still active. In such instances.
the objective difficulties are compounded by the hazards of highly incomplete

documentation, the latter being further distorted by the more or less conscious
attitudes of the author toward his living subject.
Yet, in the field of political biography as well, certain works succeed in
presenting a coherent and complex psychobiographical explanation." Among
the latter, we have chosen to examine in some detail Alexander and Juliette
George's biography of Wilson, using this example to show how various verifi-
cation criteria can be applied, as well as to indicate certain gaps and

difficulties.
It is when one compares the Georges' work with the psychoanalytic

biography of Wilson by Freud and one sees, once again, to what a
Bullitt that
great degree psychobiography —
and psychohistory in general remains an —
art. Bullitt and Freud were not lacking in documentation, and in his preface
Bullitt cites an imposing list of sources they consulted. In fact, he notes that
Freud "was dissatisfied by his studies of Leonardo da Vinci and of the Moses
statue by Michelangelo because he had been obliged to draw large conclusions
from few facts, and he had long wished to make a psychological study of a
contemporary with regard to whom thousands of facts could be ascer-
tained."*" The simplistic character of the result, the quasi-mechanical appli-
cation of the least elaborated analytic concepts, give one the impression that
most of the work is attributable to the American ambassador rather than to the
father of psychoanalysis. Yet, for our purposes this study is not lacking in
interest, for despite all its faults, it confirms on the essential points the
hypotheses at which the Georges arrived independently. (Their book was
published in the early 1950's; the manuscript of the Freud-Bullitt book was
completed in the was not published until 1966.) In certain
1930's, but
instances, the Freud-Bullitt work even furnishes added elements to complete
an explanation by the Georges.
Let us begin by recalling the main characteristics of the unconscious
repetitive structure in Wilson's behavior as outlined in the Georges' work, a
structure that they discern at every decisive stage in Wilson's public life. The
structure in question can be reduced to three distinct propositions.
First proposition: It is necessary to distinguish Wilson's behavior at the
time he was a "power-seeker" from the time he was a "power-holder." In the
first instance, Wilson was able to act with sufficient flexibility; it was in the
second situation that the difficulties appeared. When he was in a position of
power, Wilson manifested an aggressive behavior tending to force others into
the most total submission. Whenever he came up against significant opposi-
tion, he was unable to act with enough flexibility to overcome the obstacle. On
the contrary, he would formulate the conflict in terms of absolute principles
and, in their name, adopt an attitude of total intransigence; the result was
inevitably disaster, whereas any willingness to compromise would have
assured his success.
Second proposition: Wilson's hunger for success was limitless. As soon as
he had realized one ambition he launched himself into a new task, without
granting himself so much as a moment of rest to savor the success already
attained.
Third proposition: One of the most disastrous consequences of Wilson's
personal insecurity was his inability to ask for other people's advice con-
cerning problems which for him were charged with emotional significance,
unless he was sure that his advisers were not in a position to oblige him to
change his mind.
For the Georges, the origin of this behavior is to be found in Wilson's
childhood: "It our thesis that underlying Wilson's quest for political power
is
and his maimer of exercising it was the compelling need to counter the
crushing feelings of inadequacy which had been branded into his spirit as a
child. His interest in power, in political leadership, was based, we submit,
. . .
on the need to compensate for damaged self-esteem. The urgent inner need
constantly to struggle against these mischievous self-depreciating legacies
from his early years crippled his capacity to react objectively to matters at
hand."8'
We may briefly summarize the Georges' hypothesis as follows: Wilson's
father was excessively strict, and manifested an ironic attitude toward him
which had disastrous effects. The child, however, reacted to this only in a very
indirect way: he learned to read considerably late, and this inaptitude
represented a symbolic affront to the ambitions and demands of the father. On
the other hand —
and it is here that one can, by inference, propose the thesis of
—
repressed and displaced hostility in his adult life the young Wilson mani-
fested toward his father a deference, a devotion, and a love that immediately
strike one as "reaction formations" because of their excessive and unusual
character. The result was a displacement of hostility such that Woodrow
Wilson never allowed any other person to exercise power over him. He
constantly took revenge on others for the humiliation inflicted on him by his
father, since he could not express his hostility toward the father himself As
the Georges put it: "Throughout his life his relationships with others seemed
shaped by an inner command never again to bend his will to another man's. He
seems to have experienced men who were determined to make their view-
points prevail against his own— men like Dean West at Princeton or, later.
Senator unbearable threat. They seem to have stirred in him

Lodge— as an
ancient memories of his capitulation to his father and he resisted with ferocity.
He must dominate, out of fear of being dominated. It was a need so strong that
nothing— except, on occasion, the lure of achieving higher office— could
overcome opponents to heel. Not the pleas of his
his determination to bring his
friends, not even the recognition, deep within himself, that sometimes it is
"*^
necessary to compromise with one's adversaries to achieve desirable goals.
The Georges thus identify in Wilson a particular psychic structure whose
unconscious dynamic provoked a clearly discernible repetitive behavior.
Their book abounds in documentary evidence, and the Gestalt they define
seems incontrovertible. Let us, however, try to verify the scheme they suggest
by using as many supplementary sources as possible," in order to see whether
there any documentary counterevidence and whether the choices made by

is
the Georges were not arbitrary.

We may begin by recalling that the most competent and most recent of
Wilson's "traditional" biographers, Arthur S. Link, also perceived the repeti-
tive characteristics of the behavior on which the Georges based their study.
That in itself is a significant confirmation. But let us examine the Georges'
three propositions, going from the minor to the major one.
According to the second proposition, an insatiable hunger for success
constantly propelled Wilson forward, without respite or rest. The entire career
of the president is witness to this fact, and all the biographies agree on it.
Among the documents I have consulted there is nothing that would con-
tradict it, except perhaps that there was a certain falling off of Wilson's
drive after the death of his wife, and again during the first months of his
relationship with the woman who was to become his second wife, in 1 9 1 6. Yet,
in Wilson's entourage this trait of his character was hardly mentioned, except
by the president's closest adviser and
Colonel House. House's re-
friend.
marks, to which the Georges allude without quoting them, are worth repro-
ducing: "One thing the president said," he noted in his diary entry for
October 16, 1913, "was that he always lacked any feeling of elation when a
particular object was accomplished. When he signed the Tariff Bill he could
not feel the joy that was properly his, for it seemed to him that the thing was
over and another great work was calling for his attention, and he thought of this
rather than the present victory."**
Freud and Bullitt noted this same characteristic in Wilson and cited many
examples of it: his lack of joy at the success of his first courses at Bryn Mawr,
the depression that followed the realization of his fondest wish at the time, the
acceptance of his first book. Congressional Government, for publication, his
morbid reaction in 1906 when Harvey, one of the key men in the Democratic
Party machine, mentioned him as a possible candidate for the presidency.**
We shall see that the explanation given by Freud and Bullitt fits perfectly into
the general schema proposed by the Georges.
Let us next consider the third proposition, the one concerning Wilson's
hostile attitude toward any advice that did not confirm his own ideas. The
documents attesting to this characteristic are numerous and convincing, the
only possible exception being Wilson's atfitude toward Colonel House. It is
had no doubt about House's profound loyalty (at least

clear that the president
not until 1919, when his doubts were unjustified): the colonel's suggestions
seemed to him, therefore, to emanate in a sense from himself: "Mr. House is
my second personality. He is my independent self His thoughts and mine are
."«<*
one. . .
No one else, it is true, could claim to have a genuine influence on the

president — who, the moment he thought he had discovered a flaw in House's
absolute loyalty, broke with him. Wilson himself sincerely thought he could
accept advice, but as House remarks, he no one: "At
really took the advice of
another time in our conversation, he [Wilson] remarked that he always sought
advice. I almost laughed at this statement, forMcAdoo had just been telling me
to-day that he was at White Sulphur with the president and his family when the
despatch arrived from Admiral Mayo concerning his demand of Huerta to
salute our flag,and he said the president never even mentioned the matter
to him."*^ Link's exhaustive study of the archives shows that, as a matter
of fact, even House's influence remained secondary.^* It is also Link who
provides conclusive evidence of the tremendous self-assurance which made
Wilson scorn any advice or idea different from his own. According to
Lansing, Wilson's secretary of state, he did not accept reasonable advice
when it did not correspond to his own intuition. For Link, Lansing's testimony
isconfirmed by Wilson's secretary of defense. Garrison, by his most intimate
adviser in New Jersey, La Monte, as well as by his White House physician,
Carry T. Grayson, and others.*'
Thus, even if the Georges' thesis can use some minor qualification as
concerns the position of Colonel House, its general content seems to be
confirmed.
Obviously, it is the Georges' first proposition, concerning Wilson's emo-
tional investment in certain conflict situations and the self-destructive rigidity
of his behavior in such instances, which represents the essential basis of their
thesis and reasoning. Among the documents one can consult, nothing contra-
dicts this thesis and many elements confirm it.
We may note, first of all, that Wilson was not unaware of his own
intransigence and that at times he must have vaguely realized its self-
destructive character: "I can only do what I believe to be just, whether public
opinion is for or against the judgment of my conscience," he declared at a
meeting of the Big Four,'" and, even more revealingly, at another meeting:
"There is nothing more honorable than to be thrown out of power because one
was right. "'^ Even more significant perhaps is the conversation recorded by
House several years earlier, in December 1913: "I spoke of his success, and
he said his Princeton experience hung over him sometimes like a nightmare;
that he had wonderful success there, and all at once conditions changed and
the troubles, of which everyone knew, were brought about. He seemed to fear
"'^
that such a denouement might occur again.
This repetitive behavior did not escape Link, as we have already noted. In
the preface to the first volume of his biography. Link discusses the problem in
general but unequivocal terms: "There was something about Woodrow
Wilson that inevitably engendered controversy when he occupied positions of
power and influence. Wilson was a headstrong and determined man who was
usually able to rationalize his actions in terms of the moral law and to identify
his position with the divine will. This combination of strong, almost imperious
will and intense conviction operated to great advantage when Wilson had
support among the trustees at Princeton, the legislators at Trenton, or the con-
gressmen in Washington, because it gave him great power and an impelling
drive. The time came at Princeton, Trenton, and Washington when Wilson
did not command the support of the groups to whom he was responsible.
Naturally, he was not able to change his character even had he wanted to
change it, with the result that controversy and disastrous defeat occurred in
varying degrees in all three cases. "'^
The documents have been able to examine confirm, almost without
I
exception, the hypotheses of the Georges, Freud and Bullitt arrived at very
similar conclusions: according to them, it was the unconscious conflict with
the father that explained, in large part, Wilson's rigid attitude (a genetic
explanation that the Georges also propose), and was also the weight of the
it
superego imposed by the father which incited Wilson to incessant effort so that
success never brought him any rest. Despite all this, however, the Georges'
study shows once again how even the most successful psychobiographies
present certain problems that cannot be overlooked.
In the Georges' biography, Wilson's repetitive behavior, determined by his
unconscious conflicts, occupies all of the foreground, whereas the projects of
the president, of the man responsible for formulating a basic conception of
international order, appear only incidentally and are practically submerged by
the force of his unconscious conflicts. In Link's biography, on the other hand,
even if the outline of Wilson's repetitive behavior is sketched in, its uncon-
scious character, its conflictive origin and the influence of the unconscious
tendencies in question on the other aspects of Wilson's behavior are not
indicated: we have, instead, the evolution of a conscious will enriched by an
increasingly varied and complex experience, aiming for the conquest of power
but also for the realization of poHtical principles belonging to the American
progressive tradition. A complete biography of Wilson should in fact be a
synthesis of the two and the Georges'. Such a study would
studies. Link's
allow us to follow the growth of Wilson's project stage by stage, but within the
limits imposed by the unconscious structure of the President's pesonality; it
— —
would show us in the realization of this project the tragic interaction
between a conscious will pursuing its goal and the unconscious impulses that
divert it and eventually lead it to arouse opposition to its own desired ends.
Can such a double gaze be united into a single vision, one that avoids mere
artificial juxtaposition? One may well doubt it.
Furthermore, the Georges did not at all consider the possible influence of
organic illness on Wilson's behavior. Freud and Bullitt, on the other hand,
were aware of the possibility and posed the question repeatedly, but in the
absence of documentation they could not provide an answer.''' In the inter-
vening years, we have acquired further information. Thus, as we noted earlier,
Edwin Weinstein indicates that Wilson probably sufl"ered from a cerebro-
vascular ilhiess as early as 1896, and that in 1906 in any case, a definite
deterioration was noticeable. His aggressivity and intolerance at the time of
the Princeton controversy could therefore be attributed, at least in part, to an
organic cause.'- An examination of Wilson's behavior from the end of the war
on leaves no doubt about this point; the clinical and documentary evidence
provided by Weinstein is massive, and the behavior that the Georges explain
exclusively in psychodynamic terms was very probably due to the effect of a
serious deterioration in the cerebrovascular system.'* Thus, if one does not
take the physiological processes into account, one ends up with an over-
simplified uni-causal explanation; if one does take them into account, one
necessarily adds yet another element of indeterminacy to the overall picture of
the relation between Wilson's real personality and his public behavior. As
Lucien Febvre would say, however, "What matter? The historian does not
."
have the right to desert. . ,
Finally, Wilson's political behavior was certainly influenced by the tradi-

tions and the conscious and unconscious behefs of the group to which he
belonged. One can in fact ask oneself to what degree the American "collective
mentaUty" was responsible for the obstinacy, but also the idealism, of the
president. The psychoanalytic history of collective phenomena meets up at
this point with psychobiography and gives it its veritable import: the collective
identity of the group contributes to the formation of individual identity, and the
study of individual identity cannot, because of that very fact, be separated
from the study of the group. Could we not say that one of the objectives of the
psychobiography of a political figure is to teach us something about the
profound behefs of the group to which he belongs and whose leadership he has
assumed? Even more important, could we not say that major political deci-
sions, like great works of art, result from the convergence of a social
structure, the evolution of a personality, the profound beliefs of a collective
identity and perhaps, of choices with universal implications, a set
in the case
of archetypal configurations buried in the deepest regions of human experi-

ence? Political decisions, like works of art, are situated at the point where a
total history converges. The fundamental norms of a group, those that the
charismatic personality reinforces or transforms, represent the third element
of these zones of convergence.
Personality and Collective Identity
Charisma is a particular type of "grace." In Max

Weber's words, it is "a
certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart
ft-om ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or
at least specifically exceptional qualities."" Because the group recognizes this
particular grace or charisma in an individual, it accepts to be dependent on, if
not totally obedient to, the charismatic personality: the charismatic leader
dominates his group.
The recognition of a charismatic personality and the desire for his domi-
nation occur in certain circumstances, most often in situations of extreme
hardship which lead people to call for a savior. According to Erikson, these
three
hardship situations can be reduced, on the psychological level, to
principal forms: fear in the face of a grave danger which poses a
physical threat
to the community; anxiety provoked by the disintegration of a

group identity;
finally, the existential anguish experienced by people for whom the usual
rituals of existence have lost their meaning.'* Up to this
point one can hardly
disagree, but two questions immediately present themselves:

how can the
charismatic personality, who generally addresses himself to a very large

group, transcend the limited sociocultural milieu which shapes every indi-
vidual? What are the psychological foundations of charisma?
Weinstein and have very justly noted that in order to be able to
Platt'^
answer the first question, one has to admit the possibility of a direct relation
between social structure and personality, and invoke the process of interna-
lization. The charismatic personality would then be defined as a personality
able to internalize and make explicit new norms pertinent to all, or to
internalize and revive old norms, whereas the society around him, in its crisis
state, was able to perceive neither the new norms nor the old ones. (Obviously,
the primary institutions play no role at all in such a process.) But in that case,
what are the psychological qualities that allow for this unusual kind of
internalization and "expUcitation?" In other words, what is the nature of
charisma?
It has often been suggested that what characterizes all charismatic per-
sonaUties is their absolute confidence in themselves, their unshakable faith in
The charismatic leader always considers himself as
their personal mission.^*'"
the chosen instrument of some superior force, whether God or History, or God
acting through History. Classical psychoanalytic theory allows us to interpret
charisma in terms of an extreme narcissistic withdrawal in the personality of
the subject, followed by a quasi-megalomaniac action in relation to the
group."" This is an explanation (or rather, a description) which, without being
incorrect, remains extremely narrow.
On the contrary,one distinguishes between the language of the artist,
if
essentially oriented toward symbolic elaborations, and the language of the

political personality, directed toward the manipulation of real objects and
situations, could one not suggest that the charismatic personality is able to use
these two languages at the same time, being both an artist and a politician,
—
or to quote the title of the Hoffmans' study on De Gaulle a "pohtical —
artist" in the literal sense of both these terms? Like the artist, the charismatic
personality projects and compensates for certain internal lacks (those of the
group, in this instance) by means of a symbolic transposition of the problem
to a general existential level where the "true" answer seems to appear; at the
same time, like the politician, he knows how to manipulate reality so that the
solution he offers will be accepted and, above all, so that it becomes the basis
for collective action. It is in this very general explanatory context that the
biographer can look for a more exact relation between the personal conflict of
the charismatic leader and the new system of values that he proposes.
Erikson has shown that, in the case of Luther as in that of Gandhi, the
conflict between the son and the father was the emotional source of the new
system. The Reformer transformed Catholic theology and changed God's
attitudes in order to give himself an image of the Father that allowed him to
bear the rejection and the anger of his earthly father, while at the same time
accepting the paternal role of God and submitting to it: "Luther crowns his
attempt to cure the wounds of this wrath [his father's] by changing God's
attributes: instead of being like an earthly father whose mood-swings are
incomprehensible to his small son, God is given the attribute of ira miser-
ACORDIAE— a wrath which is really compassion. With this concept, Luther
was at last able to forgive God for being a Father, and grant Him
justification."'"^
In his biography of Gandhi, Erikson raises the individual conflict between
father and son to the level of a nuclear conflict in the charismatic personality in
general.'"^ This hypothesis not enough to replace the larger framework we
is
evoked above, but it can allow us to define some of its aspects more precisely.
Concerning the relation between the charismatic leader and his followers, for
example: the conflict with the father, which is reflected in the leader's relation
with the sons, allows him not only to formulate the bases of a new identity and
a new ideology, but also to establish with his disciples and the masses a
relation of love, one that does
however, exclude hostile authority; such a
not,
relation is in fact the only kind that will satisfy the needs of the masses, who
hunger for emotional bonds but also for submission.
Corresponding to the typical conflict of the charismatic leader, there seems
to be a typical emotional need in those who become his disciples. Let us take
the men around Gandhi: "These young people," writes Erikson, "highly
gifted in a variety of ways, seem to have been united in one personality 'trait,'
namely, an early and anxious concern for the abandoned and persecuted, at
first within their families, and later in a widening circle of intensified concern.
At the same time, they were loyal rebels: loyal in their sorrow, determined in
Gandhi, displaying a wish to serve, which
their rebeUion. All this they offered
was determined as much by personaUty as by tradition. Gandhi's capacity
both to arouse and to squelch ambivalence [in his disciples] must have been
formidable; but he put these men and women to work, giving direction to their
capacity to care, and multiplying miraculously both their practical gifts and
"'°''
their sense of participation.
Despite the nebulousness of the style, Erikson presents a simple hypo-
thesis: the disciples of charismatic leaders are men who find a satisfying
solution for their personal problems and achieve a sense of personal equili-
brium by submitting to a leader who provoked ambivalence, even while he
channels the energies of his followers toward practical tasks that reinforce
each one's sense of participation.
The real gap in Erikson's analyses appears when he tries to explain the role
played by the personality of the charismatic leader in the restructuring of a

on the level of the larger group. In his Gandhi, Erikson tries
collective identity
to resolve the problem by what amounts in fact to begging the question:
"... when Gandhi Hstened to his inner voice, he often thought he heard what
the masses were ready to listen to. That, of course, is the secret of all
charismatic leadership a correspondence that every traditional
"'°^ This is
history book duly notes, but it does not in itself constitute an explanation.
The explanation Erikson offers in Young Luther is hardly more con-
Man
vincing; repeats the classical themes concerning the evolution of Christian
he
thought from its beginnings to the 16th century, without making clear, for all
that, the nature of Luther's own ascendancy.

The supplementary notion of "ideology" which Erikson introduces at this

stage offers no more of a solution. According to Coles, Erikson succeeds,
thanks to this concept, in transforming "the clinical question of 'identity-
formation' into a universal and historical issue. ."*"* The intermediate
. .
concept is defined as a collective need for restructuring the image of the world.
This no more than a repetition, with the term "unconscious" tacked on, of
is
a notion one finds in the most traditional historians.

In fact, by going beyond the general explanatory framework used until now,
we can suggest certain elements of a reply to the following two questions:
1 What are the conditions favoring the internalization, by the charismatic

personality, of the norms of a new system (the bases of a new collective
identity), when in general it is the old system which is still being expressed by
the primary institutions that shaped that same personality?
2) How does the charismatic personality succeed in provoking a restruc-
turing of fundamental values in the midst of a heterogeneous, often very large
group?
A charismatic personality will tend to define himself, not in relation to the

values of his immediate limited group but in relation to those of a new system
whose norms are, by definition, integrative or totalizing, if the particular cir-
cumstances of his individual development were such that they interfered with
the process of assimilating the values of the immediate limited group (e.g., an
unresolved conflict with the father, who is the natural mediator of the values of
the immediate group, the absence of a normal family framework, etc.); if the
immediate group is undergoing such rapid transformations that a coherent
assimilation of old and new values becomes impossible; finally, if social,
political or cultural circumstances violently impose the absolute priority of
general values, as totalizing as possible. Sometimes these various conditions
come together and mutually reinforce each other. Thus, in Adolf Hitler one
finds at the same time the conflict with the father, mediator of the values of the
Austrian Catholic petite-bourgeoisie; a rapid transformation in the living
conditions of the Austro-German middle class during the second half of the
nineteenth century; and the sudden and imperative imposition of Germanic
national values by the war, andby the threat of disintegration that followed the
defeat of 1918. Given all these conditions, the relation between such a
personality and vast heterogeneous groups becomes easier to understand.
In a society undergoing rapid transformation, the old values appear
inadequte to deal with the global changes; the collective identities of small
groups crumble and make way on a level of
for a synthesis operating
abstraction sufficiently vague not to be immediately destroyed by the con-
sequences of social change, and, in certain cases, capable of meeting the most
general needs created by the changes taking place. Now since the charismatic
personality has formulated the synthesis in question for idiosyncratic reasons,
he has an answer all ready at the moment when the community's urgent need
finds expression.
We must still explain, however, why the masses turn toward a particular
personality and not toward another, even though the new synthesis may have
been formulated by a certain number of people belonging to the same socio-
cultural milieu, sometimes acting together in the same religious or political
arena. Why did the masses turn toward Hitler and not toward a whole series of
other German right-wing agitators of the same period, most of whom had
arrived at the same basic reformulation of German identity in general racial
terms?
Here we encounter the artist's particular talent for symbolic reformulation,
which nothing allows us to identify or explain with precision. The conditions
favorable to the domination of a charismatic personality, the mode of domina-
tion of that personality at various levels, the particular circumstances which
allow him to reformulate the values of a group — all this is open to psycho-
historical investigation, as it is to more traditional modes of inquiry. The
fundamental nature of charisma resembles the symbolic language of the artist,
applied to the reality of the political or social world. Further than this, we
caimot go.
Psychohistorical Typology
At the beginning of this chapter, we showed the intimate connection that exists
between the "type" and the individual. Biography, admittedly, is the search
for a particular style, for the idiosyncratic variation in relation to a typical
norm, but it is nevertheless true that typology is important in its own right as an
autonomous field of study, as a verification criterion for psychohistorical
explanation in general,'"'' and as a specific verification criterion in the analysis
of stable homogeneous groups.'"* I shall discuss it here as an autonomous
field of study.
The typologies inspired by psychoanalysis have long ago gone beyond the
limits of clinical classification, in search of significant categories in the domain
of politics or ideology,'"' in that of intelligence or cognition,' '" or else in that of
moral behavior: we may example, the fascinating perspectives for
recall, for
research opened up by the few remarks Stefan Possony devotes, at the end of
his biography of Lenin, to the psychological type of the traitor.'"
Any typology is first of all a matter of definition, and a given social or
political category does not necessarily have a psychological equivalent; con-
versely, certain identifiable psychological types are not easy to incorporate
within the known frameworks of a given sociocultural system. The revolu-
tionary personality or the fascist (authoritarian) personality, for example,
have been studied more than once. But, to take only the example, is there latter
in fact a type of personality that corresponds to the label of "fascist?"

There is
reason to doubt it. Edward Shils showed that the authoritarianism defined by
Adomo and his collaborators was as much a phenomenon of the left as of the
itself would have caused problems if the
"fascist" label
right,"^ a fact that in
had remained attached to the authoritarian personality. Nor is that all. One
can show convincingly that neither right-wing authoritarianism nor left-wing
authoritarianism, neither fascism nor communism, corresponds to a single

psychological type, and that in each of these recognized groups one can
discern personalities similar to personalities of the same type in the opposing
camp and opposed to very different personalities in the same camp. Harold
Lasswell was aware of the problem when, in his psychoanalytic studies
devoted to various kinds of political behavior, he chose to examine the
"propagandist" or the "bureaucrat," rather than the communist or the
fascist/'^ On a different level, Roger Stephane seized on the same problem
when he brought together Malraux and Ernst von Salomon in the unifying
context of the "adventurer" type,''"* without worrying about either one's
political choices. An
"operative" definition of a type is, as we can see, less
easy to formulate than it first appears, but it is obviously the sine qua non of
any study in this domain.
In what follows, I shall present two methodological exercises, as it were:
first, showing how an apparently solid typology can be invalidated by
the mere study of a few historical cases belonging to the same category;
second, offering an example of psychohistorical typology that seems to
satisfy our verification criteria.
It is not Adomo's or Rokeach's typology that I shall try to invalidate

even though both of them need considerable modification. Nor will I consider
Wolfenstein's "revolutionary personality," for in addition to the weaknesses
inherent in the study itself, the author's choice of his three "revolution-
aries" does not satisfy the elementary criteria of precision: to endow Lenin
and Trotsky with a "revolutionary personality" is conceivable, but to com-
pare them to Gandhi implies an extension of the term "revolutionary"
which excludes the possibility of a precise typology. I have chosen to
discuss a lesser-known work, one that is apparently rigorous since it is
based on a long series of experimental studies: the typology established by
David McClelland for the "creative physical scientist.""^ By drawing to-
gether the convergent conclusions of experiments concerning the charac-
teristics of creative physical scientists and linking them to certain aspects of
classical psychoanalytic theory, McClelland arrived at the definition of a
genuine type, characterized by his personality traits and by the specific
characteristics of his evolution. According to the author, one can distinguish
eight principal characteristics:
1) Men are more inclined than women to be scientifically creative; 2)
physical scientists come more often than mere chance would account for from
a radical Protestant milieu, but are themselves irreligious; 3) creative scien-
tists are such hard workers that they appear to be obsessed by their work;
4) scientists avoid complex emotions which make them feel uneasy; 5) aggres-
sivity strikes them as particularly painful; 6) physical scientists love music and
appreciate neither poetry nor the plastic arts; 7) physical scientists are exces-
sively masculine: 8) physical scientists develop, very early in life, a powerful
interest in analysis, in the structure of things.
The dynamic explanation that McClelland offers for these personality
traits is based on the following common denominator: the future scientist
encounters particular difficulties in his interpersonal relations during child-

hood. These difficulties manifest themselves especially on the level of feelings
of love toward the mother, feelings that the child tends to repress. Such an
attitude leads to a general regression in the emotional sphere, and in parti-
cular to the impossibility of finding a normal mode of expression for aggres-
sivity, due to an excessive identification with the father: the aggressivity is thus
displaced toward inanimate objects, and this displacement contributes to a

constant investigation of the structure of the material world.
We need not stop to discuss either the predominance of men in the
scientific domain, or the Protestant origin of a large number of physical
scientists. obvious that these are specific sociological and historical
It is
conditions, subject to change: thus, if the data concerning women are still
partially correct, those concerning Protestants are totally out of date."* As for
McClelland's other hypotheses, we shall examine them by considering the
biographies of three of the greatest English scientists: Newton, Faraday, and
Rutherford.
It turns out, first of all, that the thesis according to which scientists become
irreligious is one considers only the period during which the
invalid, even if
correlation between science and Protestantism could be confirmed. Newton

and Faraday, for example, both remained profoundly religious; religion occu-
pied as great a place in their lives as science."''

The thesis according to which scientists tend to avoid overly intimate
interpersonal relations is not determined by sociohistorical circumstances.
Perhaps true in the case of Nevi1;on,"* this thesis is partially false in the case of
Faraday, who had many

childhood friends and whose marriage seems to have
been happy and harmonious,"^ and is totally false as concerns Rutherford.
According to one of his biographers, "If he had not been a scientist. Ruther-
ford would have proved an ideal negotiator in modem international politics."
Or again: "The great gift Rutherford possessed for friendship was exercised all
through his life."^^" We could accumulate a whole pile of quotations to support

this view.
Newton, Faraday, and Rutherford were all hard workers in their field, but it
isonly in the case of Newton that one could speak of a veritable obsession.'-'
Faraday had numerous duties as a councillor of the realm in various domains,
and part of his time was devoted to visiting the sick as well as to his activities
as an elder in the sect to which he belonged, the Sandemanians.'- As for
Rutherford, the range of his various social activities was a natural conse-
quence of his warm and "extroverted" personality.
As concerns the avoidance of complex emotions and especially of all inter-
personal aggressivity, McClelland's thesis is no more valid than on the other
points. Admittedly, one could explain Newton's intense aggressivity
toward
Leibniz orHook as an "ideological" corollary to his strict Protestantism, but
what can one say— as far as complex emotions are concerned— of his rela-
tionship with the young Swiss Fatio de Duillier, and of the depression that
but
followed their break?'^' In Faraday the aggressive element is not evident,
on the other hand we know how intensely he courted the woman who was to
become his wife, Sarah.'" As for Rutherford, his aggressivity, amply docu-
mented throughout his career, manifested itself already in his student days;'"
and in the course of his life he was intensely involved in the most diverse
causes.
McClelland's hypothesis concerning the artistic preferences of scientists is
secondary, but is Faraday was an avid reader and

as false as the others:
received a prize in English literature in secondary school; he loved poetry and
painting, had close ties with the Royal Association of Artists, Poets and
Painters, and in his youth did not fail to "visit works of art the works of
. . .
Hogarth or other graphic arts."'^^ We do not know how Newton felt about
music, but he is the only one of our three scientists who apparently had no
penchant for poetry or belles lettres.'^^
The hypothesis concerning masculinity is too vague to be verifiable, and in

any case masculinity is a concept particularly subject to cultural variations.
That leaves only the last of the eight characteristics, the one concerning the
development of an interest in analysis, in investigating the structure of things,
very early in life. This tendency is confirmed by the biographies of the three
scientists, but what it indicates in fact is a powerful development of the
analytic faculty in those who later become great scientists —
an observation
that borders on tautology.
The inexactitude of McClelland's key propositions concerning the avoid-
ance of intimate personal relations and complex emotions (including inter-
personal aggressivity) ought in itself eliminate the need to examine the

author's central hypothesis — namely, that the personality of the creative
physical scientist shaped by a repression of feelings of love toward the
is
mother and an excessive identification with the father. We cannot resist,

however, citing one example: Newton's father died when the child was three
months old, and Newton's quasi-morbid attachment to his mother right up to
the end of her life has been noted by all of his biographers.'^* When, after his
mother remarried, a new father appeared, the young Nev^ton conceived so
much affection toward him that he wished nothing more than to set fire to his
house, hoping no doubt to bum the stepfather along with it!'-^
This brief critical discussion of McClelland's typology raises a methodo-
logical problem concerning psychohistorical typologies. McClelland estab-
lished his typology on the basis of a series of experimental studies involving a
large numberof contemporary physical scientists; these studies, therefore, have
a certain statistical validity. In criticizing the conclusions drawn from these
studies, we ourselves considered three historical cases of especially eminent
physical scientists; and, since in the three cases shown — which, by their
eminence, represent the very quintessence of the type under investigation
the hypotheses proved to be invalid, the characteristics of the proposed
typology appear to be incorrect. But can one invalidate a typology founded on
a large number of contemporary cases by citing three particularly brilliant
historical cases, or must one, in order to test the typology, refer to a very large
number of historical examples, given the fact that in this instance one is not
dealing with laws similar to those of the natural sciences, in which a single
anomaly is enough to invalidate a hypothesis? Indeed, how can we know if the

number of historical cases chosen in order to confirm or to invalidate an existing
typology, or else to found a new typology, is large enough? And how can we
prove that the examples chosen, whose number is inevitably limited, do not
represent cases arbitrarily selected in order to verify a thesis, or, conversely,

are not plausible exceptions to a typology that is generally valid?
We base our answer on the evidence rather than on logically
shall
impregnable arguments. Let us consider once again our critique of Mc-
Clelland's typology: if, in order to show that it is invalid, we had chosen three
cases of creative physical scientists whose rank was nevertheless only of the
second order in the history of physics, our method would have been open to
challenge. But as it happens, it is three of the most eminent physicists of all
times who, in one way or another, do not fit into the typology in question; in
such a case, it seems to us, the numerical comparability of the "samples"
becomes totally irrelevant. Let us imagine that someone established the
psychodynamic characteristics of creative musicians basedon a list of
contemporaries, but it turned out that neither Bach nor Mozart nor Beethoven
could fit into the typology; would we have to add a whole series of other names
to make our refutation convincing?
One can use the same reasoning for the positive demonstration (i.e., the
confirmation) of a typology. Let us take example of composers once again,
tlie
and suppose that the study included not only Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven
but also Schubert, Brahms, Schumann, Wagner, Berlioz, Ravel, and Debussy.
Let us further suppose that the data converged so that we could define a type of
composer's personality. We could then present this incomplete series as a
typological hypothesis, on the grounds that the choice of composers uni-
versally recognized to be among the greatest made the addition of further
names unnecessary; but such a case the proof always hinges on some major
in
contradiction, and in the last analysis it is only intuitively that one can decide
to what extent a series is sufficiently representative— or, conversely, to what
extent a refutation is conclusive.
As an example of a positive demonstration, let us take the type of the
political "hawk," who in the technical terminology of game theory is known as
the "defector." In the case of most conflicts, game theory divides the possible
strategies into two major categories: strategies of cooperation and strategies of
"defection." The political personality who opts for a strategy of "defection" is

not ready to make any concessions in the pursuit of his goals, and if necessary
he will resort to force or to any other kind of pressure required by the situation.
The political personality who opts for cooperation will emphasize the com-
mon interest of the parties in conflict and the possibilities of a compromise.
Research psychology shows that, in experimental conflict situa-
in social
traits and the
tions, there is a marked correlation between certain personality
choice of a preferred strategy. Thus, the "defectors" manifest authoritarian
threshold of
characteristics, a pronounced liking for risk, and a very low
tolerance for ambiguous situations.'^" In other words, experimental
social
to
psychology offers us a typology of the "defector" that it is up to the historian
testand possibly to complete, through the use of biographical material con-
cerning major political figures.
We shall not enter into the details concerning the technical problems posed
by a study of this type.'^' It will be enough to sketch in the outline of the
typology itself.
The first question we must ask is obvious: can we find, among the major
political figures of the contemporary period ( 1 9th and 20th centuries) any who
systematically opted for a poUcy of "defection" throughout their career? Are
we, in other words, justified in speaking of a typology on the basis of the
historical material available? The answer is yes, and we have chosen fourteen
political figures who seem to us to have systematically opted for this kind of
policy (with the exception of a few marginal situations) throughout the course
of their career: Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon Clemenceau, and Poin-
III,
care for France; Theodore Roosevelt, Forrestal, and Dulles for the United
States; Crispi for Italy; William II and Hitler for Germany; Beck for Poland;
Palmerston, Duff Cooper, and Churchill for England. In most of these cases,
the choice of a policy of "defection" operated not only on the level of interna-
tional affairs, but also in the domestic affairs in which these men were
involved. In certain cases, one finds the same attitude even when the men in
question were in the opposition.
Once we have identified this type of politician, the second question we must
ask is whether certain personality traits are found in the majority of the
"defectors," based on the historical data available. Here again the answer is
positive, and we can discern the repetition of the following characteristics: a
rebellious attitude toward authority when the person in question finds himself
in a position of inferiority, and the intransigent, quasi-dictatorial exercise of
authority when the person is himself in a position of authority; a preference for
violent solutions and the use of violent language in a conflict situation;
timidity, at least during the years preceding the rise to positions of power, and
harmonious interpersonal relations; in
in general a difficulty in establishing
certain cases, paranoid tendencies. These characteristics diverge at several

points from those determined on the basis of experimental research. Thus, the
experimental data suggest a marked correlation between the tendency toward
"defection" and a love of risk. Historical investigation, on the other hand,
indicates that more than half of the figures studied showed a great deal of
prudence in their politics, even while generally opting for "defection." In this
instance, historical investigation brings a corrective to the hypotheses of

experimental psychology. But. as we noted earlier, our aim here is to go
beyond the merely based on the biographical material at our
critical function:
disposal, we have iried to set up a complete typology, in other words one whose
evolutionary aspect can be documented and made explicit. In the political
figures we have one finds two distinct developmental contexts, most
studied,
of the time separate but occasionally combined in strange configurations: in
one context, the mother's role and authority predominate, due either to the
father's absence or to his weakness; the other context is essentially authori-
tarian in the classic sense of the term. In at least one case, that of Adolf Hitler,
the second (authoritarian) context dominates until the age of thirteen, and is
then replaced by the dominance of the mother after the father's sudden death.
The first context, in which the mother is dominant due to the absence or the
weak character of the father, can generally lead to a fixation on the mother and
therefore to a submissive and self-effacing personality, but it can also lead—
and it is the latter case that interests us here — to a process of compensatory
masculinity: since the child has no clearly defined male model to follow but is
at the same time pushed by the demands of the society toward masculine
behavior, he will naturally tend to exaggerate the masculine traits of his
personality, emphasizing the elements of domination, force, competition,
etc.'^^ This in turn leads to a "defector's" behavior as we have defined it.
As regards the consequences, for the personality, of a typically authori-

tarian context, they are too well known for us to dwell on them: repression of
any expression of emotional ambivalence, displacement of the aggressivity
thus repressed onto people outside the family and, later, outside the group,
often resulting in a generalized hostility toward anything that does not belong
to the "in-group" as such.
The study of types cannot replace biography or the complex methods of
investigation required by collective phenomena, but it can occasionally con-
firm (or invalidate) the results obtained in both of these domains; above all, it
can develop into an autonomous branch of psychohistory (more exactly, of the

intermediate field between psychohistory and psychosociology) and, based on
the requirements of a strict comparative method, become the model and the
constant reminder of the methodological imperative in psychohistory.
3. Collective Phenomena
In his admirable preface to Jacques Lafaye's book on the formation of national

consciousness in Mexico/ Octavio Paz summed up the various meanings
attributed to the ancient goddess Tonantzin, later known as the Virgin of
Guadalupe, by the diverse groups that came to constitute modem Mexico:
Mother of the gods and of men, of the stars and of ants, of com and of agave,
Tonantzin-Guadalupe was the Indians' imaginary compensation for the or-
phaned state into which the conquest had cast them. Having seen their priests
massacred and their idols destroyed, their links with the past and with their
supernatural world broken, they took refuge in the bosom of Tonantzin-
Guadalupe: the bosom of the mother-mountain, the bosom of the mother-ocean.
The ambiguous situation of the New Spain led to a similar reaction: the Creoles
sought in Tonantzin-Guadalupe their veritable mother. A natural and super-
natural mother, made of American earth and European theology. For the
Creoles, the brown Virgin represented the possibility of rootedness in the earth
of the Anahuac. She was both the womb and the tomb: to become rooted is to
penetrate into the earth. For the half-castes, the feeling of abandonment was
. . .
and remains more total and more dramatic. For the half-caste, the question of
origin is primordial, a question of life or death. In the imagination of the half-
castes,Tonantzin-Guadalupe has her infernal counterpart: Chingada. She is the
raped mother, exposed to the outside world, torn apart by the conquest: the
Virgin Mother, on the other hand, is intact, invulnerable, and carries a son in her
womb. The secret life of the half-caste oscillates between Chingada and
Tonantzin-Guadalupe.
Ifone could, by means of a single example, summarize the objectives of a

wide-ranging and complex method, one would define the primary aim of the
psychohistory of collective phenomena as the investigation, in a society that
can be studied historically, of the unconscious meaning of fundamental myths
such as that of Tonantzin-Guadalupe, their hidden relationships, their mani-
festation on the level of ritualized behavior and everyday beliefs, and finally
their place in the symbolic network which includes the culture as a whole.
81
But would be only the end of the road; in the meantime, in order to
this
allow us to treat more simple problems, our field of investigation will be

broader and our objectives more attainable. One can, in fact, conceive the
psychohistorical study of collective phenomena^ on several distinct levels:
meta-history, macro-history, and micro-history.
Meta-history is the interpretation of the underlying tendencies in the evolu-
tion of a civilization, the outline of the development of universal institutions
or — after all, why not? — of humanity as such; in a word, it is the series of

speculations of which Freud gave us some examples and which, still today,
proHferate under the most diverse titles.^ It is not psychohistory as we under-
stand the term.
Macro-history, to which the above-quoted example belongs, attempts to
define the unconscious characteristics of a culture or a collective mentality. It
represents the most fascinating area of investigation in this domain, but we

shallbe able to offer only very general suggestions as far as it is concerned. In
any case, in this context, quasi-intuitive extrapolations, even if they are borne
out by a few texts, cannot lead us very far. The occasional remarks by William
Langer, E. R. Dodds or Zevedei Barbu" on the anguish by a whole society
felt
would most likely require a more detailed formulation. A different, more

systematic kind of inquiry is perhaps possible.
Whether one is dealing with perceptions, symbolic expressions or collec-
tive behavior, micro-history remains, by comparison with macro-history, the
domain of what is definable and comparable, and therefore, to a far greater
degree, analyzable as well. This is essentially the category of isolated
phenomena in heterogeneous groups and in homogeneous groups, whether
stable or temporary.
Finally, there is a whole other side to the psychohistory of collective
phenomena, which is perhaps the most interesting one; we will treat it in detail
in a subsequent work, not only because of the complexity of the subject but
also because it requires a separate discussion. The problem is that of the
unconscious ties that link societies to their own past— in other words, the
mode of elaboration of a collective past. What is involved here is the question
of the hidden foundations of the historical process, on the individual level but
above all on the collective one.
In the discussion that follows, we shall take up our previous distinction

between homogeneous and heterogeneous groups as well as the theoeretical
models we proposed in chapter 1 treating them in a more explicit and detailed
,
way. Our manner of proceeding will be, in a sense, circular: beginning with the
analysis of stable homogeneous groups, where culture and society coincide in
a limited and isolated sphere, we shall go on to the necessarily more frag-
mented analyses of temporary homogeneous groups and heterogeneous
groups, ending up with the global analysis of the cultures (and mentalities) of
heterogeneous groups. Along the way, we shall stop to consider the particular
problems posed by the study of generational age groups and of the various
stages of personality development in different historical periods. These are all
Collective Phenomena 83
cases that put psychohistorical investigation to the test, allowing one to see its
possibilities as well as its limits.
Homogeneous Groups
Let us recall the characteristics of homogeneous groups: absence of sharp

social differentiation, considerable isolation in relation to the outside world, or
else the total domination of an ideology, an institution or an individual who,
for a more or less limited time, provides the group with a manifest identity in
behavior and with psychological self-isolation in relation to the outside
environment.
One notes that when the first two criteria co-occur with common primary
institutions, the result is a relatively stable homogeneous group, while the third
criterion allows us to identify the temporary homogeneous groups, whose
specific characteristics can be of the most diverse kinds: temporary homoge-
neous groups include the "groupe en fusion" that Sartre talks about, the blind
but short-lived solidarity of "believers" in a sect or a totalitarian party under the
influence of a charismatic personality, as well as the uniform attitudes, on the
whole, of the members of a "total institution," in the sense in which Irving
Goffman uses that term.* As homogeneous groups, they include
for stable
primitive societies as well as certain advanced communities whose physical or
ideological isolation has made them into closed societies over a period suffi-
ciently long to allow for the development of common primary institutions. It is
only in the case of stable groups that the "culture and personality" paradigm is
really applicable.^ In temporary homogeneous groups, on the other hand, the
uniformity of behavior is due, as we suggested in the first chapter, to the
by most members of the group, of certain fundamental norms
internalization,
which may have been edicted by a charismatic personality or else be the result
of the particular mterpretation of an ideology (in the broadest sense of the
term).
Stable homogeneous groups are rare in societies that can be studied histori-
cally. Historical evolution as such implies the action of powerful social forces
which, by definition, eliminate the bases of the "stability" of the group,
namely the common primary institutions. A French psychoanalyst has identi-
fied the characteristics of a genuine "basic personality" rooted in a specific,
well-defined family environment in contemporary Malagasy society.^ As for
us, we have chosen two studies that are more clearly historical in character. In
the first case, the homogeneity of the group is reinforced by the domination of
a "total" ideology that influences every aspect of existence: the group here is
that of the New England Puritans of the 1 7th century, more specifically the
inhabitants of Plymouth Colony, studied by John Demos.* In the second case,
that of the black slaves in the American South, the study we shall discuss'
emphasizes not the relationship between primary institutions and the person-
ality, but rather the phenomena of identification with, and internalization of,
the norms of the masters; this, despite the fact that the family organization of
the slaves could have been related to the black personality in this type of
society.
According to Demos, the Puritans of Plymouth Colony believed in great
severity toward children, starting at the time of the child's first interest in the
world around him and his first manifestations of independence, between the
ages of one and two years. The first expressions of the child's will were
interpreted as a trace of original sin and of man's rebelHon against God. Thus,
in his second year of life the Puritan child experienced an essentially repres-
sive environment. This second year was also, in most cases, the one in which
the child experienced a more or less pronounced loss of affection, for it was
around then that the next child was bom in those very large families.
Using Erikson's model. Demos points out that excessive severity toward a
child or a withdrawal of affection in the second phase of his evolution are likely
to fixate the child in an attitude of doubt and shame instead of allowing for the
harmonious development of individual autonomy. Aggressivity, directed
toward oneself or others, becomes a dominant characteristic of the personahty
In light of this, what do we observe among the adult Puritans of Plymouth
Colony? Contrary to what was long believed, it is not sexual problems that
constituted their major preoccupation, but rather problems linked to aggres-
sivity —
more precisely still, situations that concerned matters of honor ("face-
saving"), and that were obviously closely Hnked to shame and doubt: "Such
considerations," writes Demos, "are manifest, for example, throughout the
legion of Court cases that had to do with personal disputes and rivalries. Many
—
of these cases involved suits for slander or defamation where the issue of
public exposure, the risk of shame, was absolutely central. Moreover, when a
conviction was obtained, the defendant was normally required to withdraw his
"
slanderous statements, and to apologize for them, in public.
We know that, acco'-ding to Erikson, the fixation at a particular stage of
development implies, later on, a strong preoccupation with certain specific
aspects of social organization. Corresponding to the second stage of develop-
ment is the concern for "law and order." And of course, "few people have
shown as much concern for 'law and order' as the Puritans."'"
Here then is a stable homogeneous group, due to its cultural unity, its
relative isolation in relation to the outside world (at least during the first
decades of its settlement in New England), the absence of major social sub-
divisions, and above all the domination of a "totalitarian" ideology in the
genuine sense of the term: the Puritan religion. The result was a set of specific
mothering and child-rearing practices which had a decisive effect on the
development of the personality, and consequently on certain important as-
pects of adult behavior — consequences that, according to John Demos, were
also manifest in a certain conception of the social order and of the role of
institutions.
Itmust be said, however, that the univocal causal relationship Demos
establishes between certain mothering practices of the group and character-
istics such as the preoccupation with "law and order" is not altogether
justified. The Puritan religion itself implied a concern for "law and order," and
^
any attempt to find a psychoanalytic explanation for it is superfluous. On the
other hand, the aggressive behavior of the inhabitants of Plymouth Colony is
less easily explained by Puritanism alone; similarly, the strong emphasis on
questions of honor can be identified as a characteristic of a significant "basic
personality." Still, one must note that when Kardiner and Linton studied the
Alorese or the Comanches, the relations they found between primary institu-
tions, the basic personality and the secondary institutions formed a detailed
and complex configuration, one that was sufficiently idiosyncratic so that it
could not be attributed to general and commonly observable sociocultural
conditions. This is not true in the case of Plymouth Colony. Only a compara-
tive study of several groups of this type would allow one, perhaps, to resolve
the problem.
On the other hand, Stanley Elkins' study of black slaves in the United
States could have resulted in a more convincing explanation than the one he
proposes, he had invoked the influence of a specific family structure on the
if
formation of the slave personality.^'

Stanley Elkins establishes a fundamental distinction between the "open
system" of slavery as was practiced in Latin America, where various institu-
it
tions eased the existence of the slave and made him partially independent of
his master, and the "closed system" of slavery practiced on the plantations of
the South, in which nothing could weaken the total dependence of the slave on
his white master. According to Elkins, the slave entered this closed system
after having experienced the basic psychological shock of being torn from
Africa and from his ancestral culture; as a result, he knew no other values or
other meaningful norms than those imposed on him by his masters. Like
certain prisoners of the Nazi concentration camps, the black slave internalized
the norms of the master and accepted, paradoxically, the latter as his "father,"
identifying with him and regressing, in relation to this cruel father, to the
emotional stage of the child. This accounted for the appearance of the specific
personahty of the black American slave, "Sambo." Elkins writes: "Sambo,
the typical plantation slave, was docile but irresponsible, loyal but lazy,
humble but chronically given to lying and stealing; his behavior was fiill of
infantile silliness and his talk inflated with childish exaggeration. His relation-
ship with his master was one of utter dependence and childlike attachment: it
was indeed this childlike quaUty that was the very key to his being."'
Elkins' "closed system" endows the slavery of the American South with
one of the essential characteristics of homogeneous groups, but the absence of
any systematic reference to the primary institutions raises the question of the
of this group. In his book, Elkins himself made a detailed comparison

stability
between slavery and the system of the Nazi concentration camps and found
many similarities in the psychological processes at work in both contexts,
which would suggest a temporary homogeneous group. On the other hand, m
with the
his reply to his critics Elkins practically abandoned the comparison
Nazi camps in favor of the more flexible notion of "total institution" proposed
by Goffman; this comes even closer to the temporary group. But Elkins'
initial
study contained an allusion to the specific family situation of the slave:

For the Negro no real satisfactory

child, in particular, the plantation offeree
father-image other than the master. The "real" father was virtually without
authority over his child, since discipline, parental responsibility, and control of
rewards and punishments all rested in other hands; the slave father could not
even protect the mother of his children except by appealing directly to the
master. Indeed, the mother's own role loomed far larger for the slave child than
did that of the father. She controlled those few activities that were left to the
. . .
slave family. For that matter, the very etiquette of plantation life removed even
the honorific attributes of fatherhood from the Negro male, who was addressed
as "boy" —until, when the vigorous years of his prime were past, he was allowed
to assume the title of "uncle."''
We can see here the outlines of a unique family structure, in which the
problem of the identity formation of the black male child was to become, of
necessity, the focal point of intense neurotic conflicts.^'' It seems to us
plausible to consider this family structure as an essential factor in the
formation of the personality of the black slave, whether of the Sambo type or
not. It would have been important to analyze the relationship between this
kind of "basic personality" and various aspects of the black subculture on the
plantations; the results would doubtless have suggested that we were dealing
with a stable homogeneous group, characterized by the interaction between
culture and personality. This kind of analysis would still have allowed Elkins
to utilize the conceptions of Sullivan and those of role theory, but the specifi-
cally psychoanalytic part of his study would have been strengthened, even
while allowing him to answer a question that one carmot fail to raise after
reading his book: How is it that temporary institutions, such as those that
Elkins used as models, could give rise to a personality as stable in its essential
characteristics (over several generations, moreover) as that of Sambo? Why
not look, in trying to answer this question, at the most stable of institutions,
that of the specific family structure?
The homogeneous groups that interest the historian are few in
stable
number, and the method of analysis that we propose to apply to them here is
clear. It is evident that the essential characteristics of the basic personality of
such a group must be found, with all of its idiosyncratic elements, in a
significant number of individuals belonging to the group. We can therefore
formulate the verification criteria for the psychohistorical study of stable
homogeneous groups one SQWiQncQ: Any psychohistorical explanation con-
in
cerning these groups must beformulable in terms of typology and verifiable
in terms of biography.
If the analysis of family structure and of specific primary institutions forms

the center of graviy of the psychohistorical study of stable homogeneous
groups, the center of gravity of unstable or temporary homogeneous groups
varies according to the nature of the factor that dominates in the formation of
the group: a dominant personality or an isolated collective obsession on the
one hand, or the psychological on the other.
effect of a total institution
The influence of a personality on a group of "believers" and the influence
a
of an obsession in the absence of a dominant personality (more exactly,
without the continuous presence of a dominant personality'') seem to be
governed by an identical mechanism: the members of the group seem to
renounce their individuality, and the injunctions of the dominant personality
or of the obsessive ideology, like the norms of the total institution, often
lead them to the most aberrant and sometimes even the most criminal
behavior without their manifesting the least resistance, as if they were under
the effect of hypnosis.
In the category of groups dominated by a personality, we recognize the
prophet and his disciples or the head of a sect and its members, ready to follow
their leader even into death; such groups include the millenarians of the late
Middle Ages,'^ as well as Hitler and the "true beUevers" of the Nazi party.'^ If
the leader is replaced by a dominant fantasy, we have the bands of flagellants
or the groups of the possessed (or of witches) in Loudon, in Salem—
multitude of similar examples dot the history of the Western world.'* Al-
though they are more homogeneous than all the others, these groups are
nevertheless astonishingly short-lived. If the dominant personality disappears,
the group disintegrates; if the circumstances change, the collective obsession
suddenly dies down: "normalcy" returns, as if nothing had happened."
We must admit from the start that it is extremely difficult to explain the
behavior of temporary homogeneous groups of this type. The classical
explanation is the one proposed by Freud in Group Psychology and the
Analysis oftheEgo.^^ It is not an acceptable explanation, as we shall see.
Freud too seems to admit that an "idea" can replace a dominant person-
ality and have the same psychic effect on a group, even though he considers
this a minor point. What interests him is the relation of the group to its leader,
and the relation of the members of the group to each other. Two explanations,
which are interdependent, allow him to resolve the problem to his satisfaction.
First, "A primary group of this kind is a number of individuals who have put
one and the same object in the place of their ego ideal and have consequently
identified themselves with one another in their ego."^' In other words, in this
kind of group the members have abandoned their individual superegos (their
ego ideal) in favor of a collective superego, founded on the process of identi-
fication among the various members of the group. Why does this substitution
of the leader's superego for the superego of each member occur? Freud replies
with a phylogenetic explanation: "Thus the group appears to us as a revival of

the primal horde. Just as a primitive man survives potentially in every
individual, so the primal horde may arise once more out of any random
collection "" And above all: "The uncanny and coercive characteristics
of group formations, which are shown in the phenomena of suggestion that
accompany them, may therefore with justice be traced back to the fact of their
primal
origin from the primal horde. The leader of the group is still the dreaded
""
father; the group still wishes to be governed by unrestricted force
Thus, on the group, Freud
in order to explain the influence of the leader
must have recourse to a phylogenetic theory with no basis whatsoever.
with
Furthermore, if one recalls that ideas can impose themselves on a group
the same power as becomes hard to see how the analogy with the
individuals, it
father of the primal horde can apply. And how would it apply to groups domi-
nated by a woman? Of Freud's explanation, we can retain therefore two
elements: the libidinal nature of the bonds formed between the members of a
group of this kind, and the introjection of the leader's values by each member
of the group. These notions, which are more descriptive than explicative, are
close to what we wrote earlier about the relationship between the charismatic
personality and the group; several possible avenues for psychohistorical
investigation are suggested by it.
Even without knowing the exact nature of the process involved, but simply
after observing that among the members of a group of this type there is a total
introjection of the leader's values or an absolute sharing of the same obsession,
the historian can interpret the basic elements of these shared fantasies in
terms of their unconscious mechanisms, and establish a link between them and
the manifest behavior of the group. This is what I do in
myself tried to
L 'Antisemitisme nazi, in which I showed that the fantasy of the Jew as a germ
was shared by Hitler and his followers, and that this fantasy led to a behavior
of identification and purification (a combination well known to students of
individual obsessions), whose final form was to be the physical elimination of
the Jews, the "final solution."^"
The functioning of total institutions is similar, as one can see from certain
first-person accounts of the evolution of the behavior of inmates in the concen-
tration camps. We may take as an example the one analyzed by Bruno
Bettelheim in The Informed Heart. According to Bettelheim, the aim of the
Nazi concentration camp system was to break the individuality of the
prisoners, "and to change them into a docile mass from which no individual or
group act of resistance could arise."" The various methods employed to this
end by the SS succeeded in a certain number of cases, and the group of
prisoners came to manifest similar psychic characteristics of which the most
important was an infantile regression combined with a more or less strong
identification with the aggressor: "Since old prisoners had accepted, or been
forced to accept, a childlike dependency on the SS, many of them seemed to
want to feel that at least some of the people they were accepting as all-
powerful father images were just and kind."" Bettelheim does not, of course,
suggest that all of the prisoners arrived at that point; but a certain fraction, or
subgroup, did.
Temporary homogeneous groups, whatever the differences between them,
all present, therefore, an identical configuration: at a given moment, an
individual, an idea, or an institution brings together a number of individuals in
a group which, under this influence, adopts a form of behavior due to a sudden
transformation of the personality of the members of the group. But once the
dominant personality, the idea or the institution disappears, the group as a
whole disintegrates and the behavior of its members reverts, most often, to
what it was before the formation of the group.
These empirical data do not lend themselves to a single theoretical
explanation. One can opt for the theory of continuous identification and
internalization, but how then can we explain the restructuring of the person-
ality? This restructuring is altogether paradoxical, for it is both unconscious
and profound, yet is at the same time ephemeral. In cases of this kind, the
historian can do no more than attempt a description and a few partial
explanations, such as the influence of the charismatic personality. Taken as a
whole, temporary homogeneous groups are not yet amenable to systematic
psychohistorical analysis."
Heterogeneous Groups: The Study of Isolated Phenomena
The study of heterogeneous groups presupposes the primacy of sociological

explanation.-* The contribution of psychology can be only secondary, but, as
we emphasized earlier, it is essential to an understanding of the phenomenon
in all its aspects.
In this context, the study of isolated phenomena — whether a collective
attitude, a ritual, or some enduring form of symbolization on the level of the
group — represents the first and logically the simplest stage. Thus, David
McClelland attempted to isolate and analyze the extent and the origins of the
"need for achievement" in various societies.-^ The psychohistorical objective
(although the term "psychohistory" is not used) of McClelland's study is
explicitly stated: "The present effort . . . should be viewed as a first attempt by

a psychologist interested primarily in human motivation some light on
to shed
a problem of historic importance [i.e., that of economic growth— S.F.].""
According to McClelland, there exists an essential causal relationship be-
tween a high degree of the "need for achievement" in the majority of the
individuals in a group and a high rate of economic growth, the inverse also
being true. McClelland attempted to measure, by means of various projective
tests, the "need for achievement" in several contemporary societies; he
attempted to do the same for several societies of the past as well, chiefly
through a content analysis of literary and artistic themes. Children's literature
plays an important role in the identification of the degree of the "need for
achievement" in various modem societies, whereas classical literature and
vase drawings play a similar role in the study of Greek society in the Golden
Age.
with the explanation of the origins of the "need for achievement" that
It is
we enter fully into the domain of psychohistory as we understand it. McClel-

land estabhshes a link between this type of motivation and a specific family
context: the mother of a child who in later life will manifest a high degree of the
"need for achievement" encourages the child, from a very young age, to show
a great deal of independence. At the same time, the attitude of the father
in this
family context must not be restrictive or authoritarian.^' Generally speaking,

achieve-
the interference of the mother is tolerated and will allow for higher
ment, whereas the interference of the father (in the case of a male child) will
have the opposite effect."
family
One notes that the Protestant ethic tends to favor the kind of
behavior that stimulates the "need for achievement;" this allows us to add a
psychological dimension to Max Weber's famous theory concerning the role
of Protestantism in the development of modem capitalism.
McClelland's theses provoked some controversy, and his quantitative
demonstrations are not always convincing. In this instance, however, what
matters is not the rigorousness of the demonstration but the formulation of the
question, which opens up a whole field of inquiry. To suggest that there is a
relationship between profound psychological attitudes and economic develop-
ment is to open up new horizons for economic
and to demonstrate that
history,
even a phenomenon seemingly as independent of psychology as economic
growth can, through the psychohistorical analysis of a specific attitude (the
"need for achievement") take on a new significance. It goes without saying,
however, that it is in the domain of collective disorders what Georges —
Devereux calls "ethnic disorders" and "typical disorders," linked to a specific
cultural model or a particular social structure" —
that the psychohistorical
study of isolated phenomena will find an immense field of application.
"Every culture," writes Devereux, "allows certain fantasies, drives and
other psychic manifestations to reach and remain on the conscious level, while
repressing others. That is why all the members of a given culture have in
common a certain number of unconscious conflicts."^" We shall return to this
essential notion in discussing the global analysis of cultures, but it is funda-
mental for the study of isolated phenomena as well, for the psychohistorian
will want to investigate the relationship between the global culture and the
predominance of a given fantasy or basic attitude; he will also attempt to
analyze a given characteristic trait in its various stages of manifestation, or
else compare it to a similar trait in a different sociocultural context. Could one
not study, for example, the evolution of paternal authoritarianism in the
German family from the eighteenth century to the present, or else compare the
characteristic traits of this widespread phenomenon in German culture with
the doubtless different traits that it manifests in Russian society? Or again, to
cite another of Georges Devereux's suggestions, could we not examine,
through time, the way in which various cultures "masculinize" their men,
"feminize" their women and make their children "childlike"?^*
If we turn to psychic disorders in the clinical sense of the term, it is again
Georges Devereux who points out most common neurosis in our
that the
societies at the turn of the century involved symptomatic disorders; during the
1930's, it was replaced by characterial disorders, whereas today patients
suffer rather from "an alteration in their sense of their own identity."^* It is
the manifestly irrational or morbid kinds of behavior that provide a rich
material for study. Is not the first task of psychohistory to narrate the history
of, and furnish an explanation for, the evolution of neurotic and psychotic
disorders in various cultures, as a function of the evolution of the global
sociocultural context?"
The great movements of collective irrationality require the same kind of
analysis as the clinical disorders. Among
most evident of such pheno-
the
mena, we may mention the witch-crazes and the witch-hunts,^* or anti-
Semitism and the persecution of the Jews. We shall consider in some detail
two of these examples, to show how, in each case, psychohistory can add a
new dimension to the traditional and essential sociocultural analysis.
A few years ago, the British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper published his
study on The European Witchcraze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Cen-
turies. His work meets all the traditional canons of historiography, for it
describes perfectly the social and intellectual context of the phenomenon in
question: ancient Manichean notions as well as various pagan traditions sur-
vived in the midst of marginal groups which feudal Christianity had assimilated
only very partially, especially in the mountainous regions of Europe. In the con-
text of a general struggle against heresies, the Dominicans, seeking to delimit
and wipe out these heterodox beliefs, erected an elaborate system out of their
diffuse notions and thus created an increasingly complex mythology con-
cerning the practices of witchcraft and the nature of witches. But as the
mythology of the defenders of the faith became more elaborate, it in turn
attracted psychopaths of all kinds (according to Trevor-Roper), thus contribu-
ting to its own propagation.
It matters little to us what other social, intellectual, and political factors
contributed to the growth of the witch-craze and later to its decline, as long as
the psychological dimension of this immense harvest of collective fantasies is
absent. Although Trevor-Roper, in discussing the fantasies of the witches

themselves, mentions in passing that they belong to the domain of psycho-
pathology, when it comes to the monks who created
whole system he does
the
no more than describe a kind of theological-intellectual process without even
raising the question of psychopathology.^' And yet, a work such as the
Malleus Maleficarum {The Hammer of the Witches), an encyclopedia of
witchcraft written by two Dominicans and listing all the practices of witches
and the measures used to counteract them, certainly calls for psychohistorical
interpretation. The aim of such an interpretation would be to lay bare at least
part of the irrational foundations of the movement.
*^
Amand Danet, in his Introduction to a new critical edition of the Malleus,
has in fact attempted a psychohistorical interpretation. Danet seeks to define
the anguish that lies at the very source of the inquisitors' obsession, an anguish
that has often been described as characteristic of the late Middle Ages, when
the end of the world seemed just around the comer. This obsession gave rise to
a compensatory fantasy about the Church and the motherly Virgin, as well as
to its necessary counterpart, the fantasy of the maleficent woman, the witch
who must be thrown into the fire and who is "herself fire, a hot and evil
flame." Here we enter into the obscure dialectic between the sexual fantasies
of the inquisitor and those of the witch herself— a dialectic that doubtless
an altogether different order. For what is the aim of the
reflects conflicts of
inquisitor, asks Danet, if not to dishonor this woman (the witch) and
her
sexuality? But in that case, he asks, what is the "underlying motive for this
operation?" The explanation Danet offers is most suggestive: "Could it be a
question of responding to an obscure cultural movement of masculine revenge,
culture
directed against an Indo-European (Celtic and Germanic) matriarchal
in which the mother had some of the attributes of the priest and the
prophef? A
whole tradition of folklore has persisted over the centuries, heavy with the
symbolism of an obscure battle between maleficent women who castrate men

or change them into beasts, and men who attribute to women only the phallic
.'""
flight of impotence, riding on a demon, an animal, or a ridiculous stick. . .
Finally, the Malleus completes this picture with an image of God the Father.
The figure that emerges is that of a divinity full of duplicity and sadism:
Beneath the watchful eyes of such a cunning what can the sons be if not
father,
desperate, impotent men with sado-masochistic tendencies? The image of trans-
gression is linked, in their minds, with that of dissimulation and perversion. The
desire of such sons is directed toward the forbidden fruit, which appears all the
more "infinitely desirable" since it bathes in the fantasy of the unattainable and
is guarded by the interdiction of a wrathful Father. Under the pressure of an
always ill-resolved crisis, man is then tempted to scorn the forbidden pleasure, to
dishonor sexuality. In trying to win the good graces of the Father, he even goes
so far as to practice a certain sadism toward others and ultimately a castrating
masochism toward himself^
As a matter of fact, Amand Danet merely touches the tip of the iceberg, and
one can imagine a much more detailed and in-depth analysis of the same
fantasies. That would have been beyond the scope of an introduction,
however; and in any case, we are far from Trevor- Roper and his explanation of
the demonological system of the inquisitors as part of the "rationahsm of the
period.'"*^ One would like to complete this discussion by an analysis of the
fantasies evoked in Michelet's La Sorciere, but as we suggested earlier, Alain
Besangon's brilliant reading of that text presents a methodological problem
which, as far as we are concerned, is not resolved.
Turning now to another species of collective "craze," that of anti-Semitism,
we note that witches and Jews were amalgamated in the fantastic imagery of
evil. But even at a time when witches and demons had disappeared, the Jew
remained; indeed, he is the most enduring symbol of Evil known to Christian-

ity. One could go so far as to say that in the sociocultural context of the
Christian world as a whole, the myth of the Jew fulfills a single function from
the sociological and the psychological points of view: he allows the society in
question to distinguish Good from Evil, the Pure from the Impure, what is
itself from what is "other." From the sociological point of view, the Jews
represent above all the deviant group that allows a society to define its own
Hmits.''* From a psychological point of view, the identifying function of the
Jew is even clearer: he is the "group's counter-ideal," whose essential function
is to "serve as a negative counterpart to the group ideal, an embodiment as —
an example to be avoided — of everything that the group ideal is not, and must
at all cost avoid being.""*^
But even on the most general level, an explanation of the hostility directed
against the Jew in terms of the latter's double identifying function is insuffi-
cient. We are dealing here with an overdetermined phenomenon, and it is the
effect of overdetermination that explains the stability of this collective attitude
and the endurance of the symbol. The religious and cultural origins of this
negative symbol are well known; they were constantly reactivated on the
by a particular structure of relationships between Jews and non-

social level
Jews, as well as by certain additional functions of the Jew in situations of
change and crisis. On the general psychological level, the negative symbol
owes its permanence not only to its identifying function, but also to its
particular overtones in the unconscious and to its offering an outlet for the
projective tendencies of specific categories of neurotic or psychotic person-
alities.
Thus, concerns the relations between Jews and

in sociological terms, as
non-Jews, the religious auto-segregation of the former helped to arouse
hostility, as did their conviction of being a "chosen people"; their group
solidarity allowed others to identify them with all that was "foreign," and to
imagine them capable of the worst betrayals; above all, their professional
concentration in the most visible sectors of the society (finance, in medieval
and in modem times; cultural affairs in modem times), their unusually rapid
upward social mobility in comparison with neighboring groups, and finally
their participation in certain extremist ideological movements — all these

factors reinforced the negative attitudes of the society around them.
During the endogenous social transformations of a non-Jewish society in a
situation of anomie and crisis, the hatred of the Jew fulfills an important
integrative function: "This sentence: T hate the Jews' is a sentence which is
said in choms; by saying it one connects oneself with a tradition and a com-
munity," wrote Sartre.'''' And in my own previous study, I added: "For a
society or a class in the midst of rapid transformation, when the old bonds of
community have disappeared and new bonds have not yet been created, to
attach oneself to a tradition and a community becomes a vital need.""*
Furthermore, in a situation of crisis, the tension between the Jew and his
environment becomes exacerbated: certain classes in the society lose their
status and their prestige, and in their eyes any success on the part of the Jew
becomes infuriating as professional rivalries increase. Finally, in the eyes of
the society as a whole the role of the Jew becomes more threatening as the
social order disintegrates, and people begin to wonder whether the Jew himself
is not the cause of that disintegration.
astonishing stability of the negative symbol of the Jew is due perhaps
The
above all to the particular psychological coloring of the imagery that sur-
rounds the Jew in the collective unconscious. The remarks that follow are
hypothetical, but in a society that both fundamentally Christian (at least
is
until very recently) and ftindamentally patriarchal, they have a certain

logic
notion
that cannot be easily dismissed. Thus, to the extent that one accepts the
of Oedipal conflict, and to the extent that in many individuals the problem
of
Oedipal ambivalence is never wholly resolved, the Jew becomes— for cultural
world, of
reasons that are readily understandable— the symbol, in a Christian
father." Indeed, as has often been noted, the Jews are
considered as
the "bad
the representatives of God the Father, in opposition to God the Son, with
whom the Christian child identifies. But God the Father is the Law of
Law of Love; he represents strict justice and the

Retaliation as opposed to the
commandments of an authoritarian ethic, as opposed to charity. The Jews are
the ancestors, those whom the Christian child readily assimilates to the father.
Thus, the Christian imagination sees (more or less consciously) in the conflict
between the Jews and Christ a reflection of old personal conflicts with the
father, and this conflict comes to symbolize, on an unconscious level, the
Oedipal situation. Certain Jewish practices can only reinforce, moreover, this
identification of the Jew with the father in the Oedipal conflict. Circumcision,
for example, can evoke the threat of castration and even of death, a threat that
is intimately linked to the Oedipal conflict. One finds the trace of these identi-
fications and these fears under the most various forms in Western culture,
from the myth of ritual murder to the image of the Jew as a frightening old man,
as Ahasverus the Wandering Jew or some other similar figure.""
Finally, in general psychological terms the hostility directed against the
Jew serves as an outlet for the projections caused by certain specific defor-
mations of the personality. We obviously have no sufficient data to determine
whether virulent anti-Semites are for the most part neurotic or psychotic
personaHties, but the clinical studies by Ackermann and Marie Lazarsfeld-
Jahoda,^" by Adomo and his associates, by Gough^' and by Loewenstein" tend
to confirm that hypothesis, just as my own brief survey \n L'Antisemitisme
nazi does: the biographies of some twenty notorious anti-Semites, most of
whom lived in the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, seem
in fact to indicate a correlation between a fanatical hatred of the Jews and
various personality disorders. ^^ The correlation, moreover, is not between
—
extreme anti-Semitism and certain specific disorders, but and this confirms
the clinical hypotheses of Ackermann and Jahoda —
between anti-Semitism
and a whole potential range of neurotic or psychotic characteristics.
The identification of the general sociological and psychological functions
of anti-Semitism and the study of their interrelationship does not amount to a
psychohistorical study in the true sense of the term, for the diachronic element
is still missing. That is precisely where specific questions come into play: one
must study the transformation of the general functions in specific, and
changing, historical contexts.
We have already mentioned, for example, the role of anti-Semitism as a
factor of social cohesion in situations ofanomie or crisis. The psychological
dimension of this role is particularly easy to illustrate when the society in
question is undergoing a prolonged crisis or when the identity of the group is
still uncertain: in such cases, the negative symbol serves to emphasize the
by means of contrast. This process,
positive traits of the collective identity,
discernible in various groups of European society during the period of radical
transformation in the second half of the 19th century, was particularly evident
in Germany, where the changes were more rapid and more intense than else-
where and where the formation of a stable collective identity was prevented
by very serious obstacles. Thus, many Germans became conscious of their
own "German-ness" thanks to the imaginary Jew. "The German people,"
wrote the racist anti-Semite Bockel, "must, thanks to anti-Semitism, learn to
be aware of itself once again as the Germanic race opposed to the Jewish
race." Irving Fetscher, who quoted this statement by Bockel, adds: "The
imaginary counter-image [Gegenbild] of the Jewish people appears, for a

people such as the Germans, whose national consciousness is very weak, as a
welcome means whereby to achieve, indirectly, a growth of this national
consciousness."^" One could cite a whole list of quotations on this theme by
German anti-Semites: Jorges, Paul de Lagarde, and many others. Com-
menting on the examples she cites on this subject, Eva Reichmann notes: "An
inner disharmony, a lack of unity, was at the bottom of the intellectual pre-
War anti-Semitism in Germany. Anhomogeneity based on the
artificial
selection of a common foe was to be substituted for the natural homogeneity

based on national feeling which had had no chance of developing before the
disintegrating influence of a highly developed industrialism began to shatter
it."5^
Another psychological factor that reinforced anti-Semitism in Germany

—
during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries especially in the middle
classes — was the high frequency of the authoritarian family context, and
hence of the "authoritarian personality." We know that a tendency to be preju-
diced, and especially a tendency toward anti-Semitism, is one of the essential
characteristics of the authoritarian personality. Consequently, wherever this
type of personality is especially frequent, anti-Semitism is especially wide-
spread. The authoritarian personality, we may note, represents a specific
variant of the general psychological foundations of anti-Semitism based on
personality factors.
In L'Antisemitisme nazi, I studied both the sociological and the psycho-
logical factors, in order to show their cumulative effect in a crisis-ridden
Germany. The basic functions by a hatred of the Jew remained

fulfilled
unchanged, but the variants introduced by the rapid transformation of the

social and psychological context became more numerous, and the interaction
of various factors became more pronounced; nevertheless, the method of
investigation remained logically the same, allowing us to understand the
reaUty involved in all its complexity and in its historical evolution. There is no
need for us to repeat here the details of an argument sufficiently documented
elsewhere.*^
Heterogeneous Groups: The Study of Change
The transformation of heterogeneous groups, which makes up practically all
of the situations of social change that interest us, is far from being explained by
a single, unanimously accepted sociological theory. The various
theories that
have been proposed can be classified according to the "content" of the change
(theories of progress or of decline)," but a formal classification
is more useful
ifone wants to see to what degree they take account of psychological factors.
We can thus distinguish three fundamental types: 1) theories of "non-
theories ot
change"; 2) theories of progressive and continuous change; 3)
sudden and discontinuous change.
In the first category, we may place the structuralism of Levi-Strauss and its
potential application to advanced societies. It is possible that the structura-

lists will eventually arrive at a theory of the transformation of structures that
will account for the laws of these transformations; at present, however, these
laws are neither precise nor even perceivable. Structural analysis provides an
important tool, however, from our point of view; to the extent that, as Robert
Nisbet has noted, one can study change only in relation to a certain stability in
the identity of the institution or the group that is changing, structuralism allows
us to analyze the fundamental components of this stable identity. In this
context, the contribution of psychology is clear: the basic structure reflects
certain fundamental aspects of the human mind, whether we are dealing with
formal binary oppositions or with yet another restatement of the incest taboo.
On the level of the analysis of fundamental structures, psychology is pre-
dominant, even if its contribution can be expressed only in general terms. Any
analysis of social change should in fact begin with an attempt to define the
permanent structures of certain symbolic manifestations of the group (for
example), but that is a step that the non-structuralists usually omit; they prefer
to emphasize the permanence of certain institutional or cultural elements
before turning to a study of the processes of transformation themselves.
The modalities of change have given rise to rival theories: in one camp are
those who espouse the theory of gradual and continuous change; in the other,
those who maintain that no genuine change is possible without a sharp break
with the past, a sudden transformation in structure, paradigm, or norms. The
theory of continuous change, in which one can include some of Marx's models
as well as those of Talcott Parsons one remains on the formal level of
if
analysis, is based on the simple idea that the sources of change are found in the
structure of the society itself: the tensions and "dysfunctions" that arise
between elements in the social structure provoke an unstable situation in
which certain elements became maladapted; the system will then tend to
resolve the situation by readapting and transforming its constituent ele-
ments.'* Societies advance, thus, in a continuous movement from one system
of equilibrium to another, passing through necessary temporary stages of
tension and disequihbrium in the process; these stages of disequilibrium can
even be revolutionary crises in the Marxist sense of the term.
According to the theorists of discontinuous change, the processes we have
just described exist, to be sure, but they can lead only to a "reordering" of the
system without any genuine transformation. Genuine change, whether it is
provoked by a social crisis, a technological advance, or the discovery of an
anomaly in the existing scientific concepts, can be none other than a total
break with the past and a sudden mutation of the structure or the paradigm.^'
Some historians are not aware of this theoretical debate,*" but their implicit
or explicitly stated conceptions nevertheless place them either in the camp of
change-through-modification-of-structures, or in thatof sudden-passage-from-
one-structure-to-another. In opposition to the traditional Marxist school of
historians,one can quote, among many others, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie.
After having emphasized the coherence which, despite all the variations, one
can find in any given historical structure, Le Roy Ladurie remarks that the
passage from one structure to another in the final analysis, a "random"

is,
phenomenon: ''Mutation, in history as in ideology, remains, in most cases,

that scandalous zone where chance reigns supreme: from this zone, factors
that are often mysterious carve out, in the field of possibilities, large areas of
necessity which impose themselves as inevitable, but which a moment before
their appearance were as unpredictable as they were unimaginable."'*'
Is there not, in fact,
a possible synthesis between the "dialectical" position
and the "mutationist" one? Is there not, among the "mutationists," a certain
confusion between the unpredictable nature of the event which produces the
change in structure, and the ex post facto explicability of the event in terms of
the structure whose disappearance it provokes? Robert Nisbet cites as
examples the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution. But in fact the
French Revolution can be seen as the result of a slow process of disinte-
gration of the ancien regime and of the growing tensions and disequilibrium
within the system, and as the result of an immediate crisis, the event (or the
series of events) which provoked the change in the system; this event was
unpredictable, to be sure, but it could be explained afterward in the context of
the evolution that preceded and without which it could not have taken place,
it
or would not have had the consequences it had.

In the framework of this kind of synthesis, one can raise the problem of the
influence of psychological factors on the processes of change. We may sum-
marize here the model of change that we proposed in chapter 1 .*^ We argued
that the "reordering" of a system implies, in general, the abolition and the
replacement of certain common symbols of power and the like, without any
change fundamental norms, whereas the passage from one system to
in the
another can be accomplished only with the disintegration and the restructuring
of these norms. Our conclusion was as follows: "The essential causes of the
reordering or the transformation of a social system are social, not psycho-
logical, in nature.However, the integration of a new symbolic system (in the
case of reordering) or of new norms (in the case of transformation) into the
society in question depends not only on social factors, but also on the affective
reactions of a majority of the members of that society— facts that are
interpretable only in psychological terms."
Let us take as an example German society in the twentieth century. We can
distinguish three essential norms that were expressed by different symbolic
systems: unconditional obedience to hierarchical authority, the acceptance of
self-sacrifice for the glory of the group,and an active commitment to the
supremacy of the group. Under the Empire as under the Weimar Republic and
the Third Reich, these norms were represented by a symbolic system whose
bases were constituted by elements relating to the head of State, the army and
the national territory.
Under the Empire, the three fundamental norms were accepted
and
mvested with powerful positive affects; the symbolic system that represented
them was accepted as a whole, despite a growing disaffection with the person
of Wilhehn II as Emperor. When defeat brought about the replacement of the
Empire by the Weimar Republic, the weakening of the Imperial army
(reduced to a hundred thousand men), and the amputation of some national

territories both on the eastern and the western frontiers, the result was a
veritable exacerbation of the positive feelings invested in the three norms in
question, together with a total rejection, by the majority of Germans, of the
new symbols that expressed these norms. Thus, the reordering of the system
did not succeed, and it was only with the coming of the Third Reich, when the
symbolic system satisfied the aspirations of the masses, that one can speak of
a genuine reordering. Nevertheless, the fundamental norms remained the
same, and still carried a powerful emotional charge. After Germany's second
defeat, the situation became altogether different: not only was the old symbolic
system discarded, but the fundamental norms of the preceding systems lost
their affective charge; the society of the Federal Republic seems to be in the
process of assimilating new norms, closer to those of American society or of
Western society in general than were the norms of the past.
In this particular case the processes of emotional investment and dis-
investment are evident, and one can easily perceive the difference between a
reordering of the system which does not succeed (Weimar) and a reordering
that does, and is therefore accepted on the emotional level (Third Reich); one
can also see the difference between these reorderings which preserve the
fundamental norms, and a transformation of the system which involves a
rejection of the old norms (the Federal Republic). But the underlying causes of
these affective changes are not evident at first glance, and that is precisely the
most significant questionfrom a psychohistorical point of view.
In effect, the process of internalization is a general process which allows us
to relate social structure to individual structure, but in itself it does not tell us
anything about the reasons why a new norm is accepted or rejected. It is by
analyzing the changes in attitude that accompany the evolution of some insti-
tutions (the transformation of family structures, for example) that we can

understand their relation to changes in norms when they occur. Let us again
take Germany as an example. We
can ask why, after the collapse of the
Empire, the need for a despotic leader was felt as a profound necessity by most
Germans even though the Weimar Republic offered them the novelty of a
liberal system; why this leader was accepted with such enthusiasm under the
Third Reich; and finally, why that same need for an authoritarian regime was
easily replaced by the system of the Federal Republic. In other words,
liberal
we can ask why the traditional authoritarian norms were so easily abandoned
at the end of the 1 940's. To answer that question, we must examine the
relationship to authority on two distinct levels: that of political structures and
ideological injunctions on the one hand, and that of family structure on the
other. In the absence of detailed studies on the evolution of the German family
from the beginning of the century to the present day, we must content
ourselves with a general discussion, citing facts that are known to and
accepted by specialists in the field. Thus we may note that at the beginning of
the century there was still a strong correlation between the level of political
structures and that of family structure (especially in the middle classes), with
the norm of authority generally preached and accepted in both; the following
decades, however, saw an evolution Germany family toward greater
in the
liberalization,as well as the rapid disappearance of hierarchical feudal
structures in a great many areas. The Third Reich, contrary to what is
generally believed, did not prevent this transformation but encouraged it.*'
The German child bom in 1930 grew up in an environment that was much
more "fraternal" and much less "paternal" than the environment of a child
bom 1920, let alone one bom in 1900 or 1910. As a result, although one
in
can understand the problems of group identity which led to the preservation of
the norm of authority on the political level until the end of the Second World
War, one can also see that the general emotional foundations of this norm
were weakened by the evolution of the family stmcture; the ground was
therefore ready, in an ever-growing segment of the German population, for the
intemalization of the new liberal norms implied by the change in the system
that occurred in 1945. Without this evolution, the Federal Republic might
have suffered the same fate as the republic of Weimar. These hypotheses will
have to be confirmed by a series of systematic analyses; but for psychohistory
there can be no definitive explanation of the social change that has taken place
in Germany over the past few decades without an in-depth study of the
changes toward authority in the German family, and of the reper-
in attitude
cussions of these transformations on individual development.

We shall not discuss here the role of psychological factors in a process of
limited social change, such as the birth and the evolution of a political
movement. What is involved is a relatively simple kind of analysis, the model
for which has already been presented by Neil Smelser.^" We shall consider the
essential points of his model, which seems to us applicable to a large number
of phenomena of partial change that the historian might study.
LxDgically, the analysis of change should proceed in four stages, the
phenomenon under study being considered each time from a sociological and
from a psychological point of view: a definition of the stmctural context, both
on the sociological and the psychological level, should be followed by an
analysis of the immediate cause of the phenomenon (usually, a lack felt by a
fairly large number of people); this in tum should be followed by a study of the
ideology or belief which serves as a rallying point for the members of the new
movement; finally, the analyst must examine mechanisms of social and
personal control that are activated by the formation and the development of
the movement in question.
Remaining within the field of German history, we may analyze the birth
and evolution of the Nazi Party according to the four stages outlined above.
The social context that facilitated the spread of Nazism is well known; we can
add to it an equally evident psychological context: there was the need for
revenge, of course, but also the search for identity on the part of a society in
full disarray, and a desire both for submission and domination, this
last
tendency being strongest in the authoritarian personality that seems to

characterize the German middle classes of the period.
In social terms, the lack which functioned as the immediate cause was the
destmction of a sense of nadonal honor, as well as the economic, political, and
social chaos of Weimar. In psychological terms, the lack

can be defined as the
reinforcement of the above-mentioned factors (problem of identity, aspira-
tions of the authoritarian personality) by the social and political upheavals of
the time.
As concerns the process of mobilization whereby the group most affected
by the above changes rallied around an idea or a personality, we find that the
explanation must be stated in psychological rather than in social terms, for
what is involved here is the formation of a temporary homogeneous group
(which we discussed earlier).
The same is true of the final stage of analysis, concerning the activation of
mechanisms of social and individual control. Within the Nazi group, there
occurs a weakening of the mechanisms of control of the ego; this is the collec-
tive regression typical of temporary homogeneous groups, with its usual
psychological consequences: the acceptance of the fantasies of the leader and
the development of a collective obsession of identification and purification in
the face of the group's mythical enemy.
Obviously, not every phenomenon of limited change can be analyzed
according to this model, but it does provide an example of a method that the
historian can adapt to various contexts. Similarly, the phenomena of change
that the historian seeks to interpret do not all fall into one of the two categories
we have discussed here; some will be more general than the study of the birth
of a political movement, without amounting to a transformation of the social
system as a whole. What we have tried to propose are two different models
whose elements can be combined according to the specific characteristics of
the phenomena under study.
Before going on to discuss macro-history or the global analysis of cultures,
let us stop for a moment to consider the possible contribution of psycho-
history to the explanation of a unique phenomenon: that of generational age
groups, or, to use the technical sociological term, cohorts.
Age Groups
The sometimes even its existence as

significance of a particular age group, and
a distinct stage, varies from culture to culture and period to period. According
to Philippe Aries, "the distinguishing marks of childhood" did not exist in
medieval society. Children passed from the care of the mother or the wet
nurse, in other words from the stage of infancy, to full albeit passive—
participation in the life of adults.**
It was in the sixteenth century that people began to distinguish childhood as
a specific category. "The child, or at least the child of quality, whether noble
or middle class, henceforth had an outfit reserved for his age group, which set
him apart from the adults. The adoption of a special childhood costume, which
became generalized throughout the upper classes from the end of the 1 6th
century, marked a very important date in the formation of the idea of
childhood."**
Ifchildhood appeared as a distinct category during the sixteenth century,

"adolescence," which plays such an important role in current psychoanalytic
thought, did not make its definitive appearance, according to Philippe Aries,
until the end of the nineteenth century! Already in the eighteenth century, to be
sure, Cherubino and the new recruit were present as two prototypes of the
modem adolescent, but it was with Wagner's Siegfried that the adolescent
really came into his own: "The music oi Siegfried'" writes Aries, "expressed
for the first time that combination of (provisional) purity, physical strength,
naturism, spontaneity and joie de vivre which was to make the adolescent the
hero of our twentieth century, the century of adolescence."^''
One can of course dispute the exact date of the appearance of the "adoles-
cent" in Western culture. The GermanBildungsroman ("novel of education")
of the early nineteenth century, of which Goethe's Wilhelm Meister is the most
famous example, seems already to have been concerned with the basic
problems of adolescence. We may fix the latter's appearance, therefore, rather
at the end of the eighteenth century, in the works of Rousseau.** But the
quarrel over dates is a minor matter. What matters is that we understand the
historical and cultural variations imposed on some of the most important
developmental phases of our existence. Depending on the society, certain
developmental phases can be blocked or eUminated; conversely, some socie-
ties will create, as Kenneth Keniston has noted, developmental phases that do
not exist in others.*' This fact naturally leads to various hypotheses; thus,
according to Keniston, "in societies where adolescence does not occur many
of the psychological characteristics which we consider the results of an
adolescent experience should be extremely rare: for example, a high degree of
emancipation from the family, a well-developed self-identity, a belief system
based upon a reexamination of the cultural assumptions learned in childhood,
'"'^
and, perhaps, the cognitive capacity for formal operation. This type of
correlation is not self-evident, but it is the kind of question that the historian
can ask about age groups in various societies. In fact, the historian ought to
establish the give-and-take between the age group and the society at large,
explaining the characteristics of the former by the evolution of the latter, and,
conversely, examining the possible influence of the age group on some of the
attitudes of the society. Thus, in his study of childhood in France in the
seventeenth century,^' David Hunt shows both the particularities of the
behavior toward children in the society, and the influence of this behavior on
certain aspects of the society itself.
Hunt maintains that, contrary to Aries's thesis (according to which parents

were indifferent to the behavior of their children as long as the latter remained
outside the adult world), French parents in the seventeenth century showed a
strong interest in their children's reactions, beginning as early as infancy.'^ He
even perceives an interaction between adult behavior, the reaction of the child,
and certain crucial aspects of the social structure as a whole: "In particular. I
have the impression," he writes, "that the second Eriksonian stage has been
the most pertinent to the study of childhood in the old regime."" Hunt
then
provides an abundance of first-person accounts about the harshness of

the
methods employed to break the child's "autonomy" as soon as it manifested

itself. As for the social consequences of this treatment, Hunt sums it up by
showing the vicious circle it created: the father's harshness led to the same
harshness in the son; in the society at large it led to the passive acceptance of
a hierarchical order indifferent to the dignity of the individual and founded for
the most part on coercive methods. By repressing the child's tendencies
toward autonomy in the second stage of development, monarchic society
could ensure, to some extent, the submission of adults: "In this way, a
"^''
repressive status quo [was] anchored in the conflicts of the anal stage.
In context, the sentence we have just quoted is not as "simplistic" as it
might appear. Even so, one notes a certain absence of subtle discriminations
(which is perhaps the inevitable weakness of psychohistory). Having said that,
we must immediately go on: is Hunt's hypothesis verifiable? Can one demon-
strate the existence of the correlation he suggests?
The developmental stage that Hunt found to be significant is the second
stage of the Eriksonian model — the anal stage in orthodox psychoanalytic
terminology. This was also the stage that John Demos found most pertinent in
his study of Plymouth Colony. As Hunt notes: "There are several possible
explanations for the particular salience of this aspect of Erikson's theory. For
example, one might argue that because of its distinctive characteristics,
seventeenth-century society chose to define with a special clarity issues
associated with the second stage of childhood. It is also possible that all
societies tend to stress these issues and that the emphasis found in the present
study is related to a universal fact of childrearing."''' This is an important

observation, not because the emphasis placed on the problem of the second
stage in Erikson's model doubtless reflects the fact that this stage, when the
child's autonomy first manifests itself, elicits special attention from the
parents, but rather because seems that the attitudes acquired at this stage
it
are— together with the formation of the xdenWiy— those whose ejfects on the
social behavior of the adult are the most readily identifiable. In primitive
societies or in certain homogeneous groups as we have defined them, it is
possible to discover in adult behavior the consequences of a specific manner of
resolving the problems of the firstdevelopmental stage (the oral stage, with its
antithetical attitudes of trust and suspicion), or the consequences of the mode
of resolution of the Oedipal conflict. The complex social organization of
heterogeneous groups, on the other hand, places greater emphasis on attitudes

toward authority on every level of behavior, and on the question of individual
—
and collective self-image hence on the solution of the problem of identity. If
this is in fact the case, then Hunt's extrapolations, which are diflicult to
support in the context of an isolated study, would become altogether more
significant in the framework of a comparative study.
We can obviously not present, in these pages, a comparative study of this
kind. We will, however, after some general remarks on the characteristics of
the stage of "youth" in contemporary societies, examine a particular aspect of
this stage in German society at the beginning of the twentieth century; we will
also suggest some possible comparisons between the German case and certain
kinds of youthful behavior in more recent times, notably in American society
during the 1960's.
Regardless of the exact period when adolescence and early youth emerged
as a culturally distinct stage in the developmental cycle, it is only at the end of
the nineteenth century that one finds the first expressions of the psychological
and cultural exigencies of youth as youth, that is as a group with its own
values, a distinct generation in the sense in which Karl Mannheim defined the
term.''^ As several scholars have noted, most of the "rebellions of youth" up to
that time ("Young Italy," "Young Turks," etc.) had been fought in the name of
universal revolutionary ideals, rather than with the deliberate aim of ex-
pressing the aspirations of youth as such.''^
Among the sociological criteria that characterize this age group, we must
distinguish between the general criteria that define the function of youth in the
global structure of modem on the one hand (these criteria, being
societies
"universalistic" in nature, do not allocate status and roles in terms of family or
clan membership), and the social conditions of conflict between youth and the
society at large on the other hand; this latter criterion is the more important
one from our point of view.
Generally speaking, one can consider adolescence and youth in modem
societies as the age during which the individual separates himself from the
familial norms that defined his existence until then, without at the same time
integrating himself into so-called "adult" society and accepting all of its
norms. The adolescent tends to seek the company of his peers in organizations
of various kinds, and to use these groups as environments in which to prepare
for adult hfe. Naturally, not all such groups provide adequate preparation for
adult life, and some provide very inadequate preparation indeed: nevertheless,
it is in these groups that the adolescent can experience a whole series of roles
that will be necessary for his integration into adult society. By definition, then,
"Youth as an age span becomes a special period of discontinuity and resociali-

zation in which past and future identifications and roles are sharply con-
trasted, often mutually incompatible."''* Thus, the period of adolescence and
youth implies, in modem industrial societies, an element of tension and of
conflict with the adult society. This tension becomes especially pronounced
when the society is undergoing rapid changes that give rise to major conflicts
of values." It is in such situations that the psychological tensions character-
istic of this developmental stage become especially significant.
Before discussing the psychology of adolescence, we must emphasize once
again that certain characteristics of the psychic transformation that occurs
during this period of human development have taken on importance only very
recently, and for the most part in industrial societies. It remains tme. however,
that the physiological transformations of adolescence, and the fact that these
transformations are in all cultures accompanied by a change in status (the
more or less harmonious and more or less rapid entry of the child into the adult
world) make this a difficult period, characterized by certain psychological ""
80
whose intensity can vary greatly from individual to individual
disturbances
Even and sudden changes in

in industrial societies, differences in social status
the sociocultural context have a considerable influence on the behavior of
adolescents; this influence is easy to account for theoretically, if one admits
that this is the developmental stage during which the individual must define his
identity, both by integrating the diverse elements of his own past history and
—
by referring to the norms of the group to which he belongs in other words, his
sociocultural context.
has been argued recently that a perpetual change in identity is becoming a
It
normal psychological characteristic of modem man, who is obliged to adapt to

a constantly changing environment.*' Whether or not this is in fact the case, it
is certain that during the first half of this century— and, for a great majority of
young people, right to —
up to this day the search for a stable identity has been
an overriding concern. But we should note that the solution to this problem can
take on three different forms (excluding a fourth, pathological possibility—
that of permanent irresolution):
1 the acceptance of the social and ideological realities of the environment,
together with its fundamental norms;
2) the rejection of these reaUties and the perpetuation of an attitude of
revolt within the framework of "revolutionary" ideological and political
institutions;
3) the rejection both of social reality and of all revolutionary solutions in
the name of a more or less extreme degree of disinvolvement or "privatism";

the latter can be expressed in various forms, ranging from religious mysticism
to absolute estheticism.
The first of these solutions is the one that the liberal bourgeois society of the
West considers normal: it is the one adopted, as a rule, by the great majority of
young people. As for the other two possibilities, it has seemed to us that the
"ideological" deviant solution was more characteristic of the 1920's and
1930's, whereas the "privatist" solution has been more frequent in the recent
past. If this change could be demonstrated, some fundamental questions
would arise concerning the evolution of large-scale social structures, but
above all the evolution of family structures in Western society.
If we examine the German youth of the first three decades of this century,
we note that the movements of protest and revolt which developed in Germany
were more structured than in neighboring countries; at the same time, these
movements were simply a more emphatic expression of a malaise that was
also evident among middle class youth in other Western countries. The social
origins of this notable increase in the opposition of young people to the existing
system have been well summed up by Kingsley Davis: the acceleration of the
rhythm of social change, the growing complexity of the system, the appear-
ance of conflicting norms within the society, and the acceleration of social
mobility.*^ These conditions were particularly evident in Germany, where
industrialization had been more rapid and on a larger scale than in other
European countries, and where, by the beginning of the twentieth century, the
messianic dreams attached to the foundation of the Reich were no more than a
vague memory; furthermore, the conflicting norms thus produced— on the one
hand, the demands of the new industrial society; on the other, the traditions of
rural life, which still exercised a powerful attraction— gave rise to insur-
mountable divisions within the society.
But in Germany as elsewhere, the behavior of young people is far from
being uniform, and the three solutions to the identity crisis that we mentioned
above can be distinctly discerned. We shall not analyze here the significance
of the first solution— that of acceptance and compromise— with all its possible
was the traditional liberal solution finally chosen by the hero of
variations: this
Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, Hans Castorp, as well as by Mann
himself. Nor shall we analyze the "privatist" solution, for the history of the
period shows that it was adopted only by a minority. The second solution,
implying the rejection of bourgeouis reality and the perpetuation of Utopian
aspirations and of an attitude of revolt, seems to us far more significant:
politically, it led to fascism or to communism, two great revolutionary
the
options of the period. It is by studying the youth movements that we shall
discover the psychological bases of this option.
The history of the German youth movements was
has often been told.*' It
in 1901 that the movement of the Wandervogel ("migratory birds") was

officially founded, in a basement in Berlin-Steglitz. Under the leadership of
the movement's founder, Karl Fischer, a few dozen youths aged from twelve
or thirteen to nineteen went on organized hikes far from the cities, first in
Germany and later in other parts of Europe. Hikes formed the basis of the
movement's activities: there were the camp fires, the singing, the nights spent
under the stars, the return to nature and to the sources of life. Soon after its
founding, the movement, which grew from a few dozen to a few hundred and
then to several thousand members*'* (most of them male), broke up into rival
factions. Karl Fischer resigned and others took his place. At the great meeting
of the youth movements that took place on the Hohe Meissner in 1 9 1 3, there
were not one, but several distinct groups present. Yet, the aspirations and the
ftmdamental problems remained the same in all the groups and continued to be
so after the war, when the movements became politicized and their influence
was by a good part of the country's bourgeois youth. In the magazines of

felt
all kinds published by the various factions, as well as in their songbooks and
in
the novels, the poetry and the painting that they adopted, one finds the same
fears and aspirations despite their apparent diversity.
"The time of the Wandervogel' s foundation," writes the first historian of
the movement, Hans Bluher, "was characterized by a struggle of young people
against the worid of adults."*^ Recently, some writers on the subject have tried
the
to minimize the importance of this aspect of the movement, claiming that
youth of the Wandervogel were not in principle opposed to the worid of their
fathers and that their apparent rejection of it was only true of a few
theoreti-
cians within the movement.** In fact, allthe evidence suggests the contrary:
the movement was first of all an attempt to liberate young people from the
Their
worid of adults, a worid whose values and customs they rejected.
opposition to that worid was intense, so much so that during the
war many
young people demanded the exclusion of the first members of the movement—
who had in the —

meantime become adults in the name of the natural opposi-
tion between generations.^'' But against what, exactly, were these young men
revolting? What were the values and the behavior that they rejected?
In a very general way, we could reply, as Peter Gay does, that the
" Wandervogel sought an escape from the lies spawned by petty bourgeois
culture, a clean way of life unmarked by the use of alcohol or tobacco, and,
above all, a common existence that could rise above self-interest and shabby
party politics."*^ Thus
was the lies, the routine, the often sordid character of
it
petty bourgeois life —

in the home, at school and in the larger social context
that were rejected. But this radical refusal, to which one should add a
systematic anti-materialism and the horror of large modem cities, was
accompanied by specific themes that were quite strange but quite important
from our point of view. Here was a group of young people who, in the great
majority, revolted against the "impurity" of the adult world in a very precise
sense: they rejected alcohol and tobacco, but they also rejected the "impurity"
of adult sexual life. The evidence for this is massive.
Among the favorite novels of the members of the youth movements,
Wiltfeber was ambiguous on the question of the rejection of "impurity," but
Helmut Harringa was a veritable call to arms against alcohol and eroticism.*'
But let us look, rather, at the writings of the Wandervogel or the Biinde
themselves, and above all at members. "One of the
the behavior of their
principal targets of the attacks of the youth movements," writes someone who
knew the movements first-hand, "was bourgeois social life, especially the
coarseness of sexual mores both public and private, which assailed their deep
longing for chastity at practically every streetcomer. Disgusted by the abject
omnipresence of these corrupt morals, the young people, in their need for
purity, at first saw no other solution than a total rejection of all sexu-
ality. ..."'" In his introduction to a volume of writings of the youth move-
ments, Theodor Wilhelm, while voicing skepticism about the role of the
"generation conflict" in the constitution of the movements, maintains that
"sexual asceticism" was one of their essential characteristics. But in reading
the texts themselves, one is astonished by the arguments employed by these
youth-movement members of forty years ago. Their rejection of sexuality was,
they claim, a reaction against the "corrupt" morals of adults, but also an
ordinary consequence of the fact that the young girls who founded their own
groups, distinct from the male groups, were not very attractive!" Curious
Whatever one thinks of them, the rejection of a sexual
rationalizations, these.
freedom that today would be considered normal and desirable characterizes a
considerable segment of the German youth movements of the beginning of the
century, and (although to a lesser extent) of the 1920's as well. "Young
people," writes Wyneken, "found no other solution to their sexual problem
than to profess sexual abstinence and set up comaraderie as the relation
between the sexes. ."'^ This statement, which seems to be a criticism, is in
. .
fact a kind of proclamation of faith by the author himself. As Walter Laqueur

has noted, "Wyneken was on the whole in favor of 'heroic asceticism' and
frequently stressed his belief that in the existing social order the sexual
.

question was insoluble. Heimann and the few others who went on
. . .
record
before the outbreak of the First World War favored abstinence before
marriage, out of an 'erotic-mystical orientation' which, they insisted, was not
at all identical with the spirit of abstinence preached by the professional
Philistine abstentionists."'^
In conflict with the world of adults and wary of the opposite sex, the young
Germans who joined the ranks of the youth movements naturally sought
refuge, consolation, and a goal in life in their own group, the group of young
men united under an idealized leader. In fact, more than the desire to return to
nature, more than the flight toward a mythical past or a utopic future, was the
it
involvement with the group, the exaltation of comaraderie and the community
of young men that marked the Wandervogel and the movements that followed
it. Much has been said about the homosexual character (either latent or active)
of the German youth movements. It is probable that the sexual reticence

toward women, the immersion in a group of men at an age when young men
often experience homosexual inclinations, and the influence of certain leaders
contributed to the creation of a more or less overtly homosexual atmosphere in
the movements, and perhaps even to certain homosexual practices.^'' We shall
look in a while at the larger implications of these tendencies; first, however, let
us consider the core of the movements: the community of peers and their
leader.
The community, the group, was itself a program: as one of their manifestos
declared, "Where lively people are together no one needs a programme. . .
There is nothing more wonderful and fruitful than communion in a small circle
of confidants where no plan and no 'order of the day' hems in spontaneous
vitality and the spirit 'blowing where it listeth.' ""' Or again, as one of the
. . .
participants, Wilhelm Stahlin, put it: "The new instinct that awoke, the
instinct of community, found its perfect realization in the bonds of friendship
within these small groups But without a leader, group action was
"'^
impossible: the idealized, inspired leader was the center, the uniting bond and
the activating element of each section of the movement.
It was a relationship of this kind that existed between the first
Wanden-ogel
and Karl Fischer, and it was the same relationship that united the
their leader,
members of the successive groups that made up the movements and those who
led them: "At a time when democracy is conquering the whole
world." wrote
one of the leaders, Robert Oelbermann. in 1922. "at a time when the masses
when the value of a person judged by his pocket-
think they can rule and is
the awareness of leadership [Fuhrertum] and the sense

of loyalty in
book
those who follow the leader [Gefolgschafstreue] have been reawakened
in the
"''
The mystical and erotic character of the bonds
youth movement
noted by
between the group's leader and his young followers, which has been
"Oh,
Bluher and others, incontestably reflects a deep emotional involvement:
my leader," writes a young man beset by sexual problems which seemed to
These
him irresolvable, "do not turn away from me. help me to be pure!""*
on the
young "rebels" were waiting for a savior, on the personal level and
collective one as well.
Before going further, we should emphasize that the themes of aUenation,

revolt, idealism, extreme terms by the German youth
and Utopia, expressed in
movements of the first three decades of this century, were in fact the amplified
echo of the fears and aspirations of a large segment of German society or — at
least of German youth —
at the time. Antimaterialism, the loss of confidence in
the values of the bourgeois world, the determination to break out of the
authoritarian straitjacket of the family and the larger social institutions (even if
that involved accepting the authority of a charismatic leader) — these are

among the great subjects treated in the art and literature of the period, by the
Expressionists above all but by others as well. The most popular novel of the
pre-war period, Burte's Wiltfeber, depicts the fundamental antagonism be-
tween the young Germanic hero and the rigid, suspicion-ridden, petty world of
adults. Hessenclever's Der Sohn and Amolt Bronnen's Vatermord express
not only the son's revolt against the father, but, in the latter novel, the son's
murder of the father. In his study of German culture during the Weimar
Repubhc, Peter Gay devotes a whole chapter to the "revolt of the sons,"'^
which he sees as one of the fundamental psychological characteristics of the
time. The same theme appears as an essential leitmotiv in the post-war
German cinema: the hateful, demented nature of authority is one of the central
themes of the most famous German film of the twenties. The Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari. '"" As for the desire for a new community, for a charismatic leader
and a liberating form of action, we know how deeply entrenched it was in the
aspirations of German society during this period; those aspirations had their
roots, to be sure, in a remote past, but were already manifest at the beginning
of the century. The youth movements thus appeared as a kind of seismograph
that registered a very deep upheaval.
We have already mentioned the sociological foundations of this revolt of
the young. The sociological explanation is not sufficient, however, for it leaves
aside the factors we have just described; a psychological analysis is necessary
to complete the picture.
Let us return to our point of departure: the revolt of the young that became
widespread in Germany after the beginning of the century was due to general
social factors, but also to a new attitude toward the authoritarianism of
German society and of the German family. This questioning of authoritarian
norms can be would seem, to a falling-off of the emotional charge
attributed, it
associated with the hierarchical framework both on the general and the
familial level, this falling-off being itself due to the intrusion of egalitarian
norms imposed by industrial society as well as to the incipient transformation
of the German middle-class family. In the framework of rural life or in the
world of small craftsmen, the authority of the father was that of someone who
was present at every hour of the day; in the framework of the new industrial
society, that authority belonged to a man who was absent more and more of
the time: it became more arbitrary, more blind, but more feeble as well.
Furthermore, the ease of access to education gave the sons a sudden advan-
tage over the fathers. Thus, the psychological foundations of revolt appear
evident.
Before attempting to interpret them, let us recall the essential aspects of this
revolt: 1 ) young in an autonomous culture that emphasized the
isolation of the
particular values of youth (Jugendkultur); 2) an insistence on ascetic ideals
with a more or less strong homosexual coloration— in general, an idealized
homosexuality; 3) the cult of the peer group and a quasi-mystical submission
to the authority of the leader.
The isolation of the young
an autonomous culture appears as an obvious
in
form of rejection of the surrounding reality, and at the same time as an extreme
manifestation of the narcissistic regression that marks the normal develop-
ment of the adolescent. But in this case we can speak of a narcissistic fixation,
evidenced by exaggerated attitudes of self-admiration: the idealization of the
values of youth within an autonomous culture; the idealization of the
beauty of young bodies and of the physical environment of youth in the
illustrations ofbooks and magazines (especially in the stylized engravings of

the movement's most famous illustrator, Fidus); the proliferation of rites and
ceremonies that perpetuated the mythical, "all-powerful" world of youth by
denying the very existence of another reality; finally, the narcissistic cult of the
—
peer group and its leaders idealized and aggrandized images of the self.
The narcissism of the members of the youth movement leads us to one of
the essential components of their ascetic self-discipline as concerned alcohol
and and above all, sex. Asceticism, in effect, is the rejection of
cigarettes,
uncleanness or pollution, be it by alcohol or sex (for alcohol and the sex life of
adults were seen as forms of pollution); in other words, it is the perpetuation of
one's original purity, which is the most intense form of narcissism. Asceticism
is also the rejection of "debauchery" (interpreted as a loss of strength), the
will to preserve one's erotic energy in all its magical fullness in order to devote
it to a higher end (this theme recurs constantly in discussions concerning Eros
and sex); in a word, it is the narcissistic preservation of a mythical plenitude of
the self.
But the asceticism of the youth movements has, I believe, yet another
psychological source: the fear of instinctual chaos. In his analysis of German

fihns of the inter-war period, Siegfried Kracauer has convincingly shown that
Germans at this time, and especially the young, felt confronted by a funda-
mental dilemma: traditional tyrannical authority was hateful, but if he aban-
doned it, man would find himself in chaos— social chaos and instinctual
chaos— and chaos meant death.'"' The symbol of chaos in The Cabinet ofDr.
Caligari is the carnival where Caligari hides out and from where Cesare sets
out to strangle his victims. Thus, the disaffection with the authoritarian
the
structure of the family and of society triggered revolt, but it also threatened
individual with fatal disintegration due to the chaotic irruption of instinctual
forces that a weakened superego could no longer contain. Against
this threat,
the young had only one recourse: he replaced external authority by an

rebel
chosen.
internal authority that was even stricter, but that appeared freely
youth
Narcissism, ascetic discipline, and the imperious instinctual needs of
account for the sublimated homosexuality that characterized the
movement:
the myth
the idealization of the peer group, the idealization of the male body,
no History and Psychoanalysis
of Eros as the antithesis of sexual debauchery, the cult of discipline — all of

these factors converge toward the same end. Finally, these same factors
account for the remarkable psychological compromise represented by sub-
mission to the leader.
The was barely older than the members of the movement,
leader, in fact,
but he was surrounded by a genuinely mystical aura. This cult of the leader
amounted, it seems to me, to a psychic compromise between three pairs of
contradictory impulses:
1 A compromise between the need to submit and the need to revolt. The
initial authoritarian structure and the authoritarian family had inculcated the
young with a profound need for submission, which tended to negate the will to
revolt caused by other, independent factors. Now the leader was not a father
figure, but a member of the same generation whom his followers idealized and
whose leadership they "freely" accepted.
2) A compromise between total narcissistic regression and the facing of
reality. The leader satisfied the narcissistic need, for he was the idealized
image of the members themselves; that in turn allowed them to face certain
real problems that the leader chose to bring up for discussion or to confront
directly.
3) A
compromise between asceticism and libidinal needs. The leader
helped the young men to turn their backs on debauchery and became himself
the object of the erotic desire of the members; these desires were then
sublimated, their energy placed at the service of the group.
We may note, finally, that two of the principal psychological traits we have
attributed to the members of the youth movements — latent homosexuality and
the fear of instinctual chaos, whence the need for discipline and order— are
characteristic traits of the "authoritarian personality," whose development is
encouraged by the type of family structure that was prevalent in Germany

during this period.'"^
It is impossible for us to undertake here the detailed comparative study that
is needed between the German youth movements of the beginning of the
century and the student movements of the 1960's. We can nevertheless
suggest some directions for exploration. The similarities between these move-
ments have sometimes been emphasized; in fact, the differences between them
strike us as more important. But as to the reasons for these differences, we can
only venture some very general hypotheses on the subject.
The student revolts of the 1960's involved a definite minority, but, as in the
case of the German youth movements, this minority seems to have expressed,
in an extreme way, a by a great majority of its peers. Very
state of mind shared
schematically, the opposition of these young people to contemporary society
can be seen as having taken three different forms: 1) the bohemianism of the
"hippies;" 2) radical activism; 3) a vague disengagement. The first two of
these attracted attention because of their eccentricity or their political reper-
cussions; the third, however, was probably much more representative of the
general state of mind.'"" Indeed, the hippies and the radicals seem to have
disappeared from the scene, whereas the feeling of vague alienation and
disengagement has persisted.
obvious that once they reach adulthood, the great majority of today's
It is
"alienated" youth will adapt to the society around them; but the particular
way in which they live their youth remains significant: whereas at the
beginning of the century the opposition of the young led to ideology (even if
the ideology remained ill-defined) and to the desire to become involved in
some kind of struggle, today their opposition seems to be leading to indif-
ference, to personal disinvolvement. One could, of course, simply say that we
live in an era that has seen the "end of ideology,"'^' so that disengagement is,
for many people, the only logical stance possible. That may be so, but in that
case we have to ask whether this development is not also due to unconscious
causes, over and above the simple rejection of the idols of the past and the
obvious effects of a consumer society.
Kenneth Keniston has studied the psychological structure of "uncom-
mitted" students in several American universities during the 1960's. These
young people emerge as "rebels without a cause," incapable of defining the
positive values to which they are attached, searching for an uncertain
identity.'"^ Their case histories are marked by a very clear repetitive pattern:
strong attachment to the mother, whom they see as a victim, a woman who was
not able to realize all her potential; a scornful attitude toward the father, who
for the most part appears weak, incompetent, and always distant. The mother
is not considered responsible for her own failures in life; the father, on the
other hand, is.'"' In the psychoanalytic interviews and the projective tests
given to these young people the predominant themes are oral, which corres-
ponds to an attachment to the mother; but these oral themes are themes of
dependence and passivity in relation to women. This dependence can be
dangerous, for the fantasies that come up imply a struggle with the male rival;
although the outcome of the struggle is always victory for the young hero, it is
accompanied by guilt feelings and a profound fear of the conquered mother,
whose demands the young man
be unable to meet.'"*
will
One can ask whether these attitudes, however extreme they may be, are not
linked to a fundamental transformation of family structures in Western
society— specifically, to a change in the sex roles of the two parents. In the
German family at the beginning of the century, but also, to a somewhat lesser
extent perhaps, in the American family, the central role of the father was an
undisputed fact— this despite the reaction against various forms of authority
on the part of the young people of the period. Admittedly, the social evolution
that eventually led to the "disappearance" of the father had already begun, but
until the Second World War the father's central position was only shaken,
not
eliminated altogether. The conflict between generations developed, therefore,

according to the relatively simple pattern we described earlier: the rebellion of
the sons was accompanied by a fear of the chaotic consequences of
their
repressed
rebellion, whence their asceticism and their need to channel their
different but still authoritarian direction; the leader of
the peer
energies into a
group allowed young men to submit to authority, but the particular nature of
the ego ideal he represented allowed for a remarkable compromise between
rebellion and submission.
The definitive displacement of the father from his central role can be
explained as the result of a clear sociological trend. As Alexander Mitscher-
lich has convincingly demonstrated, the father, who in traditional society was
constantly present and visible, a source of authority but also a living example,
has become more and more cut off from the family because of the demands of
professional advanced industrial societies.*"' In fact, one can distinguish
life in
three successive and distinct phases in this transformation: the phase of close
physical and cultural proximity between father and son, which is the phase
where paternal authority was accepted and assimilated in the context of a
continuous tradition and a feeling of reciprocity; the phase of physical and
professional distantiation between father and son, which manifested itself
more clearly during the second half of the nineteenth century than during the
first half, and in which the absence of reciprocity, of continuous exchange
between father and son gave rise to a seemingly arbitrary and distant authori-
tarianism as well as to the first signs of rebellion on the part of the sons, a
rebellion which became widespread at the beginning of the twentieth century;
finally, the third phase, which is the phase of the disappearance of the father:
he becomes, in his son's eyes, a ridiculous personage and the object of scorn
(since, as Keniston showed, he is so easily vanquished and displaced from his
position near the mother), a phenomenon that exists not only in America but
in the West in general.
Macro-history: Collective Mentality and Culture
The discussion of macro-history is all the more difficult because of the

confusion that abounds concerning the exact nature and meaning of the
phenomena covered by such terms as "collective mentality" or "national
character" — yet it is precisely these phenomena which, insofar as they are
analyzable, are the province of macro-historical analysis.
The term "collective mentality" was coined by French school of
the
historians, but its definition is hazy. Thus, in a recent essay, Jacques Le Goff
speaks of religious mentalities and of the medieval mentality, but when he tries
to explain exactly what he means by these terms, he does so in a very

roundabout way:
The level of the history of mentalities is the level of the ordinary and the
automatic; it lies outside the control of the individual subjects of history because
it reveals the impersonal content of their thinking: what Caesar and the last
it is
of his soldiers, Saint Louis and his serf, Christopher Columbus and the sailor of
his fleet have in common. The history of mentalities is to the history of ideas
what the history of material culture is to economic history. The reaction of the.
men of the fourteenth century to the plague, that divine punishment, grows out of
the age-old, unconscious message of Christian thinkers from Saint Augustine to
Saint Thomas Aquinas; it can be explained in terms of the equation
between
illness and formulated by the monks of the late Middle Ages, but it does
sin,
away with every kind of logical articulation, every subtle form of reasoning, and
keeps only the rough cast of the idea. Thus, the utensils of everyday life and the
clothing of the poor derive from prestigious models created by the surface
developments of the economy, of fashion and of taste. The style of a period lies
below that, on the deep level of ordinary Hfe."°
It is not surprising after this to learn that the word "mentality" is not listed in
the indexes of contemporary works of psychology, anthropology, or soci-

ology."' Yet, in speaking of mentalities the historian is not dreaming: there is
certainly something there. Is that all we can say?

be readily admitted that the collective mentality includes certain
It will
commonly shared perceptions, as well as certain commonly accepted atti-

tudes. Now is it not this community of perceptions and attitudes that gives a
society — whether large or small — its sense of identity? And the notion of
identity carries with it an essential element: that of internal coherence. Le
Goff himself recognizes this when he speaks of the "style of a period." Lucien
Febvre alludes implicitly to this same coherence when he asks whether certain
periods or cultures do not exhibit identifiable emotional tendencies toward —
cruelty or pity, toward hatred or love.''^ According to Alphonse Dupront. this
coherence is the key concept (the "baptismal notion," in his words) in the
study of collective mentalities.''^ But can a coherence in mentalities exist in a
vacuum? Does the coherence of a collective mentality not express the
structural unity of the underlying culture? We thus arrive at a quasi self-
evident definition: the collective mentality is the common denominator of

perceptions and attitudes produced by a specific culture, or by one aspect of
that culture,"" at a given period.
The culture in question can be national or transnational, and we note
immediately that in the case of a collective mentality related to a national
culture we can speak of a "national mentality," which none other than the
is
much-maligned "national character." But in that case, what do we do with the
objections raised against the notion of national character? Do these objections

not apply to collective mentalities as well?"*
The objections are obvious: the heterogeneity of a national group, the
multiplicity of social distinctions, of sub-groups of all kinds, make it im-
possible to define a "national character," hence a collective mentality on the
national level, hence any collective mentality related to a vast and diversified
cultural whole. It was David Riesman who noted that in the United States if
one took as a constant the median annual income of four thousand dollars (this
was in 1 953), one would find many more differences than similarities between
a Methodist accountant in Wichita, a Jewish bartender in Brooklyn, a Greek
restaurateur in Chicago, and an Irish Catholic policeman in Boston."* But
the
United States, one could reply, is a special case, and the ethnic differences
that persist despite the pressure of the American "melting pot" suggest
precisely that it makes sense to study national character. Such is
not the
opinion of Riesman, however: "There are Jews who are very 'Irish'
'The' Swedes were 'warlike' not so many generations ago; now they produce
peacemakers. 'The' EngUsh have gone through fantastic transformations from
EHzabethan times to the present. From Merrie England to the Cromwellian
sobersides, from eighteenth-century license to mid- Victorian rigidity, and
from this to mid-twentieth century 'spontaneous collectivism' these are —
immense shifts of the emotional center of life for miUions of people.""''
Important as it was at the time it was written because it tempered the —
excesses"* of the studies on national character Riesman's statement is —
nevertheless incorrect. The notion of national character or collective men-
tality does not imply stability over time: mentalities change, just as the
sociocultural contexts that underliethem change. As for the objection con-
cerning social divisions, Louis Dumont once remarked that "proletarians and
capitalists speak French in France, otherwise they couldn't confront their
ideas; in general, they have much more in common than they think, in
comparison to a Hindu, for example."'"
As a matter of fact, this common denominator is implicit in the very notion
of culture; there is a necessary link between the coherence of a social structure
(which can be the structure of a whole nation), the coherence of the culture
that expresses it, and the coherence of certain characteristics of the collective
mentality that is a manifestation of it. And since every society must confront
certain specific problems linked to the manner in which it adapts to general
human and natural limitations, as well as to specific human and natural
"a closed system of questions and
limitations, a culture will necessarily be
answers concerning the universe and human behavior."'^" A collective men-
tality corresponding to a given culture can be recognized as much by the kinds
of questions it asks as by the manner it formulates them and the answers it
gives to them. When Serge Moscovici tells us, with brilliant concision, that
"through every century there runs an essential questioning which mobilizes its
vital forces," and goes on to remark that "the eighteenth century can be said to
have been set in motion by the political question. the nineteenth century . . ,
emphasizes the social question [and] the two currents converge in our century
to raise the natural question, "'^' then one sees what is perhaps the common
denominator of modem Western culture. The "sub-questions" that result
from these great interrogative currents will be reflected in a collective
mentality on the level of this transnational culture, which is more vast even
than the culture of the Christian Middle Ages, but is no less real. Just as there
exists a hierarchy of social and culture contexts, so one must take into account
a hierarchy of essential questions and a hierarchy of traits in collective
mentalities.
Now questions and answers are formulated not only on the conscious level.
Every fundamental answer is expressed in symbolic terms, and the latter
resound in a particular way in the unconscious, in function of a specific culture

which "allows certain fantasies, drives and other psychic manifestations to
reach and remain on the conscious level, and demands that others be
repressed"'^^ — in other words, in function of the unconscious mode of inter-
pretation that a culture gives of its most general symbols. But how then is one
to Study both the conscious level and the level of the unconscious foundations
of a culture or a collective mentality? And first of all, what documents can the
historian use?
We have already mentioned the variety and the polysemous character of
psychohistorical documentation, but it goes without saying that every subject
has own privileged sources. As concerns the study of mentalities, Lucien
its
Febvre, who envisaged it on the level of surface phenomena, cited as sources

the ethical documents (especially judicial archives) and the artistic and
literary documents of a culture.'" That is too limited a view, even if one
remains on the conscious level. Jacques Lafaye has shown how important it is
to analyze the great myths of a collectivity, in order to discern the permanent
themes around which the disparate elements of the collective mentality are
crystallized; he himself studied the role of the myth of the god Quetzalcoatl.
who became Saint Thomas, and of the goddess Tonantzin, transformed into
the Virgin of Guadalupe, in the creation of national consciousness in
—
Mexico in other words, as the foundation of Mexican collective mentality.'"
Jacques Le Goff went one step further in emphasizing the role of "documents
which bear witness to those feelings or those paroxystic or marginal forms of
behavior which, through their deviation from the norm, bring out more clearly
the underlying common mentality."'" In the case of the medieval mentality,
these include hagiographies and the various manifestations of demonic be-
havior such as possession or heresy, as well as the opposite kind of behavior
which is just as marginal and no less significant: witch-hunts, or the behavior
of the judges toward their victims. As we saw earlier in discussing the work of
Georges Devereux, the psychic disorder that runs through a culture represents
an essential index of the fundamental structures of that culture— hence of its
most common forms of expression— even though it does so on the pathological
level.' ^^ One can also cite here documents that represent certain rites which
characterize, over a very long timespan, a whole cultural area, such as the
"tarantism" that Ernesto Martino has so masterfully described and
De
analyzed. This rite not only illustrates the specific ritual context elaborated by
a culture in order to allow for the expression and, eventually, for the reinte-
gration of certain idiosyncratic psychic disorders, but also tells us a great deal
about the underlying mental characteristics of a Mediterranean culture which
experienced, and still experiences, the clash between Christianity and pagan
'^''
orgiastic cults.
Literary' 2^ and documents are an inexhaustible source for thematic
artistic
analysis, but it may be even more useful to study the characteristic forms (or
styles) of the art of a period, relating them to other essential currents in the
collective sensibility in order to discover their common underlying signi-
ficance. '^^ Finally, one must attempt to discover, through a study of its
historiography, the vision that a society has of itself and of the world. As
Alphonse Dupront has noted, "An inventory of the types of historical nostalgia
for an original past would provide us with an extraordinary document on
. . .
the ways the human imagination has conceived of the notion of return; it
would
also provide a rich psychic documentation on the modes of refusal to live in
one's own time. The temporal horizon of a period and of a society is like a code
indicating its need for balance, its particular emotional resources, and its
awareness of its own existence. Societies with a long history and societies with
a short history constitute two general types of collective behavior toward the
past; the same is true of societies that live in the eternal — and naturally, in the
surging diversity of the human, of all the intermediary types in between."'^"
This enumeration of documentary sources, which is by no means exhaus-
tive, method of investigation.
brings us back to the essential question: the
One method, obviously, is simply to describe surface phenomena. Some of
the best historians have stopped at that level, Huizinga's The Waning of the
Middle Ages being a classic example.'^' Perhaps a purely descriptive stage is
necessary even if one aims for a more in-depth analysis, for it is description
alone that preserves the impalpable "je ne sais quoi" which characterizes the
phenomena of collective mentality. Even on this level, however, one must ask
the "unifying" questions and discover the "style" of the period, of the culture
or of the mentality one is studying: Huizinga, for example, speaks of the
"bittersweetness of and sees in that particular emotional contrast the
life,"
chief characteristic of the waning medieval world. But, as we have already

suggested, the unconscious level also calls for study. Some contemporary
historians recognize this necessity. Michel Vovelle, in his volume of essays on
collective attitudes toward death in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
mentions right at the outset that "... the history of mentalities ... is turning
more and more toward the collective unconscious."'" Vovelle's own work,
however, remains exclusively on the level of conscious thought. The most
recent study of English collective mentality in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, Keith Thomas' Religion and the Decline ofMagic, shows the same
partial awareness of the need to study unconscious structures, without
actually attempting to do so: Thomas mentions Freud's theses in passing, but
that is all. Although the awareness of a new dimension exists, then, in most
cases has not brought about a reorientation in the methods of research
it
themselves.
The first of the two methods we ourselves are about to propose is somewhat
hazardous: it risks falling into the simplistic approach of studies on the basic
personality, even though the heterogeneous context makes such an approach
invalid.'" The method involves an analysis on three distinct levels: first, the
definition of the characteristics of the group's "modal personahty;" second,
the analysis of certain common elements in the primary institutions; third, an
interpretation of thedominant elements in the symbolic expressions of the
community. An attempt at synthesis would consist in interpreting the traits of
the modal personality as the consequence of typical emotional reactions
aroused by certain dominant elements in the group's network of symbolic
expressions, and possibly as the consequence of certain common character-
istics in the group's primary institutions.
The term "modal personality" is meant here in the sense proposed by
Inkeles and Levinson: "It appears unlikely that any specific personality
" ^
characteristic, or any character type, will be found in as much as 60 to 70

percent of any modern national population. However, it is still a reasonable
hypothesis that a nation may be characterized in terms of a limited number of
modes, say five or six, some of which apply to perhaps 10 to 1 5 percent, others
to perhaps 30 percent of the total population. Such a conception of national
character can accommodate the subcultural variations of socioeconomic
class, geosocial region, ethnic group, and the like, which appear to exist in all
modem nations."'^"
A study on the modal personality of a group can be meaningful only if it is
comparative, that is, if it succeeds in pinpointing notable differences con-

cerning certain crucial aspects in the Ufe of every individual and every
community: for example, the typical attitude toward authority, toward one-
self, and toward the dilemmas posed by the various stages of personality
development (in the Eriksonian sense). '^^ We could perhaps add to this list the
typical attitudes toward existential situations such as love, illness, or death.
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie recently noted the fundamental differences
between the contemporary attitude of Western cultures toward death, and their
attitude two centuries ago. He also noted the widespread interest of European
historians in the phenomenon of death, even though nothing of the sort was
apparent in American historiography.^^^ Could that be the symptom of more
profound differences on the level of mentalities?
Whereas the comparison between contemporary mentalities is essentially
the work of anthropologists and sociologists, the historian will concern himself
above all with comparisons between periods in the past, either in the context of
a single culture or in different cultural contexts.
Parallel to the comparative study of manifest attitudes, the historian will
undertake a comparative study of social structures, as well as family struc-
tures and modes of childrearing, aiming once again to pinpoint significant
differences among groups.*^^ If it turns out that, over and above the differences
due to the social subdivisions within each heterogeneous group, certain child-
rearing practices existing on the level of a complex sociocultural entity can be
distinguished from the practices of other entities of the same kind, then one can
venture a hypothesis relating a given characteristic of the modal personality to
a given socio-familial context. At the same time, one must always be aware of
the influence of socialization processes outside the family, which may be of
decisive importance.*^*
The correlationsbetween the group's primary institutions and the char-
acteristics of the modal personality would be only a first step; it would
have to
be followed by an examination of how the dominant elements of the group's
symbolic system can in turn determine certain characteristics of the modal
personahty, even if the origins of the symbolic system itself remain unclear. /I
synthesis relating these three levels of investigation to each other would,
as
we mentioned earlier, constitute the most complete global analysis one could
undertake of the unconscious foundations of a "collective mentality,
'"
whether on the national or on some other level
personality to the
If the attempt to relate the characteristics of the modal
primary institutions in a heterogeneous context appears toe hazardous, there

remains the second method, which is the analysis of symbolic networks alone.
The documentary sources we enumerated earlier provide, each in its own
domain, some essential symbolic indices, and the analysis would concentrate
on the concordance of the different networks: hagiography, liierature, political
thought and historiography, art, and so on. We shall take as our example a
study that illustrates precisely this kind of method: Alain Besangon's Le
Tsarevitch immole {The Immolated Tsarevitch). Through this concrete
example we shall rediscover all the appeal of psychoanalytic structuralism,
but we shall also see its most evident pitfalls.
Le Tsarevitch immole is, as its subtitle indicates, a study on the "symbo-
lism of the law in Russian culture." Alain Besangon examines the symbolic
theme which, according to him, is apparent in the relation of the Russians to
God as well as in their relation to the sovereign. The same theme and the same
structure of unconscious psychic elements can be discerned, it would seem, in
the great works of Russian literature. What is involved here is a specifically
Russian way of approaching the Oedipal problem, namely, an inability to
resolve the problem due to a kind of paralysis and self-punitive submission on
the part of the son, in the face of an all-powerful and inaccessible father.
Whereas, on the religious level, Christ's life and self-sacrifice represent, for
Western man, symbols of liberation, for the Russian the encounter with God is
annihilating and seems to lead to death.'''" On the political level the same
symbolism is evident, and it is the immolation of the Tsarevitch by the Tsar
which occupies the center of the stage: Ivan is the victim of his father, Ivan the
Terrible, Dimitri is killed by Boris Godunov, Alexis is killed by Peter the
Great, Ivan by Catherine 11.'"'
is killed
The relationship between the underlying theme on the religious level and on
the political level is clear. One finds in Russian literature an expression of the
same inability to attain autonomy, to resolve the problem of Oedipus and to
leave the father behind: "Just as Russian culture, in its original treatment of
Christianity and royalty, seems to have drawn its inspiration from the critical
phase of the Oedipal conflict, so Gogol, Dostoevsky, Rozanov, and Blok came
ever closer to the Oedipal crisis in their works without ever attempting to
. . .
overcome it. That was not their aim. They developed an ideology of ac-
ceptance and a philosophy of self-sacrifice which is not the most vital part of
their work, but which covers up and rationalizes their veritable motive: to
relive, in tears and terror, that incandescent moment of human life. They come
fearlessly close to Oedipus, but only in order to savor the experience. . . . They
use the Pantocrator and the Tsar, the cruel facts of serfdom and of the
patriarchal world, everything that is specific to their culture and their nation,
in order to play out a drama perpetually re-enacted by all of humanity. Their
works, so specifically rooted in a time and place, acquire thereby a universal
resonance. They did not change Russian history, but transmuted it into
song. ."'"2
. .
It was from this context, argues Besangon, that the Russian Revolution
derived its particular form: despite a certain development, the Revolution
seems have encountered an obstacle, and its first phase, that of parricide,
to
was never surmounted; but in this instance, it is the Russian people who are
paying the debt, not the tyrant.''''
Alain Besangon obviously does not deny the possibility of interpreting
Russian culture in sociological terms, but he proposes another interpretation,
another meaning, independent of the sociological one: "I have taken special
care," he writes, "to separate the two levels: on the one hand, the level of
economic, and social history, which obeys its own laws; on the other,
political
running parallel to the first and accompanying it in counterpoint, this other
.""•''
history, marching to a different drummer. . .
That such a reading of a symbolic system is fascinating, and that it opens up

new perspectives, will readily be admitted. But, as we have already empha-
sized, a structuralist analysis can be convincing only if it is sufficiently
rigorous in its demonstrations. Now in terms of Alain Besangon's own
analysis of Russian culture, one notices that Dostoevsky, the most Russian of
Russian writers, lends himself to a reading that suggests a very different
Russian approach to the Oedipal conflict from the one that Besangon pro-
poses: if, in Crime and Punishment, the relationship between the judge
Porfiry and Raskolnikov seems to fit the structural model proposed by
Besangon, can't one argue, on the contrary, that in A Raw Youth the son
confronts the father, that in The Possessed he gets the better of him, and that in
The Brothers Karamazov he kills him? In all of Dostoevsky's novels, there is
not a single paternal figure who is not ridiculous, debauched, or absent. There
is no one who resembles the divine Pantocrator or the inaccessible
certainly
Tsar, the terrible torturer, the muzhik brandishing his ax. There is nothing that
would allow for a univocal interpretation of this sort.'**-
The same difficulties could be found in the political field. What are we to
conclude from them?
A collective mentality (or, as in this instance, a culture considered as a
single phenomenon) lends itself to the kind of global analysis characteristic of
structuralism in general, and of psychoanalytic structuralism in particular. In
order to be convincing, such an analysis must give evidence of an extremely
high degree of rigorousness. Only the accumulation of a whole series of studies
of this type will show whether such rigorousness is in fact possible. Other-
wise, the method will yield some fascinating connections between symbols,
some new insights that could not have been arrived at by description alone, but
it produce conviction.
will not necessarily . . .
Can we not say that we have just defined the problem of psychohistory
itself?
Conclusion
What, then, is the value of psychohistory? The preceding pages are full of
hesitations, warnings, expressions of approval immediately qualified by reser-
vations. It is time to pronounce a more definite conclusion.
We may give a general reply to the question by considering the term
"psychohistory" in its broadest theoretical sense, not as the current appli-
cation of psychoanalysis to history. If one defines psychohistory as the
utilization of psychological theories in history, without considering the present
state of these theories but rather their possible future development, whatever
that might be, then one can reply that the value of psychohistory is the same as
the value of a systematic explanation of human behavior applied to an under-
standing of the past. For those who do not reject a history of this kind, tending
toward generalizing explanations, psychohistory thus defined offers an un-
limited field of possibilities. In such a case, the reply about its value must be
positive, without qualification. But in fact, it is not with the abstract principle
of psychohistory that we are dealing here. Our question concerns the utili-
zation of psychoanalytic theories in history— envisaging, to be sure, the

possibility of new developments in psychoanalysis, but not the radical trans-
formation of the general framework of current psychoanalytic thought.
The weak spot of psychohistory remains the verification of its explana-
tions. We have suggested the use of various verification criteria, but we must
recall that,whatever their degree of convergence, psychohistorical explana-
tion will necessarily, by its very nature, remain indirect. This not with-
standing, our aim has been to show that even in psychohistory one could not
prove just anything by using just any method: a coherent framework does
exist, and its internal logic is discernible. The best examples of a concrete
application of psychoanalysis (examples that are admittedly still too rare)
differ from traditional historiography only by the slightly greater degree of
indeterminacy that characterizes their explanations.
That, I would suggest, is a small enough price to pay; the reasons for it have
121
been implicitly adduced throughout this book, but they must now be made
explicit. First of all, psychohistory throws a new light on traditional problems;
second, it makes possible the study of new problems; finally, it makes an
important contribution to the integration of various historical methods into a
global approach tending toward a total history.
For the reader of this book, the first reason I have mentioned should require
no demonstration. One can argue, to be sure, about the validity of psycho-
historical explanations, but it seems incontestable that, in the field of biog-
raphy as in that of collective behavior, psychohistory can approach traditional
subjects from a new perspective. We need but recall the hypotheses con-
cerning the structure of Wilson's personality and its influence on his political
behavior, or the relationship between childrearing practices and adult be-
havior in Plymouth Colony, or again the relationship between family structure
and the "need to achieve" in certain societies. We may also recall the demon-
stration of possible links between personality disorders and virulent anti-
Semitism and the significance of this phenomenon for the explanation of anti-
Semitism in general, or the possible psychohistorical explanation of witch-
hunts, or the explanation that psychohistory can provide for certain peer group
phenomena, or, finally, its explanation of the underlying significance of a
"collective mentality."
The second reason must not be confused with the first: here we are no
longer dealing with a new conception of traditional historical problems, but
rather, thanks to psychohistory itself, with the formulation of altogether new
questions. Thus, two recent new fields of inquiry probably owe their develop-
ment to the preoccupations of psychoanalysis: the history of childhood and of
the family, and the history of sexual mores. But have we not also suggested a
history of the authority relations between fathers and sons in a given society,
or a history of mental disorders or of collective neuroses? Could we not have a
more in-depth history of attitudes toward death? Can we not envisage, thanks
to psychohistory, the rehabilitation of biography and the systematic study of
types (either historical typology or the historical verification of empirically
derived types)? More and make
generally, doesn't psychohistory suggest
possible the comparative study of the psychological phenomena of the past?
The third reason, concerning the contribution of psychohistory to the
elaboration of a total history, introduces a wholly different dimension.
Throughout book we have above all insisted on the interdisciplinary
this
nature of history, on the possible modes of convergence between history,
sociology, and psychoanalysis. But this is only a step in the direction of an
even more encompassing historical inquiry: the complete investigation of an
individual or social phenomenon is, in eflect, possible only if the explicative
approach, the view from the outside — in other words, the approach of syste-
matic history — supplements and complements the intuitive approach, the
view from the inside. Systematic explanation must not replace intuition, it
must complete it. Only a dual approach of this kind can be called total history:
the understanding of a phenomenon both as a network of data accessible to
systematic inquiry a«^ as the existential, irreducible reality of a person or of a
123 Conclusion
group. Now from this perspective, the methodological weakness of psycho-

analysis and consequently of psychohistory appears, paradoxically, as their
strongest point: they are really situated between Erklaren and Verstehen,
linked both to the pole of systematization and to that of intuitive under-
standing. Psychoanalysis partakes of both, and at the same time these two
approaches are not simply juxtaposed in it: they are integrated into a unified
interpretation of the phenomenon. Despite the weaknesses of psychoanalytic
theory itself, and despite the methodological difficulties posed by its applica-
tion outside the therapeutic context, the unified approach that it imposes on us
can be considered, from this point of view, exemplary.
But the contribution of psychohistory to the creation of a total history is not
only methodological, it is substantive as well. Historians have no trouble
establishing plausible correlations between the social life, the economic
activity, and even the scientific and technological evolution of a society; the
history of ideas and cultural or artistic history constitute a distinct area that
can also be presented in a unified way; finally, political and military history
constitute a third distinct area. Historians have succeeded in relating these
diverse domains to each other, either in a unified Marxist context or in various
more recent sociological contexts. But in every one of these cases, a crucial
element remains unexplained: the sociological "input" can be identified, and
so can the "output" in terms of collective behavior; but the mechanism that
allows one to link the "input" to the "output" is not explained, or at best is
explained more or less tautologically. Now the models we proposed in
chapter 1 and developed chapter 3 are perhaps no more than embryonic

in
outlines of possible solutions. Nevertheless, they indicate a direction to be

followed one wishes to explain the interaction between society and collec-
if
tive behavior, on the level of static analysis as well as on that of dynamic

analysis or historical change.
Finally, we may recall that in chapter 2 we tried to show that psychohistory
made a fundamental contribution to the study of certain "total social facts" (in
Marcel Mauss's terminology), in particular of works of art, political decision-
making, and the elaboration of a collective identity norm. It is here that the
historian ought to grasp, in the most concrete way possible, the convergence of
the social and the psychological (on the various levels of both these factors), in
the context of a genuinely integrated history.

Were we to stop here, we would have to conclude that psychohistory is
valuable indeed, opening vast perspectives for future development and the
breaking of new ground. But there remains one last problem which bodes less
well for the future.

We have seen that those psychoanalysts who launched upon historical
studies produced, for the most part, works of dubious value, and sometimes
even works that were totally unacceptable from the point of view of the
historian. Quite understandably, it is not impossible to devote the
difficult if
major portion of one's time to clinical work and be able to acquire, at the
same time, a solid historical background. It is thus up to historians who are
well informed about psychology in general and psychoanalysis in particular to
develop the discipline of psychohistory. But what does it mean to be "well-

informed" in this instance? It seems to be generally agreed that a purely
bookish knowledge of psychoanalysis and that analysis is a
is insufficient,
process one must have lived through in order to understand its nuances and its
veritable significance. In short, in order to understand psychoanalysis, one
must have been psychoanalyzed.
In theory, the pesonal experience of psychoanalysis ought to allow one to
avoid the misuse or the purely mechanical application of concepts which, as
we now know, are extremelycomplex and have multiple meanings. But that is
precisely where the difficulty arises: psychoanalysis is a process which
involves the whole person, and involves him emotionally on the deepest level.
It is true that a successful analysis ought to end with the resolution of the
patient's transference toward the analyst and toward psychoanalysis as well,

but the notion of a "complete" or "perfect" analysis remains an abstraction.
In fact, historians who have been psychoanalyzed maintain, and will for the
most part continue to maintain, an attitude of intense emotional involvement
with psychoanalysis; this makes it extremely difficult for them to exercise that
critical faculty without which, as we have seen, psychohistory cannot hope to
develop into a scientific discipline worthy of the name. Thus, if he is not

analyzed, the historian risks having only a superficial understanding of
analytic theories; and if he is analyzed, he risks not being able to exercise, in
this new domain, a critical faculty that is absolutely essential. I would not have
raised this problem had not noticed, in certain political scientists or
if I
historians who undertook and finished an analysis both for personal and for
professional reasons, the development of an intense "ideological" extremism.
This dilemma appears unresolvable, and only future works in psycho-
history will show whether certain historians are able to find the necessary
equilibrium between analytic experience and critical detachment. It is not
merely for the sake of paradox that I would suggest, in conclusion, that the real
difficulties of psychohistory do not reside only in the nature of the subject, in
the state of psychoanalysis, or in the problem of proofs and criteria for
verification; they are inherent in the ambiguous situation of the psycho-
historian.
.
Notes — Introduction
1. Lucien Febvre. Combats pour Vhistoire, p. 235 (Febrve's italics). (Unless otherwise
indicated, all translations from French works cited in this book are by Susan Suleiman.)
2. Frank E. Manuel, "The Use and Abuse of Psychology in History," Daedalus, no. 100
(winter 1971): 192. Along the same lines. Gaston Bachelard quotes Remy de Gourmont who
found that "as one reads the ."
Chants de Maldoror, consciousness slips away, slips away. . .
{GastonBachQlard, Lautreamont, p. 104).
3. Lucien Febvre, Combats pour ihistoire, p. 230.
4. W. B. Gallic, Philosophy and the Historical Understanding, p. 11 6.
5. This is the distinction established by Leopold von Ranke: "The writing of history cannot
be expected to possess the same free development of its subject which, in theory at least, is
expected in a work of literature." (Quoted in Fritz Stem, The Varieties ofHistory from Voltaire
to the Present, p. 57.) The same distinction was particularly well made by Fred Weinstein and
Gerald M. Piatt in their article, "History and Theory: The Question of Psychoanalysis." The
Journal oflnterdisciplinar}' History 2, no. 4 (spring 1972). We cannot, however, invoke here the
psychoanalytic arguments used by Weinstein and Piatt, for that would be circular.
6. The notion of the unconscious, for example, is already to be found in antiquity, notably
in the Upanishad and in Greece. See on this subject L. L. Whyte, The Unconscious before Freud.
1. Jean Piaget, Epistemologie des sciences de I'homme, pp. 93ff.
8. Carl Hempel, "The Function of General Laws in History." reprinted in Patrick

Gardiner, Theories of History, pp. 344fF.
9. For a good definition of contemporary social sciences, see Hans

"laws" in the
Reichenbach, "Probability Methods in Social Science." in Daniel Lemer and Harold D. Lasswell,
The Policy Sciences: Recent Developments in Scope and Method.
10. Paul Veyne, Comment on ecrit Vhistoire. pp. 1 1 Iff., 203-205; for the phrase about
laws //; history, see p. 279.
U . L 'historien entre I'ethnologue et lefuturologue (collective work), p. 277.
12. Jean Piaget, Epistemologie des sciences de I'homme, p. 2 1
13. Abraham Kaplan, The Conduct of Inquiry: Methodology for Behavioral Sciences.
pp. 86, 117.
14. See in particular on this subject Raymond Aron. Introduction to the Philosophy of
History, p. 49; and Maurice Mandelbaum, The Problem of Historical Knowledge, pp. 64-66.
15. Among French specialists in psychohistory, one can mention the example of Alphonse
Dupront, who in the course of a few years evolved from a very "classical" position on the question
125
See Alphonse Dupront. "Problemes et

to a position favoring the use of psychoanalysis in history.
methodes d'une histoire de la Annales ESC, Jan. 1967; and "L'histoire
psychologic co\\QC\.i\Q,''
apres Freud," Revue de I'enseignement superieur, nos. 44—45 ( 1 969).
16. William L. Langer, "The Next Assignment," in Bruce Mazlish, Psychoanalysis and
History, pp. 89-90.
1 7 See especially Lewis Namier, Personalities and Powers, as well as Lewis Namier and
John Brook, Charles Townshend. As for E. R. Dodds, his two chief works in this context are The
Greeks and the Irrational and Pagan and Christian in an Age ofAnxiety.
18. Gushing Strout, "Ego Psychology and the Historian," History and Theory, 7, no. 3
(1968), p. 281.
19. Alan Bullock, for example, recently declared that he found Erikson's book on Luther
less instructive than most of the other works he had read on the subject. Generally speaking, he
found the results obtained by the use of psychoanalysis in history disappointing, and only some
fruitful applications of the method in question would, according to him, confirm its validity
{L'historien entre I'ethnologue et lefuturologue, p. 192).
20. Jacques Barzun, "The Muse and Her Doctors," The American Historical Review 11,
no. 1(1972).
21. Ibid., pp. 37-39.

22. Ibid.
23. Sidney Rattner, "The Historian's Approach to Psychology,"7our«a/ ofthe History of

Ideas 2, no. 1(1941).
24. Jacques Barzun, "The Muse and Her Doctors." p. 50.
25. Garl E. Rogers, "Toward a Science of the Person," in T. W. Wann, Behaviorism and
Phenomenology: Contrasting Bases of Modern Psychology, p. 109.
26. For an excellent illustration of the possible overlapping between various psychological
theories, see Gardner Murphy, "Psychological Views of Personality and Contributions to Its
Study," in Edward Norbeck, Douglas Price-Williams, and William M. McCord. The Study of
Personality: An Interdisciplinary Appraisal, especially pp. 24ff. In fact, the problem of the
diversity of explicative theories is not unique to psychology. It also exists in economics, and
economic history is none the worse for it. Quoting Henri Guitton. Jean Bouvier writes that the
multitude of theories of economic crisis can "make one dizzy. . .
." At the same time, "all of the
theories (including Marxist ones) have allowed us to bring out some of the principal traits of
industrial-capitalist economic development. ." (Jean Bouvier. "Problematique des crises
. .
economiques du XIX^ siecle et analyses historiques: le cas de la France." in Jacques Le Goff and
Pierre Nora, Faire de l'histoire. II. Nouvelles approches, p. 27.
27. There exist currently several volumes of essays devoted to psychohistory. but with the
exception of Alain Besangon's. they are all. in our judgment, too heterogeneous. The reader will
nevertheless findsome useful insights in the following: Bruce Mazlish, Psychoanalysis and
History; Benjamin B. Wolfman, The Psychoanalytic Interpretation of History: Hans-Ulrich
Wehler, Geschichte und Psychoanalyse: Alain Besangon, Histoire et experience du moi The
volume by Alain Besangon. although it too is a collection of the author's previously published
articles, offers a coherent and brilliant demonstration of the possibilities of a psychoanalytic
reading of historical texts, as well as of the possibilities of a method of interpretation that can be
qualified as "psychoanalytic structuralism."
. )
Notes — Chapter One
1. It is true that certain experiments in individual psychology, and especially in social

psychology, allow us to explain some historical phenomena whose characteristics would other-
wise be difficult to grasp. Thus the notorious refusal of certain political figures to perceive an
unequivocal reality (as was the case with Chamberlain in early 1939), or the growing accumu-
based on a unilateral and false perception (Chamberlain in 1938 or Stalin in
lation of decisions
1940-1941) can be explained, at least in part, by Leon Festinger's theories abut "cognitive
dissonance." The extraordinary success of a pamphlet like the Protocol of the Elders ofZion in
Germany in the 1920's can also, in part, be explained by these theories (see Leon Festinger,/!
Theory of Cognitive Dissonance). Similarly, the cohesion or the disintegration of certain groups,
especially governing groups experiencing a crisis situation, can find a partial interpretation in
Hamblin's experiments on groups in crisis (see Robert L. Hamblin, "Group Integration during a
Crisis," in J. David Singer, Human Behavior and International Politics). One could cite other
examples as well. Their limited importance, however, is due to the fact that they are unrelated to
each other, that they explain only very limited phenomena, and that often they simply define more
cleariy ambiguous aspects of a phenomenon that is already understood. We may note that
H. Stuart Hughes, who is among those contemporary historians most interested in the possible
application of the social sciences to history, reached the same negative conclusions concerning
experimental psychology, although for slightly different reasons (see H. Stuart Hughes, "The
Historian and the Social Scxtniisi" American Historical Review 66, no. 3 ( 1 960]: 34).
2. Robert Coles, "How Good is Psychohistory?" The New York Review of Books.
March 8, 1973.
3 On the relation between Piaget's theories and psychoanalysis, see the very detailed study
by P. Wolff, "The Developmental Psychology of Jean Piaget and Psychoanalysis," Psycho-
logical Issues, 1960.
4. The validity of these criteria was "confirmed" when I discovered that they corres-
ponded almost exactly word for word to the criteria formulated by the historian Robert F.
Berkhofer, who was attempting to define the conditions for the application of the behavioral
sciences to history. (See Robert F. Berkhofer, Behavioral Approach to Historical Analysis.
5. Sheldon's theories, like those of Le Senne. can nevertheless provide secondary confir-
mations, and sometimes they throw light on certain characteristics that psychoanalysis, for
example, hardly treats at all. Thus Anthony Storr's psychoanalytic interpretation of Churchill's
personality is also based on some of Sheldon's concepts. (See Anthony Storr, "The Man," in
A. J. P. Taylor et al., Churchill Revised: A Critical Assessment, p. 236.) Generally speaking, the
traits are as old
attempts to establish a correlation between bodily characteristics and personality
127
as psychology itself. Having mentioned the American Sheldon and the Frenchman Le Senne, we
must in the interest of fairness mention the German Ernst Kretschmer, whose best known work is
Kbrperbau und Charakter (Body Structure and Character).
6. The necessary convergence of the most diverse disciplines and methods in the syste-
matic study of the personality is cogently argued in Edward Norbeck, Douglas Price-Williams,
and William M. McCord, The Study ofPersonality.
7. One would like to have Sartre in one's camp in this enterprise, and yet. . . . When he tells
example, that Baudelaire, at the age of six (my italics), finding himself alone and rejected
us, for
upon the remarriage of his beloved mother, instead of "passively supporting" his isolation,
"embraced it with fury and, since he was condemned to it hoped that at any rate his
. . .
condemnation was final," we cannot but wonder at the precociousness of the boy; the same is true
when we are told that "this brings us to the point at which Baudelaire chose the sort of person he
—
would be that irrevocable choice by which each of us decides in a particular situation what he
will be and what he is. ."{Jean-Paul Sartre, Baudelaire, trans. Martin Tumell, p. 18). And what
. .
would have happened if Caroline Baudelaire had gotten remarried when young Charles was only
two years old? He could not, in that case, have consciously assumed his destiny, but is it certain
that he would not have reacted? We know that very young children who experience powerful emo-
tional frustrations fall ill and sometimes die. We also know that an "abandonment" of the kind
—
experienced by Baudelaire if it takes place at the age of two or three years— often provokes
immediate somatic reactions and can subsequently leave neurotic traces that last a lifetime. The
rejection of unconscious processes leads Sartre to elaborate developmental schemata that are
empirically indefensible, at least from our point of view.
8. H. Stuart Hughes, History as Art and as Science, p. 42.
9. Hans Meyerhoff, "On Psychoanalysis and History," Psychoanalysis and the Psycho-
analytic Review 49, no. 2 ( 1 962), p. 5. For a more systematic study of the "historical" character
of psychoanalytic therapy, see Samuel Novey, The Second Look: The Reconstruction of
Personal History in Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis.
10. Philip Rieff, "The Meaning of History and Religion in Freud's Thought," in Bruce
Mazlish, Psychoanalysis and History, p. 25. The "historical" conception of psychoanalysis is
not accepted by everyone, however; Page Smith, for example, has noted the repetitive character of
the Freudian interpretation of certain collective phenomena (77?e Historian and History, p. 1 28).
But this criticism confuses Freud's metahistorical theories, which can easily be rejected without
any repercussions for psychoanalytic theory, with the use of psychoanalytic theory itself in
historical explanation on the individual or collective level. Smith has also argued that the notion of
Oedipal conflict is ahistorical, for it implies a break between father and son, whereas history is
founded on the transmission of values from father to son {The Historian and History, p. 130).
This strange argument shows that the ignorance of historians in matters of psychoanalysis is at
least as great as the ignorance of psychoanalysts in matters of history. The fact is that the
resolution of the Oedipal conflict leads to the formation of the superego, which is precisely the
internalization of paternal values by the son.
Admittedly, other historians, much more knowledgeable about psychoanalysis, have pointed
out the ahistorical character of the interpretation of a specific situation by reference to an
unvarying Oedipal conflict that would somehow exist outside of time (Carl E. Schorske,
"Politique et parricide dans I'lnterpretation des reves de Freud," Annates ESC 28 [March-
April, 1 977], p. 328). The Oedipus complex can, in itself, be considered as an invariable psychic
conflict, but there are as many ways of experiencing it as there are individuals. A different analysis
of the dreams in The Interpretation of Dreams would have allowed Schorske to perceive the
specific, historical character of this vision of the conflict between father and son in Freud himself
11. I am assuming here that the reader is familiar with the essential principles of the
psychoanalytic theory of the personality, or if not that he can familiarize himself with them by
consulting one of the many works available on the subject. For a very complete description of the
principal schools of thought that dominate contemporary psychoanalysis, see Ruth L. Munroe,
Schools of Psychoanalytic Thought. Orthodox Freudian theory is well presented in a large
number of textbooks, to wit: Charles Brenner, An Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis;
Notes— Chapter One 129
Robert Waelder, Basic Theory of Psychoanalysis; Gerald S. Blum, Psychodynamics: The

Science of Unconscious Mental Forces; Daniel Lagache, La Psychanalyse. A good summary of
the neo-Freudian point of view can be found in Clara Thompson's history of psychoanalysis.
Psychoanalysis: Evolution and Development.
1 2. Karl R Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth ofScientific Knowledge, p.
38.
13. Anatol Rapoport, "Various Meanings of Theory," The American Political Science
Review 52, no. 4 (1958), p. 982.
14. The number of publications devoted to this subject is immense; I shall of necessity
mention only the most important arguments, giving a minimum of references.
15. Cf. Philip E. Vernon, Personality Assessment, p. 121.
16. Ernest L. Hilgard, "Psychoanalysis: Experimental Studies," in D. L. Sills, Inter-

national Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, p. 40.
17. This is in fact the opinion of a great many psychoanalysts, including Ernst Kris,
Lawrence Kublie, Gittelson and others. See Bjom Christiansen, "The Scientific Status of
Psychoanalytic Clinical Evidence," Inquiry, no. 7 ( 1 964): 64.
18. Michael Martin, "The Scientific Status of Psychoanalytic Evidence," Inquiry, no. 7
(1964): 32.
19. Ibid., p. 24.
20. Christiansen, "The Scientific Status of Psychoanalytic Clinical Evidence," p. 65.
21. Ibid., p. 75.
22. Paul E. Meehl, Clinical versus Statistical Prediction: A Theoretical Analysis and a
Review ofEvidence.
23. See in particular McKeachie and C. L. Doyle, Psychology, p. 448, and Harrison H.
Gough, "Clinical versus Statistical Prediction in Psychology," in Leo Postman, Psychology in
theMaking, p. 576.
24. The number of publications on this subject is considerable. For a relatively old but very
systematic evaluation of experimental studies of psychoanalytic concepts, see Robert R. Sears,
Survey of Objective Studies ofPsychoanalytic Concepts; for a study that tends more toward the
justification of psychoanalysis on these grounds, see E. Pumpian-Mindlin, Psychoanalysis as
Science. For a very recent synthesis, see Ernest L. Hilgard, "Psychoanalysis: experimental
studies"; see also GermaldBlum, Psychodynamics: The Science of Unconscious Mental
S.
Forces, pp. 25ff.; Philip E. Vernon, Personality Assessment, p. 92; and especially I. Samoff,
Testing Freudian Concepts: An Experimental Social Approach.
25. worth mentioning, however, that over the past few years some quasi-experimental
It is
studies on young children, and especially in ethology, "have gradually confirmed some analytic
theories that seemed to be purely speculative" (Anthony Storr, Human Destructiveness, p. 78;
see also I. Samoff, Testing Freudian Concepts).
26. Robert Waelder, Basic Theory ofPsychoanalysis, p. 1 9.
27. Karl K Popper, "Philosophy of Science: A Personal Report," in C. A. Mace, British

Philosophy in the Midcentury, pp. 158-159.
28. Abraham Kaplan, The New World of Philosophy, pp. 150-151, and, by the same
author. The Conduct ofInquiry, p. 100.
29. Saul E. Harrison, "Is Psychoanalysis 'Our Science'? Reflections on the Scientific
Status of Psychoanalysis," Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 18 (1970),
p. 132.
30. See, on this Ernest Nagel, "Methodological Issues in Psychoanalytic

subject,
Theory," in Sidney Hook, Psychoanalysis. Scientific Method and Philosophy, p. 41. A
particularly massive and ferocious attack on the imprecision of many psychoanalytic terms,
especially those of ego psychology, was recently published by an author who has himself
systematically applied psychoanalysis to the study of politics, Nathan Leites. See his The New
Ego: Pitfalls in Current Thinking about Patients in Psychoanalysis.
3 1 Certain psychoanalysts have attempted to bypass the whole problem of the scientific
status of psychoanalysis, by proposing a "semantic theory" of psychoanalysis: the patient's
symptoms and various aspects of his behavior are not "caused" by such and such an event or by a
past situation, but rather they constitute a language that the patient creates but does not
understand; it is the analyst's task to interpret this language, to say clearly what the patient says, as
it were, in code. (See especially, on this subject, Charles RycToft,Psychoanalysis Observed.) The
problem of causality, of explanatory theory, seems thus to be surmounted; but it is surmounted in
appearance only, for the psychoanalyst cannot decipher the patient's language without referring,
explicitly or implicitly, to a theoretical system that will provide him with the key to the code. This
theoretical system brings us right back to the problem of the scientific verification of psycho-
analytic propositions.
32. The basic concepts of ego psychology are discussed in most general works on
psychoanalysis (see note For more complete theoretical discussions, see the following
1 1 above).
classic works: Anna Freud, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense; Erik H. Erikson,
Childhood and Society. Heinz Hartmarm, Ego Psychology and Problems ofAdaptation; and, by
the same author. Essays on Ego Psychology: Selected Problems in Psychoanalytic Theory.
33. Bruno Bettelheim, The Informed Heart.

34. This existential conception of the integrity of the self is well described in Rollo May's
work. Psychology and the Human Dilemma; concerning the application of this concept to a
Man's Search for Meaning: An
better understanding of extreme situations, see Victor E. Frankl,
Introduction to Logo-therapy, a new and revised edition of From Death-Camp to Existentialism.
35. Ludwig Binswanger's study on "the case of Ellen West" is justly famous. It is perhaps
the best example of the possible contribution of existential analysis to psychohistory. (See Ludwig
Binswanger, "The Case of Ellen West: An Anthropological-Clinical Study," in Rollo May et al.,
Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology. ) The major difficulty of existential
analysis remains, however, unchanged: such analysis falls easily into vagueness, imprecision, and
purely intuitive procedures. If one had to point to an equivalent of this kind of analysis in France
one that exhibited both its strongest and its weakest points— the name that would most readily
come to mind is that of Minkowski.
36. For an excellent summary, see Anthony Storr, Jung.
37. Georges Devereux would doubtless disagree with this point: in his From Anxiety to
Method in the Behavioral Sciences, he discovers the distorting effects of unconscious counter-
transference even in the relation between the experimental scientist and his subject. Devereux is
right in theory, but in practice this kind of countertransferential distortion is often so minimal that
we can speak of objective analysis.
38. Jacques Hassoun, "Avant-propos" in Theodor Reik, Le Rituel: Psychanalyse des
rites religieux, p. 13.
39. Alain Besangon, Histoire et experience du moi, p. 77.
40. Ibid., pp. 77-78.

41. My position here is identical to the one explicitly formulated by Erik H. Erikson in his
article, "On the Nature of Psychohistorical Evidence: In Search of Gandhi," Daedalus, no. 97
(summer 1968), p. 713.
42. Milton Singer, "A Survey of Culture and Personality Theory and Research," in Bert
Kaplan, Studying Personality Cross-Culturally, p. 19. Concerning mental disturbances,
Georges Devereux has convincingly shown that, even if every culture has its own way of
expressing deviant behavior, the distinctions between normal and abnormal derive from universal
criteria. (See Georges DevcTeux.Essais d'ethnopsychiatrie generate. )
43. Anne Parsons, "Is the Oedipus Complex Universal?" in Werner Muensterberger and
Sidney Axelrad, The Psychoanalytic Study of Society.
44. Bronislaw Malinowski, Sex and Repression in Savage Society.
45. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud,
published by James Strachey (with the collaboration of Anna Freud), vol. XI, pp. 63fF. (All
subsequent references to this edition will be indicated as SE).
. . . .
46. This was a common practice without any particular individual significance, unless one
can show the existence of thematic repetition in the unfinished works, in opposition to the finished
ones. Freud made no comparative analysis of this kind. Dominique Fernandez, on the other hand,
arrives at some interesting results along these lines in his study of Michelangelo. See his I'Arbre
jusqu'aux racines: Psychanalyse et Creation, pp. 140-141.
47. Abraham Kaplan, The Conduct ofInquiry, p. 3 1 4.
48. Jean Laplanche and J.-B. Pontalis, The Language of Psychoanalysis, trans. Donald
Nicholson-Smith, p. 292.
49. Ibid.
50. Robert Waelder, Basic Theory ofPsychoanalysis, p. 5
51. Fritz Schmidl, "Psychoanalysis and History," Psychoanalytic Quarterly 31, no. 4
(1962), p. 539.
52. Alexander L. George and Juliette L. George, IVoodrow Wilson and Colonel House: A
Personality Study.
53. Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson, vol. 1 , The Road to the White House, pp. 90-9 1
54. For an interesting example of a repetitive structure of behavior, as well as a brief
discussion of the methodological questions implied by the use of this type of psychohistorical
proof, see Richard L. Bushman's article on Benjamin Franklin: "On the Uses of Psychology:
Conflict and Conciliation in Benjamin Franklin," History and Theory 6, no. 1 (1966).
55. See especially Alfred L. Baldwin, "Personal Structure Analysis: A Statistical Method
for Investigating the Single Personality," Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 37
(1942).
56. The methodology in question is too technical and too varied to be discussed here. The
interested reader will find examples of the various approaches in George Gerbner et al.. The
Analysis of Communication Content. The difficulty, ft-om our point of view, is that the analysis of
content or the analysis of the logical structures of individual communication cannot be univocally
correlated with a particular type of personality.
57. Marrou, The Meaning of History; p. 81. Obviously, it is the traditional type of
H.-I.
personal documents— letters, diaries, etc.— that form the bulk of the documents to be used by the
psychohistorian, especially in the domain of biography and typology. The use of such documents
has always been considered and one would do well to consult the study by Lx)uis
difficult,
Gottschalk, Clyde Kluckhobi, Robert Angell, The Use of Personal Documents in History,
Anthropology and Sociology. Even more important from our point of view is the study by Gordon
W. Allport, The Use ofPersonal Documents in Psychological Science.
58. Alphonse Dupront, "L'histoire apres Freud," p. 29.
59. Dominique Fernandez, "Introduction a la psychobiographie," Incidences de la psych-

analyse I (1910): 42.
60. Jean-Paul Sartre, L 'Idiot de lafamille.
6 1 Erik H. Erikson, Youth Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History, pp. 72-
73. Erikson attempts at least to reconstruct by means of inference the unknown events of
childhood; certain psychohistorians have decided to facilitate their task by simply inventing the
unknown elements, with no attempt at inference whatsoever. This is how Rudolph Binion
proceeds from the very pages of his biography of Lou Andreas-Salome (Frau Lou:
first
Nietzsche's Wayward Disciple, p. 6). We will return to this problem in the next chapter.
62. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, part I, chapter 5.
63. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Diary of a Writer, p. 1 86.
64. Ibid., p. 19.
65 . Alain Besangon, Histoire et experience du moi, p. 115.
66. Dominique Arban, Dostoievski par lui-m'eme. p. 22. The interpretation of literary
documents becomes even more uncertain when one is dealing with texts that are on the surface
theories. The
"revelatory," but that were written by writers familiar with psychoanalytic
in a sense
interpretation of Kaflca's work, for example, in terms of a father-son conflict
is
obligatory; Do5 Urteil (The Judgment) occupies a central place in this kind of interpretation, and
is often cited. Kafka himself, however wrote in his. Diaries, precisely about Z)as Urteil: "Many
emotions carried along in the writing, joy, for example, that I shall have something beautiful for
yidCiCsArkadia, thoughts about Freud, of course . .
." vol. 1 p. 276.
,
67. This uncertainty is increased further by the fact that the symbolic significance of the
mare cannot be proven, except by the similarity in structure between the signifying sequence and
the signified sequence. Contrary to the position advanced by The Interpretation of
Freud in
Dreams, I believe that there is no fixed relation between a given symbol and a specific
unconscious configuration. The choice of symbols is always subjective, and therefore itself subject
to interpretation. This variable and purely subjective relation between signifier and signified
eliminates certain recent arguments against psychoanalytic interpretation, notably those de-
veloped by Dan Sperber in his book. Rethinking Symbolism.
68. On this subject, seeBruceMazlish, "Clio on the Couch," f^cou/zrer 31, no. 3 (1968).
69. Thus Durkheim relates a high suicide rate to the absence of religion, bachelorhood, or
living in an urban environment; he establishes, in other words, a correlation between the tendency
to suicide and cohesion, or the degree of the individual's social integration. But, as Jean
Maisonneuve notes, "does this give us an explanation of suicide? No, for we must still under-
stand ... the psychological mechanisms whereby cohesion or the absence of cohesion restrain
one from, or push one to, suicide." (Jean Maisonneuve, Introduction a la psychosociologie,
p. 10.) See also, on this subject, the article by Alex Inkeles, "Personality and Social Structure," in
Robert K. Merton et al.. Sociology Today, pp. 252ff.

70. Marcel Mauss, Sociologie et Anthropologic, pp. 291-292.
71. Ibid.
72. Claude Levi-Strauss, "Introduction a I'oeuvre de Marcel Mauss," in Marcel Mauss,

Sociologie et Anthropologic, pp. 16fT.. andesp>ecially p. 23.
73. Talcott Parsons, Social Structure and Personality.

74. Neil J. Smelser, Theory of Collective Behavior
75. Neil J. Smelser, Essays in Sociological Explanation: and Robert S. Wallerstein and
NeilJ. Smelser, "Psychoanalysis and Sociology: Articulations and Applications," International
Journal ofPsycho-analysis 50 ( 1 969).
76. Wallerstein and Smelser, "Psychoanalysis and Sociology." p. 694.
77. Much has been written about the way Freud interpreted the past and envisaged history.
We shall mention only those points that are immediately relevant to our discussion; for a more
general treatment, see Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy, and Philip RiefT. Freud, the Mind of
the Moralist. It is Alain Besangon. however, who offers the best introduction to the subject in the
first chapter of his book, Histoire et experience du moi.
78. 5E, vol. 13, p. 157.
79. 5f, vol. 23, p. 80.
80. 5£, vol. 21, pp. 42-43.

81. 5£, vol. 23, p. 99.
82. See especially, on this subject, Gerard Mendel, La Revolte contre le pere. pp. 15fF..
pp. 144ff.
83. Gerard Mendel. La Crise des generations, p. 57. The same hypothesis is convincingly
presented by Georges Devereux in hisEssais d'ethnopsychiatrie generate, especially pp. 143ff.,
and p. 160.
84. See Roger Dadoun. Geza Roheim et I'essorde I'anthropologiepsychanalytique, p. 48.
85. Geza Roheim. The Origin and Function of Culture, p. 99.
86. Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology ofFascism, p. 1 54.
87. Norman O. Brown. Life against Death, pp. 292ff. The reader will find dozens of
similar examples, applied to every conceivable field, in Robert Bastide, Sociologie et
Psychanalyse.
88. Hanns Sachs, "The Delay of the Machine Age," P.yvc/ioo«a/>7/c 5«or/er/v 4 no 2
(1933):404ff.
89. Kurt R. Eissler, Medical Orthodoxy and the Future ofPsychoanalysis, pp. 230fT. It is
amusing to see Eissler's simplemindedness on this point criticized, in the name of historical rigor,
by another psychoanalyst, Robert Waelder, who then turns around and explains (in the name
of the same historical rigor, no doubt) the collapse of Austrian allegiance to the imperial institution
in terms of a "castration complex." See Robert Waelder, "Psychoanalysis and History:
Application of Psychoanalysis to Historiography," in Benjamin B. Wolman, The Psycho-
analytic Interpretation ofHistory, pp. 4, 24.
90. Raymond de Saussure, "Psychoanalysis and History," in Geza Roheim, Psycho-

analysis and the Social Sciences, vol. II, p. 25.
91. Talcott Parsons, "Psychoanalysis and the Social Structure," Psychoanalytic Quar-
terly 19, no. 3 (1950), pp. 312-315.
92. The structuralist paradigm of psychohistorical explanation has few adherents at
present, and as far as know the only studies attempting to develop this mode of inquiry are those
I
published in France. The works of Alain Besangon represent, in this respect, the most complete
statement of a conception that one also finds, on a more restricted level, in the work of other
French psychoanalysts. Despite its limited field of application, this model of psychohistorical
explanation seems sufficiently original and coherent to be considered as a separate category.
93. Alain BesanQon, Histoire et experience du moi, pp. 9,91.

94. Ibid., p. 94.
95. See, for example, the definition of structure according to Piaget: "Le probleme de
I'explication," in Leo Apostel et al., L 'Explication dans les sciences, p. 9.
96. See in particular the criticisms formulated by Edmund Leach, in his book, Levi-
Strauss. Leach himself is a convinced structuralist, but his analysis of various Biblical texts,
although brilliant, does not altogether dispel one's doubts about the structuralist method. (See
Edmund Leach, Genesis as Myth and Other Essays. )
97. The difference between formal structures and thematic configurations, or even config-
urations of object relations, represents all the difference between structuralism 5mc/« sensu and
psychoanalytic structuralism. It is obvious, contrary to the thesis advanced by Janine Chasseguet-
Smirgel, that a given configuration of any individual's object relations is understandable only in
terms of content. As
concerns the similarities and differences between Freud and Levi-Strauss in
their conception of the unconscious, see especially Ino Rossi, "The Unconscious in the Anthro-
pology of Claude Levi-Strauss," American Anthropologist 25 (1973).
98. It is we proposed some definitions: 1 ) A society is a group of individuals (a
high time
group of variable whose members have established mutual relations that differentiate them
size),
in some way from those not belonging to that society; generally, what is distinctive about a society
is the elaboration or the assimilation of a specific culture. 2) A culture corresponds, here, to the
set of representationsand symbolic expressions (language, institutions, norms, art, religious and
philosophical system, etc.) of a society. (The definitions of culture are, of course, legion.) 3) The
term "collective behavior" designates two different types of behavior: on the one hand, the
behavior of the members of a group, conscious of belonging to that group and acting according to
certain common perceptions and goals; on the other hand, the behavior of individuals who have
thesame perceptions and act in similar ways, without necessarily identifying themselves as
members of the same group. It goes without saying that, in both cases, the conscious perceptions
and goals can also have an unconscious meaning. Thus, in the broadest sense, it is a certain unity
in perceptions, behavior and goals among a small or large number of individuals that allows us to
speak of "collective behavior."
99. This term, current in American sociology, will be explained in chapter 3.
1(X). The relation between culture and personality has become a vast field of research, a
good part of which has nothing to do with psychoanalytic theory. Milton Singer's article, "A
Survey of Culture and Personality Theory and Research," contains an excellent summary of the
various kinds of research in this field.
101 The aim of this formulation, as of the pages that follow, is to allow for a synthesis (a
rather unusual one) between the conceptions of Erik H. Erikson and those of Abram Kardiner and
Ralph Linton. For Erikson's theses on this point, see especially Childhood and Society; for the
theories of Kardinerand Linton, see their two works: The Individual and His Society and The
Psychological Frontiers of Society.
I am aware of the considerable differences between Erikson's notions and those of
perfectly
Kardiner, as well as of the fact that Erikson can be considered as part of the mainstream of
psychoanalytic thought, while Kardiner is always characterized as a neo-Freudian. Yet, in the
perspective of our paradigm, the inherent logic of their analyses is almost identical.
102. Mike! Dufrenne, La personnalite de base, p. 1 28. We may recall that in France the
importance of studies on the basic personality as a unifying ground between psychoanalysis and
sociology was already noted in the 1 950s by Roger Bastide (cf. his Sociologie etpsychanalyse).
103. The between homogeneous and heterogeneous groups is absolutely

distinction
essential if one is to understand the relation between primary and secondary institutions. In
attempting, on the basis of a study conducted in a small American town ("Plainville, USA"), to
describe the characteristics of a basic Western personaUty— as if Western society constituted a
homogeneous group— Kardiner comes close to being ridiculous (see The Psychological Frontiers
of Society). Furthermore, a certain uniformity in family structures is not in itself a sufficient index
to explain or determine the homogeneity of a group; at most one can attempt to look within the
secondary institutions for some reflections, more or less distorted by other social factors, of these
common family traits. There is therefore nothing surprising about the fact demonstrated by Robert
Bellah, namely, that certain common traits in the family structure and family ethos of Christian
society and Chinese society are not directly reflected on the level of religious expression in these
two societies (see Robert N. Bellah, Beyond Belief: Fssays on Religion in a Post-Traditional
World, pp. 76ff.).
1 04 Abram Kardiner and Ralph Linton, The Psychological Frontiers of Society.

105. Mikel Dufrenne, La Personnalite de base, p. 1 79. It would be easy to reformulate this
example in "orthodox" Freudian terms.

106. The empirical studies concerning the validity of the notion of basic personality have
been interpreted in contradictory ways. Milton Singer, for example, maintains that there is no
conclusive proof that the majority of the members of a given sociocultural entity possess a
sufficient number of similar characteristics to allow one to speak unequivocally of the existence of
a "basic personality," despite certain noticeable similarities; Bert Kaplan, on the other hand,
writing in the same year, arrived at the conclusion that the notion of basic personality was strongly
reinforced by the empirical studies, which nevertheless were not absolutely conclusive. For these
two opposing views, see Milton Singer, "A Survey of Culture and Personality Theory and
Research," p. 41, and Bert Kaplan, "Cross-Cultural Use of Projective Techniques," in Francis
L. K. Hsu, Psychological Anthropology.
107. John Bowlby, "The Nature of the Child's Tie to Its Mother," IntemationalJoumal
ofPsycho-analysis 39 (1958).
108. See Talcott Parsons, Social Structure and Personality. As concerns the relation
between social structure and the specific activity of the id, one can cite some studies on dreams in
various societies: it is not only the manifest content of these dreams that varies from society to
society, but— insofar as the kind of classical analysis that can be used is correct— their latent
content as well. It has been noted, for example, that Americans and Japanese suffer from
different anxieties, manifesting themselves differently on the level of dreams— hence on the level
of primary processes of the id. See R. Burke, "Histoire sociale des reves," Annales ESC 28
(March-April 1973): 332.
As ego by means of successive internalizations of idealized objects,
for the formation of the
notably of the idealized characteristics of the parents, Heinz Kohut's recent studies on narcissim
confirm the essential character of this process. See especially Kohut's The Analysis of the Self A
Systematic Approach to the Psychoanalytic Treatment ofNarcissistic Personality Disorders.
109. Fred Weinstein and Gerald M. Piatt, Psychoanalytic Sociology: An Essay on the
Interpretation of Historical Data and the Phenomena of Collective Behavior.

. .
Notes — Chapter One 135
1 10. Roy SchzStT, Aspects ofInternalization, p. 9.
111. The paradigm I shall propose here is inspired only in part by the one that Fred
Weinstein and Gerald M. Piatt presented The Wish
to be Free: Society, Psyche and Value
in
Change, and in Psychoanalytic Sociology. Their conception taken as a whole seems in effect very
much open to doubt. In our perspective, the id remains, on the whole, an area inaccessible to the
process of internalization, whereas in Weinstein's and Piatt's second book (Psychoanalytic
Sociology) the generalized character of processes of internalization ata// levels of the personality
practically eliminates the need for a psychoanalytic study of social change.
112. I use the general term "affective needs" for the sake of convenience; it is evident that
we are dealing here with the result of complex interactions implying, in particular, various com-
promises between the instinctual tendencies and the demands of the superego and the ego of the
members of the group.
1 13. Ludwig Immergluck, "Determinism versus Freedom in Contemporary Psychology:

An Ancient Problem Revisited," /I /wmcaw Psychologist 19 ( 1964): 270.
1 14. Ernest 3ones,Essays in Applied Psychoanalysis, vol. II, p. 186.
115. Jean Laplanche and J.-B. Pontalis, Vocabulary ofPsychoanalysis, p. 130.
1 16. One finds this notion expressed, in one form or another, in a great many articles.
Among the latter, we may cite: Ernest Hartmann, "The Psychophysiology of Free Will: An
Example of Vertical Research," in Rudolph M. Loewenstein et al.. Psychoanalysis as a General
Psychology, pp. 52 Iff.; John Hospers, "Free Will and Psychoanalysis," in W. Sellers and
J.Hospers, Readings in Ethical Theory, pp. 560ff.; Samuel D. Lipton, "A Note on the
Compatibility of Psychic Determinism and Freedom of Will," InternationalJoumal of Psycho-
analysis 36, no. 2 ( 1 95 5 ).
117. Erik H. Erikson, Identity, Youth and Crisis, p. 109.
118. Heinzllartmaim,Ego Psychology and the Problem ofAdaptation, pp. 8-9.
119. Merton Gill and G. S. Klein, The Collected Papers of David Rapaport, pp. 22-23.
120. Ibid., pp. 352, 294, 830. An ahnost identical notion is convincingly expressed by
Abraham Kaplan in The Conduct ofInquiry, p. 1 21
121 Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology ofBeing, pp. 103ff.
1 22. Erik H. Erikson, Childhood and Society, p. 228.

Notes — Chapter Two
1 See Herman Nunberg and Ernst Fedem, Minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic
Society. I.1906-1908; II. 1908-1910
2. Sigmund Freud, "Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood," SE, vol. 1 1 A .
few years later Freud devoted a very brief psychobiographical study to Dostoevsky: "Dostoevsky
and Parricide," SE, vol. 21. The very first psychobiographical interpretation made by Freud
came well before these two essays, however; it was in a letter to Fliess, June 20, 1898, in which
Freud spoke about the novelist Konrad Fredinand Meyer. (See Sigmund Freud, The Origins of
Psychoanalysis: Letters to Wilhelm Fliess, Drafts and Notes, pp. 256-257.)
3. Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson, Twenty-Eighth
President of the United States: A Psychological Study.
4. Psychobiographies of all sizes come by the hundreds; the fact that most of these
literally
studies are now forgotten is no reflection on psychohistory Readers with a collector's or archivist's
.
bent will find some of the titles of psychobiographies published during the First World War and
the 1920's interesting. (See John A. Garraty, The Nature ofBiography, pp. 1 Many
15ff., 230ff.)
psychobiographical studies have also used classicial psychiatry, existential psychoanalysis, or

various idiosyncratic derivatives of psychoanalysis. To the titles we have already mentioned, we
may add Karl Jaspers' Strindberg und Van Gogh, as well as the huge catalogue of "patho-
graphies" published by W. Lange-Eichbaum: The Problem of Genius.
5. The extent of Freud's error as well as the other weaknesses of his study have been
particularly well demonstrated by Meyer Schapiro, "Leonardo and Freud: An Art Historical
Study," Journal of the History ofIdeas 1 7 ( 1 956). But the polemic is by no means over, and the
die-hard Freudians have in turn refuted Schapiro's theses (see in particular Kurt R. Eissler,
Leonardo da Vinci. Psychoanalytic Notes on the Enigma). An interesting Jungian analysis of
Leonardo's work and personality is to be found in Erich Neumann, Art and the Creative
Unconscious.
6. M. S. Gwiim&chQT, America's Last King: An Interpretation of the Madness of George
III
1 . Ida McAlpine and Richard Hunter, George III and the Mad Business, pp. 354-363.
See also E. J. Hundert, "History, Psychology and the Study of Deviant Behavior." The Journal
of Interdisciplinary History 2. no. 4 ( 1 972), pp. 453 ff. But one ought to mention that the thesis of
the king's organic illness (actually, porphyria) propounded by the opponents of the psychoanalytic
interpretation is considered unfounded by various medical experts as well as by many
itself
historians (see J. H. Plumb. "The Wolfs Clothing," The New York Review of Books. Dec. 14,
1972).
136
..
/Votes — Chapter Two 137
8. Sibylle K. Escalona and Grace Heider, Prediction and Outcome: A Study in Child
Development, p. 9. This fundamental continuity found in every individual manifests itself
particularly strikingly in personalities that have experienced "conversion." It was Lucien
—
Goldmann who, as we shall see, cannot be accused of a bias in favor of biographical studies—
who gave an excellent demonstration of the unity of Pascal's quest, for example, despite Pascal's
famous conversion (see Lucien Goldmann, The Hidden God). From our point of view, the
continuity is not only that of form and style, but is expressed through essential characteristics and
tendencies of the personality.
9. The most recent study on this subject is David Shapiro's Neurotic Styles.
10. Quoted (and illustrated) in H. J. Eysenck, Crime and Personality, p.51.

1 1 Erik H. Erikson, Childhood and Society, p. 348.
12. Gertrud M. Kurth, "The Jew and Adolf Hitler," in Sandor Lorand, The Yearbook of
Psychoanalysis 4 ( 1 949), pp. 266ff.
13. Georges Devereux, "La psychanalyse appliquee al'histoirede Sp&Tte,'' Annates ESC
(Jan.-Feb. 1965), p. 29.
14. Gustav By sho'ws]^. Dictators and Disciplines, p. 147.
15. Rudolph Binion, "Research Note," Newsletter: Group for the Use of Psychology in
History l,no.3 (July 1912).

16. Walter C. Langer, The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report, pp. 194-
196. Since my aim here is not to analyze these studies individually but rather to compare them, I
will not mention the numerous factual errors, and above all the unfounded suppositions contained
in Langer's work; these are for the most part attributable to the early date ofits writing. For a
critique of Langer see Hans W. Gatzke, "Hitler and Psychohistory," American Historical
Review 18,no. 4 (1913).
17. According to many historians, however, this decision was made in March or April
1941.
18. Robert C. L. Waite. "Adolf Hitler's Antisemitism," in Benjamin B. Wolman. The
Psychoanalytic Interpretation ofHistory, pp. 203ff.
1 9. Saul Friedlander, L 'Antisemitisme nazi: Histoire d'une psychose collective, pp. 1 33ff.
20. This is also the age at which some future political leaders compose plays and poems,
whose importance for psychobiography is evident— as is amply shown by Saint-Just's Organt or
De Gaulle's Une Mauvaise rencontre.
21. "A problem, once suggested, carries its own impetus," writes a biographer of
Nietzsche, "and the thinker is driven on by it to new problems and solutions. To understand these,
we must follow the development of his thought— and that is best done separately from the survey
of his any joint treatment will almost inevitably suggest a false notion of causal relationship
life, as
between life and philosophy." (Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche, Philosopher, Psychologist. Anti-
christ, p. 21.) The dichotomy between life and work is too sharply drawn, but Kaufmann makes
clear the nature of the indeterminacy that the biographer must confront.
23. See on this subject the excellent biography by Quentin Bell: Virginia Woolf(2 vols.).
24. V/emeTMaser, AdolfHitler, Legende, Mythos, Wirklichkeit, p. 333.
25. Werner Maser, AdolfHitler, pp. 334ff.
26. Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Surx'ival, 1940-1965.
27. Edwin A. Weinstein, " Woodrow Wilson's Neurological Illness," Journal of Ameri-
can History 57 (1970-1971).
28. Edwin A. Weinstein, "Woodrow Wilson's Neurological Illness."
29. T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays, pp. 2 1-22.
30. Raymond Picard, Pourquoi la nouvelle critique?, p. 1 1 7.
Serge Doubrovsky, The New Criticism in France, trans. Derek Coltman. p. 94.
3 1
see the
32. For a more complete picture of the various currents of "la nouvelle critique."
138 History' and Psychoanalysis
excellent volume containing the proceedings of the Cerisy colloquium, Les Chemins actuels de la
critique.
33. Lucien Goldmann, Pour une sociologie du roman, p. 43 1

34. "The greatest of all pictures based on the facts of vision wasn't painted in the scientific
atmosphere of Holland, but in the superstitious, convention-ridden court of Philip IV of Spain:
Las Meninas, 'The Ladies which was painted by Velasquez about five years before
in Waiting,'
Vermeer's finest interiors. Although one may use works of art to illustrate the history of
. . .
civilization, one must not pretend that social conditions produce works of art or inevitably
influence their form." (Kenneth Clark, Civilization: A Personal View, p. 213.)
35. Lucien Goldmann, Structures mentales et Creation culturelle, p. 1 6.
36. Ernst Kris, Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art, p. 61
37. Sarah Kofman, L'Enfance de I'art: Une interpretation de I'esthetique freudienne,

pp. 125-126.
38. Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, Pour une psychanalyse de I'art et de la creativite, pp. 44-
46. 60-62. The same thesis is stated, among others, by Yvon Beleval in his preface to the study by
Anne CldLTicieT, Psychanalyse et Critique litteraire, p. 19.
39. Kofman, L 'Enfance de I'art, p. 1 27.
40. Chasseguet-Smirgel, Pour une psychanalyse de I'art, p. 62. One finds this necessary
synthesis between the structuralist and genetic methods in biography in the most unexpected
places. Thus, in his inaugural speech at the Academic Frangaise, Claude Levi-Strauss. paying
homage to his predecessor, Henry de Montherlant, began with a structural analysis of Monther-
lant's works — an analysis that led, according to him, to an evident conclusion whose "internal
logic" manifested itself in "the need to short-circuit the mediation of the mother: the carnal act,
performed either actually or figuratively, results in a metaphoric or actual death. And life,
understood in this metaphoric or actual sense, can result only from a renunciation of the carnal
act, either actually or figuratively."
Levi-Strauss then turned to a direct thematic analysis, taking into account the biographical
origins of the work: "The plot ofLo Peine morte (The Dead Queen) lays bare. I believe, this well-
spring of my predecessor's thought. To the question 'Who
dead Queen?' few spectators
is the
would hesitate to reply: Ines de Castro. Is she not seen, after all, at the end of the last act, dead and
wearing a crown? Yet, during the play itself the words of the title appear only once, and they refer
to another woman: the dead wife of Ferrante, who says to his son: 'From the time you were five
years old to when you were thirteen, I loved you tenderly. The Queen, your mother, died very
young.' The ambiguity here is more than a matter of chance. Pedro, therefore, is a son without a
mother, like Philippe in Les Jeunes Filles and Alcacer in Don Juan, like the son that Alban
invents for himself at the end of Z,e Songe or the one to whom is addressed the Lettre d'un pere
{Letter from a Father), or the one who engages in a dialogue with the stranger of L 'Equinoxe de
septembre; just as Celestino's daughter is a daughter without a mother, her mother having "died in
giving her birth.' But. unlike the author, who. as is well known, always rejected marriage. Pedro
succeeds in replacing his mother, who died while he was a baby, by a wife: Ines, who, as if to
confirm this continuity, becomes in turn the dead Queen. She must die, in fact, not only in order to
reproduce the Queen mother, whom she replaces (we must not forget her belly, which alone bears
the crown), but also and above all because the author, even more than Ferrante. wants to eliminate
the solution chosen by Pedro —a solution he rejects, to a problem that is also his own. . .
."
(Claude Levi-Strauss, "Discours de reception a I'Academie franâise," Le Monde, June 28,

1974.)
41. Anthony Storr, The Dynamics of Creation: David McClelland. The Roots of
Consciousness.
42. S£, vol. 13. p. 187.
43. Jean Delay. "Nevrose et creation," \n Aspects de la psychiatric moderne.

44. For Melanie Klein's thought on this subject, as well as for the theses advanced by
Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, see the latter's work, previously cited: Psychanalyse de I'art et de la
creativite.
.. .
Notes— Chapter Two J 39
45 Storr, The Dynamics of Creation.

46. Chasseguet-Smirgel, Psychanalvse de I'art et de la creativite, p. 1 02.
47. Storr, TTie Dynamics of Creation, p. 203fT.
48. Jean Starobinski, La Relation critique, p. 283 (my italics).
49. Ibid., p. 63.
50. Roland Barthes, Michelet, p. 5
51. Marie 'Qonaârie, Edgar Poe, sa vie, son oeuvre, Etude analytique, pp. 763-764.
Other scholars have arrived at similar conclusions. Thus, Leopold Bellak establishes a dis-
tinction between writers who constantly treat the same story in various forms (extreme subjec-
tivity) and those who are able to express several themes (see Leopold Bellak, "Somerset
Maugham: A Thematic Analysis of Ten Short Stories," in Robert W. White, The Study ofLives.
p. 157.) When, in the case of a writer with a single theme, the theme is very often reworked, the
historian can attempt to capture its essence by using the method of the superposition of texts
advocated by Charles Mauron. For a very clear summary of Mauron's method, see his essay,
"Les origines d'un mythe personnel chez Tecrivain," in Critique sociologique et Critique
psychanalytique, pp. 9 Iff. For a systematic and detailed demonstration of the method, see
Mauron's book, Des metaphores obsedantes au mythe personnel: Introduction a la psycho-
critique.
52. George D. Vainter, Proust: The Early Years, p. 16.
53. In certain cases, which are by definition rare, the fundamental problem is so particular
that it is possible to determine rather exactly its influence on the level of the work. Thus, Marc
Soriano has admirably demonstrated, in the life and works of Charles Perrault, the importance of
Perrault's having been a twin. See Marc Soriano, Les Contes de Perrault, Culture savante et
Traditions populaires.
54. Dominique Fernandez, L 'Arbrejusqu 'aux racines, p. 1 40.
55. Ibid., p. 125.
56. Ibid., p. 125.
57. Ibid., p. 128.
58. Ibid., p. 140 (italics in the text).
59. Ibid. , p. 1 78 ( italics in the text).
60. Preface by Jean-Frangois Lyotard to Anton Ehrenzweig, I'Ordre cache de I'art: Essai
sur la psychologic de I'imagination artist ique. p. 2.
6 1 Nicolas Abraham, "Le temps, le rythme et I'inconscient," in Entretiens sur I'art et la
psychanalvse.
62. Ismond Rosen, "Etude psychanalytique de la sculpture," in Entretiens sur I'art et la
psychanalyse.
63. Anton Ehrenzweig, I'Ordre cache de I'art, p. 109.
64. We may add that, although Ehrenzweig's work is impressive by its originality, it
nevertheless raises some theoretical problems that it does not resolve. Even if one admits the
validity of his conception of the primary processes, one soon notices that his thesis, which is easily
demonstrated in the case of modem painting, sculpture, and music, is less convincing in the case of
"classical" music (despite a few examples) and applies barely if at all to literature (with the
possible exception of the nouveau roman). Furthermore. Ehrenzweig does not quite succeed
in
explaining how. according to his system, "normal" artistic creation differs from the production of
schizophrenics. Finally, one can ask why the presence of the "hidden order" at the heart of
the
primary processes did not give rise to serial music or abstract painting in the seventeenth century,
not obliged, in the end. to reinstruduce the structuring function of the ego
as a
for example, are we
determining element in artistic creation?
65. Y^Qmandez, L'Arbre jusqu'aux racines, p. 181.
66. E. H. Gombrich,y4r/ and Illusion.

67. Lucien Goldmann, Pour une sociologie du roman, pp. 86-87.
/ 40 History and Psychoanalysis
68. This notion is similar to that of Leo Spitzer, who considered the "stylistic deviation"
from the linguistic norm as an expression of the writer's personality; on the other hand, it is hard to
see why Spitzer sought to interpret this deviation also as the sign of an evolution in the "collective
soul." One remains unconvinced by his example of the use of the phrase "a cause de" in Charles-
Louis Philippe's novel, Bubu de Montpamasse (see Leo Spitzer, Linguistics and Literary
History, pp. 11-15).
69. Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method, trans. Hazel E. Barnes, pp. 62-63.
70. Sidirohm^)^., Le Relation critique, p. 102).
71. Ibid., p. 146.
72. For a more detailed theoretical discussion, see Fred \. Greenstein, Personality and
Politics. As its title indicates, Greenstein's book is concerned with the psychoanalytic bases of
political behavior; he examines, in greater detail than I am able to do here, the problem of the
relation between role and personality. Greenstein has also published an important volume of
texts treating the influence of personality factors on political behavior; historians will find the
theoretical discussions in the volume pertinent to their own concerns. ( See Fred I. Greenstein and
Michael Lemer. A Source Book for the Study ofPersonality and Politics.
73. Raymond Aron, Introduction a la philosophic de I'histoire, p. 1 04.

74. Avon. Introduction a la philosophic de I'histoire, p. 106.
75. Stanley Hoffmann and Inge Hoffmann, "De Gaulle as Political Artist: The Will to
Grandeur," in Stanley Hoffmann, Decline or Renewal? France Since the 1930's, p. 202.
76. Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills, Character and Social Structure. The Psychology of
Institutions, p. 419.
77. We could complicate the problem further: granted that the personality influences the
mode of execution of a role considered from a subjective viewpoint — in other words, as a series of
norms internalized by the individual who performs the role — that would not be the case one if
considered the role in a broader perspective, not only in terms of internalized norms but also in
terms of objective limits independent of individual We might add that it is precisely on the
will.
political level that these objective limits are most strongly felt, often leaving a very narrow margin of
choice and maneuvering to the person who makes the decisions. This notion is reinforced by recent
studies concerning the influence of bureaucratic organizations on decision making, notably in the
field of foreign policy, where there appeared to be much more leeway for choice than in domestic
policy. (See, for example, Graham T. Allison, The Essence of Decision: An Analysis of the
Cuban Missile Crisis.) The reply to this kind of argument can be stated in brief and simple terms:
the argument is not entirely false when the political process follows what can be called a "normal"
course; but as soon as a crisis situation occurs, the limits imposed on individual decision-making
by the weight of various objective factors, especially by organizational and bureaucratic
constraints, are broadened, and the political leader finds himself free to choose between war and
peace, resistance or submission, compromise or confrontation. Whether he finds support for his
decision is another matter. Crisis situations allow one to see, more forcefully than ever, the
essential role of personality factors in the context of political decision-making.
78. Among the important works in this category, we may note the biographies of the
English General Clinton and of the American politician, Charles Sumner. See William B.
Wilcox, Portrait of a General, Sir Henry Clinton, in the War of Independence; Da\id Donald,
Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War.
79. Besides the Georges' study on Wilson, we should mention Fawn M. Brodie, Thomas
Jefferson: An Intimate History: Lewis J. Edinger, Kurt Schumacher: A Study in Personality and
Political Behavior; Arnold Rogowjames Forrestal: A Study ofPersonality, Politics and Policy;
Robert C. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879-1929: A Study in History and Personality, as
well as the more limited but nevertheless very interesting study by Peter Loewenberg, "The
Unsuccessful Adolescence of Heinrich \\\mm\Qr" American Historical Review 76, no. 3 ( 1 97 1 ),
pp. 612fr.
80. Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson, pp. 6-7.
. . . . " 1
Notes— Chapter Two 1 4
8 1 Alexander L. George and Juliette George. Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House: A
Personality Study, p. 114.
82. George and George. Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, p. 1 2.
83. This verification is made possible by the fact that a number of previously unpublished
sources, notably the "deliberations of the Big Four," have been published since the Georges"
study appeared.
84. C. Seymour (ed.). Intimate Papers of Colonel House, p. 119
85. Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson, p. 116.
86. Intimate Papers of Colonel House, p. 114.
87. Ibid., pp. 126-127.

88. Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson, vol. 5, Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace,
1916-1917, p. 8.
89. Ibid., vol. 2. The New Freedom, pp. 68-69.
90. Les Deliberations du Conseildes Quatre (24 mars-28 juin 1919), vol. 1, p. 187.
91. Ibid., p. 28.
92. Intimate Papers of Colonel House, p. 120.
93. Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson, vol. 1 , p. 8.
94. See Freud and Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson, pp. 80-8 1
95. Edwin A. Weinstein, "Woodrow Wilson's Neurological Illness," p. 336.
96. Ibid.,pp. 339ff.
97. Max Weber, Theory' of Social and Economic Organisation, p. 358.
98. Cited in Robert C. Tucker, "The Theor>' of Charismatic Leadership," Daedalus 97

(summer 1968), p. 745.
99. Fred Weinstein and Gerald M. Piatt, Psychoanalytic Sociology, pp. 68, 75,112.
100. Robert C. Tucker, "The Theory of Charismatic Leadership," p. 749.
101 Peter Loewenberg, "Theodor Herzl: A Psychoanalytic Study in Charismatic Leader-

ship," in Benjamin B. Wolman, The Psychoanalytic Interpretation of History, pp. 150fT.
102. Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History,
p. 262.
103. Erik H. Erikson, Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins ofMilitant Nan- Violence, p. 401 .
104. Ibid., p. 408.

105. Ibid., p. 412.
1 06. Robert Coles, Erik H. Erikson: The Growth ofHis Work, p. 206.
107. See supra, p.
108. See infra, p.
109. See, among many others, Harold D. Lasswell, Psychopathology and Politics;
Theodore W. Adomo The Authoritarian Personality: E. Victor Wolfenstein, The

et al..
and
Revolutionary Personality: Lenin. Trotsky, Gandhi: James B. Barber, "Adult Identity
Presidential Style: The Rhetorical Emphasis." Daedalus 97 (summer 1968). For a detailed
description of these typologies, see the previously cited works by Fred I. Greenstem.
1 10. Milton Rokeach, The Open and Closed Mind.

111. Stefan T. Possony, Lenin: The Compulsive Revolutionary, p. 398.
1 12. Edward Shils, "Authoritarianism. Right and Left," in Richard Christie and Marie
Jahoda, Studies in the Scope and Method of "The Authoritarian Personality.

113. Harold D. Lasswell, Psychopathology and Politics.
on Salomon.
1 14. Roger Stephane. Portrait de I'aventurier: T. E. Lawrence, Malraux, \
of
David McClelland, The Roots of Consciousness. "The Psychodynamics
the
115.
Creative Physical Scientist," pp. 146ff.
116. McClelland bases his argument on Robert Merton's theory — highly contro- itself
versial — about the relationship between Puritanism and science (see R. K. Merton, Social Theory
and Social Structure). In fact, if any religion is over-represented in the scientific domain in our
day, it is the Jewish one.
117. Frank E. Manuel, A Portrait of Isaac Newton: and L. P. Williams, Michael

Faraday, pp. 500ff.
1 18. Manuel,i4 Portrait ofIsaac Newton, for example p. 99.
1 19. See 'WiWia.ms, Michael Faraday, pp. 8, 96, 99, 100, 358, and J. Ag&s%\, Faraday as
Natural Philosopher, p. 15, as well as Bernard S. Finn. "Views of Faraday." Science 176
(4035), pp. 665-667.

1 20. Ivor B. Evans, Man ofPower: The Life History ofBaron Rutherford ofNelson, pp.
221,229.
121. Manuel, A Portrait ofIsaac Newton, p. 1 04.
1 22. Agassi, Faraday as Natural Philosopher, pp. 59, 330.

1 23. See Manuel. A Portrait ofIsaac Newton.
124. V^'iWxams, Michael Faraday, p. "i.
125. Evans, Ma« o/Po>v'er, p. 25.
1 26. Agassi. Faraday as Natural Philosopher, p. 3; Williams, Michael Faraday, p. 3.
127. Manuel, A Portrait ofIsaac Newton, p. 77.
1 28. See especially Frank E. Manuel's detailed discussion on this subject in A Portrait of
Isaac Newton.
129. Ibid.
1 30. For a summary of the research on this subject, see Kenneth W. Terhune. "The Effects
of Personality in Cooperation and Conflict," in Paul Swingle. The Structure of Conflict.
131. On this subject, see Saul Friedlander and Raymond Cohen. "The Personality Origins
of Belligerence in International Conflict: An Analysis of Historical Cases," Journal of Com-
parative Politics, January 1975.
1 32. This behavior pattern has often been studied: see in particular H. B. Biller and L. J.
Borstelmann. "Masculine Development: An Integrative Review," Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 13

(1967); E. M. Hetherington. "A Developmental Study of the Effects of Sex of the Dominant
Parent on Sex-role Preference, Identification and Imitation ChMTen,"' Journal ofPersonality
in
and Social Psychology2 ( 1 965); D. B. Lynn and W. L. Sawrey. "The Effects of Father-absence
on Norwegian Boys and Girls," yourna/ ofAbnormal and Social Psychology 59 ( 1 959).
.
Notes — Chapter Three
1 Preface by Octavio Paz. to Jacques Lafaye, Quetzalcoatl et Guadalupe: La Formation

de la conscience nationale au Mexique, pp. 24-25.
2. Let us recall here the definition we gave in chapter 1 of the term "collective behavior,"
which is obviously linked to the notion of "collective phenomena": collective behavior consists of
the shared perceptions, symbolic expressions, or modes of behavior attributable to the members of
a group; at times, these perceptions or modes of behavior manifest themselves in an identical way,
and over a long enough period to discount the effect of pure chance, even in individuals who do not
belong to the same group (unless one defines the group as the abstract category created by the
common denominator).
3. More mind here Freud's Totem and Taboo, Civilization and Its
specifically, I have in
Discontents, and as well as Hebert Marcuse's Eros and Civilization

Moses and Monotheism,
and Norman O. Brown's Life Against Death. Erich FTomm's Escape from Freedom belongs in
the same category.
4. See William L. Langer, "The Next Assignment," in Bruce Mazlish, Psychoanalysis

and History; E. R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age ofAnxiety; Zevedei Barbu, Problems
ofHistorical Psychology.
5. According to Goffman's definition, the total institution isolates the individual from the
outside world and places him in a particular context in which he is more or less absolutely, and for
a more or less long period of time, bound by the rules of behavior decreed by the institution.
Goffman distinguishes several categories of total institutions. To illustrate the notion in its general
meaning, we can cite as examples the sanatorium, the prison or the concentration camp, the
boarding school or the monastery. ( See Irving Goffman,Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation
ofMental Patients and Other Inmates, esp. p. 16.)
6. complementary group or a counter-group appears in the midst of a given

As soon as a
group, the latter is no longer a homogeneous entity; that fact invalidates— at least in our present
context— the principal argument used by Georges Devereux against the theories of Kardiner.
(See Geroges Devereux, "La psychanalyse appliquee a Thistoire de Sparte," Annales ESC,
January-February 1965, p. 38.)
7. O. Mannoni, Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization. It has been

pointed out, however, that to treat the Malagasies as a homogeneous group is incorrect, given
(among other reasons) the particular position of the dominant caste, the Hovas. (See Bruce
Mazlish, "Group Psychology and Problems of Contemporary History," yourna/ of Contempor-
ary History 3, no. 211968].)
8. John Demos,/4 Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony.
143
9. Stanley Elkins, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life.

10. Demos, y4 Little Commonwealth,
135-139. In a previous study on the repetitive
pp.
themes in the witchcraft of seventeenth-century New England, Demos found that aggressivity
played the same central explanation in terms of the developmental model was more
role, but his
tentative. In fact, these aggressive themes are essentially linked to orality, which seems to lead
back to the first stage in Erikson's model, unless one opts instead for a Kleinian interpretation.
(See John Demos, "Underlying Themes in the Witchcraft of Seventeenth-Century New
^x\g\and" American Historical Review 75, no. 5 [1970].)
1 1 Elkins' study provoked a great deal of controversy, the essential issues of which are
summed up in Ann J. Lane, The Debate over Slavery: Stanley Elkins and His Critics. But on the
whole the controversy was over the interpretation of the facts, not over the essential facts
themselves. More recently, however, it is the basic data concerning black slavery in the United
States that have been contested: the slave society has been described as a stratified society, with
economic competition and a definite degree of individual development among its members. (See
Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics ofAmerican
Negro Slavery.) Since the debate remains open and since Fogel's and Engerman's thesis is far
from being accepted by most historians, we may consider that, in the absence of definite proof to
the contrary, the traditionally accepted facts about the life of black slaves in the United States are
correct.
1 2. Elkins, Slavery, p. 82. To explain the formation of the Sambo personality, Elkins uses
three convergent theories: the psychoanalytic theory of internalization, H. S. Sullivan's theory of
interpersonal relations, and role theory.
13. Elkins, Slavery, p. 130.
1 4. In its most general form, this problem has not escaped the attention of other scholars.
See especially Harold R. Isaacs, The New World of Negro Americans, and Charles Silberman,
Crisis in Black and White.
15. Every collective obsession requires a first gesture, a first narrative account, an initial
setting in motion by a few magnetic personalities. See on this subject the clinical case histories
reported in Georges Heuyer, Psychoses collectives et suicides collectifs.
1 6. On this subject, see especially Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millenium.
1 7. Saul FriendVander, L'Antisemitiseme nazi, esp. pp. 146ff.
18. See the general study by Julio CaroBaroja, The World of Witches, as well as Michel de
Certeau'sLcf Possession de Loudun and Chadwick Hansen's Witchcraft of Salem.
19. From this point of view, the phenomenon closest to us, and perhaps the most
astonishing one, is the quasi-disappearance of Nazism with the death of Adolf Hitler. But Norman
Cohn already showed that the disappearance of the "prophets of the millenium" led to the
disappearance of their sects. Similarly, possession as a phenomenon disappeared from Salem and
Loudun practically overnight.
20. Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the A nalysis ofthe Ego.
21. Ibid., p. 48.
22. Ibid., p. 55.
23. Ibid., p. 59.
24. FriedYander, L'Antisemilisme nazi, pp. 173ff.
25. BrunoBettelheim, The Informed Heart, p. 109.
26. Ibid., p. 172.
27. We are obviously dealing here with phenomena that one would tend to qualify as forms
of collective hypnosis — even though that term does not take us very far — or, other times, as in
forms of "collective possession" — which takes us even less Hypnosis and possession are both
far.
described as phenomena that involve profound, but generally temporary, changes (even though in
the case of possession the change can be, as we know, irreversible). In any event, the role of the
historian is essential, for he alone is in a position to evaluate, in as strictly critical terms as

. .
Notes—Chapter Three 145

possible, all the documentary material needed for compartive studies (which must come first) and
for theoretical explanation (which comes second).
28. It is we recall the relative character of the notions of homogeneity
essential that
and
heterogeneity thatwe are employing. Thus, if in a heterogeneous group all the young
children
experience the same traumatic events, certain similar tendencies can
manifest themselves later in
many of the members of that group as adults. In such a case the traumatic event produces
a kind of
sui generis homogeneity, as concerns a certain age group. For an interesting
example, see Peter
Loewenberg, "The Psychohistorical Origins of the Nazi Youth Cohon" American
Historical
Review 16, no. 5 (\91\).
29. Numerous studies of a similar nature exist in this field. We shall limit ourselves to
discussing the classic work by David D. McClelland himself. The Achieving Society.
30. Ibid., p. 3.
31. Ibid.,pp. 342, 345.
32. Ibid., p. 353.

33. Georges Devereux, Essais d'ethnopsychiatrie generate, p. 13.
34. Ibid., p. 5.
35. Ibid., p. 45.
36. Ibid., p. 92.
37. There exist numerous documentary sources for this kind of study: for example, the
importance accorded to a particular symptom or disorder in the clinical literature, as well as in
literature in general; hospital archives, especially those of psychiatric hospitals; the
archives of
various commissions or groups studying the mental health of a population; finally, the private
archives of psychiatrists or psychoanalysts. In his Madness and Civilization, Michel Foucault
has given us a brilliant history of the evolution of mental disorders and of the attitudes toward them
in a given culture. One can envisage an additional psychohistorical dimension to
a study of this
kind.
38. If one studies a particular group behavior involving a paroxystic collective phenome-
non of short duration, one is in fact dealing with a temporary homogeneous group (as in the
examples we mentioned earlier of witchcraft in Loudon or Salem). If, on the other hand, one
considers the witchcraze as an irrational attitude that manifested itself over a period of close to
two centuries, then one is studying an isolated phenomenon in the sense in which we are discussing
it here.
39. Hugh R. Trevor-Roper, The European Witchcraze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries, p. 160.
40. Henry Institoris and Jacques Sprenger, Le Marteau des Sorci'eres (with an intro-
duction by Amand Danet).
41 Danet, Introduction to Le Marteau des Sorcieres, p. 8.
42. Ibid.
43. Trevor-Roper, The European Witchcraze, p. 170.

44. See chapter 1 , especially p. 20.
45. For a discussion of the "identifying" role of marginal or deviant groups, see Kai T.
Erikson, Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology ofDeviance.
46. Georges Devereux, "La psychanalyse appliquee a Thistoire de Sparte." p. 32.
47. Jean-Paul Sartre, Portrait of the Anti-Semite, trans. Mary Guggenheim, p. 1 1
48. Friedlander, L 'Antisemitisme nazi, p. 50.
49. The general psychological foundations of anti-Semitism have been analyzed in
numerous studies, of which the best known are those of Ernst S\mme\, Antisemitism: A Social
Disease; Rodolphe Loewenstein, Psychanalyse de I'antisemitisme: Henry Loeblowitz-Lennart,
"The Jew as Symbol," Psychoanalytic Quarterly 16, no. 1 (1947); Bela Grunberger, "The
Antisemite and the Oedipal Conflict," InternationalJoumal ofPsycho-analysis 45 ( 1 964).
1 46 History and Psychoanalysis
50. Nathan Ackermann and Marie Lazarsfeld-Jahoda, Antisemitism and Emotional

Disorder.
51. G. H. Gough, "Studies in Social Intolerance: A Personality Scale for Antisemitism,"

Journal of Social Psychology 33 ( 1 95 1 ), p. 253.
52. Loewenstein, Psychanalyse de I'antisemitisme, p. 17.
53. Friedlander, L 'Antisemitisme nazi, pp. 27ff.
54. Iring Fetscher, "Zur Entstehung des politischen Antisemitismus in Deutschland," in
Herman Huss and Andreas Schroder, Antisemitismus: Zur Pathologie der Biirgerlichen
Gesellschaft.
55. Eva G. Reichmann, Hostages of Civilization: The Social Sources of National-

Socialist Anti-Semitism, p. 164.
56. One point, however, deserves clarification. Anti-Semitism has been defined as an
attitude allowing the anti-Semite to distinguish Good from Evil, the Pure from the Impure, and so
on. In order for this function to be maintained, isn't the survival of the Jews essential to the non-
Jewish society? But Nazism, the paroxystic form of anti-Semitism, made ever>' effort to annihilate
the Jews. Isn't there a fundamental contradiction implied in this? The answer is relatively simple: if
the Nazis annihilated the Jews physically, they proceeded at the same time to elaborate a detailed
and fantastic version of the myth of the Jew, in other words of the counter-ideal of the mythical
"in-group." Furthermore, in a context of racial hierarchy other inferior races can fulfill the
physical and concrete function of the visible counter-ideal, while the myth of the Jew preserves its
function as the "ideal" incarnation of Evil.
57. Robert Nisbet,5'oc/a/C/7a«ê, pp. 1-2.

58. For a succinct and clear statement of this conception of social change, see Robert K.
Merton, "A Paradigm for Functional Analysis in Sociology," in Social Theory and Social
Structure, pp. 49ff.
59. Emphatically defended by Robert Nisbet (who borrowed some of his notions from
Radciiffe-Brown), the theory of change through "rupture" is particularly well known and has been
most often discussed in the context of scientific change, since the publication of Thomas S. Kuhn's
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
60. Robert Nisbet, it is true, included several essays by historians in his volume on social
change.
61 . Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Le Territoire de Thistorien, p. 171.
62. See chapter 1. p. 35.
63. On this subject, see in particular David Schoenbaum, Hitler's Social Revolution:
Class and Status in Nazi Germany, 1933-1939.
64. Neil J. Smelser," Social and Psychological Dimensions of Collective Behavior," in
Essays in Sociological Explanation, pp. 1 lOff.
65. Philippe Aries, Centuries ofChildhood, trans. Robert Baldick. p. 50.
66. Ibid.
67. Ibid., p. 30.
68. J. H. Van den Berg, Metabletica ou la Psychologic historique, pp. 32ff.
69. Kenneth Keniston, "Psychological Development and Historical Change." The

Journal ofInterdisciplinary History 2, no. 2 ( 1 97 1 ), p. 342.
70. Keniston, ibid., p. 342. The same hypothesis has been formulated in particularly
emphatic and univocal terms by Lloyd de Mause, in the framework of what he calls the
"psychogenetic theory of History." According to de Mause. the specific traits of a culture depend
on the particular configuration of childhood in that culture. This kind of theory, which is partially
correct as far as homogeneous groups are concerned, becomes reductionistic when applied to
heterogeneous groups, as we have shown. For a full statement of de Mause's views, see his
introduction to the collective volume. The History ofChildhood.
.
Notes— Chapter Three 147

71. David Hunt, Parents and Children in Histon.-: The Psychology of Family Life in
Early Modem France.
72. Ibid., p. 190.
73. Ibid., p. 191.
74. Ibid., p. 158. The qualification of "tosome extent" is in this case essential, for once
again we are not dealing with a homogeneous group.
75. Ibid., p. 192.
76. Karl Mannheim, "The Problem of Generations," in Essays on the Sociology of

Knowledge, pp. 276ff.
77. S. N. Eisenstadt. From Generation to Generation: Age Groups and Social Structure.
p. 316.
78. Abrams, "Rites de passage: The Conflict of Generations
Philip in Industrial Society,"
Journal of Contemporary History 5. no. 1 1 970), p. 85. ( 1
79. Kingsley Davis, "The Sociology of Parent- Youth Conflict," American Sociological
Review 5 (\9^Q), p. 5Z5.
80. Muzafer Sherif and Hadley Cantril, The Psychology of Ego Involvements: Social
Attitudes and Identifications, pp. 205ff.
8 1 See Robert Jay Lifton, "Protean Man," in History and Human Survival
82. See above, p. 103.
83. Besides the various volumes of writings by members of the youth movements to which
we shall be referring frequently in what follows, the two most complete historical studies on this
subject are Howard Becker's German Youth, Bond or Free, and Walter Z. Laqueur's Young
Germany: A History of the German Youth Movement.
84. German youth movements counted around 15,000 members. (See George
In 191 1, the
Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology, p. 171.) According to Fritz Jungmann. the various youth
movements that grew out of the IVanderx'ogel had a total of 40,000 members in 1914. (See Fritz
Jungmann, "Autoritat und Sexualmoral in der Jugendbewegung." in Max Horkheimer, Studien
iiber Autoritdt und Familie, p. 670.)
85. Hans Bliiher, "Geschichte des Wandervbgels," in Werner Kindt, Grundschriften der
Deutschen Jugendbewegung, p. 41.
86. Kindt, Grundschriften, p. 10.
87. Laqueur, Young Germany, pp. 92-93.

88. Peter Gay, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider, p. 78.
89. The impact of a work such as Helmut Harringa was immense. Already before the first
World War it had sold 400.000 copies. (See Fritz Jungmann, "Autoritat und Sexualmoral in der
Jugendbewegung," p. 67 1 .)
90. Elisabeth Busse-Wilson, "Liebe und Kameradschaft." in Kindt. Grundschriften.
p. 329.
91. Kindt. Grundschriften. p. 16.
92. Gustave Wyneken, "Der Weltgeschichtliche Sinn der Jugendbewegung." in Kindt,
Grundschriften, p. 153.
93. Laqueur, Young Germany, p. 59.
94. The role of active homosexuality in the German youth movements has been con-
siderably overestimated, due to Biuher's books and to the practices of a deviant fraction within the
movements, which drew public attention and provoked scandal. According to Jungmann. overt
homosexuality within the movements was not more widespread than among German youth in
general. On the other hand, the youth movement encouraged friendship with erotic overtones, or
"sublimated" homosexuality between members, and especially between the members and the
its
leader. (See Fritz Jungmann. "Autoritat und Sexualmoral in der Jugendbewegung," pp. 676-
677.)
95. Quoted in Howard Becker, German Youth, Bond or Free, p. 97.
96. Wilhelm Stahlin, "Der Neue Lebensstil," in Kindt, Grundschriften, p. 59.
97. Quoted in Harry Pross, Jugend, Eros, Politik: Die Geschichte der Deutschen Jugend-
verbiinde, p. 286.
98. Pross, Jugend. Eros. Politik. p. 288.
99. Gay, Weimar Culture, pp. 102fT.
100. For an extremely subtle thematic analysis of German films between the war and the
Nazi seizure of power, see Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler.
101 As concerns the youth movements, the instinctual freedom one
Ibid., pp. 84ff., 96ff.
finds in a group such as Muck-Lamberty's "Npue Schar" does not mean very much, given the
limited and ephemeral character of the phenomenon. What seems far more significant was the
rejection of expressionism and the choice of a highly stylized kind of painting, such as one finds
from the very start in the illustrations of the youth movements' publications.
102. One cannot fail to note that several of the psychological characteristics we have just
mentioned have often been identified as being particular to the "fascist personality." Further-
more, it has often been noted to what a great extent fascism idolized youth and was itself a "youth
movement." George Mosse, who has placed particular emphasis on this aspect of fascism, notes
that the fascist leaders themselves were for the most part men who were still young: "Mussolini
was 39 when he became Prime Minister, Hitler 44 on attaining the Chancellorship. Leon Degrelle
was in his early thirties, and Primo de Rivera as well as Codreanu were in their late twenties. . . .
Indeed, when they inveighed against the bourgeoisie they meant merely the older generation
which could never understand a movement of youth." (George L. Mosse, "The Genesis of
Fascism,'' Journal of Contemporary History l,no. 1 [1966], pp. 18-19). Robert Brasillach and
Drieu La Rochelle practically equated youth with fascism: in the thirty-year old Brasillach, who
has just discovered the marvels of fascism, we recognize all the major themes that inspired the
adolescents of the Wanden'ogel, but in an extreme form. (See Robert Brasillach, "Notre avant-
guerre," in Une Generation dans I'orage, p. 205ff.). A study of the deep psychological
connections between fascism and youth remains to be written.
103. See especially two articles by Walter Laqueur, "Reflections on Youth Movements"
and "The Archeology of Youth," reprinted in his book. Out of the Ruins ofEurope.
104. This assertion is not based on a formal survey, but rather on an intuitive evaluation of
the situation, based on my observation of various university settings both in the United States and
in Europe.
1 05 Daniel Bell. The End ofIdeology: On the Exhaustion ofPolitical Ideas in the Fifties.
106. Kenneth Keniston, The Uncommitted: Alienated Youth in American Society,
pp. 102-103. We should point out that in Keniston's study the totally "uncommitted" student
appeared to be an exception. I am suggesting, however, that this is an "ideal type" which
reflects the tendency of a very large segment, if not the majority, of American youth.
107. Ibid., pp. 113, 117.
108. Ibid., pp. 173n"., 1990".
109. AlexanderMitscheTlich, Society without a Father, trans. Erich Mosbacher. p. 141.
1 10. Jacques Le Goff, "Les mentalites: Une histoire ambigue," in J. Le Goffand P. Nora,
Fairede I'histoire. vol. 1, p. 80.
111. Ibid., pp. 84,91.

1 1 2. Lucien Febvre, Combats pour I'histoire, p. 229.
1 13. Alphonse Dupront, "L'histoire apres Freud," Revue de I'Enseignement superieur.
nos. 44-45 (1969), p. 36.
114. The reason for this qualification is clear: one can study, as Robert Mandrou has done,
for example, French mentality in the seventeenth century as a global phenomenon (see Robert
Mandrou, Introduction a la France moderne, 1500-1640: Essai de psychologic historique), or
one can study a particular aspect of this mentality, such as religious mentality or peasant
mentality.
. f
Notes— Chapter Three 149

115. Despite their applicability to the general problems in the study of collective men-
talities, we cannot take account here of the vast number of works and discussions devoted to the
question of "national character." The debate over "national character" has in fact become a field
unto itself; thus, the bibliography of a work published
1960 on the study of national character
in
lists close to a thousand titles, treating essentially of theoretical and methodological questions.
See H. C. J. Duijker and N. H. ¥n]ddi. National Character and National Stereotypes.
1 16. David Riesman, "Psychological Types and National Character," American Quar-
terly, no. 5 (1953), p. 329.
117. Ibid., pp. 330-332.
118. As examples of oversimplifications in this domain one can cite the numerous works of
Geoffrey Gorer, the best known of which is The People of Great Russia (in collaboration with
John Ryckmann).
1 19. Louis Dumont, Homo hierarchicus: Essai sur le systeme des castes, p. 15.
1 20. G. E. von Griinebaum. L Identite culturelle de I'Islam, p. 1
121. Serge Moscovici, Essai sur I'histoire humaine de la nature, pp. 5-6.
122. Devereux, Essais d'ethnopsychiatrie generale, p. 5.
123. Febvre. Combats pour I'histoire, p. 235.

1 24. Lafaye, Quetzelcoatl et Guadalupe.
125. Le Goff, "Les mentalites," pp. 86ff.
1 26. Devereux, Essais d'ethnopsychiatrie generate.
1 27. Ernesto De Martino. La Terre du remords, espjecially pp. 303ff.
128. Popular literature is perhaps more important in this instance than "great" literature.
Robert Mandrou has provided an excellent demonstration of its importance in his hook.De la cul-
ture populaire aux XVI f et XVIlf siecles: La Bibliolheque de Troves.
129. On this subject, see Anton Ehrenzweig's remarks on modem art in L'Ordre cache de
I'art, pp. 102. 162ff. For the analysis of contemporary mentalities, the study of films is essential.
The significance of a popular film is equal to that of the most widely read book, due to the direct
impact of the image and the interaction between the spectator and the screen, which is just as deep
as the one between the reader and the printed page. But only a thematic analysis of a great number
of films can overcome the inherent obstacles posed by the composite nature of this mode of
expression. For this reason, the conclusions drawn by Gregory Bateson from his analysis of the
Nazi film. Hitlerjunge Quex, are not very convincing: the same can be said of Erikson's analysis
of the Soviet film, The Childhood of Maxim Gorky. For a summary of Bateson's analysis, see
Margaret Mead and Rhoda Metraux. The Study of Culture at a Distance, pp. 302 ff.: for
Erikson's study, see the \as\c\\&p\tr o^Childhood and Society. The comparative study by Martha
Wolfenstein and Nathan Leites, presented in their book. The Movies: A Psychological Study, is
methodologically far superior, despite some of the simplistic parallels the authors draw between
the present and the distant past.
1 30. Dupront, '^L'histoire apres Freud," p. 46.
131. Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages.

1 32. Michel Vovelle, Mourir autrefois: Attitudes collectives devant la mort aux XVI
etXVIII^ siecles, p. 9.
133. Marc Raeff. to cite one example, was not able to avoid this pitfall in his otherwise
extremely suggestive study on the collective mentality of the Russian nobility in the eighteenth
century. Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia: The Eighteenth Century Nobility. For a very
pertinent critique of Raeffs work, especially in the perspective we are adopting here, see Michael
Confino, "Histoire et psychologie: a propos de la noblesse russe au XVIII siecle," Annates
ESC, vol. 22, November-December 1967.
134. Alex Inkeles and Daniel J. Levinson. "National Character the Study of Modal
Personality and Sociocultural Systems." in Gardner Lindzey and Elliott Aronson, The Hand-
book of Social Psychology, vol. 4, p. 427.
J 50 History and Psychoanalysis
135. For this range of choices, see in particular Inkeles and Levinson, "National Char-
acter." p. One of the chief weaknesses of the volume on culture and personality edited by
447.
Margaret Mead and Rhoda Metraux (see note 129) is precisely that the essays included in it are
not comparative studies devoted to a few central problems, but rather dispersed monographs
that do not allow one to draw any conclusion based on the only valid basis, which is inter-
cultural comparison. It should be noted, however, that the problems posed by such intercultural
comparisons are not easy to resolve; they have generated. a large number of methodological
studies, not only in sociology and anthropology but in social psychology. We shall not enter into a
detailed discussion of these technical questions.
1 36. Le Roy Ladurie, Le Territoire de Vhistorien, pp. 395, 402.
137.The comparative study edited by Margaret Mead and Martha Wolfenstein, Child-
hood Contemporary Cultures, suffers from the absence of common points of reference. This
in
notwithstanding, the analogous conclusions reached by several studies referring to the same
general theme and presented by several co-authors of the volume for example, Martha —
Wolfenstein's and Frangoise Dolto's studies concerning the differences between French and
American children — are not lacking in importance.
1 38. For a particularly suggestive study on the relation between the global social context,
the forms of child-rearing and certain characteristics of the American mentality, see David M.
Potter, People ofPlenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character.
1 39. We could in fact add a fourth level of analysis, that of particular modes of thought (in
the formal sense), which some scholars believe they have discerned through an analysis of the
divergent structures of languages. See, for example, Benjamin L. 'Whori, Language, Thought and
Reality, Edward Sapir, Language, Culture and Personality; Hagime Nakamura, The Ways of
Thinking ofEastern Peoples.
1 40. Alain Besangon, Le Tsarevitch immole, pp. 72ff.
141. Ibid., p. 78.
142. Ibid., p. 240.

143. Ibid., p. 241.
144. Ibid.
145. In his contribution to the collective volume, Faire de I'histoire, Alain Besangon
repeats this interpretation of Russian culture through an analysis of Chemyshevsky's What Is To
Be Done? and Dostoevsky's Aô/e^/rom Underground. (See Alain Besangon, •'L'inconscient:
L'episode de la prostituee dans Que faire? et dans Le Sous-Sol, " in Le Goff and Nora, Faire de
I'histoire, vol. 3, p. 31). But in a previous essay. Besangon implicitly reversed the roles of the
mother and the father, so that it was the dangerous, castrating woman, the Oedipai mother, whom
the Russian man had to confront. (See Alain Besangon, "Fonction du reve dans ie roman russe,"
in Histoire et Experience du moi. )
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Index
8
Index
Aceticism. of youth movements, 109, 1 10 Bloch,Eduard,46,48

Ackermann, Nathan. 94 Bloch, Marc, 1
Adler, Alfred, 11, 13 Blok, and Oedipal crisis, 1 18
Adolescence: Bluher, Hans, 105
historical origin of, 101,103 Bockel, anti-Semitism of, 94
and psychic structure, 49 Bonaparte, Marie, 56, 57
Adomo, Theodore W., typology of. 73, 74, 94 Bouvard, common sense of, 2
Ahasverus the Wandering Jew, 94 Brahms, 59
Allport, Gordon, 10 British Journal of Psychology, 44
Alorese society, 36-37, 85 Bronnen. Amolt, 108
American Historical Association, 4 Brothers Karamazov, The (Dostoevsky). 53,
American New Criticism, 50 119
Anal stage, and society, 102 Brown, Norman O., 32
Anti-Semitism. See also Hitler, Adolf Briicke, on Freud. 40
of Hitler. 45^8 Bullitt. William, on Wilson, 43, 64, 66, 68
psychology of. 92-95 Bunde. 106

Antisemitisme nazi, L' (Friedlander), 88, 94, Burte, on youth. 108
95 Bychowski, Gustav, 46
Arban, Dominique, 29
Aries, Philippe, 101 Cabinet ofDr Caligari. The. 108, 109
Aron. Raymond, 3. 62 Calvinism, and aggression, 30
Art and Illusion (Gombrich), 60 Castorp, Hans, 105
Authoritarianism, and typology, 73fT., 74 Castration complex:
intensity of, 32
Baldwin, Alfred, 25 and neurosis, 31-32
Barbu, Zevedei, 82 Catherine II. of Russia, 1 1
Barthes. Roland, 56 Cattel. R.. 10

Barzun. Jacques, anti-psychohistorical Charisma:
critique of. 4-6 and groups. 88
Baudelaire, fixationof, 61 and personality, 69-73
Beck, of Poland, 78 Chasseguet-Smirgel, Janine, 54. 55
Berkeley, Bishop. 18 Cherubino. as adolescent. 101
Besangon, Alain, 18. 19, 29, 92, 1 18, 1 19 Childeric. fall of, 2
Bettelheim. Bruno. 88 Childhood and Society (Erikson). 41 45 ,
Bildungsroman, 101 Chingada, and half-caste, 81

Binion, Rudolph, 46 Churchill, Winston:
Binswanger. Ludwig. 11,17 and British policy. 63
Biography. See Psychobiography and defection. 78
Birague, Valentine de, 18, 19 illness of, 49
169
1 70 Index
Circumcision, as threat, 94 Ego:

Civilizationand its Discontents (Freud), 3 autonomous, 40-41
Ciemenceau, Georges, 78 and culture, 34-35, 39
Coles, Robert, 9, 72 and id, 1
Collective mentality, lllfT., 122. See also and regression, 100
Groups Ego and the Id, T/ie (Freud), 40
Collective phenomena. See Groups Ego ideal, and superego, 87
Comanches, society, 85 Ego psychology:
Combats pour I'histoire (Febvre), 1 and art, 53
Comparability, as scientific criterion, 24-25 on autonomy, 40-41
Confessions (Rousseau), 61 and culture, 20
Congressional Government (Wilson), 66 justification of, 16-17
Contemporaneity, principle of, 10 Ehrenzweig, Anton, 59
Content analysis, and personality, 25 Eissler, Kurt, 32
Convergence, as scientific criterion, 22 Eliot, T.S., 50
Countertransference: Elizabeth and Essex, 5
and history, 18 Elkins, Stanley, 85,86
use of, 1 Erikson. Erik:
Couvade. practice of, 1 criticisms of, 4
Creativity, and unconscious, 54 on development, and society, 84, 101, 102
Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky). 21 119 , and free will, 40
Crispi. of Italy, 78 on hardship. 69
Critique of Dialectical Reason (Sartre), 60 on Hitler, 45
Crusades, and Childeric, 2 on identity, 17, 41-42
Culture and personality: on ideology, 71, 72
paradigm of, 35-39, 83 on Luther, 27
and unconscious, 19-20 psychobiographies of, 70-73
stage model, 37
Danet,Amand, 91,92 Erkldren, 4,26,123
Da Vinci, Leonardo, Freud on, 43, 64 Escalona, Sibylle K., 44
Davis, Kingsley, 104 European Witchcraze. The (Trevor-
. . ,
De Gaulle, Charles, personality of, 63, 70 Roper), 91

Delay, Jean, 54 Existential psychology. See also Phenomen-
De Martino, Ernesto. 1 15 ological psychology
Demos, John, 83,84, 102 and psychoanalysis, 17
DerSohn (Hessenclever), 108 and psychological theory, 6
Description, role of, 2 Experimental psychology, use of. 6.9. 10. 15
Determinism, and psychoanalysis, 39-42 Eysenck, H. J., 10, 12
Devereux, Georges, 46, 90, 115
Dieu cache, Le (Goldmann), 5 Factorial analysis, 10
Dilthey, on religion, 2 Faraday, and typology, 75, 76
Displacement, of father, 1 12 Febvre, Lucien, 1, 2, 69, 1 13, 1 15
Documents, of psychohistory, 26-29 Fechner, and Freud, 40
Dodds.E. R.,4.82 Federal Republic, Germany, 98, 99
Dominicans, and witchcraft, 91 Fernandez, Dominique, 26, 57-59
Dostoevsky, Fyodor: Fetscher, Irving, 94
heroes of, 2 Fidus. illustrator. 109
and Oedipus, 118, 119 Final solution, 30. 88. See also Anti-Semitism
psychology of, 15,53 Fischer. Karl. 105. 107
Raskolnikov dream. 27-29 Fixation:
"Dostoevsky and Parricide" (Freud), 43 on mother. 2
Doubrovsky, Serge. 50 and typology, 79
DuBois. Cora. 36 Flaubert, 27,60.61
Duff Cooper, 78 Forrestal. James. 78
Dufrenne, Mikel, 36 Free acts, defined. 41
Du Gard, Roger Martin, 60 Free will. See Determinism, and psychoanlysis
Duillier, Fatiode, 75 Freud, Sigmund. See also Psychoanalysis
Dulles, John Foster. 78 acceptance/criticism of, 5, 6
Dumont. Lx)uis. 1 14 on art, 52, 54
Dupront, Alphonse. 26. 1 3. 1 1 1
determinism issue, 39
Durkheim. on social behavior. 30 on dreams, 22-23
3 81 1 7 3 3
Index 1 71
and empiricism, 12-16 Hanisch. recollections of, 48

on groups, 87-88 Hartmann, Heinz, 40
on history, personal, 1 1-12 Hassoun, Jacques, 18, 19
on Leonardo, 21-22 Heider, Grace, 44
and meta-history, 82 Heimann, on abstinence, 107
orthodox/neo-Freudians, 19, 20 Helmut Harringa, 106
paradigm of, 16 Hempel, Carl:
psychobiographies of, 43 model of. validity, 3
and reductionism, 3 1 ff. on social science, 3
seminars of, 43 Hessenclever, on authority, 108
on social model, 38 Hidden God, The (Goldmann), 51,52
and stages, 37 Hidden Order ofArt, 7'/2e(Ehrenzweig), 59
and structuralism, 52-53 Hilgard, Ernest L., 12
onWilson, 64, 66,68 Hitler, Adolf:
Fromm, Erich, 1 attack on Russia, explained, 3
Fiihrertum, 107 career choice of, 63
Functional autonomy, principle of, 10 and cultural values, 72, 73
"Function of Dreams, The . .
." (Besangon), and defection, 78
29 fantasy surrounding, 87
Future of an Illusion, The (Freud), 3 psychobiographies of, 45-48
and typology, 78, 79
Galen, classification of, 45 Hoffman, on De Gaule, 70
Gandhi: Holderlin, madness of, 2
authority conflict of, 70, 7 Holy Family ofDoni, The, 57
and typology, 74 Homer, mythology. 12
Ganymede, punishment, 58 Homogeneous/heterogeneous groups, 35. See
Garrison, Secretary of Defense, 67 also Groups
Gay, Peter, 106. 108 Homosexuality:
Gefolgschafstreue, 107 and art, 57,58
Genetic epistemology, use of, 9-10 latent, and youth movements, 109-1 10
Genghis Khan, 46 passive, 21
George, Alexander, on Wilson, 23-24, 49, tendency to, social, 33
64-68 Horney. Karen. 1
George, Juliette, on Wilson, 23-24, 49, 64-68 House, Colonel Edward, 66, 67
George III, King of England, 43-44, 49 Huerta, demands of, 67
Gestalten, and explanation, 23ff. Huizinga, Johan, 1 16
Gibbon, on Romans, 25-26 Hunt, David, 101-102
Gide, and Valery, 50 Hunter, on King George III, 49
Goethe, on adolescence, 101
Goffman, Irving, 83 Id: •
Gogol, and Oedipal crisis, 1 1 and ego, 16,41

Goldmann, Lucien, 5 1 5 2, 60 , and social structure, 38
Gombrich, E. H.,60,61 Identity:
Gough, G. H., 94 and coherence, 1 1
Grayson, Carry T., 67 formation of, 41-42

Greiner, recollections of, 48 of group, 83
Grillparzer, and Freud, 43 and self, 1
Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Idiographic sciences, 3
Ego (Freud), 87 Immolated Tsarevitch, r/ie(Besan(;on), 118
Groups. 8 Iff.: Informed Heart, r/!e(Bettelheim). 88
age groups, lOOff. Inkeles, Alex. 1 16
heterogeneous, 89ff. Internalization:
change, 95 ff. and groups, 89
phenomena, 89ff.
isolated models of. 35
homogeneous, 83ff. Internal life design, 42
and macro-history, 1 12ff. Intuition:
Gudunov, Boris, 18 1 contradictions in, 4
Guttmacher, M.S.,44 and documentation, 22
role of, 2, 3
Hamlet, 53 and system, 6-7
Hammer of the Witches, The, 91 value of, 26
1 72 Index
Israel, birth of, 32 Macro-history, 82, 1 12ff. See also Collective

Ivan the Terrible, 1 1 mentality; Groups
Madonna ofBruges, 57
Jean-Paul. Freud on, 43 Madonna of la Scala, 57
Jones, Ernest, 40 Magic Mountain, The (Mann), 105
Jorges, anti-Semitism of, 95 Malagasy society, 83
Jugendkultur, 109 Malinowski, Bronislaw, 20
Jung,CarI, 11,13, 17 Malleus Maleficarum, 91-92
Malraux:
as adventurer, 74
Kaplan, Abraham, 15, 22
novels of, 60
Kardiner, Abram, 36, 85
Manifest/latent contents, 29-30
Keniston, Kenneth, 101, 1 1
Mann, Thomas, 60, 105
Kierkegaard, social context, 5
Mannheim, Karl, 103
Klein, Melanie:
Manuel, Frank, 2
on art, 54, 55
Marrou, Henri, on documents, 26
and stages, 37
Marxism, context, 96, 123
Kleist, Freud on, 43
Maslow, Abraham, 41
Kol Nidre, interpretation of, 18, 19
Masturbation, guilt over, 32
Kracauer, Siegfried, 109
Mau-Maus, loyalty of, 46
Kris, Ernst, 52
Mauron, on art, 49
Kubizek, recollections of, 48
Mauss,Marcel, 30, 31,123
Kurth, Gertrud M., 45-47
May, Rollo, 1
Mayo, Admiral, and Wilson, 67
Lacan, Jacques, 16 McAdoo, Secretary of Treasury, 67
Lefaye, Jacques, 81 McAlpine, on George III, 49
La Fontaine, 2 McClelland, David:
Lagarde, Paul de, 95 on achievement. 89, 90
La Monte, and Wilson, 67 quantitative study of, 25
Langer, Walter, 46, 47 typologies of, 74-77
Langer, William L., on next assignment. 4, 60, Meehl, Paul E., comparative studies of, 1
82 Meta-history, 82
Language of Psychoanalysis, The (Laplanche Meyer, Konrad Ferdinand. 43
and Pontalis), 22 Michelangelo, 57-59, 64
Lansing, Secretary of State, 67 Michelet:
Laplanche, Jean, 22 fantasies of, 18-19,92
Laqueur, Walter, 106 study on, 56
La Rouchefoucauld, 2 Micro-history, 82
La Senne, personality theory of, 10 Mitscherlich, Alexander, 1 12
Lasswell, Harold, 74 Modal personality, defined, 1 16-1 17
Lazarsfeld-Jahoda, Marie, 94 Moran, Lord, 49
LeGoff, Jacques, 112, 113, 115 Morell, Dr.,49
Lenau, Freud on, 43 Moscovici, Serge. 1 14
Lenin: Moses and Monotheism (Freud), 32
illness of, 49 Murphy, Gardner, on theory, 10-1
and typology, 73, 74 Mutation, and change, 97
"Leonardo da Vinci" (Freud), 2
Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel, 96, 1 17
Levinson, Daniel 116
J., Namier. Sir Lewis. 4
Levi-Strauss, Claude, 30, 34, 52, 95-96 Napoleon Bonaparte:
Lewin, Kurt, 10 self-crowning. 63
Libidinal index, of civilization, 33 andtypology. 75.76, 78
Link, Arthur S., on Wilson, 24, 66-68 Napoleon III, and typology, 78
Linton, Ralph, 36, 85 Narcissism:
Lodge, Henry Cabot, 65 and charisma, 70
Loewenstein, Rudolf, 94 and peer group, 109
Luther (Fthwe), 1 regression in. 1 10
Luther, Martin, psychobiography of, 27, 44, and self. 1
70,71 Narcissistic completion, 55

Lyotard, Jean-Frangois, 59 National character, 112
1 5 1 1 7
13 1 1
Index 173
Neurosis. See also Psychoanalysis Possessed. The (Dostoevs\iy), 1 19
and art, 54 Possony, Stefan. 73
and history, 1 1-12 Pourunesociologiedu roman (Goldmann). 5
and Oedipus complex, 3 1-32
Privatism, and society, 104
and personality, 44 Projection, of Hitler. 46-47
Nisbet. Robert, 96, 97 Proust, 2,56
Nomothetic sciences, 3 Psychoanalysis. See also Freud, Sigmund:
Psychobiography
Oedipus complex. See also Freud, Sigmund; and art. 52fT.
Psychoanalysis and biography:
and anti-Semitism, 94 problems. 5, 21-22
and art, 53 scientific verification. 22fF.
and fixation, 21-22 branches of, 1
and Hitler, 47 and charisma, 70-73
intensity of, 32 and empiricism, 12-16
interpretations of, 15, 19, 20 historians on, 1,4
as model, 34 and history, aims, 1 1-12
and neurosis, 31-32 hypotheses, basic. 29-30
and Russians, 18 1 opposition to. 4. 14-15
and society, 102 and prediction. 1
variations in, 20 and psychological, theory, 6
Oedipus Rex, 53 and sociology, 3
Oelbermann, Robert, 1 07 structuralism, 33fF.
Oral stage, and society. 102 and unconscious. 18
Overdetermination: value of. 123
example of, 29 Psychobiography:
meaning of, 22-23 aims of. 30. 44
and art, 50ff.
Painter, George, 56-57 and collective identity. 69-73
Palmerston, Lord, 78 and political behavior. 62ff.
Panofsky. 59 problems of. 45 ff.
Paradigms, in psychohistory, 29fF. and psychoanalysis, 2 1 ff., 43fT.
Parricide, and sexuality, 53 and typology, psychohistorical. 73fr.
Parsons, Talcott: Psychological theory, multiplicity of, 6-7.
levels of analysis, 33, 96 See also Psychoanalysis
on personality, 30, 3 1 ,38 Puberty rites, primitive, 18
Paz.Octavio, 81
Peak experiences. 41 Quantitative analysis, as scientific criterion, 25
Pecuchet. 2 QuetzalcoatI, and Saint Thomas. 1 15
Petain, Marshal Henri, 63
Peter the Great, 118 Racine, and personality, 5
Phaeton, punishment, 58.59 Rapaport. David. 40. 41
Phenomenological psychology, 6, 9. See also Rapoport. Anatol. 12
Existential psychology Raskolnikov:
Phylogenesis, and ontogenesis, 32 dream of. 27-29
Physiological psychology, use of, 9 and Porfiry, 119
Piaget, Jean, theory of, 9-10 Rattner. Sidney. 6
Picard. Raymond. 50, 5 Raw Youth. A (Dostoevsky). 1 19
Picasso, 59 Reaction formation:
Piatt, Gerald, 38, 70 in art. 57
Plutarch, 5 verification of, 1
Plymouth Colony, childhood in, 83-85, 102. Reductionist thesis, 3 1 ff.
122 Reich. Wilhelm. 32

Poe, Edgar Allan, 56 Reichmann, Eva, 95
Poincare, of France, 78 Reik. Theodor, 18,19
Pollock, Jackson, 59 Religion and the Decline of Magic (Thomas),
Pontalis,J.-B..22 116
Popper, Karl, 14-16 Revolutionary personality, 74
Porfiry, Judge, 119 Reynaud. Paul. 63
Positivism, and psychoanalysis, 1 Rieff. Philip. 1
1 74 Index
Riesman, David. 1 13, 1 14 Sullivan, H.S., 86

Riley. Bridget,59 Superego:
Rogers. Carl, on psychological theory. 6 and social norms. 34-35. 39
Roheim. Geza. 32 weakness in, 36
Rokeach. Milton, typology of. 74
Romains. Jules. 60 Theory, framework of, 9ff.
Roman Empire: 25-26. 32 choice. 9fr.
Roosevelt. Franklin, illness of, 49 criteria, 10

Roosevelt. Theodore. 78 psychoanalysis, 1 Iff.
Rousseau. J. J.: determinism issue. 39-42

and adolescence. 101 documents, 26-29
archetype of. 6 paradigms. 29ff.
Royal Association of Artists. Poets, and psychohistorical explanation, 18ff.
Painters, 76 Third Reich. See also Hitler. Adolf
Rozanov. and Oedipal crisis. 1 18 regression in. 100
Russian Formalists. 50 social context, 30, 99-100
Russian Revolution, 118-119 symbolism of, 98, 99
Rutherford, and typ>ology. 75. 76 Thomas. Keith. 1 16
Tityus. punishment. 58, 59
Sachs. Hanns. on machine culture, 32 Tommaso Cavalieri. 58
Sambo personality. 85-86 Tonantzin (Virgin of Guadalupe). 81. 115
Sandemanians. and Faraday, 75 TondoPilti, 57
Sartre. Jean-Paul: Tondo Taddei, 57
on anti-Semitism, 93 Total institutions, 83. 88
biography of. 27 Total social facts. 1 23
on family milieu. 60-6 Totem and Taboo (Freud). 3
on groups. 83 Trevor- Roper. Hugh. 9 1 92 .
and psychoanalysis. 1 Trilling. Lionel. 50

on socialization, 61 Trobrianders. mores of, 20
Saussure. Raymoijd de. 33 Trotsky, Leon:
Schleiermacher. religious thought, 2 career choice, 63
Schneidman. on speech. 25 and typology, 75
Sempe, cartoon of, 7 Tsarevitch immole, Le (Besangon), 1 1
Sexual penersion. of Hitler. 46. 47 Turandot. 6

Shakespeare, psychology of. 53 Typological comparison, 26, 73ff.
Sheehan. textbook of. 6
Sheldon. W. H.. personality theory. 10 Van Gogh. Vincent, heredity of. 49
Shils. Edward. 73 Vatermord (%Tonncn). 108
Shofar. effect of, 1 Velly. Abbe, on Childeric, 2
Siegfried, 101 Venus and Two Cupids, 57
Slavery, psychology of, 85-86 Verstehen, A. 26. 123
Smelser. 30. 31,99 Veyne. Paul:
Sociology: on art. 50
and art. 5 on explanation, 3
and psychoanalysis. 30-3 Von Salomon, Ernst, as adventurer. 74
Sorciere. La(Michelet). 92 Vovelle, Michel. 1 16
Stahlin.Wilhelm. 107
Starobinski. Jean, 55. 56, 61 Waelder. Robert. 1
Stephane. Roger. 74 Wagner, and adolescence, 101
Stevenson, and Michelangelo, 59 Waite. Robert G. L., 47
Storr. Anthony, 54. 55 WallStreel.crashof 1929. 3
Strachey. Lytton, 5 Wandervogel, 105-107
Structuralism: Waning of the Middle Ages, The (Huizinga),
and art, 52-53 116
and change, 96 "Weak explanation." as narrative, 3
and symbolic relations, 33fT. Weber. Max:
as theoretical option, 7 on achievement. 89-90
value of. 1 19 on charisma. 69
Sublimation: Wedekind. Freud on. 43
and art. 54 Weimar Republic, and Third Reich, 97-100
verification of, 16 Weinstein, Edwin. 49
Index 175
Weinstein, Fred, 38. 70 Witchcraft, 91-92

West, Dean, and Wilson, 65 Wolfenstein, E. Victor, 74
Wilhelm,Theodor, 106 Woodworth, textbook of. 6
Wilhelm Mm/er (Goethe), 101 Woolf, Virginia, 49
Wilhelm II, Emperor, 78, 97 World War I, causes, 23
Wilson, Edmund, 50 Writer's Diary, A (Dostoevsky), 28
Wilson, Woodrow: Wyneken, Gustave, 106
Freud on, 43
illness of, 49-50
personality patterns, 23-24, 64-69, 1 22 Young Man Luther {Erikson), 71
WiltfeberiBuviQ), 106, 108 Youth, historical origins of, 103
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Prelude to Downfall: Hitler and the United States, 1939-1941

Reflexions sur I'avenir d'Israel

L'Antisemitisme Nazi: Histoire d'une psychose collective

With Mahmoud Hussein:

Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc.

Published in Great Britain by:

English translation copyright ® 1 978 by Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc.

Friedlander, Saul, 1932-

Translation of Histoire et psychanalyse.

Manufactured in the United States of America

1. The Theoretical Framework 9

2. Is Psychoanalytic Biography Possible? 43

When Histoire et psychoanalyse was completed in the spring of 1975, many

The remarkable proliferation of psychohistorical inquiry over the past two

subsequent study in a work which is certain to provide historians with a

facts are in essence psychological facts." In reality, the importance accorded

present-day historian can already go beyond the description of psychological

facts and attempt a theoretical interpretation that seems objectively neces-

Let me not be misunderstood: I am in no way suggesting that we banish

the historical study of psychological phenomena can be traced back to one of

"irreducible originality of an event," the historian cannot or must not

recourse to a whole series of generalizations whose bases the social sciences

cannot logically be conceived except in relation to a generalization; under-

voking the existence of an "objective mind." If the "objective mind" is

invariable, it cannot explain how we understand what is particular and

the past, ...''*

Hellenistic period,'"' historians simply shmgged their shoulders. Why?

factory a few historical studies written by well-known psychoanalysts such as

psychoanalysis to history— in other words, against the discipHne that is

enrich, not hinder, history in its chronological narration of concrete events

cite the terms in which Barzun defines history in general).

Two fundamental questions remain: how is the historian to choose between

that psychohistorical explanation is verifiable, that it does not replace facts by

As early as 1941, Sidney Rattner noted that the multiplicity of contemp-

description and intuitive evaluation. Let us repeat once again: systematic

Psychohistory, then, is the utiUzation of a systematic psychology— in this

The Choice of a Theory

In considering the range of contemporary psychological theories, the historian

hypotheses of experimental psychology, be it in the field of experimental

of these hypotheses are relevant to political science or the study of inter-

know how an argument. Piaget's thought, fascinating

by Eysenck and Cattel; in addition, the questiormaires and other measures

The Theoretical Framework 1

Jung, the conceptions of existential psychologists such as Rollo May and

psychoanalysis are identical: to discover human motivations, whether in the

psychoanalytic method by its very essence, historical. The notions of

reminiscences. Freud italicized this passage, notes PhiHp Rieff, and he

If it is not difficult to justify the choice of psychoanalysis as a theory suited

The controversies concerning the scientific status of psychoanalysis have

Statistical proof establishing the superiority of psychoanalytic therapy over

are concerned, one can empirically define a whole series of psychoanalytic

realities: every reader of Dostoevsky knows that Rogozhin hated Prince

What are we to conclude?

ments of the opponents of psychoanalysis, they are refutable. It is undeniable,

So be it. What nevertheless leads us to adopt the psychoanalytic theories as

We do not, and cannot, know whether all of the somewhat "mechanical"

At this point in our discussion, we must ask ourselves which branch of

The Theoretical Framework 1

The same is true of certain kinds of psychosis, notably of schizophrenia.