In Decoding the Past, Peter Loewenberg has collected eleven of his brilliant essays on psychohistory, a discipline that has emerged from the synthesis of traditional historical analysis and clinical psychoanalysis. He surveys this relatively new field its methods and its problems to show the special contributions that psychoanalysis can make to history. He then further explores the psychohistorical method by applying it to studies of personality, cultures, groups, and mass movements, demonstrating that psychohistory offers one of the most powerful of interpretive approaches to history. Decoding the Past is an impressive study that demonstrates the range of Loewenberg's own work in history and psychoanalysis and the full promise of an important and innovative methodology for others. His new essay takes up many of the criticisms and concerns raised about the method of psychohistory, and offers a cogent defense for its continued usage.

In Fantasy and Reality in History, Peter Loewenberg, a historian, political psychologist, and psychoanalyst, brings what the discipline of psychoanalysis has learned about human conduct and the irrational to bear on the analysis and writing of history. The result is a remarkable series of studies on individual and social anxiety, racism and nationalism, and crisis management. The first section proposes psychohistorical theoretical and clinical perspectives on Freud, psychoanalysis, social structure, and culture. Loewenberg examines creative group process in early twentieth century Zurich and how the earliest practitioners of psychoanalysis - Freud, C.G. Jung, Karl Abraham, and others - established the discipline's understanding of the unconscious and how it functions. The second section explores the tensions in the lives and politics of modern political leaders. Loewenberg offers case studies including the pornographic sexual politics of the nineteenth-century British Liberal Prime Minister William E. Gladstone, interpretations of the self-sacrifice of the German-Jewish foreign minister Walther Rathenau, the ideas of Austrian President Karl Renner at resolving nationality conflicts, and the primitive psychic splitting of the contemporary Russian fascist demagogue Vladimir Zhirinovsky. The final section interprets manifestations of anxiety in history, and its expression in racism, anti-Judaism, Nazism, and nationalism. In each study, Loewenberg blends clinical and historical-political methods which not only produce new and exciting research, but also demonstrate how a psychoanalytic approach enriches our understanding of history, and how historical and social science perspectives mayinform the resolution of clinical conflicts.

This book offers a close glimpse of the nuanced dialectic between major psychoanalytic concepts and the sociopolitical environments in which such ideas were germinated, spread, took roots, and further evolved.

In Decoding the Past, Peter Loewenberg has collected eleven of his brilliant essays on psychohistory, a discipline that has emerged from the synthesis of traditional historical analysis and clinical psychoanalysis. He surveys this relatively new field--its methods and its problems--to show the special contributions that psychoanalysis can make to history. He then further explores the psychohistorical method by applying it to studies of personality, cultures, groups, and mass movements, demonstrating that psychohistory offers one of the most powerful of interpretive approaches to history.

Decoding the Past is an impressive study that demonstrates the range of Loewenberg's own work in history and psychoanalysis and the full promise of an important and innovative methodology for others. His new essay takes up many of the criticisms and concerns raised about the method of psychohistory, and offers a cogent defense for its continued usage.

This collection of essays on the 100 years of history of the International Psychoanalytical Association provides far more than a chronological account of events. Within its pages, one encounters pioneering presences in the world of psychoanalysis, savours endearing anecdotes, comes across phrases that are both quaint and novel, reads the accounts of various splits and also the emergence of new groups, sees new journals evolve, senses the excitement of fresh discoveries in the field, and partakes in a delightful and thrilling sojourn of thought and praxis. Even more importantly, the book offers a close glimpse of the nuanced dialectic between major psychoanalytic concepts and the sociopolitical environments in which such ideas were germinated, spread, took roots, and further evolved. Travelling from Freud's Vienna to locales as different from each other as the United States and Japan, Uruguay and India, England and Turkey, Brazil and China, Australia and Mexico, psychoanalysis retained its basic core while assimilating local expositions of theory and technique. Consequently, the binary essence of psychoanalysis shines throughout the various contributions to this book: all human beings are basically alike and each one is uniquely different. Such unified testimony to our disciplines essential humanity and respect for authenticity makes us feel grateful to the books contributors.'- Salman Akhtar, MD, Training and Supervising Analyst, Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia, and Professor of Psychiatry, Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia