Review of Peter Gay's "Freud for Historians"

[The above video is mostly a reading of the text below, with an occasional aside thrown in for good measure as they strike me as relevant.  I welcome questions, comments, or concerns about the material contained in this video.]

“Freud for Historians” is the third book of a trilogy that began with “Style in History” (1974) and “Art and Act” (1976). In the earlier books, Gay used some unchallenged assumptions of his field, and therefore used the third book in order to explain the basis for his historical methodology. Gay is a psychohistorian – that is, a historian whose work is consciously influenced by the work of Sigmund Freud, specifically psychoanalysis. He has quite rightly perceived Freud to be under attack from many corners, not least from academic historians, and uses this book to explain how Freud can shed some light on the historical experience and human psychological understanding when used intelligently. 

Gay notes that historians have had a curious aversion toward psychohistory. He makes a strong case that, besides just a simple recounting of events, historians also need a way of discussing the motivations, passions, desires, and needs of historical actors. Where to look for a model? While historians have been reluctant to appropriate Freud, this, he argues is far from their only problem: even some of the most accomplished historians have also misunderstood, deliberately distorted, or even lied about him in their academic work. 

“What psychoanalysis can bring to the assessment of past experiences is a set of discoveries and a method – fallible, incompletely tested, difficult to apply yet, I am persuaded, the best we now have to register the broken surfaces and sound the unplumbed depths of human nature” (p. 77). Gay concedes that much of the problems might be Freud’s reputation as a monolithic, reductive determinist (“biology is destiny”) who leaves no room for the complexities of class, culture, or other variables in individual lives. But he makes a tight and compelling case that a sophisticated reading of Freud mitigates against these assumptions; furthermore, psychoanalysis was never meant to be handed down by the Founding Father as a set of unassailable dictates. Instead, while Freudian drives are seen by critics as being the sole factors of influence, all historians import a psychology into their work to describe “persistent human wishes, gratifications, and frustrations.” While Freud can be used as a valuable heuristic, this by no means lessens the capacity for culture and other environmental factors to affect human agency. 

Gay might be best known for his five-volume history called “The Bourgeois Experience: From Victoria to Freud,” one volume of which (“The Cultivation of Hatred”) I read several years ago. I remember thinking it was an odd project, and certainly a kind of history with which I was completely unfamiliar; the Freudianism seemed out of place, and I felt a little embarrassed for Gay for importing such stuff into his work. However, reading this, the arc of his life’s work makes much more sense. If someone were to ask me what I think of Freud, my response may very well be a function of the time of day and my mood instead of my objective knowledge of his work. However, the capaciousness of Gay’s intellect and his refusal to grow complacent within his chosen tradition had me constantly rooting him on while reading this. His is a model for cultural and intellectual work, and this is a fine apologia for those interested in opening up new historical byways.