Psychoanalysis and History

The relationship between history and psychoanalysis has long been contentious, starting with Freud’s ambivalence toward history, with some declaring the two fields to be largely incommensurable. The contributors to this special issue rethink this complicated dynamic, demonstrating both the uses of psychoanalysis for interrogating historical narratives and the importance of history for psychoanalytic analysis. Essays address how psychoanalysis reframes the ways historians have represented the Holocaust and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, investigate neoliberal group psychology by studying the emergence of QAnon, trace the political trajectories of psychoanalysis in the mid-twentieth century, and find previously unexplored links between Freud and the US plantation economy. Together, the essays testify to the importance of considering the unconscious dimensions of thought when attempting to understand the workings of politics and representations of the past.

Contributors. Max Cavitch, Zahid R. Chaudhary, Alex Colston, Brian Connolly, Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, David L. Eng, Joan Wallach Scott, Carolyn Shapiro, Michelle Stephens