Freud for Historians

Is psychoanalysis a legitimate tool for helping us understand the past?

Many traditional historians have answered with an emphatic no, greeting the introduction of Freud into historical study with responses ranging from condescending scepticism to outrage.

Now Peter Gay, one of America's leading historians, builds an eloquent case for "history informed by psychoanalysis" and offers an impressive rebuttal to the charges of the profession's anti-Freudians. In this book, Gay takes on the opposition's arguments, defending psychoanalysis as a discipline that can enhance social, economic, and literary studies.

No mere polemic, Freud for Historians is a thoughtful and detailed contribution to a major intellectual debate.

"Gay is one of those rare academics whose competence in psychoanalysis is hardly less than his expertise in historical research."--The New York Times

"An impassioned, compelling argument for the utility of the psychoanalytic perspective to inform historical studies."--Library Journal "Incisive, persuasive, a delight to read...[It] should spark wide controversy for a long time to come."--Los Angeles Times Book Review