From the couch to the archive - Psychoanalysis applied to History: the case of Peter Gay

Abstract

It is evaluated how the German-American historian Peter Gay (1923-2015) appropriated Psychoanalysis in History. To this end, we probe how objects (in this case, the unconscious), theories (specifically, the Oedipus complex), methods (regression, free association and the analysis of dreams, lapses and jokes) and the narrative forms (“case histories”) employed by Freud in the clinic and in the criticism of culture were re-signified in Gay’s historiographical practice, mainly in his works published from the 1980s onwards, period in which his intellectual project is consolidated. It is concluded that the psychoanalytic contribution made it possible for the historian, in addition to reviewing the role played by the bourgeoisie in the last three centuries, to expand the thematic, theoretical, methodological and aesthetic horizon of the discipline.

Keywords: Theory of History; History methodology; Historiography