Understanding History’s Impact: Or, How to Avoid Reading the Present Onto the Past

  • This essay addresses some of the challenges involved in accounting for history’s impact on psychological development. First, I consider how the personal beliefs and theoretical assumptions of psychoanalysts and historians can limit their understanding of other people, whether in the past or the present. Second, I examine the degree to which an individual’s perception and understanding is always a reflection of the collective cultural understanding in which that person lives. I apply these two observations to the discussion of how European Jewish psychoanalysts responded to the traumas of the Holocaust in the decades afterWorld War II. I suggest that individual responses were shaped by the absence of a collective discourse about the Holocaust during this time. When examining the past, I maintain that psychoanalysts and historians should be cautious, lest their current theories determine their understanding of the past.

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Metadaten
Author:Roger Frie
Parent Title (English):Psychoanalysis, Self and Context, Vol. 12 (2017), pp. 269-276.
Document Type:Articles
Language:English
Year of first Publication:2017
Release Date:2019/03/04
Format:PDF-file upon request / PDF-Datei auf Anfrage
IdNo:Frie_R_2017a
Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive:Articles / Artikel
Licence (German):
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