HIST2312 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Class Conflict, Marc Bloch, Karl Popper
Week 4 Lecture – Freud, Psychohistory and the History of Emotions
No classes Week 10 – tutorials week 12
Intro:
• Tend to pick and choose – borrow from different schools
• Pshohist as a shool of histor ut Freuds ifluee
• Critics of Freud in history writing – died 1939 – morphed into new ideas for internal
mental life – methodology
• Freud was precursor to new subject of the History of Emotions
Freud in Context:
• 1930-1960 – boom period for interest
• Counter-actions then action against the reaction
• Approaching as historians
Significance:
• Causation in history – thigs dot happe aidet eerthig has a cause,
theory of causation)
o Religious – Proidee ultiatel Gods pla for huait, seular ersio
of humanity with theology)
o Marxist – historical materialism (all history is the history of class struggle)
o Freudian – the uosious id (new theory on what motivated human
actions, enable us to explain the real motivations behind the actions of
leaders and in doing so created history) – trying to understand within the
context of their time
o Marx (class struggle is the motivating factor) – Freud (the unconscious exists
prior to ones conscious of belonging to a class)
• One of the 3 great social scientist – Freud, Marx, Vaber – s-6
• Extended into linguist, political sciences – extended outside discipline
• Developed psychoanalysis as way of treating mental illness and explained the
human mind and the social and cultural world it creates – practical element
• Coincides with rise of social scientists – saw as the science of the human mind
• Irrational event was rise of Hitler – had to understand the human mind
• Draw attention to things that had not been seen – shifting of focus (sexual relations,
childhood, madness)
• Contribution – whether direct or indirect
• Who is the major subject?
• Psychohistorian on the individual and their unconscious motivation rooted deep in
the psyche
Sigmund Freud:
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