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him of doing bad psychoanalysis and writing bad history. Psycho–
analytic practitioners have questioned the depth of Loewenberg's
clinical acumen, have been skeptical of his use of clinical data, and
have been quick to remind him of the obvious, that the dead do not
free-associate, joke, dream, or provide us with slips of the tongue the
way analysands do on a couch in an analyst's office. Analysts seem
reluctant to admit that a specialist from the humanities or social sci–
ences could achieve a subtle and incisive grasp of therapeutic issues.
Historians, for their part, have been unacquainted with or put off by
a psychoanalytic perspective. Only recently, and quite selectively, has
historical training included an immersion in psychoanalytic theory
and practice. Most historians trained in America lack a Freudian
cultural background; thus they are ill-prepared to entertain psycho–
analytic methods of inquiry and argumentation. Historians suffering
from facticity, the fetishism of facts, cannot accept the untraditional
forms of verification that go along with psychoanalytic interpreta–
tions of history. They are offended by analogical forms of thinking.
They distrust speculative leaps about what
feels
right as opposed to
what can be demonstrated empirically did happen. In two professions
so ostensibly committed to the comprehension of the past, it is not
surprising that mainstream historical and psychoanalytic thinking
tends to be conservative, deeply resistant to interpretative and meth–
odological innovations. For more than fifteen years, Loewenberg
has bucked misrepresentation, misunderstanding, suspicion, and
downright contempt of his work.
Decoding the Past
brings together the fruits of Loewenberg's labors,
and consequently provides us with an opportunity to write a prelimi–
nary assessment of his contribution. The volume consists of eleven
essays, four of which are previously unpublished (a paperback edition
just issued by the University of California Press includes an autobio–
graphical preface). Subtitled
The Psychohistorical Approach,
Loewenberg
has extended the boundaries of meaning in historical scholarship.
He has done so with a good deal of modesty, with clear prose, with a
modulated passion akin to analytic tact, and with meticulous atten–
tion to documentation and evidence. He makes no grandiose claims
about his methodology. He is seldom messianic or polemical.
Loewenberg's psychohistory would be more accurately under–
stood as a number of approaches. He has mastered a vast armamen–
tarium of psychoanalytic theoretical perspectives and insights, begin–
ning with Freud's classical model of instinctual drives and defenses,
borrowing generously from the ego psychologists and Eriksonians
who pointed to the adaptive as well as neurotic aspects of defenses;
