Psychology and History
Interdisciplinary Explorations

Exploring the relationship between psychology and history, this book considers how the disciplines could benefit from a closer dialogue.

Cristian Tileag? (Edited by), Jovan Byford (Edited by)

9781107034310, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 20 February 2014

324 pages, 8 b/w illus.
23.5 x 16 x 2.5 cm, 0.58 kg

'This is a very welcome collection of rich and in-depth explorations of just how, and why, psychologists need to see their research as historically and culturally contextualised, rather than pursuing 'universals'. These papers, by leading figures in the field, also show how truly innovative cross-disciplinary work can be, generating new questions as well as new solutions.' Helen Haste, Harvard Graduate School of Education and University of Bath

As disciplines, psychology and history share a primary concern with the human condition. Yet historically, the relationship between the two fields has been uneasy, marked by a long-standing climate of mutual suspicion. This book engages with the history of this relationship and possibilities for its future intellectual and empirical development. Bringing together internationally renowned psychologists and historians, it explores the ways in which the two disciplines could benefit from a closer dialogue. Thirteen chapters span a broad range of topics, including social memory, prejudice, stereotyping, affect and emotion, cognition, personality, gender and the self. Contributors draw on examples from different cultural contexts - from eighteenth-century Britain, to apartheid South Africa, to conflict-torn Yugoslavia - to offer fresh impetus to interdisciplinary scholarship. Generating new ideas, research questions and problems, this book encourages researchers to engage in genuine dialogue and place their own explorations in new intellectual contexts.

Foreword Kenneth J. Gergen
Introduction: psychology and history - themes, debates, overlaps, and borrowings Cristian Tileag? and Jovan Byford
Part I. Theoretical Dialogues: 1. History, psychology and social memory Geoffrey Cubitt
2. The incommensurability of psychoanalysis and history Joan Wallach Scott
3. Bringing the brain into history: behind Hunt's and Smail's appeals to neurohistory Jeremy Burman
4. The successes and obstacles to the interdisciplinary marriage of psychology and history Paul Elovitz
5. Questioning interdisciplinarity: history, social psychology and the theory of social representations Ivana Marková
Part II. Empirical Dialogues: Cognition, Affect and the Self: 6. Redefining historical identities: sexuality, gender, and the self Carolyn Dean
7. The affective turn: historicising the emotions Rob Boddice
8. The role of cognitive orientation in the foreign policies and interpersonal understandings of Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1937–41 Mark E. Blum
9. Self esteem before William James: phrenology's forgotten faculty George Turner, Susan Condor and Alan Collins
Part III. Empirical Dialogues: Prejudice, Ideology, Stereotypes and National Character: 10. Two histories of prejudice Kevin Durrheim
11. Henri Tajfel, Peretz Bernstein and the history of Der Antisemitismus Michael Billig
12. Historical stereotypes and histories of stereotypes Mark Knights
13. Psychology, the Viennese legacy and the construction of identity in Yugoslavia Cathie Carmichael
Conclusion: barriers to and promises of the interdisciplinary dialogue between psychology and history Cristian Tileag? and Jovan Byford.

Subject Areas: Social, group or collective psychology [JMH], Social & cultural history [HBTB], General & world history [HBG], History: theory & methods [HBA]