An Adlerian Psychohistorian

I began my training in psychoanalysis late in my career as a historian, though an interest in the subject preceded, by many years, my actual decision to formally study and train in psychoanalysis. I had been introduced to some of Freud’s writings when I was an undergraduate at the City University of New York and was fascinated by them. My interest deepened during graduate studies when I did work on the beginnings of the psychological profession in the United States and G. Stanley Hall’s involvement in

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bringing Freud to Clark University again brought me into contact with psychoanalysis, particularly its influence on the intellectual climate of the day.

More recently, in the course of studying second generation immigrants during the 1930s, I discovered that the concept of the inferiority complex was commonly used in explaining whatever ailed the children of immigrants. I became interested in the origins of the idea and that took me to Alfred Adler, but it has also influenced me much more broadly.

I began my training in 1993 and it has been a fascinating journey, both in its clinical and theoretical dimensions. It has deeply impacted on my perception of human motivation and experience, and has influenced how and what I teach. I am much more sensitized to the felt experience, and am mindful of Robert Stoller’s injunction about the necessity of bringing the subjective into the social sciences.

I continue to work on Adler’s influence in the United States, which was in some ways more pervasive than Freud’s though far less recognized. I am also working on the impact of migration in the American experience. Psychoanalytic perspectives have been very helpful, and in this connection I have been much aided by the work of Salman Akhtar, “A Third Individuation: Immigration, Identity, and the Psychoanalytic Process,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 1995, 43:1051-1084, and of Leon and Rebeca Grinberg, Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Migration and Exile, trans. Festinger (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).

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