On the origins of psychoanalytic psychohistory

This article examines the origins and early development of psychoanalytically inspired psychohistory from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. It focuses on Erik H. Erikson, Bruce Mazlish, and Robert Jay Lifton and illustrates their contributions to psychoanalytic psychohistory. Erikson, Mazlish, and Lifton were core members of the Wellfleet group, a research project originally funded by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1965 to conceptualize the foundation of psychohistory. The article gives an account of the early history of the Wellfleet group and argues for specific historical reasons to explain why psychoanalytic psychohistory emerged on the East Coast of the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. A critique of the Wellfleet group in unpublished correspondence of Erich Fromm and David Riesman is also discussed.