What can Freudian psychohistory tell us?

Lloyd Demause describes psychohistory as "the science of patterns of historical motivations" and asserts that it is "a science, not narrative art like history". Freud is known as the founder of the psychoanalytical school of thought, the ideas of which can be used with historical enquiry to form psychohistory. Benjamin Wolman believes that a historian's job is to discover "what has happened in history" but psychohistory is useful as it presents a new way of …

…Chicago, 1989), Demause, Lloyd, 'Foundations of Psychohistory', http://www.geocities.com/kidhistory/found/p132x146.htm , January 2006, Gay, Peter, 'Freud for Historians' (Oxford, 1985), Lifton, Robert Jay, 'The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide' (New York, 1926), Merriman, John, 'A History of Modern Europe: From Renaissance to the Present' (London, 2004), Stannard, David E., 'Shrinking History: On Freud and the Failure of Psychohistory' (Oxford, 1980), Wolman, Benjamin B., 'The Psychoanalytical Interpretation of History' (London, 1971). Word Count - 1,822.