This book explores the conviction that psychoanalysis and history can, through active dialogue, learn from each other, to understand ourselves better as individuals and societies.

With a methodological focus, each chapter captures a live dialogue between a psychoanalyst and a historian, enriched by discussion and further refinement. Chapters relate the subjectivity of clinical psychoanalysis to the structuring of social and national groups. Topics range across politics, international conflicts, class and the effects of trauma on the individual and the group.

With insights on a wide range of historical and contemporary social and political topics and many aspects of human experience, this is key reading for psychoanalysts, historians, social scientists and anyone wanting a deeper understanding of human nature and experience.

Karl Figlio is Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex; Clinical Associate, British Psychoanalytical Society and Senior Member, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Association, British Psychotherapy Society. Books include Remembering as Reparation: Psychoanalysis and Historical Memory (2017), Rethinking the Psychoanalysis of Masculinity: From Toxic to Seminal (2024).

Anthony D. Kauders is Professor Emeritus of Modern History, Keele University. He has published in German-Jewish history, antisemitism and the history of psychology, including Der Freud-Komplex. Eine Geschichte der Psychoanalyse in Deutschland (Berlin, 2014). He is currently using social psychological concepts to understand modern antisemitism. Recent work has appeared in Antisemitism Studies, Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung, Geschichte und Gesellschaft and Holocaust and Genocide Studies.