Historia i psychologia. Krótki raport o niespełnionym projekcie

Abstract

The article is a form of author’s farewell with the hopes for institutional and systematic cognitive cooperation of psychology and history beyond the paradigm of psychoanalysis. The fact that, both at the Polish and global scale, there is no relatively stable centre that would be interested in moderating such cooperation is given as the reason for this situation. The article provides an in-depth characterization of the last undertaking of this type, namely the cyclic conferences organized in the years 1996–2002 at the University of Ghent. The circle gathered around that place promoted the term: “psychological history”. It describes research from the borderland of psychology and history that exceeds the mere use of psychoanalysis for historical research i.e. the narrowly understood psychohistory. Despite these declarations, which resulted both from undertaking research that did not use Freudianism and from developing methodological reflexions, the Ghent conferences were also dominated by psychoanalytical works. Beyond that circle, the reader can encounter only sporadic and often random undertakings that combine psychology and history. The article analyzes a series of examples of this type, particularly taking into account the history of business – and more broadly – the historical elements in management. Contrary to the pessimistic genesis of the article, it ends with pointing to the potential area of academic cooperation between psychology and history. The cooperation is marked by a relatively new branch of management i.e. the organizational history which is focused, among other things, on “historicizing subjectivities.”