More than most research psychologists, I have provided historical analyses and theoretical integrations of the topics I investigate. Such broad contributions are only moderately prized and can even be injurious to the health of one's reputation. Several members of the psychological nomenklatura have asked me why a smart guy like me bothers with this history and theoretical integration stuff. I have explained, if not excused, this predilection in terms of peculiar values inculcated by my atypical educational background. The tradition of the new has long been central to the mainstream American research university, shaping scholars hungry to publish unprecedented innovations. In contrast, the Catholic university of my youth inculcated the tradition of continuity, encouraging one to find adumbrations of one's insights in past contributions. An example is the distinctiveness principle, developed in chapter 8, that one notices not what is there but what is missing, so that complex stimuli like the self are selectively perceived in terms of their peculiar (unpredictable, information-rich, distinctive) features. I reported foreshadowings of this principle in other thinkers stretching from the Upanishads, through Duns Scotus, Nicholas of Cusa, and the Lurian Cabala, to Buber, Pavlov, Lashley, and G. A. Miller (McGuire, 1984a; see chapter 8 in this volume). My aberrant schooling encouraged the use of creativity to discover, not the uniqueness of one's insight, but its enriching connectedness. This chapter presents as examples my interpretive histories of social psychology and of political psychology, and then a discussion of the use of historical data in psychology.