As disciplines, psychology and history share a primary concern with the human condition. Yet historically, the relationship between the two fields has been uneasy, marked by a long-standing climate of mutual suspicion. This book engages with the history of this relationship and possibilities for its future intellectual and empirical development. Bringing together internationally renowned psychologists and historians, it explores the ways in which the two disciplines could benefit from a closer dialogue. Thirteen chapters span a broad range of topics, including social memory, prejudice, stereotyping, affect and emotion, cognition, personality, gender and the self. Contributors draw on examples from different cultural contexts - from eighteenth-century Britain, to apartheid South Africa, to conflict-torn Yugoslavia - to offer fresh impetus to interdisciplinary scholarship. Generating new ideas, research questions and problems, this book encourages researchers to engage in genuine dialogue and place their own explorations in new intellectual contexts.

‘An engaging volume exploring potentials and problems in relating psychology and history, drawing on recent developments in discursive and critical psychology. Looming in the background is the Holocaust with efforts to understand it intellectually, politically and personally.'

William McKinley Runyan - University of California, Berkeley and author of Psychology and Historical Interpretation and Life Histories and Psychobiography

‘This is a very welcome collection of rich and in-depth explorations of just how, and why, psychologists need to see their research as historically and culturally contextualised, rather than pursuing 'universals'. These papers, by leading figures in the field, also show how truly innovative cross-disciplinary work can be, generating new questions as well as new solutions.'

Helen Haste - Harvard Graduate School of Education and University of Bath