“History,” James Joyce wrote in the voice of Stephen Daedalus, “is a nightmare, from which I am trying to awake.”

Although both Freud and Jung delved into an often imagined prehistory to justify their theories, their case histories tend to be rooted firmly in the here and now or recent genealogy. The modern psychology of response and stimulus and adaptation to an arguably dysfunctional world almost completely ignores any historical dimension.

History intersects with our psyches in two ways. First there is what we might call the weight of history: the way ideas and events from long, long ago still determine our behavior, often in unexpected, mysterious ways. Such regressions or reiterations can pop up quite suddenly, especially in collective behavior. History does tend to repeat itself in some way, even, or perhaps especially, if we are not consciously aware of it.

Second, there is the fact that the social world that surrounds us is historically determined. It is both the product of the past, bearing its scars and marks, and a context unique to this point in time and hence necessarily fleeting. The future, different from both present and past, is an important and oft-overlooked part of the flow of historical time. We have little, but a precious little, control over this future that is constantly being produced.

History never ends, we cannot wake up from it; but perhaps if we think about it and investigate it more, we can wake up to it, at once learn from it and liberate ourselves a little from its thrall.