Having covered the main nineteenth-century reflections on the changeability and immutability of man as a cultural being, we begin this chapter with a discussion of the subconscious and the changeable side of man. Whether we realise it or not, psychoanalytic concepts dealing especially with the subconscious have become a part of our daily lives. When you tell a friend who is angry with you that he ‘shouldn't take it out on you’, you are making a psychoanalytic remark that demonstrates your awareness that the anger is not directed at you but stems from an unpleasant experience — perhaps one that occurred in the past. In any case, it is something that you yourself are not responsible for. Concepts such as ‘a defense mechanism’ or ‘an inferiority complex’ have become so commonplace that we use them even in our conversations in the pub. The disadvantage of using these terms so loosely is that we do not always know exactly what we are talking about with all our psychoanalysing. Moreover, if ‘psychoanalysis’ leaves too large a footprint in our lives, it gives us the feeling that we are structurally sick or abnormal. All this can culminate in a distrust of psychological babble and lead to the conclusion that psychoanalysis is nothing but mindless babble.

Yet it can be useful to examine several concepts from the field of psychoanalysis for two reasons. First, psychoanalysis can genuinely help one to analyse a culture more thoroughly, and second, cultural theorists frequently used concepts from psychoanalysis over the course of the twentieth century, which led to decisive steps being taken in the field. In this chapter we will first explain a number of key concepts stemming from what is now known as ‘classical psychoanalysis’ — that of Sigmund Freud. Our use of these psychoanalytic concepts is obviously very simplified, and we do not delve into the development or the complexity of Freud's way of thinking. We will discuss the way in which psychoanalysis was applied in the social sciences at the beginning of the twentieth century, particularly by the École des Annales in France, and what the consequences were for research into the history and sociology of culture.