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[[Freud ]] wrote little [[about ]] history, in the [[sense ]] that professional historians [[understand ]] that term, or about its [[relationship ]] to [[psychoanalysis]]. Nevertheless, [[three ]] remarks are in [[order]].From the outset, Freud posited [[psychoanalytic ]] investigation as [[being ]] linked to the reconstitution of the [[patient]]'s personal history. The aim was to restore this history to [[patients]], with the [[goal ]] of helping individuals emerge as the [[subject ]] and [[agent ]] of their own history through the lifting of the repressions that weighed it down, and breaking the pattern of repetitions that resulted from it. Initially Freud conceived of this [[process ]] as a restitution of buried traces in their entirety; he thus readily compared it with the task of the archaeologist who brings to light the strata of a buried [[past ]] layer by layer. Although he always maintained his fundamental hypothesis—that the [[psyche ]] forgets nothing—he came to believe that these "traces" undergo constant [[change ]] as they are reshaped through deferred [[action ]] and that they can therefore only be known through [[analysis ]] in this reworked [[form]], as he explained in "Constructions in Analysis" (1937).If Freud showed little interest in History as it is written by historians, by contrast he took a great interest in the prehistory and [[anthropology ]] of so-called [[primitive ]] peoples, above all at the [[time ]] when he was seeking to substantiate his views on phylogenesis as the basis for [[individual ]] psychogenesis. This was the period when he wrote <i>[[Totem ]] and [[Taboo]]</i> (1912-13a) and <i>A Phylogenetic [[Fantasy]]: [[Overview ]] of the [[Transference ]] [[Neuroses]]</i> (1987 [1915]).Finally, on several occasions Freud undertook a psychoanalytic [[interpretation ]] of significant personalities from both the past, such as [[Leonardo ]] [[da Vinci ]] ("[[Leonardo da Vinci ]] and a [[Memory ]] of His [[Childhood]]," 1910), and the [[present]], such as President Woodrow Wilson (<i>Thomas Woodrow Wilson, Twenty-Eighth President of the [[United States]]: A [[Psychological ]] Study</i>, with W. C. Bullitt, 1966). Returning to the story of [[Moses ]] in <i>Moses and [[Monotheism]]: Three Essays</i> (1939a), he sought to show that the [[theory ]] that Moses was an Egyptian would account for his [[mythical ]] [[role ]] of founder of a [[monotheistic ]] [[religion]].It was this type of [[work]], known as psychobiographical studies, that was most influential on certain of his successors. Notably, in this [[regard]], reinterpretations of [[Nazism ]] in [[terms ]] of Adolf [[Hitler]]'s [[personality ]] and [[psychopathology ]] can be cited; see, for example, Saul Friedländer's <i>[[History and Psychoanalysis]]: An Inquiry into the Possibilities and Limits of Psychohistory</i> (1975/1978). These studies have often drawn criticism (for example, from [[Alain ]] Besançon, after a 1974 work in which he tried this approach) for the reductionist tendency of some authors to overlook factors ([[cultural]], [[economic]], [[social]], etc.) operating [[outside ]] of individual [[psychic ]] functioning.The historian and the [[psychoanalyst ]] would seem to have common interests: both work on memory, [[forgetting]], and the restitution of traces; for both, the [[temporal ]] [[dimension ]] is essential. Both admit that they [[construct ]] their [[object ]] of study through the combined use of techniques for gathering factual data and the work of interpretation that endows these data with [[meaning ]] by fitting [[them ]] together; moreover, both use narratives as their starting point, and they accept that these narratives come to them constructed through meaning and must be deconstructed and reconstructed within the framework of their [[discipline]].One [[difference ]] between them is the fact that while the historian focuses on the effects of time in the collective memory, the psychoanalyst focuses on these effects in the [[case ]] of an individual person considered as such. This difference might seem to be a minor one, were it not for the substantial difficulties in assessing how these two levels of analysis are connected: How do collective history and individual history fit together? To what extent does History depend on the contingencies of individual fates, and to what extent are these fates shaped by History? The main difficulties, however, are [[epistemological ]] in [[nature]].These difficulties have to do with methods: While the historian is at leisure to verify and tally sources using every means at his or her disposal, the [[analyst ]] is, as a matter of principle—within the framework of "classical" treatment—limited to only what the patient says in the [[analytic ]] setting. It is [[impossible ]] to establish whether a given [[event ]] in the past actually took [[place ]] as the patient says it did. It has been argued, justifiably, that this is a moot question, that the only event that is certain is that something has been said this way in the here and now, and that therein lies all the "[[material]]" of the analysis (see Viderman, 1970, 1977).The divergence between history and psychoanalysis [[exists ]] also, and perhaps above all, at the [[theoretical ]] level. Time does not have the same status in the two disciplines. The psychoanalyst, who can only [[know ]] past events through their narration in the present, is led to accept two temporalities: a one-directional, linear time in which the narrated events, with their possibility [[causality]], are ordered; and [[another]], two-directional time, in which an event has modified, sometimes profoundly, an earlier event that is thus reshaped. This means accepting a [[principle ]] of "antero-grade" causality that has no analogue in the study of history or, perhaps, in any [[other ]] discipline.