Spain and the Doctors: Historical Theories as Diagnoses in National Psychopathology

Abstract

There has been among historians, philosophers, and semioticians a growing awareness of the theoretical strata involved in the writing of history. Within historical narratives we can find at least three major levels of theory: (i) the naming of events according to everyday concepts; (ii) the interpretation of the class of plot best fitted to the web of events to be narrated; and (iii) the implicit or explicit formal framework employed for systematic narrative. Like medical diagnosis, history applies general knowledge to singular situations; like history, medicine describes events, creates storylines, and draws on general models. This likeness is politically relevant when history is taken as another, higher kind of diagnosis: that of a national malaise in need of political cure. As an empirical case, we analyze a number of historical theories formulated as historical diagnoses in traumatic twentieth-century Spain, and then test the link between theories and therapies.