Abstract

The difficulties of applying psychology to historiography are considerable, and historians have been reluctant to make the effort. Psychologists seem to work with scanty and dubious evidence and often merely provide new names for familiar facts. Psychology cannot provide a reference point from which men's personalities are automatically diagnosed, but it can enhance the historian's sensitivity to patterns of character. As an extended case study, Franklin's Autobiography exhibits patterns of concern for getting supplies , fear of being hurt in seeking them, and success in devising methods of getting supplies while withdrawing from hostilities-patterns seen in his vegetarianism, business, and diplomacy