Paul Roazen was a political scientist who became a preeminent historian of psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...

.

Roazen studied at Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 and in Chicago and Oxford. Later he returned to Harvard. The subject of his dissertation was Freud's political thinking. In 1971 he changed to York University

York University

York University is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's third-largest university, Ontario's second-largest graduate school, and Canada's leading interdisciplinary university....

 in Toronto, where he taught until his early retirement in 1995.

In 1965 Roazen began to interview surviving friends, relatives, colleagues and patients of Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...

. His first 'big' book "Freud and his followers“ was based on hundreds of hours of material. This was an original approach at the time. Kurt Eissler interviewed pioneers of psychoanalysis but, with the exception of an interview with Wilhelm Reich

Wilhelm Reich

Wilhelm Reich was an Austrian-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, known as one of the most radical figures in the history of psychiatry...

, they were not published.

Roazen was the first non-psychoanalyst whom Anna Freud

Anna Freud

Anna Freud was the sixth and last child of Sigmund and Martha Freud. Born in Vienna, she followed the path of her father and contributed to the newly born field of psychoanalysis...

 allowed to access the archives of the British Psychoanalytical Institute. He was able to see the huge material Ernest Jones

Ernest Jones

Alfred Ernest Jones was a British neurologist and psychoanalyst, and Sigmund Freud’s official biographer. Jones was the first English-speaking practitioner of psychoanalysis and became its leading exponent in the English-speaking world where, as President of both the British Psycho-Analytical...

 had used to write his biography of Freud.

Writings

Author

• Freud: Political and Social Thought, New York, Knopf, 1968,
• Brother Animal: The Story of Freud and Tausk, N.Y., Knopf, 1969
• Freud and his followers, New York, Knopf, 1975
• Erik H. Erikson: The Power and Limits of a Vision, N.Y., The Free Press, 1976
• Helene Deutsch
  Helene Deutsch
  Helene Deutsch was an Austrian-American psychoanalyst and colleague of Sigmund Freud. She was the first psychoanalyst to specialize in women.- Life :...
  
  : A Psychoanalyst’s Life, N.Y., Doubleday, 1985
• Encountering Freud: The Politics and Histories of Psychoanalysis, New Brunswick, N.J., Transaction Publishers, 1990
• Meeting Freud’s Family, Amherst, University of Mass. Press, 1993
• Heresy: Sandor Rado and the Psychoanalytic Movement, with Bluma Swerdloff, Northvale, N.J., Aronson, 1995
• How Freud Worked: First-Hand Accounts of Patients, Northvale, N.J. : J. Aronson, 1995
• Canada’s King: An Essay in Political Psychology, Oakville, Ontario, Mosaic Press, 1998
• Oedipus in Britain: Edward Glover and the Struggle Over Klein (N.Y., Other Press, 2000)
• Political theory and the psychology of the unconscious : Freud, J. S. Mill, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Fromm, Bettelheim and Erikson, London, Open Gate Press, 2000
• The historiography of psychoanalysis, New Brunswick (US) ; London (UK), Transaction Publ., 2001
• The Trauma of Freud: Controversies in Psychoanalysis, New Brunswick, N.J., Transaction Publishers, 2002
• Cultural Foundations of Political Psychology, New Brunswick, N.J., Transaction Publishers, 2003
• On The Freud Watch: Public Memoirs, London, Free Association Books
  Free Association Books
  Free Association Books is an innovative project started in 1980s London. It arose as the brainchild of Bob Young and colleagues, who, disillusioned by the decline of the liberatory movement, began a search using psychoanalysis to understand the problems of liberation...
  
  , 2003
• Edoardo Weiss: The House that Freud Built (New Brunswick, N.J., Transaction Publishers, 2005)
• The Doctor and the Diplomat: The Mysterious Collaboration Between Freud and Bullitt on Woodrow Wilson (N.Y., Rowman & Littlefield

Editor

• Victor Tausk: Sexuality, war, and schizophrenia : collected psychoanalytic papers, edited and with an introduction by Paul Roazen ; translations by Eric Mosbacher &others. - New Brunswick, US : Transaction Publishers, 1991

Secondary literature

• Freud under analysis : history, theory, practice ; essays in honour of Paul Roazen, ed. by Todd Dufresne. - Northvale, NJ ; London : Aronson, 1997
• Dufresne, Todd (2007). “Psychoanalysis Eats Its Own: Or, The Heretical Saint Roazen,” in Psychoanalysis and History, ed. J. Forrester, 9(1): 93-109.
• Hans-Jürgen Wirth: „Nachruf auf Paul Roazen“ in: Freie Assoziation - Das Unbewusste in Organisationen und Kultur, 9. Jahrgang, Heft 01/2006 –

See also

• Henri Ellenberger
  Henri Ellenberger
  Henri F. Ellenberger was a Canadian-Swiss psychiatrist, medical historian, and criminologist, sometimes considered the founding historiographer of psychiatry....
  
  
• Elisabeth Roudinesco
  Elisabeth Roudinesco
  Élisabeth Roudinesco is a French academic historian and psychoanalyst. She is an independent guest researcher at University of Paris VII – Denis Diderot...