Over its publication history, American Psychologist has featured numerous articles and special issues on the history of psychology and continues to encourage historical scholarship that is of broad interest to its readership.
Given that most psychologists are not specifically trained in the theories, methods, and standards of historical scholarship (i.e., historiography), the following are some general guidelines for undertaking an article with a historical focus. Note that this is not an exhaustive or authoritative list. As in any field, there are considerable variations and debates among historians as to how to approach historical writing.
- Ensure that the historical topic and/or question is of potentially broad interest to psychologists. If it is on a highly specialized topic or poses a more narrow question, consider whether a specialist journal in the history of psychology, or in that specific area of psychology, might be more appropriate.
- Ensure that the historical argument/analysis is original. Does it bring a new understanding to, shed new light on, complicate/nuance or even challenge something that we previously thought of in a certain way, or that, historically, has been taken as a given?
- The article should be more than a literature review. Use historical methods, employ historical data, and/or re-analyze or interpret historical sources or data to come to new conclusions. Historical methods include, for example, archival research, oral history research, consultation of primary sources, data-based interpretation, and digital methods (citation analysis, content analysis, network analysis) employed in the service of historical questions, etc.
- Move beyond description to analysis. Although a compelling narrative is at the heart of historical scholarship, good historical papers have both a purpose (I will do X), and a rationale (By doing X I will show Y, and this is why it is interesting, matters, etc.)
- Attend carefully to historical context. Consider the political, cultural, social, disciplinary, intellectual, and/or geographic contexts when undertaking your analysis. How might these have affected the events, theories, developments, practices under discussion, or the argument being made? When citing directly from historical sources, ensure citations are contextualized appropriately.
- Avoid presentism but establish contemporary relevance. Historians define presentism as using the standards of the present as the basis for evaluating and writing about the past. This often leads to histories that caricature the past as “unenlightened” compared to the present without fully engaging with historical context. That said, historians always write in the present and their interests are often shaped by contemporary problems and concerns. Historical scholarship can speak to these concerns. What are the contemporary implications that might be drawn from this historical account?
- Demonstrate a thorough familiarity with the historical literature that has already been published on the topic. The failure to appropriately survey and consider this literature is one of the most frequent problems with historical papers, but fortunately it is also the most straightforward to remedy. Authors should consult the field’s own resources (for example, the journal History of Psychology, or Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences) but also move outside psychology to consult books and journals in history, sociology, law, economics, gender studies, science studies, etc. When writing about the global south or non-western countries, make sure to look for historical sources from that culture that have addressed the issue in question.
- Adhere to appropriate ethical guidelines when using or citing archival and/or oral history material, including considerations for protecting individuals’ privacy where relevant, and ensuring that appropriate permissions have been secured for citing material that is not in the public domain.
