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Peter Gay, the distinguished historian and author, reshaped our understanding of European culture and intellectual history with his groundbreaking studies of the Enlightenment, Freudian psychology, and the rise of modernism. From his influential works like "The Enlightenment An Interpretation" to his insightful biographies of figures like Freud and Mozart, Gay's scholarship continues to illuminate the forces that have shaped the modern world and inspired generations of readers and scholars.
"To have a liberal temperament is a kind of psychological boon, To be able to understand that someone you disagree with is not just a terrible creature but somebody with whom you disagree."
"There is something very intriguing about, for example, the sense of accomplishment that a small child has, which you might be able to reduce to aggression and libido, but which might also have some independent existence."
"Every historian has informally an anthropology, without ever using the word."
"And my interest in history was, and remains, very strong: what I wanted was to understand certain things better by understanding them psychoanalytically."
"My assumption is that fundamentally the picture of the human animal, as developed by Freud, is largely right."