The effort to implant secular science in Spain was stymied throughout the nineteenth century by a ruling conservative elite which held that “science without religion is blind” and viewed the practice of science divorced from an explicitly Catholic, Thomist philosophical framework as being the equivalent of civil subversion. Medical doctors, in particular, were held to be subversive; in the aftermath of the conservative overthrow of the liberal government in 1824 all professors of the Madrid Medical College were either imprisoned or removed from their chairs. The liberal revolution of 1868, which briefly overthrew the Bourbons and their conservative supporters and installed the short-lived First Republic, was universally regarded by Spanish scientists as having opened the door to new ideas. Chief among these was Darwinism, anathema to Catholic conservatives because of its challenge to Biblical dogma. There had been virtually no discussion of this heretical idea before the revolution, and it was freely discussed in its wake.

In this article I will first investigate the response Freudian psychoanalysis received in the Netherlands from 1905, when the first Dutch analyst began to practice psychoanalysis, until the beginning of World War II. Then I will briefly describe the development of psychoanalysis after the war.

In the Netherlands as elsewhere Freudian psychoanalysis was transmitted first to the medical profession, that is to say, to a segment of the Dutch social elite. From there, Freud's ideas spread to other parts of the elite, especially the intellectuals and the religious leaders, after which psychoanalysis was filtered down to the public at large in a form the elite thought appropriate to it.

This essay deals mainly with the factors influencing the reception of psychoanalysis in Germany. However, I will preface my discussion with two brief sections describing the events of the reception. Please note that as used here, Germany refers specifically to the state, and not to the German-speaking areas of central Europe.

The foregoing histories of the reception of psychoanalysis in Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain offer illuminating comparisons not only with each other but with the well-known histories of psychoanalysis in Austria, the United States, and, known to a lesser extent, England. Both parallels and divergences appear, suggesting cultural variation as well as some underlying commonalities in all of Western culture.

It is generally accepted that declining birth rates in most Western countries after the late 1870s2 were preceded by declining marital fertility among the middle classes. Though some scholars have suggested that the general decline was due partly to the working classes' later emulation of the middleclass family size “ideal,” no hypothesis has been presented to explain satisfactorily the downward trend in middle-class fertility. The most widely accepted explanation is that the “great depression” of 1873–96 lowered the middle-class standard of living, which in turn led to a concomitant decline in the birth rate as middle-class couples tried to retain or improve levels of consumption and status. However, recent research indicates that the great depression may not have been anywhere near as severe as earlier scholars have implied. But even if the middle classes believed that they were experiencing a declining standard of living, surely many years of supposed deprivation would have been necessary to jolt their class psyche to the realization that the future was to remain forever gloomy. And when some authorities who promoted the great depression hypothesis also claim that the middle-class fertility decline commenced in the early 1870s, before the onset of the great depression, then the argument becomes even more suspect. If the work of other authorities, who have received less coverage in demographic literature, is considered, then it is not the great depression but the 1850s and 1860s—the period of mid-Victorian prosperity—that should be supported as heralding the decline in fertility.

In an influential essay, Arnaldo Momigliano has identified an extremely important but perhaps little remarked oddity of ancient Greek historical writing and political thought.

Historians dislike nomads. This feeling is perhaps understandable, since our sedentary habits keep us from a full comprehension of people whose prosperity depended so much on continual movement and opportunistic raiding. The primary historical sources reinforce this dislike with their universally pejorative attitude: their authors were sedentary beings also who saw nomads as predators and described them from a safe distance. Why should we impeach these witnesses in the absence of an alternative body of sources containing the nomadic perspective? It is ironic that the very practices which led to the nomads' success have doomed them to ignominy in our modern eyes. Why should mounted archers have preserved archives? Paper, always heavy, would restrict mobility, range, and speed of horses. In short, travelling light gave military advantages to the nomads, but it also gave their history into the hands of their settled prey.