Peter Gay

Peter Gay was a psychoanalyst and a historian. He migrated to the United States in 1941, where he gained his PhD in 1951. He was Professor of History at Columbia University until 1969 and then, until his retirement in 1993, at Yale. Among his many books are studies on European Enlightenment, Voltaire’s political thought and Weimar culture. Gay applies psychoanalysis to historical issues, which resulted in works such as Freud. A Life for Our Time (1988) and the multi-volume The Bourgeois Experience (1984-1998). 2007 saw the appearance of Modernism. The Lure of Heresy (2007).