Born in Blois in 1914, Philippe Aries was man way before his time. After a failed attempt at becoming a teacher, Aries took a job as an archivist. His passion however was in the study of history, particularly in cultural history which was virtually unknown at this time. Inspired by the Annales, Aries wrote History of the French Populations and their Attitudes toward Life since the Eighteenth Century (1948), in which he presents his "history of mentalities." It is however his book L'Enfant et la vie familial sous l'Ancien Regime in which he is famous for. Within this book, Aries looks at the problem of why adolescents became "wayward." Through his research of the history of family dynamics, particularly of the parent-child relationship, and how life is a developmental process, Aries arrives at an answer that has neither political or military backing as once thought. Aries's ideas shared a commonality with psychologist Erik Erikson's model of "life-long psychological growth," which was brought public at about the same time as Aries's book.
When historians became "enlightened" to this new approach, how were they able to discover which avenues they wanted to pursue in history?
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