Psychohistory

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For Isaac Asimov's use of the term in science fiction, see psychohistory (fictional).

Psychohistory is the study of the psychological motivations of historical events. It combines the insights of psychotherapy with the research methodology of the social sciences to understand the emotional origin of the social and political behavior of groups and nations, past and present. This field of study is considered by some to have significant differences from the mainstream fields of history and psychology.

Contents

[edit] Description

Rembrandt's painting of the sacrifice of Isaac, from the Old Testament.
Rembrandt's painting of the sacrifice of Isaac, from the Old Testament.

Psychohistory derives many of its insights from areas that are perceived to be ignored by conventional historians as shaping factors of human history, in particular, the effects of childbirth, parenting practice, and child abuse. The historical impact of incest, infanticide and child sacrifice are considered. Psychohistory holds that human societies can change between infanticidal and non-infanticidal practices and has coined the term "early infanticidal childrearing" to describe abuse and neglect observed by many anthropologists. Lloyd deMause, the pioneer of psychohistory, has described a system of psychogenic modes which describe the range of styles of parenting he has observed historically and across cultures.

Many political scientists and historians teach that social behavior is usually for rational reasons rather than irrational ones, and that international violence is often instigated for economic gain. Psychohistorians, on the other hand, suggest that social behavior may be a self-destructive re-enactment of earlier abuse and neglect; that unconscious flashbacks to early fears and destructive parenting could dominate individual and social behavior.

Psychohistory has been credited with helping to revitalize the historical biography. Notable examples of psychobiographies are those of Lewis Namier, who wrote about the British House of Commons and Fawn Brodie, who wrote about Thomas Jefferson.

[edit] Areas of Psychohistorical Study

There are three inter-related areas of psychohistorical study.

  • The History of Childhood - which looks at such questions as:
    • How have children been raised throughout history
    • How has the family been constituted
    • How and why have practices changed over time
    • The changing place and value of children in society over time
    • How and why our views of child abuse and neglect have changed
  • Psychobiography - which seeks to understand individual historical people and their motivations in history.
  • Group Psychohistory - which seeks to understand the motivations of large groups, including nations, in history and current affairs. In doing so, psychohistory advances the use of group-fantasy analysis of political speeches, political cartoons and media headlines since the fantasy words therein offer clues to unconscious thinking and behaviors.

[edit] Emergence as a Discipline

Sigmund Freud's well known work, Civilization and Its Discontents (1929), included an analysis of history based on his theory of psychoanalysis.

Wilhelm Reich combined his psychoanalytic and political theories in his book Mass Psychology of Fascism in 1933.

The psychologist and philosopher Erich Fromm wrote about the psychological motivation behind political ideology, starting with The Fear of Freedom in 1941.

Its first academic use appeared in Erik Erikson's book Young Man Luther (1958), where the author called for a discipline of "psycho-history" to examine the impact of human character on history.

Lloyd deMause developed a formal psychohistorical approach from 1974 onwards, and continues to be an influential theorist in this field.

Other notable psychohistorians include Alice Miller and Julian Jaynes, though they are rarely thought of as being specifically psychohistorians.

[edit] Independence as a Discipline

The remains of a sacrificed boy to Huitzilopochtli in the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan (photo by Héctor Monta).
The remains of a sacrificed boy to Huitzilopochtli in the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan (photo by Héctor Monta).

DeMause and others have argued that psychohistory is a separate field of scholarly inquiry with its own particular methods, objectives and theories, which set it apart from conventional historical analysis and anthropology. Some historians, social scientists and anthropologists have, however, argued that their disciplines already describe psychological motivation and that Psychohistory is not, therefore, a separate subject. Others have dismissed deMause's theories and motives arguing that the emphasis given by Psychohistory to speculation on the psychological motivations of people in history make it an undisciplined field of study. Doubt has also been cast on the viability of the application of post-mortem psychoanalysis by Freud's followers [1] [2].

Psychohistorians maintain that the difference is one of emphasis and that, in conventional study, narrative and description are central, while psychological motivation is hardly touched on. For deMause, child abuse takes the center stage. Psychohistorians accuse most anthropologists and ethnologists of being apologists for incest, infanticide, cannibalism and child sacrifice. They maintain that what constitutes child abuse is a matter of objective fact, and that some of the practices which mainstream anthropologists apologize for may result in psychosis, dissociation and magical thinking: particularly for the surviving children who had a sacrificed brother or sister by their parents. Psychohistorians also believe that the extreme cultural relativism proposed by many anthropologists is contrary to the letter and spirit of human rights.

[edit] Psychogenic mode

A "psychogenic mode" in Psychohistory is a type of mentality (or psychoclass) that results from, and is associated with, a particular childrearing style.

The major psychogenic modes described by Lloyd deMause are:

Mode Childrearing Characteristics Historical Manifestations
Infanticidal Early infanticidal childrearing:
Ritual sacrifice. High infanticide rates, incest, body mutilation, child rape and tortures.		 Child sacrifice and infanticide among tribal societies, Mesoamerica and the Incas; in Assyrian and Canaanite religions. Phoenicians, Carthaginians and other early states also sacrificed infants to their gods. On the other hand, the relatively more enlightened Greeks and Romans exposed some of their babies (“late” infanticidal childrearing).
Late infanticidal childrearing:
While the young child is not overly rejected by the mother, many newborn babies, especially girls, are exposed to death.
Abandoning Early Christians considered a child as having a soul at birth, although possessed by evil tendencies. Routine infanticide was replaced by joining in the group fantasy of the sacrifice of Christ, who was sent by his father to be killed for the sins of others. Routine pederasty of boys continued in monasteries and elsewhere, and the rape of girls was commonplace. Infanticide replaced by abandonment. At least those children who survived the experience didn’t internalize a completely murderous superego. Longer swaddling, fosterage, outside wetnursing, oblation of children to monasteries & nunneries, and apprenticeship.
Ambivalent The twelfth century saw the first child instruction manuals and rudimentary child protection laws, although most mothers still emotionally rejected their children. Children were often treated as erotic objects by adults. The later Middle Ages ended abandonment of children to monasteries. Enemas, early beating, shorter swaddling, mourning for deceased children, a precursor to empathy.
Intrusive During the sixteenth century, particularly in England, parents shifted from trying to stop children’s growth to trying to control them and make them obedient. Parents were prepared to give them attention as long as they controlled their minds, their insides, their anger and the lives they led. The intrusive parent began to unswaddle the infant. Early toilet training, repression of child's sexuality. Hell threats turned into the Puritan child so familiar from early modern childrearing literature. On the other hand, the end of swaddling and wet-nursing made possible the explosive modern takeoff in scientific advance.
Socializing Beginning in the eighteenth century, mothers began to actually enjoy child care, and fathers began to participate in younger children’s development. The aim remained instilling parental goals rather than encouraging individuation. Psychological manipulation and spanking were used to make children obedient. Hellfire and the harsher physical disciplinary actions using objects to beat the child disappeared. The Socializing Mode remains the most popular model of parenting in North America and Western Europe to the present day. Use of guilt, "mental discipline", humiliation, rise of compulsory schooling, delegation of parental unconscious wishes. As parental injections continued to diminish, the rearing of the child became less a process of conquering its will than of training it. The socializing psychoclass built the modern world.
Helping Beginning in the mid-twentieth century, some parents adopted the role of helping children reach their own goals in life, rather than "socialize" them into fulfilling parental wishes. Less psychological manipulation, more unconditional love. Children raised in this way are far more empathic towards others in society than earlier generations. Children's rights movement, deschooling and free schooling, natural childbirth, Taking Children Seriously and the abandonment of circumcision.

Psychohistorians maintain that the six modes of abusive childrearing (excluding the "helping mode") are related to psychiatric disorders from psychoses to neuroses.

The chart below shows the dates at which these modes are believed to have evolved in the most advanced nations, based on contemporary accounts from historical records. A black and white version of the chart appears in Foundations of Psychohistory.[3] The timeline doesn't apply to hunter-gatherer societies. It doesn't apply either to the Greek and Roman world, where there was a wide variation in childrearing practices. It is notable that the arrival of the Ambivalent mode of child-rearing preceded the start of the Renaissance (mid 1300s) by only one or two generations, and the arrival of the Socializing mode coincided with the Age of Enlightenment, which began in the late 1700s.

Newspaper reports of child abuse (e.g., the exposure of baby girls in India explains why millions of women are “missing” in that country) demonstrate that the earlier forms of childrearing coexist with later modes, even in the most advanced countries. However, the chart should not be regarded as an accurate representation of the relative prevalence of each mode in the present day, as it is not based on large-scale, formal surveys.

Evolution of the six psychogenic modes in the most advanced countries.

According to psychohistory theory, each of the six psychoclasses co-exists in the modern world today, and regardless of the changes in the environment, it is only when changes in childhood occur that societies begin to progress.

[edit] A psychoclass for postmodern times

In The Emotional Life of Nations deMause wrote: "My conclusion from a lifetime of study of the history of childhood is that society is founded upon the abuse of children". According to the psychogenic theory, since Neanderthal man most tribes and families practiced infanticide, child mutilation, incest and beating of their children throughout prehistory and history. Presently the Western socializing mode of childrearing is considered much less abusive in the field, though this mode is not yet entirely free of abuse.

"Each generation begins anew with fresh, eager, trusting faces of babies, ready to love and create a new world. And each generation of parents tortures, abuses, neglects, and dominates its children until they become emotionally crippled adults who repeat in nearly exact detail the social violence and domination that existed in previous decades" [4]

There is notwithstanding an optimistic trait in the field. Psychohistorians believe that when violence against children disappears the murderous drive of serial killers and terrorists will fade away [5]. Political violence of any other sort will disappear as well, along with religion itself, magical thinking, mental disorders, crime, jails, wars and other inhumanities of man against man [6]

[edit] Organizations and Centers of Study

The principal centre for psychohistorical study is The Institute for Psychohistory which has 19 branches around the globe and has for over 30 years published the Journal of Psychohistory.

The International Psychohistorical Association, is the professional organization for the field of psychohistory. It publishes Psychohistory News and has a psychohistorical mail order lending library. It hosts an annual convention.

Psychohistory is taught at a few universities as an adjunct to history or social science or as a post graduate study. The following have published course details: Boston University, City University of New York, University of Nevada, State University of New York at Rockland, and Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut.

[edit] Notable psychohistorians

  • Rudolph Binion, Professor of Modern European History, Brandeis University (see faculty bio).
  • Lloyd deMause, founder of The Institute for Psychohistory.
  • Robert Jay Lifton, a psychiatrist specializing in psychological motivations for war and terrorism.
  • Peter Loewenberg, Department of History, UCLA (see faculty bio).
  • Bruce Mazlish, Professor of History, Emeritus, MIT (see faculty bio).
  • Charles Strozier, Professor of History, Graduate Center, CUNY (see resumé at the Center for Millennial Studies).

[edit] See also

[edit] Compare with

  • Psychogeography - "The study of specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals."

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ [1] Review of Shrinking History on Freud and the Failure of Psychohistory - Reviewed by Cosma Shalizi
    Note: The book under review criticizes the Freudian approach to psychohistory. It makes no mention of deMause or The Institute for Psychohistory.
  2. ^ Hunt, Lynn, CSC Conferences & Symposia paper, Psychoanalysis, the Self, and Historical Interpretation History Pennsylvania [2]
  3. ^ deMause, Lloyd, Foundations of Psychohistory, p. 61, Creative Roots Pub, ISBN 0-940508-01-X (1982)
  4. ^ deMause, Lloyd (2002). The Emotional Life of Nations. Karnac, 97. 
  5. ^ http://primal-page.com/godwin
  6. ^ http://primal-page.com/ps4.htm

[edit] References

  • deMause, Lloyd, Foundations of Psychohistory, Creative Roots Pub, ISBN 0-940508-01-X (1982) (available online at no cost)
  • deMause, Lloyd, The Emotional Life of Nations, Publisher: Other Press; ISBN 1-892746-98-0 (2002) (available online at no cost)
  • Lawton, Henry W., The Psychohistorian's Handbook, New York: Psychohistory Press, ISBN 0-914434-27-6 (1989)
  • Loewenberg, Peter, Decoding the Past: The Psychohistorical Approach, Transaction Pub, ISBN 1-56000-846-6 (2002)
  • Stannard, David E., Shrinking History, On Freud and the Failure of Psychohistory, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-503044-3 (1980). A critique of the Freudian approach to psychohistory.
  • Szaluta, Jacques, Psychohistory: Theory and Practice, Publisher Peter Lang, ISBN 0-8204-1741-6 (1999)

[edit] External links

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