Talk:Psychohistory

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[edit] Critics of psychohistory

What about information on critics of psychohistory? Judging by the fact that its founder accuses mainstream anthropologists of advocating pedophilia, I'm sure there must be quite a few of them. Unfortunately, my cursory Google search could not find any -- is anyone familiar with any in academic literature?

Since psychohistory seems strongly influenced by psychoanalysis, and a lot of people think psychoanalysis is psuedoscience, I assume the same people would have similar views of psychohistory. I'm also sure that many historians would view as preposterous the idea that we can analyse the psychology of long dead historical figures at all accurately (as opposed to just taking together whatever lose pieces of information we can find to make a story that fits our ideology).

Actually, if you ask me most 'therapists' are pseudoscientists anyway, but thats another story... -- an.

In fact, none of the several psychotherapists I know of have heard of this guy; also, when I was in college I had a friend who majored in history and talked about "psychohistory" that he had heard about in a few lectures, but the term did not refer to the contents of this page, it refered more generally to historians using psychological theories to explain the behaorior of historical figures. In other words, this page seems to me to be promoting one man's business. Unfortunately, I am neither a trained psychologist nor a trained historian and am not in a position to evaluate this stuff seriously. I would have to do serious research (and I do not think a google search is real research) and I don't have the time. Anyone who does, however, should! Slrubenstein


The text in this topic seems almost derived from a sales folder. I have neither the expertise nor the time to delve into this, but I was, in another life, a psychology grad student, and I have never heard of this field. I question the NPOV of this text. ~Puffy_jacket

That psychohistory exists as a field of academic study and discussion surely cannot be disputed - follow the links provided. The page also includes a statement on the differences between psychohistory and history. Can you be more specific than saying that it ‘seems almost derived from a sales folder’. It sounds as though you disagree with the subject and wish it didn’t exist. Lumos3 09:52, 19 Dec 2003 (UTC)

---

Here you go, from the link you provided to the international psychohistorial association:

"There are no formal training programs for psychohistorians."

"Psychohistorians are essentially self-taught."

"Ideally, the psychohistorian should be trained in both history and psychoanalysis. [...] many have no formal training in either area. Thus, psychohistorical scholarship is somewhat variable in quality."

I have, contrary to your speculation, no personal opinion about "psychohistory", but based on the links provided, "psychohistory" does not appear to be a legitimate field of study. Are you able to provide objective information not taken from sites run by self-taught "psychohistorians"? Are you able to provide external links that are not sites run by those promoting their own online classes in "psychohistory"?

I searched for the topic myself. The vast, vast majority of "psychohistory" hits were either:

  • a discussion of Asimov novels
  • a promotional mention of the "psychohistory" discussion list you linked to
  • a promotional mention of the several websites you linked to
  • the websites and discussion list themselves

I was unable to find one single mention of "psychohistory" by any legitimate scientific journal. Or one single mention of 'psychohistory" by any legitimate institute of learning.

That does not bode well. Please, if you know of a college that teaches a course in this field, link to it. If you know of a "psychohistorian" who has published, link us. As of now, this does not appear to me to be a legitimate scholarly field.

- Puffy jacket 17:44, 19 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I agree PH is not mainstream but it has academic connections .

A Google search on ‘Psychohistory courses’ found lots, here a few

Courses

Boston University has a Pychohistory Course see http://www.bu.edu/bridge/archive/2003/10-31/psycho.html And CAS HI 503 at www.bu.edu/history/crsinven.html

Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut has a course see http://www.wesleyan.edu/course/hist251f.htm

University of Nevada has a Department of psychohistory, http://www.unr.edu/planning/0304cycle/psychohistoryplan.pdf

State University of New York Rockland see HIS 213/4 at http://www.sunyrockland.edu/courses/h.htm

City University of New York See HIS 360 http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/~history/cours.htm

References There is a bibliography of published works on Psychohistory see http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/8623/literature.htm

Lumos3 01:56, 20 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I have hade changes to the page in line with the objections already given . Unless more objection are posted I intend to remove the article from the list of articles with POV Lumos3 23:34, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Psychohistory is a valid, if not entirely recognized, academic field.

I recommend a book by Jacques Szaluta, "Psychohistory: Theory and Practice," Peter Lang Published it in 1999. I'm not trying to advertise the book, but it is a good overview of the evolution of the field. It is also important to note that Lloyd DeMause is mentioned, but he is no such thing as the "inventor" of the field as he claims. His presence on the web and the way he dominates the one or two listservs I've seen tend to skew the perception. Here is the publishers description of Szaluta's book:

"This work is the first comprehensive text in the field of psychohistory that presents both the theory and the practice of this interdisciplinary field. The presentation of psychoanalytic theory in this work includes the fundamental contributions made by Freud as well as the post-Freudian developments. Another unique feature of this work, because psychohistory is so controversial, is that the pros and cons are presented, thereby putting the field in better relief. This work accentuates how psychohistory differs from traditional history, and how psychohistory is more insightful in the study of the individual, the family, and the group. In sum, Psychohistory: Theory and Practice demonstrates how psychohistory is transforming the study of history and why psychohistory is so promising for our understanding of mankind."

Finally, in the interest of full disclosure, Professor Szaluta was my History professor in college and wrote me a recommendation for Grad School. I do not see myself as a champion of psychohistory as I have serious doubts about the applicability of post-mortem psychoanalysis, but the field is definately valid.

Notice of removal of The neutrality of this article is disputed warning This statement has been here for about 5 months now and the article has matured a lot since than and contains a statement of the field's marginal status . I propose to remove it within 7 days . Lumos3 21:58, 26 May 2004 (UTC)~

[edit] Wikipedia is a Weird Encyclopedia

Oh my God, I can't believe we have an article on this crap. This Lloyd DeMause guy, (who is the inventor of this neologism masquerading as a legitimate field of science), is the same whack job who reliably informs us that Japanese mothers "masturbate" their infants, that 60% of all children have been molested repeatedly, that 50% of all male children have been forced to touch their mothers' gentiles, and, oh, here's a nice one: Half of all Asian children are killed shortly after birth by their parents. You can always tell a DeMause written paper by the way in which he ingeniously sites other articles written by himself as source material. DeMause is nothing more than another paranoid, megalomaniac like L. Ron Hubbard, right down to the way in which he graciously credits Freud as a co-inventor of Dianetics, er, sorry, I mean Psychohistory. When I can stop doubling over in laughter, I'll consider what is going to be needed in the way of a critisim section for this article. The main Psychohistory link should be about Asimov's famous Foundation novels, with this nonsense pointed to by Psychohistory (pseudoscience) func(talk) 02:54, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Do you have a specific source for all these statistics which you claim are from deMause? That quote about Asian children, in particular, doesn't appear anywhere on the web except on this page and another site trashing deMause. It would be obviously NPOV to call it pseudoscience in the article title. Please do write a criticism section for this article; it needs one. There's plenty of criticism out there. (You'll have to make it a lot less POV than what you wrote above, though.) Pfalstad 05:09, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Regarding the Main Link to be to Asimov. I agree, although I have been an Asimov fan since high school, but who hasn't? (MartinGugino 01:27, 14 April 2006 (UTC))

Lloyd DeMause's claims on the abuse of children throughout history are certainly disturbing if true. There is however no shame in an author citing research done by themselves. A paper should cite all appropriate research so that the reader can check its validity. DeMause is a pioneer in this field so one would expect a certain amount of self referencing to his own earlier work. Lumos3 20:45, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What research? Have you read his papers? He doesn't research anything, he just makes up theories, ie: he projects his personal obsessions into a formalized set of opinions, and then calls it research. func(talk) 20:04, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Well, a lot of people think 99% of all Freud did was just made up, and don't consider psychoanalysis scientific. I'll be the first to acknowledge that it's not the most _falsifiable_ of theories, so it may not be completely straightforward to describe it as science. It seems closer to say, literary criticism or "theory" (in the humanities/critical sense). I'm not certain to what extent psychohistory itself pretends to be predictive; most of my readings of it seem to be explanatory and providing a context but falling short of prediction. Not that there's anything wrong with that...as I said, that's kind of what literary criticism and philosophy do. And a field may be semi-legitimate even when its most prominent proponent may be crankish. If this were not so, all of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy would be hub-bub (because of Freud). At any rate, I think people should find out for themselves. I've read some a few articles not written by deMause, and they didn't seem to be written by either lunatics, dimwits, or cranks. And the idea of applying psychological motivation to large-scale group behaviour is not by itself preposterous or patently asinine. Revolver 11:15, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
The Journal of Psychohistory was carried by the University of Oregon's library as an academic journal when I was a student there roughly 10 years ago, so either it's semi-legitimate (at least enough for the taxpayers of the state of Oregon to shell out for the stacks) or the standards at these universities have gone way down...take your pick. Revolver 11:21, 25 May 2005 (UTC)


In the article there's no mention at all of the uses and abuses of psychohistory. For example, in World War II some Allied propaganda attributed the rise of both Nazism and actual Nazi atrocities to allegedly high levels of homosexuality, sado-masochism and boot fetishism (!) in Germany - and the propagandists made no distinction between these, which they portrayed as manifestations of one and the same phenomenon. Worse still, long after 1945 there were apparently serious attempts to "explain" Nazi atrocities as a sudden outburst of (male) sexual perversion. Since "Psychohistorians" are practioners of a relatively new discipline which is widely regarded as suspect, it would be helpful to know whether they think such stuff has any real explanatory force at all. I regard such "explanations" as amusing light entertainment, nothing more. User: Norvo, 16:49 (UTC) 31 Jul 2005

[edit] Typo?

I'm assuming this in the references: "Sigmund Freud, collecting works" is "Collected works", but I'm noting it here just in case I'm wrong. --DanielCD 15:00, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] www.psychohistory.com

The essays I read on this site are biased and in some cases obscenely wrong in their assertions. Almost all the references and citations I saw are internal. I ammended the description so it won't appear that this is an objective site.

In fact, a lot of these articles seem to be projecting modern ideas into the past rather than actually deciphering the psychology of the past, the exact opposite of what such an endeavor should strive for. --DanielCD 15:09, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Child Abuse

  • Why there is still denial in modern societies about the reality of child abuse

This is really loaded. It seems to be there's a rabid insistance on child abuse today rather than denial (depending on which society you are meaning). But this is far from as matter-of-fact as presented in the article. --DanielCD 15:11, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Areas of Psychohistorical Study

Care should be taken here, as there are groups that are out there trying to actually revise history, rather than examine history. These groups will claim to be doing "psychohistory" and be scholarly while actually trying to push an agenda. --DanielCD 15:14, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV

I added an NPOV tag, as this article definitely needs more criticism of this idea. The articles from the site this article is based on are anything but objective. But this one site's POV seems to dominate this article with no alternate views given. Until this is remedied, the tag should remain. --DanielCD 15:19, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

The trouble I see with the NPOV tag is that “Psychohistory” is rarely challenged in the academia. How then will it be challenged in Wikipedia? Though I don’t subscribe to all of psychohistorians’ claims, I don’t see anything wrong with the article (I wouldn’t see anything wrong with some balancing statements either). Cesar Tort 23:36, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
I agree with the idea about Psychohistory. The focus from this one site is what I'm referring to. I mean just what you say, add some balancing statements. --DanielCD 23:44, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
I have added some academic criticism I found in a google search. But why pick on Psychohistory, there are hundreds of articles on Wikipedia which describe a fringe subject and don’t give a "balancing" point of view. Take for example Psychogeography which is linked from this article. The same argument would put NPOV there as well. Psychohistory makes the outrageous claim that child rearing affects us in more profound ways than we care to acknowledge and makes most people uncomfortable when they first encounter it. This article describes the subject and does not sell it. I don’t think it deserved the NPOV tag. Lumos3 08:28, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough. Yes, there are lots of articles that are a little off. As long as there's some mention that there are contrary opinions, I think we can lose the tag. --DanielCD 22:55, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

I see no reason at all why this article should be separated from Psychogenic mode. —Cesar Tort 18:36, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Psychoclass

I updated the redirect page to send Psychoclass to Psychohistory instead of Psychogenic mode. I noticed the word "psychoclass" appears nowhere in the article, although the word appears frequently in the writings of psychohistorians. Perhaps it should it be mentioned and briefly explained. -- Bookish 23:24, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely agree! —Cesar Tort 23:36, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Schreber

I would like to remove mention to Daniel Paul Schreber which is too controversial a subject among psychohistorians and trauma writers such as Jeffrey Masson and Morton Schatzman. Schatzman wrote a whole book about Schreber [1] and radically departs from Freud’s theory. Freud blames Schreber; current trauma writers blame Schreber’s abusive father. —Cesar Tort 16:22, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Schreber is mentioned only as an example of Freud doing a post mortum analysis. If there is a controversy here what is it? It would be better to mention what it is than to remove it for neatness. Lumos3 17:06, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I am only trying to say that there are some trauma writers who hate Freud’s ridiculous homosexual and blame-the-victim interpretation of Schreber. Freud’s bizarre theory is about a totally unproven and hypothetical sexual orientation of Schreber to his father. I know you have read Alice Miller’s For Your Own Good. Well: Schreber’s father was none other that the author of bestselling poisonous pedagogy books that drove Germany to groupthink's eliminationst anti-Semitism! The Schreber affair is too controversial and not really germane to psychohistory. It should be removed. —Cesar Tort 17:55, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Trauma writers who hate Freud's interpretation would probably also be aware that Niederland came to basically the same conclusion as Morton Schatzman. -- Bookish 18:18, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree. But this is not explained in the text and a casual reader may erroneously interpret it as an endorsement of Freud’s views. —Cesar Tort 18:32, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Anyone who clicks on the Daniel Paul Schreber link would find out that Freud's interpretation is disputed. It gives prominence to Schatzman's Interpretation. I included the Niederland article in the References on that page, and added: He basically came to same conclusion as Morton Schatzman. By the way, I have a copy of Jeffrey Masson's When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Life of Animals. -- Bookish 19:04, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Freudian psychoanalysis is currently out of favour in academic circles. Anyone who believes in the blame-the-victim interpretation before arriving at the page would probably be prejudiced against Psychohistory no matter what was written. I would say the Daniel Paul Schreber article is highly relevant to Psychohistory. BTW, I also have a copy of Jeffrey Masson's Final Analysis. -- Bookish 19:26, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Oh. Guau! Wow! (Ups! I wrote a word in Spanish! Hope you understood it, Bookish :) I really, really LOVE Masson. And F.A. is my favorite of his books! If you think readers won’t be deceived by that phrase into Freud’s crank views, let the phrase stay (it pretty much appears as a pro-Freudian phrase). The Niederland article is relevant, of course; but not mention of the Vienna quack. I only want disambiguation. —Cesar Tort 21:31, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure which phrase you mean. Did I miss something because it was clear to me because I wrote it? Here is the text:
However, one of the most famous studies among Freud's writings is a post-mortem analysis of Daniel Paul Schreber. Psychoanalyst W.G. Niederland published a re-appraisal of Freud's interpretation in 1959: "Schreber: Father and Son" (Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 28:151-169).
I read somewhere that this was one of the most discussed (and disputed) works by Freud. I don't know whether it's a fact. Can you let me know which phrase? Maybe it would be easy to re-word it. Maybe "well known" instead of "famous"? That would be OK with me. -- Bookish 22:46, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
let’s just remove mention to Freud in that phrase! —Cesar Tort 22:55, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
That would defeat the point I was making. Please don't do anything for now, and think it over for a few days -- Bookish 23:57, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] fascinating flaming discussion!

Hey Bookish: Have you read the flaming discussion in the Talk:Early infanticidal childrearing archives? I printed and read them! I also learnt more there about the animosity between psychohistorians and anthropologists than in any printed text. Psychohistorians of course are right and anthropologists wrong! —Cesar Tort 22:32, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps a brief summary of that debate should appear in the Psychohistory article? —Cesar Tort 22:39, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Did you receive The Emotional Life of Nations yet? He discusses the antipathy of anthropologists towards psychohistory. If you think a brief summary is appropriate can we discuss a draft here on the talk page? -- Bookish 22:46, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Amazon mail to Mexico is so slow... But I have finished deMause’s FOUNDATIONS and have printed and read the main chapters of his EMOL book thanks to his web page. I’ll post a draft soon... —Cesar Tort 22:55, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I am basically paraphrasing, copying and pasting the summaries in the flaming pages:

Early infanticidal childrearing is a psychohistorical model developed by deMause which purports that childrearing in the Paleolithic Era and in contemporary pre-literate hunter-gatherer tribes can be summarized by three basic ideas:
  • children are not considered human
  • infants are useful to parents as erotic objects
  • children aren't considered useful to any adult in any other way
This particular model is a psychological concept that attempts to explain anthropological data, especially from primitive societies.
Anthropologists point out that speculating about the Neolithic is inaccurate since it's impossible to gain significant data about child-rearing practices from archeological remains dating to the Neolithic. Anthropologists also determined that deMause drew his analyses from anthropological data of modern hunter-gather societies.
In return, deMause and his followers accuse most anthropologists and ethnologists of being apologists for incest, infanticide, cannibalism and child sacrifice. They claim that what constitutes child abuse is a matter of objective fact and that some of the practices which mainstream anthropologists apologize for, such as beatings of newborn infants, result in brain lesions and other visible neurological damage. Other practices may result in psychosis, dissociation and magical thinking. They also claim that the extreme cultural relativism proposed by many anthropologists is contrary to the letter and spirit of human rights.

—Cesar Tort 23:20, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, the anthropologists are 100% correct that no historical documents are available for the Paleolithic or Neolithic eras. What you have pasted so far is way too looooooooong! I worry that a good article could be spoiled if it incorporates a discussion that is specific to one single mode of childrearing instead of psychohistory as a whole. Also, it makes the subject look a lot more controversial. Is that what you want? Please check out James W. Prescott and the external link to "Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence". It contains a large amount of psychogenic data from modern hunter-gather societies. -- Bookish 00:02, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I am satisfied with having discussed both subjects here in talk page. I have no strong feelings about leaving the article as it is. Perhaps you may simply want to add a line or two of the above to the article? —Cesar Tort 00:42, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
To introduce the controversy from anthropology, a line or two would be the right amount, if you feel it's necessary. I made quite a few minor edits yesterday aimed towards a neutral tone, and I made sure not to go beyond the facts. I don't want to add any more myself. As it's a controversial subject, it could easily be spoiled by digressions or a surfeit of material. -- Bookish 10:43, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] avoid future tagging

Not long ago this article was pov tagged. See DanielCD’s posts above: in my view, legitimate concerns. Perhaps what you may add should address such concerns to avoid future tagging? —Cesar Tort 16:01, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rembrandt's painting

Cesar: I suspect child sacrifice is the hardest part of Psychohistory for most people to swallow. I think pictures make a bigger impact than words, so I added two things:

  1. Rembrandt's painting of the sacrifice of Isaac, from the Old Testament. Alice Miller used it in The Untouched Key.
  2. An external link to an article about Inca child sacrifice (with photographs) from Discovery Channel Canada.

It's probably not a good idea to link to any articles about religion, so I only included the painting. Do you remember double****.info? -- Bookish 18:18, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Rembrandt was a splendid choice, Bookish. Indians also used to sacrifice children here: and Mexican anthropologists are just as Neanderthals and totally lacking of compassion and empathy towards the victims as in the US and Europe. That’s why I liked the flaming debate I called your attention to. Verily verily I say to you that all of this is about a clash of psychoclasses!
There have been so many article changes in the last few days that I didn’t notice if you added that sentence about psychoclasses? (BTW, I don’t understand the meaning of “double****.info”) —Cesar Tort 18:41, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I just added the word psychoclass in brackets: A psychogenic mode in Psychohistory is a type of mentality (or psychoclass) that results from, and is associated with, a particular childrearing style.
double**** is from something I wrote on your talk page about Christians in Wikipedia a while back. -- Bookish 19:12, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
It looks then that the article is OK by now. Do you agree? —Cesar Tort 19:29, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, it seems OK to me. -- Bookish 22:23, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Faculty Bios

From Bookish 21:12, 16 June 2006 (UTC):

At present, the article focuses on the work of Lloyd deMause, which is understandable, because there appears to be more material on the web by him, or about him, than any other psychohistorian. However, I did find faculty bios for the others mentioned in Notable psychohistorians section. I believe the article would appear less partisan if their academic titles were included, together with links to faculty bios. It would be also fair to arrange it in alphabetical order and add Bruce Mazlish, Emeritus Professor of History at MIT. Here is my suggestion:

[edit] Notable psychohistorians


Good ideas. —Cesar Tort 22:51, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
I'll wait a day or two to see if anyone else has a comment -- Bookish 22:56, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I used four different search engines to find out more about the psychohistory journal for university academics, The Psychohistory Review. I found only citations. The journal doesn't appear to have a publisher's website. Charles Strozier was the founding editor. I added a brief description of The Wellfleet Psychohistory Group to the Robert Jay Lifton article. It was all I could find using search engines. -- Bookish 15:23, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] deMause’s comment on this article

Yesterday I wrote this email:

Dear Lloyd deMause:

The Wikipedia article on psychohistory [2] is almost completed. I hope you will like it. Of course, you or anyone of your colleagues can edit it and make the changes you deem it necessary. Cesar Tort

de Mause’s reply (19 June 2006):
Splendid job. I have no changes to content. However two websites have changed recently: The IPA website is now simply http://www.psychohistory.us and the discussion group is http://www.psychohistory-historicalmotivations@yahoogroups.com
Lloyd

—Cesar Tort 14:20, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Cesar, thanks for contacting Lloyd. I updated the International Psychohistorical Association link. However, the psychohistory moderated discussion group at Topica still exists. The other link Lloyd provided is a login address, but there is a website for the group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/psychohistory-historicalmotivations/
What do you think, Cesar? Do you want to add the website for the second group? There wasn't much information about it on the site. -- Bookish 16:22, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
I’ve just seen the main page of this later group and have no objections about whether including it or not. Once I get the EMOL book I may add a brief paragraph below the “Evolution of six psychogenic modes” graph you introduced: the only colored graph in the entire psychohistory literature! —Cesar Tort 17:05, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
I looked at the Topica list. Apparently, the new list will replace it. To play safe, I replaced the Topica link with a link to Psychohistory Discussion List at Psychohistory.com. -- Bookish 17:40, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] info added

I have now read Lloyd deMause’s books Foundations of Psychohistory and The Emotional Life of Nations. As promised above, I have now added info to make psychohistory theory more comprehensible —though undoubtedly more utopian for outsiders! I also removed a reference at the end of the article under the heading “Individual studies”:

Freud, Sigmund (1967). "Thomas Woodrow Wilson, Twenty eighth President of the United States: A Psychological Study", Boston, Houghton Mifflin in: Sigmund Freud, Collected Works, supplement, S. 686-692.

The above reference was only peripherally connected to the article content. Since present-day psychohistory was the product of an American scholar I standardized the text to American English. —Cesar Tort 00:30, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A psychoclass for postmodern times

Mindblindness from the "postmodern times" pulpit:

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.

That claim is far too grandiose. Few people will believe there is only one source for all those ills, even if it's true. Think about the readers. Religious people will be offended. Helping mode parents exist in the world today who are religious. They admire Jesus for challenging the status quo. Do you want to alienate everyone who hasn't yet accepted these ideas? -- 81.174.211.214 21:19, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Whether it's grandiose or not is irrelevant. Are you saying that it's an inaccurate description of what psychohistorians believe? If so, change it, but don't revert a whole bunch of unrelated stuff in the process. Pfalstad 22:40, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Norbert Elias' "psychohistory"

Norbert Elias had proposed the formation of a new discipline called "psychohistory" in his opus magnum about civilization. Discussing the subject of rationalisation in the context of European history, he underlined the importance of the rational and irrational aspects of people, their ideas and their habits in building their culture. In "psychohistory" he saw that such a study would become feasible, history would no longer just exclude psychologic facts, neither would psychology just occupy itself with current problems. Searching the net with the question in mind, if this discipline had since developped, I am decieved to find this...

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 195.176.186.2 (talk • contribs).

Next time please sign. Also, please remember Wikipedia is not a soapbox. If you want an open forum to discuss psychohistory issues, you are welcomed here [3]  :) Cesar Tort 06:48, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mutilation

The bottom-right section of the table says:

Children's rights movement, deschooling and free schooling, natural childbirth, Taking Children Seriously and the abandonment of genital mutilation of infant boys.

Is that supposed to be referring to circumcision? If so it should simply say so. As it is it's neither clear nor POV. --Ptcamn 23:41, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I didn't write it but, yes: I'll correct it. —Cesar Tort 00:00, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../p/s/y/Talk%7EPsychohistory_5484.html"