Home

Invitation to the Psychohistory Forum meeting November 20, 2021, on the impact of child abuse in Nazi Germany and society generally.

Notice of the new Psychobiography Research and Publication Group of the Forum: 

This link will describe a definition of psychobiography and the following: our vision, mission statement, membership benefits, and methodology. 

If you are or becoming a psychobiographer, to join, fill out this membership questionnaire.

The Many Roads of the Builders of Psychohistory was published on November 9th and is available from ORI Academic Press in ebook ($19.99) and softcover ($24.99) formats. 

Call for Papers:

Call for Papers due on March 15, 2022 are on:
Our Emotional Connections to Art, Books, Media, Music, Objects, Podcasts, TV, etc. (Note, this may be divided into three parts.)
The Emotions of Facing Death, Dying, and Life in the Era of COVID

Additional Call for Papers are on a variety of special issues. Some upcoming Call for Papers are on The Psychology of Film and Screens Our Anxious Digitally Connected World.

Notices of our forthcoming presentations:
Sven Fuchs’ PowerPoint presentation, “The Childhood Origins of (Political) Violence and Peacelessness,” will be held virtually on 11-20-2021, from 10:30am to 1:00pm.

Links enabling you to view some recent Psychohistory Forum meetings.
Lawrence Friedman Psychohistory Forum  Meeting, “Erik Erikson Retrospective” 4-13-19
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3
Brian D’agostino Psyohistory Forum Meeting 3-9-19 (TBA)
David Lotto Meeting, “The Male Perspective on Sex and Power in the Age of #MeToo Meeting Report” 1-26-2019
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4

Welcome to Clio’s Psyche and the Psychohistory Forum

Our mission is to enlarge and disseminate the related paradigms of applied psychoanalysis, political psychology, psychobiography, and psychological history. We seek to do this in non-technical language.

Our goal is always to stimulate psychohistorical thought, publications, research, and teaching. Some specific objectives are as follows:

  • To encourage the general public to think psychohistorically
  • To disseminate psychohistorical knowledge
  • To communicate with Psychohistory Forum members and Clio’s Psyche subscribers
  • To assist the networking of colleagues, especially in the Forum research groups
  • To grow the psychohistorical community and the larger group of people interested in what we do
  • To help clinicians focus on history and current events
  • To assist academics in all disciplines — history, literature, political science, psychology, sociology, anthropology — to utilize the insights and tools of psychoanalysis, psychobiography, and psychology
  • To foster psychohistorical debate, discussion, listening, publication, research, and thought
  • To help transmit the knowledge of an older generation of psychohistorians to those just entering the field
  • To research and publish the history of our field, honoring the work of those who have built it
  • To make available online obituaries of those who die, memorializing their work

In conclusion, we welcome others joining with us to achieve the goals articulated in this mission statement.

1994   2019


Paul H. Elovitz, PhD
Editor, Clio’s Psyche

Psychohistory

What happened why is the historian’s
 Agenda.  What potentially extends
 To every action of the common man’s,
 So that the controversy never ends
 Concerning which bits of the human past
 To privilege. The stakes are high because
 The what can shape the why.  Why empires last,
 Or birth rates fall, or tools emerge, or laws,
 Are loaded questions that construe the what
 As empires, birth rates, tools, or laws—that float
 These as the active entities and not
 The people doing what those terms denote.
 All whats come down to human doings.  See:
 All whys thus end in psychohistory. 

Rudolph Binion
Written for the annual compendium of Clio’s Psyche

Announcements and Forthcoming Events

Spring 2021, Volume 27 Number 3, of Clio’s Psyche is now available.  See Table of Contents below.  To join/subscribe, see Membership.  Back Issue Spring 2020, Volume 26 Number 3, can be viewed online.

Until further notice, our Psychohistory Forum Work-In-Progress Seminars will be online.  The Psychology of the Presidential Election meeting will be on October 31st with the following presenters: Dan McAdams (Northwestern University), “The Episodic Man: Donald Trump,” Denis O’Keefe (NYU), “Donald Trump and Stochastic Terrorism,” and Paul H. Elovitz (Ramapo College), “Reflections on Biden’s Personality.”  Jim Anderson’s (Northwestern University/psychoanalyst) presentation on “Heinz Kohut’s Vulnerable Self” will be held when it is safe for him to fly from Chicago and the group to meet in person.  Additional seminars will be announced online. 

Interview with Paul H. Elovitz, PhD

Author of The Making of Psychohistory

(Conducted by Ken Fuchsman, EdD,

week of July 2, 2018)

Read Excerpts from Ch. 1 and Ch. 2 and Table of Contents from The Making of Psychohistory.

NOW AVAILABLE: The Making of Psychohistory: Origins, Controversies, and Pioneering Contributors by Dr. Paul H. Elovitz, PhD – Ordering information through the publisher (as a paperback ISBN # 978-1-138-58749-6, it is reduced at checkout at the Routledge publisher’s site with the code FLR40 from $38.95 to $31.16).

Most Recent Tables of Contents

Clio’s Psyche

Understanding the “Why” of Culture, Current Events, History, and Society

Spring 2021                Volume 27 Number 3

The Psychohistory Forum Roundtable on the January 6th Insurrection . . . . . . 273
Peter Loewenberg, Paul H. Elovitz, James William Anderson,
Robert Dallek, Avner Falk, David Lotto, Michael Maccoby,
Jeff Meyerhoff, Peter Petschauer, Jon Smith, Pamela Steiner
Psychohistorical Reflections on the January 6th Insurrection . . . . . . . . . . . . . .285
Paul H. Elovitz

By Order of the President, Invasion of the U.S. Capitol: An Allegory . . . . . . .288
Howard F. Stein
Healing Divided America
Can America Heal: Framing the Dialectic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .289
Richard Booth
Unity Beyond Trauma? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
Billie Pivnick
Perils of Democratic Factionalism: Equality Versus Freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
Lawrence Tritle
Healing a Divided America: Understanding and Repairing the Damage . . . . . 304
Karyne E. Messina
An Optimist Says Healing Will be a Long Endeavor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
Paul H. Elovitz
Cultivating Empathy through the Reading of Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .312
Mark I. West
The Psychology of Teaching: Part I
Introduction to Psychohistorical and Psychoanalytic Teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
Paul H. Elovitz
How the Talking Cure Reduced COVID-19 Anxiety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
Thomas Cook
Teaching At-Risk Students in a Pandemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
Marcia Anne Newton
Virtually Teaching the Election and a Survey of Civilization . . . . . . . . . . . . . .327
Paul H. Elovitz
Stories of Survival: Writing through Trauma in the First-Year Classroom . . . 333
Katy D’Angelo
Engaged, Not Curious: Teaching Therapeutic Writing Online . . . . . . . . . . . . .338
Reinekke Lengelle
Teaching Psychotherapy in Wuhan in the Era of COVID-19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . .343
Arnold D. Richards & Arlene Kramer Richards
Teaching Psychoanalysis at Adelphi: A Dream Come True . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .348
Burton Norman Seitler
Relational Pathways to a Critical Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
Denis J. O’Keefe
Psychohistory, Teaching, and Analytic Neutrality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358
Robert Samuels
_____________________________________________________________________
Who First Wrote about the Methodology of Psychobiography . . . . . . . . . . . . .363
James William Anderson & William McKinley Runyan
Academic Historians’ Failure to Support Psychohistory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .372
William R. Meyers
_____________________________________________________________________
The Psychoanalysis of Cinema: Part II
Tale of Two Women in Blue Jasmine and The Invisible Woman. . . . . . . . . . . 378
Susan Kavaler-Adler
I Found it at the Movies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .383
Merle Molofsky
Trauma, Tragedy, Recovery, and Justice in Rambo: First Blood . . . . . . . . . . . 388
Benjamin Wegner
Memorial
Jerrold Post: CIA Psychobiographer (1934-2020)  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .394
Paul H. Elovitz
Letters to the Editor
Thoughts on Dangerous Social Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396
Herbert Barry III
Appreciation of Dr. Seitler’s Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .397
Richard Booth
Bulletin Board . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
Call for Papers  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284, 377, 398, 401

Winter 2021                Volume 27 Number 2

On Healing America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .149 
Paul H. Elovitz, Marilyn Charles, Burton Norman Seitler, Jack Schwartz, Peter W. Petschauer, Tom Ferraro, Michael Maccoby, Denis O’Keefe, Matthew H.      Bowker, Richard Brookhiser, Lawrence A. Tritle, Hannah Hahn, Kenneth
Rasmussen
The Psychology of Caregiving
When My World Fell Apart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .155
Marc-André Cotton
Autumn. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Ethelbert Miller
The Last Thing My Mother Saw: Reflections on Caregiving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Judith Harris
Passover. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .164
Ethelbert Miller
The Dark Psychology of Caregiving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
Jeffrey Berman
Legal and Psychological Aspects of Christian Caregiving. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .172
Peter W. Petschauer
Psychoanalytic Implications of Caretaking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
Neil Wilson
Tell Me It’s Autumn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .180
Ethelbert Miller
Taking and Giving Care: For Whom and to What End(s)? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
Marilyn Charles
Inna Rozentsvit Caregiving Symposium
The Meaning of Life Among Caregivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .185
Inna Rozentsvit
The True Meaning of Life Among Caregivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .191
Jack Schwartz
Watching My Mother Sleep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .193
Jennie Mintz
A Response to Rozentsvit and the Dilemmas of a Caregiver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Paul H. Elovitz
Fabe’s Symposium on Woody Allen’s Comedy
Woody Allen’s Psychological Slapstick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Marilyn Fabe
Did Woody Allen’s Troubled Childhood Fuel His Humor? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
James William Anderson
Free Associations on Why I Never Liked Woody Allen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .208
Paul H. Elovitz
Woody Allen and the Psychology of Deficit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .210
Gregory Bellow
Marilyn Fabe’s Kohutian Reading of “Woody Allen’s Psychological Slapstick” . . . . . .214
Claire Kahane
Shedding Light on Some of Woody Allen’s Darker Shadows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .216
Marian Wiener-Margulies
Woody Allen’s Myth is His Greatest Accomplishment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .219
Jack Schwartz
In Movies and Life, I Sometimes Don’t Know Whether to Laugh or Cry . . . . . . . . . . . 222
Christine Silverstein
Marilyn Fabe Responds. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .225
Marilyn Fabe: Psychoanalytic Film Scholar Interview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
James William Anderson
The Psychoanalysis of Cinema
The Third Man and Film Noir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
David R. Beisel
Can Refugees Escape? Traumatized, Dissociated, Silenced, and Unheard . . . . . . . . . . .244
Ruth M. Lijtmaer
Cinema as an Art of Healing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
Holger Schumacher
_____________________________________________________________________
Südtirol/Alto Adige; Trauma Lingering in Open and Latent Hostilities . . . . . . . . . . . . .253
Peter W. Petschauer
The Forum’s First Virtual Meeting: The 2020 Election . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
Paul H. Elovitz
The Episodic Man: Donald Trump . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .260
Dan P. McAdams
Book Review
Donald J. Trump: Psychohistorical Perspectives on Our 45th President . . . . . . . . . . . . .264
Joseph G. Ponterotto & Ingrid Grieger
Memorials
In Memoriam: William R. Meyers—Advocate for Psychohistory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
Paul H. Elovitz
Souvik Raychaudhuri: Scholar of Indian Film . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .268
Brian D’Agostino
Bulletin Board . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Call for Papers  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 & 271

Fall 2020                Volume 27 Number 1

Maccoby’s The President We Need Symposium
The President We Need . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 
Michael Maccoby
Analysis and Data from an Economist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13
Robert Shapiro
Reflections on Trump and Maccoby’s Article  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 
Judith Harris
The President We Need is a Unifier, Not a Divider  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 
Charles Heckscher
Obstacles to Electing the Leaders We Need  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24
Ken Fuchsman
President Biden Would be an Empathetic Healer & Knowledgeable Problem Solver . . . 27
Paul H. Elovitz
Who Is “We”?  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31
Benjamin Wegner
Michael Maccoby Responds to the Commentaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Michael Maccoby
Election 2020, Politics, and COVID-19
The Abusive and Troubled Childhood of Donald Trump . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Sven Fuchs with Peter W. Petschauer
Binary Thinking Meets Chaotic Fragmentation in the 2020 Election  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Justin Frank
When a Psychoanalyst Marries a Historian: Brookhiser and Safer  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Paul H. Elovitz
Unmasking an Agenda: COVID-19 and America’s Indifference to Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Peter W. Petschauer
Donald Trump: Master Marketer or Malignant Manipulative Masochist?  . . . . . . . . . . . .61
Burton Norman Seitler
Death at the COVID-19 Front  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .65
Peter W. Petschauer
COVID-19: Denial, Mourning, George Floyd, and Healing Our Losses  . . . . . . . . . . . . .67
Paul H. Elovitz
2020 Election and COVID-19  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73
Dorothea Leicher
America’s Response to the Plague  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
David Lotto
A Distant Mirror: Modi, Trump, and Pandemic Politics in an Authoritarian Age . . . . . . 82
Souvik Raychaudhuri, Brian D’Agostino, and Sagnik Dhar
Leadership at a Loss: Why Britain and the U.S. Mishandled the COVID-19 Crisis . . . . .87
Nick Duffell
The Psychology of Living with COVID-19
COVID-19 in Spain: Quarantine Songs  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Abigail Jareño Gómez
Personal Reflections on Living in the Altered State of COVID-19  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Ruth M. Lijtmaer
“We Can’t Breathe”: Pandemic, Dreams, and Helping  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Juhani Ihanus
Reflections Concerning the Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Ludwig Janus
Psychohistorical Interviews
An Interview with C. Fred Alford  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .107
Matthew H. Bowker
Marilyn Fabe: Psychobiographer  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
James William Anderson
Lloyd deMause Memorial
Lloyd deMause’s Odyssey  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  .125
Juhani Ihanus
Pearls of Wisdom from Lloyd deMause  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .130
Brett Kahr
Remembering Lloyd deMause  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
John Jacob Hartman
Book Reviews
Volkan’s Remarkable Application of Psychoanalysis to Society  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .137
John Jacob Hartman
Psychobiography is Trending Among Psychologists  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Benjamin Wegner
Letter to the Editor
Lawton’s Pathbreaking “The Myth of Altruism” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .144
David R. Beisel
Young Scholar Research Members of the Forum. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .145
Bulletin Board . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Call for Papers  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 & 147