Editor’s Introduction

In early January, Andrew Brink, a founding member of the Forum and of the Editorial Board of Clio’s Psyche, contacted me, requesting that Clio’s Psyche do a symposium on Lloyd deMause’s The Emotional Life of Nations which had been reviewed favorably in our December 2002 issue by Howard Stein (“Exploring The Emotional Life of Nations,” Vol. 9 No. 3: pp. 150-152). I asked several Editorial Board members and the majority of their responses were positive. David Beisel suggested that we publish the symposium no earlier than June and preferably in September, so authors would have enough time to carefully write a thousand words, or more if they should so desire. We decided that we would ask, with a personal request from me, each of the members of our Editorial Board. Fred Alford (Maryland), Andrew Brink (McMaster, Toronto), Joseph Dowling (Leigh), Peter Petschauer (Appalachian State), and Leon Rappoport (Kansas State) responded with comments on the book. Because Professor Brink expressed bewilderment as to why historians in general were not more accepting of deMause’s work, I decided to ask some additional historians each of whom had published at least one book of psychohistory. The idea was that only psychohistorical scholars, or those quite open to the field, would be part of the symposium. Professors Lee Shneidman (Adelphi) and David Felix (CUNY), both of whom I saw at the Forum’s Biography and Autobiography Research Group, readily accepted the assignment, as did Professor Lawrence Tritle (Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles). In the end, what emerged were extremely divergent comments by six historians, one literary scholar, one political scientist, and one psychologist. As always, the views expressed represent those of the authors and not of Clio’s Psyche.

Because we do not usually have symposia on psychohistorical books, I think it a good idea to remind the reader of Lloyd deMause’s contributions to psychohistory. They are impressive, innovative, numerous, varied, and well-known. He is one of the most widely known of the colleagues who have devoted their scholarly careers to the field and he has had far more institutional impact than anyone else. He founded the Psychohistory Press, Creative Roots Publishing, the Journal of Psychohistory (initially named the History of Childhood Quarterly), the Institute for Psychohistory, and the International Psychohistorical Association (IPA — of which he has twice been president). He is a pioneer of online psychohistory. As Director of the Institute for Psychohistory, IPA President, Editor of the Journal, editor (and author) of The History of Childhood (1974) and (with Henry Ebel) Jimmy Carter and American Fantasy (1977), deMause has encouraged the work of others and often published it. He is the sole author of Foundations of Psychohistory (1982) and of Reagan’s America (1984). His work in the early 1970s on childhood was and remains pathbreaking, inspiring many psychohistorians to integrate the history of childhood into their work. His subsequent probing of historical group fantasies has been less widely accepted within the academic and psychoanalytic communities. In the IPA and elsewhere, he is admired for his staunch devotion to the rights of children and the struggle against war.

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