Reflections on the Binion Symposium (response article)

In a long and distinguished career that has included professorships at Brandeis, Columbia, MIT, Colle’ge de France, and working for UNESCO in Paris, Rudolph Binion has demonstrated an enormous breadth and range of historical and psychohistorical knowledge. His Frau Lou: Nietzsche’s Wayward Disciple (1968) and Hitler Among the Germans (1976) are psychohistorical achievements of the first order. For almost three decades his primary focus has been to go beyond individual to group psychology—his “De Gaulle as Pétain” is a prime example of this.

Organizing the symposium has been an exciting and challenging task. As serious scholars, we want our work to be refereed by the most knowledgeable colleagues—researchers who are also open to new ideas and who do not automatically find scholarship objectionable because they read the words “psychology” or “psychohistory” in it. This task became challenging for several reasons mostly having to do with limited lead time and the problem of overcoming the understandable professorial disinclination to take on another unpaid scholarly obligation during a time usually set aside for one’s own research and relaxation. We were approaching busy, highly productive scholars, requesting that they take valuable time from their own important work. It was only at the beginning of June that Binion’s article was accepted as a suitable long article for our small quarterly by being anonymously refereed by an appropriate board of scholars. We quickly decided it would make an excellent symposium issue and went on to identify two rather distinct groups—psychological historians and traditional historians—with the expertise to best respond to this excursion into French history by the Leff Families Professor of Modern European History at Brandeis University.

Identifying the first group of well-qualified psychologically-informed historians was easy and its members were generous in spending their precious time on our symposium, rather than their own research and publications. In the end, we were quite fortunate to find a group who felt that they had sufficient knowledge of the subject matter as well as of the methodology of psychohistory to respond. Most serendipitously, we even had two scholars of France as well as of psychological history (Shapiro and Szaluta). Jacques Szaluta, in fact, has published articles on Pétain as well as a psychohistory textbook first published in France.

“Traditional” historians of France represented the biggest challenge. First, I didn’t know them and they did not know me, my reputation as an editor, or our journal. Therefore they had no special reason to accede to my request. Nevertheless, they were quite accommodating, going to great lengths to recommend colleagues with special expertise on de Gaulle, Pétain, the general period, or at least French history. I suspect a few found it much easier to recommend others than to volunteer to write a response themselves because they often seemed unsure of what to make of a request for a comment on a paper based on psychohistory. Some made it quite clear to me that they read the Binion piece carefully before they decided they did not have enough time. Several clearly felt they would have to immerse themselves in psychohistorical literature to do the job properly, even though I specified that this was not required. Two accepted the invitation only after being reassured that we were only looking for good scholarship

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from colleagues well versed in France of the period, rather than from experts on psychohistory.

Among the resistances to participating was the common reluctance of the specialist of a particular place and time to go outside of the materials they know so well within an historical context, on the grounds that there are too many variables. For example, a distinguished French historian from one of our most famous universities declined on the basis of inadequate time, while rather gratuitously suggesting that the very idea of comparing men from these different periods was suspect. Yet, as professors in our survey courses we must do precisely this to make history intelligible to our students. If we can’t compare two Twentieth century French generals turned head-of-state whose lives overlapped by 61 years, and who had long-term relationships with each other, then whom can we compare?

Direct prejudice against psychohistory was something I did encounter from one of the 55 correspondents I had in conducting this project. I thanked this scholar, who has a Harvard doctoral degree and who teaches at a well-known urban university, for his candor in declaring his lack of “sympathy” and “prejudice,” inquiring as to why he held these views. He declared that his doubts came from a conviction that contemporary American culture has too much psychological jargon. This is a point I have long been making, so I agreed and mentioned the paper I had just given in Canada on my ideal of a psychohistory to be written without significant psychological terminology. When he sent me a rough draft of his response, it became perfectly clear that his lack of sympathy for our field led him to misinterpret a fact as well as only make interpretations hostile to the approach. As much as we welcome differences of opinion, it had become crystal clear to me, and the member of our Editorial Board to whom I showed his response anonymously, that this professor was not a suitable responder for this symposium. I thanked him for his time and effort.

In the end, I am most appreciative of the scholars of France and Europe who responded to the symposium paper or helped me identify well-qualified colleagues who might be able to write on “De Gaulle as Pétain.” Several scholars who stand out in this regard are Professors William Keylor (Boston), Kim Munholland (Minnesota), Robert Paxton (Columbia), John Sweets (Kansas), and Irwin Wall (UC-Riverside). It struck me just how many of the French historians were either on their way to or from France for research or pleasure. (I must confess to some envy of their enjoyment of the wonders of France while I edited and typed away in northern New Jersey.) In the future I hope to tap their expertise for more articles on French history, since I feel that our publication has been stronger in American, English, German, and Russian history than it has been for France.

The respondents in this symposium represent many different universities and colleges throughout the United States and Canada. Virtually all are trained in European history and a number are scholars of France with publications specifically in the area of our discussion. Though the majority are psychological historians, there are five without a background in this area. They approach the materials in a variety of ways. John Hellman of McGill, for example, offers information on de Gaulle’s background and military affairs while Lee Shneidman of Adelphi provides a personalized assessment. David James Fisher, a psychoanalyst and modern European historian, asks the types of questions that reflect his therapeutic experience even more than his historical training. Given the number of commentators, there is comparatively little overlapping coverage. The overall result is a richness of insight.

The symposium is a special pleasure for me since when I think of Rudy Binion, the three words that come to mind are erudition, intellect, and friendship. I’m often in awe of the breadth and depth of his knowledge of European culture, history, group process, and so much more. He is a generous supporter of this publication, who sits on our Editorial Board. In submitting this paper he encouraged its use as a symposium so that Clio’s Psyche might become known to a larger group of scholars. In three decades I have learned an enormous amount by both listening to him develop his ideas at numerous conferences and reading the results of his in-depth archival research and profound thought. Awe and gratitude, however, are not a good basis for writing a critical response to a major paper. Nonetheless, this does not present a problem since I do not feel as critical of Binion’s “De

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Gaulle as Pétain” as appreciative of his accomplishment in writing it.

This being said, I must note that despite our common doctoral degrees in modern European history, we have very different backgrounds and ways of looking at the world. Childhood is the main focus of my research and I integrate it into the many psychobiographies I have written of people like Humphry Davy, Thomas Telford, the Bushes, Bill Clinton, and Paul Tsongas. Binion, on the other hand, has written about childhood in the past but in recent decades has increasingly turned his focus away from it, concentrating on group psychohistory, sometimes to the exclusion of childhood. Group psychology is a subject I approach quite cautiously as reflected in my comments in the Clio’s Psyche Group Process Symposium (Vol. 7 No. 3, December 2000, pp. 148-149). While I agree that people in groups often act differently than they do as individuals, I look for the motives of the individual, having found this to be a more reliable source of information than trying to explain the motives according to some theoretical framework, as is done by most students of group behavior.

Fortunately, Binion does not lead with theory. Indeed, I am impressed by his humility in acknowledging the limits of his knowledge as to the means of transmission of group trauma and his willingness to “eat” his own words when the evidence disproves an earlier hypothesis about trauma always being unconscious. In reading Binion’s theoretical framework I am left wondering what the relationship is between the traditional Freudian notion of the repetition compulsion and Binion’s idea of traumatic reliving. It is worth noting that the unconscious compulsion to repeat encapsulated in the first concept is focused on the individual rather than the group. (As we know, while Freud used the word repetition, singular or plural, over 190 times, he never used repetition compulsion as a phrase. The reader should note that though I do not recall ever before having used the term repetition compulsion in my published work—beyond in a listing of psychological terms—it is one of many psychological concepts that help to frame the hypothesis that I utilize in making sense of the data that comes from my study of history and life.)

“De Gaulle as Pétain” is informative, suggestive, and thought-provoking and produces in me thoughts of betrayal, denial, grandiosity, and withdrawal. Pride and grandiosity are apparent in so much of the behavior of the founder of the Fifth Republic. His identification with the grandeur of France is so profound that he could not accept its defeat in June 1940. When he could not dominate French politics, de Gaulle chose to retreat to his tent and await the call to service under his terms. He acted above politics and politicians, both of which he disdained. In the face of such expressions of superiority over others I wonder about what lies beneath. As a psychoanalyst, I know that grandiosity is a defensive mechanism, covering up feelings of inadequacy, vulnerability, and weakness.

Professor Binion does a good job of highlighting de Gaulle’s denial, even noting that “His historic identity was built on that double denial of the national trauma of 1940.” Charles de Gaulle was in denial of his status of having ghostwritten a book for his mentor, Pétain, denial of defeat in 1940, denial of the legitimacy of Pétain’s Vichy government, denial of his position as dependent on the good will of the British and Americans in World War II, and in denial that France was no longer a really great power after WW II. As is often the case with many famous leaders—as well as ordinary people—he denied that which did not fit his picture of reality and his role in the world.

Betrayal is another important theme in the life Charles de Gaulle. He saw Pétain’s creation of the Vichy regime as a betrayal of France in 1940, rather than as a partially successful attempt to save it from the full force of the German Reich. He saw Pétain as having betrayed him personally in claiming his words in the book he ultimately published, in defiance of his mentor, as France and Her Army (1938). He saw the English and Americans as betraying France by treating it as one of the great powers in name only, not really recognizing its grandeur and significance as a full partner. De Gaulle in turn betrayed Pétain’s Vichy government, the Fourth Republic, and in 1961 the generals and Algerian colonialists who brought him to power.

In conclusion, each reader will have to decide if the De Gaulle as Pétain Symposium accomplishes our goal of creating a lively intellectual ex-

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change furthering our knowledge of historical reliving, French history, Pétain, de Gaulle, and the relationship between leader and led.

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