Psychohistory is a Valuable Approach

Reading the five excellent papers that were written by old hands in psychohistory gave me a chuckle as I asked myself in amusement, “So what else is new?” I remember the heady days of the early 1970s when young knights of psychohistory, armed with shiny psychodynamic armors while riding swift psychoanalytic horses, charged the bastion of history with the possible aim, perhaps, of replacing it with psychohistory. The defenders of the historical status quo were becoming very defensive and I had a sense of foreboding that in reaction they might become aggressive and even vengeful. It was not a matter of overt denigration of historians by psychohistorians. It was more like a tacit implication that what was hitherto a deficient history will now be replaced by proper psychohistory.

I was writing A Psychohistory of Zionism then, which was published in 1975. Trying to avert the danger that I sensed, I stated the following in the introductory note to the book: “Throughout the book I have tried to accentuate the psychological aspects of historical developments, which is the task of psychohistory. Nevertheless, I wish to state my conviction that psychohistory is a complement to history, not a substitute for it.” I was trying to allay any fears by traditional historians that we, the new breed of psychohistorians, are out to supplant them. It did not work. Consequently, we occasionally felt like a persecuted minority, somewhat akin to the way Jews historically feel.

I mention the Jews on purpose because of a specific issue in Jewish culture. Not every Jew is a really “kosher” Jew who qualifies for the designation. As a result, controversies raged in Israel and abroad as to “who is a Jew?” Is he a Jew by virtue of the Halakhah (meaning by the Jewish religious law; he is a Jew because he feels himself to be a Jew) or is he a Jew because others characterize him as such, whether he likes it or not? Lo and behold, similar questions were raised concerning who is “a true psychohistorian.” I never thought that this issue could be resolved by extensive teaching programs where budding psychohistorians would receive psychoanalytic training on the one hand and a rigorous practice in handling primary and secondary historical sources on the other hand. Being a psychohistorian is like being a Jew. It does not come with a diploma but springs from a person’s identity. Thus, in the current controversy between Ken Fuchsman and David Lotto on this matter I am on Lotto’s side: Psychohistory is an approach rather than a discipline. When people ask me which methodology I use as a psychohistorian, I tell them that I read the New York Times like I read poetry. But although this stance is quite fine with me, there are al-

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ways others who request more specific terms that would imply much greater rigor than the lukewarm statement that I use a psychodynamic method.

The truth is that I was never able to teach what I do. For many years I witnessed my colleagues David Beisel, Paul Elovitz, and Jacques Szaluta struggle with issues involved in teaching psychohistory in the classroom. But I could not teach how I scoop up data that jumps at me from the public domain and, even more difficult to explain, how I connect the dots in unusual ways. Perhaps the whole endeavor represents art more than science. This could cast doubt on my credentials as a psychohistorian. Moreover, it is also possible to determine whether someone is a psychohistorian by checking if he does psychohistory; pure and simple. After The History of Childhood Quarterly became The Journal of Psychohistory, history of childhood was still deemed by some as an essential part of the field. Consequently, if a study did not include history of childhood, it was not regarded as true psychohistory. And if you do not do true psychohistory, you are not really a psychohistorian. This needling and tormenting of the members of a besieged minority came mostly from within its own ranks as intra-group schisms continued to emerge. This brings me to the issue of self-inflicted wounds.

David Beisel cited an assertion by Lloyd deMause in 1975 that while psychohistory was science, historians were astrologers. This stinging remark represented utter folly, since hurling ridiculous insults at your antagonists only invites attack. The historical, or should I say psychohistorical, irony in all this is that eventually deMause himself invited an astrologist to present an astrological paper to the International Psychohistorical Association (IPA) convention. I questioned this act that was nevertheless defended by many participants, including Henry Lawton, who defended it in the name of “eclecticism.” I had no patience for this kind of mistaken tolerance and quit the association. I thought that it was foolish for people who were bothered by having been called “loonies” by other historians, and also bothered by their work being called “psychobabble,” to provide their tormentors with more ammunition. I attributed this group folly to the group’s subservience to deMause, its cult-like guru leader. Cultism was not a phenomenon of other psychohistory groups. The problem of cultism was confined to the IPA. Unfortunately, it created negative attitudes toward psychohistorical writing in general among historians and in-

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tellectuals.

Indeed, the IPA had a guru and he received exalted adulation. Here is an example: Many people are familiar with the famous sequence of ideas leading from Copernicus through Darwin to Freud. In like fashion, during a group session Casper Schmidt drew a progression of ideas leading from Sigmund Freud (free associations) to Anna Freud (children’s play) to Lloyd deMause (fantasy analysis). DeMause seemed to me overjoyed on that occasion. It was really sad to watch. At the very time that psychohistorians were feeling like a persecuted minority and were struggling with the issue of how to define themselves and their field, they projected an image of a cult. This was a self-inflicted deep wound. These few recollections of mine support the legitimacy of comparing early Freudianism with the psychohistorical movement, as was done by Elovitz. Both movements promoted revolutionary new ideas and had their jobs cut out for them in seeking acceptance by mainstream scientific fields. In this connection Elovitz was right to conclude that psychoanalysis was better received then than psychohistory is being received now.

So what is the future of psychohistory? Are we condemned to keep watching again and again the same movie that we have already seen before? I feel a bit optimistic, albeit with a few words of caution. I would recommend staying away from grand designs concerning what is psychohistory or producing textbooks that cover the whole field. Pursuing specific topics of interest with the proper sensitivity to undercurrents, nuances, and reverberations (what a sloppy methodology) is likely to be more successful in capturing the attention and interest of the audience. It is recommended to stay away from technical jargon whenever possible. Do not seek out revealing answers in the statistical manual of the American Psychiatric Association. It is a dictionary of symptoms rather than an elucidation of causes and is therefore of limited value. Try not to be psychoanalytic ideologues. They are unsympathetic types, the kinds of authorities who impart “insights” with a smile that may, nevertheless, turn into a frown and an accusation of “resistance” once the insights are not accepted. Finally, in selecting topics, follow your heart and do not worry about under what field designation the topic falls. Two of my own recent choices have been the issue of self and world in literature and the topic of Faustian bargains. The late Rudolph Binion might have called them “psychohistorical and psycholiterary.” Either way is fine, as long as it is not psychobabble.

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