Paul Elovitz on the Past, Present, and Future of Clio’s Psyche

Juhani Ihanus (JI): When I first participated in the International Psychohistorical Association (IPA) Convention in New York in June 1994, I met you and Bob Lentz in an Italian restaurant holding in your hands the brand new first issue of Clio’s Psyche with the subheading “Examining the ‘Why’ of History.” I remember how proud and enthusiastic you were about this enterprise, and how you had great plans so that the quarterly would flourish, and it has done that. From the initial modest eight-page newsletter, the journal has developed into a major publication in the field of psychohistory. How do you remember the initial steps toward Clio’s Psyche?

Paul H. Elovitz (PHE): In the building of Clio’s Psyche, our goal was to create a journal that would grow psychohistory and maintain a record of the interdisciplinary meetings I had been organizing since the mid-1970s—39 years to date. As a psychohistorian I am a highly collaborative worker, especially when I initiate a new adventure. Thus, I started the Psychohistory Forum with the late Henry Lawton (2014) as Co-Director, although after several years he left

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the Co-Director position to start his psychohistorical film group. In starting Clio, I searched for like-minded colleagues and two candidates quite readily emerged. One, a talented and accomplished professor at a major university, had considerable editorial experience but a dissimilar view of psychohistory, little sense of the unconscious, and a contrarian inclination. Consequently I chose to work with Bob Lentz, an Amerian living in Canada who had very little background in psychohistory but an unusually good head on his shoulders and an eagerness to learn. For nine years Bob served wonderfully as Associate Editor, as we built Clio from an eight-page newsletter to become a lengthy quarterly, scholarly journal of current events, politics, and history viewed from psychoanalytic and psychological perspectives. Bob’s abilities wonderfully complemented my own and he did an incredible amount of work and now occasionally guest edits special issues that fit his interests. Fortunately, he still serves on our Editorial Board.

JI: How did you manage to organize the impressive development of Clio’s Psyche, including so many distinguished Editorial Board members, high-level contributions, and large extensions in the subject area, as reflected in the subheading (starting from 1998) “Understanding the ‘Why’ of Culture, Current Events, History, and Society”?

PHE: It is nice that you see us achieving the goals of having quality members and contributions, and expanding the range of psychohistorical subject matter. This has always been our goal, and we have been able to get high quality people on our Editorial Board because they’ve shared the vision. The great challenge has been to turn a board of editors, who to a great extent started out as figureheads, into a working and vital part of our journal. Because these are such top-notch individuals doing so much path-breaking work in their separate fields, it is not always easy to get them to write, publish, and referee. Of late, we have worked harder to have them all make a more hands-on commitment, and we have made this a condition for new people who accept the honor and responsibility of service. Sometimes it appears to me that my strength is greater as a networker, rather than as a long-term planner who obsessively sets out a five-year plan to achieve my goals. I’ve always got a half dozen or so different ideas for special issues or features kicking around in my head. The crucial question is, how do I find colleagues to write on an issue, guest Co-Editors to work with, and mainly, the time and energy to devote to each of these? When col-

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leagues write me about a subject that is meaningful to them I often propose that we work together on it so it is not just an abstract idea but also becomes something very concrete when they accept the invitation. Of course, there are a number of colleagues who prefer to stay focused on their own work, which I respect but often regret when I realize that we will not be able to psychohistorically develop an excellent idea that they have. Major events and emotional shifts in our society may determine when we will develop certain special issues and symposia. Thus, when George W. Bush was preparing the country to go to what is now called his “War of Choice,” I wrote on teaching students about the issue prior to the outbreak of the war, and it even became a symposium issue in the Journal of Psychohistory.

JI: What was the breakdown of the disciplinary backgrounds of the Editorial Board at the founding of Clio’s Psyche and what is it at the present time?

PHE: Initially, most of the members of the Editorial Board were historians at universities who had published psychohistorically. In identifying colleagues to join in our endeavor, I showed a marked preference for historians with a long-term commitment to the integration of psychology with history. Since psychohistory is an interdisciplinary enterprise, we have always had colleagues from a variety of fields; at the moment we have: political science, psychology, sociology, and the laity. In 1995 when we first listed the board of editors, we had seven historians, a literature professor, and a psychiatrist who was also an excellent Darwin scholar—the following year we added an academic psychologist. Now we have five historians and three colleagues who are also psychoanalytically trained; then we had only two who were trained as analysts. Our Board has always included some wonderful psychohistorians. Colleagues on the board of editors are increasingly expected to play a more active role and the standard is that each should be at least a Supporting Member of the Psychohistory Forum, which I am, while I also donate over a thousand hours a year to the activities of Clio and the Psychohistory Forum that supports it.

JI: At the start, how did you position Clio’s Psyche in the field of other psychohistorical, political psychology, and applied psychoanalysis publications, and how do you see its position now?

PHE: It has always been my strong conviction that if you have interesting things to say, you will find readers, and that there can

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never be too many psychohistorical journals. In its early days the Psychohistory Review was focused on the literature and methodology of the field as well as teaching; then on doing work primarily with historical subjects, although after Chuck Strozier moved to New York City and became a practicing psychoanalyst, it seems to have become more open to therapeutic ideas. The Journal of Psychohistory was increasingly focused on fantasy analysis which has never been one of our primary foci. The older psychoanalytic journals, such as American Imago and The Psychoanalytic Review, have been inclined to do literary criticism far more than applied psychoanalysis, psychobiography, and the history of childhood, which are three primary areas of psychohistorical concern. Mentality/Mentalities was a valuable and somewhat psychohistorical journal published in New Zealand by an émigré Brooklynite but regrettably it ceased publication in 2012.

JI: How has Clio’s Online Forum influenced publications in the journal?

PHE: Through it I have occasionally met additional people who have become members of the Forum. Sometimes I’ve invited them to write for Clio or, as in the case of Arnold Richards, interview on his role in enlarging psychoanalysis’ online presence. While I generally do not have time to keep up with the activities of our discussion group when there’s a major shift of emotion, such as during Hurricane Sandy and the tragic Newtown, Connecticut shootings, I have become involved. I invited individuals who joined the discussion to write articles for Clio’s Psyche and, in the case of the shootings, went online the same day the shootings occurred asking my colleagues to write their emotional responses to the tragic events without getting into the issue of gun control, which I feared would change the tone. For the next four months we had a multitude of responses. Ultimately I extracted and edited over 40 pages of this material for the March 2013 issue.

There is enormous variation in the quantity and quality of responses on the Online Forum, with most participants not even being members of the Psychohistory Forum or readers of our journal. Indeed, I am concerned that the Online Forum’s content often is not psychohistorical and some younger colleagues have told me that they read Clio’s Psyche, when in fact they only sometimes read the forum.

We need to increase our online presence by establishing hy-

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perlinks to our articles and website. Indeed, a University of Colorado political science professor just wrote me declaring that if it is not online, it is as if it does not exist. Ken Fuchsman of our Editorial Board has also expressed the same concern. This lack of awareness is especially true for the younger generation, scholars around the world, and the popular media which disseminates ideas. The issue is how to make this happen. If you have any ideas on how to overcome this weakness, please share them with me.

JI: Journals that are both printed and electronic, and maintain an online discussion forum, have a “multiple” presence, and they activate different audiences. Online discussions are often unpredictable, and, as you said, the responses vary enormously in quantity and quality. However, such discussions can be very up to date, exciting, and freely moving. How to choose and edit such material for the journal, without losing liveliness, is a hard question. I would also put it the other way around: How to extract material from the journal for developing extended online presence, and activating new readers? Hyperlinks to articles and the website are the traditional way, but they are not enough. There should also be quick and intense “fishing” periods, right after the new journal issue has appeared, or even before it has appeared, when some exemplary texts, short quotations, theme condensations, “teasers,” and even provocations (suggestions, claims, arguments, questions) are sent from the editors to different social media forums attached to the journal. The online visitations can provide clues to how online interests are emphasized and distributed. In practice, it would demand that some people get involved in operating as disseminators of material, and as moderators of online discussions, and further reflections. I wonder if this is possible in Clio’s Psyche. Perhaps not only editors and editorial board members but also some of the writers (or new potential writers) could be enthusiastic about this kind of activation.

PHE: Thank you for your most helpful suggestions. Let us see if some of our colleagues volunteer to assist with turning these possibilities into realities.

JI: In Clio’s Psyche, you always prefer non-technical, jargon-free language. That is actually a very ambitious aim since, for academicians at least, it is often hard to discard certain phrases, conceptualizations, and theoretical formulations. Have you considered the possible criticism against this demand for language without jargon? It can be claimed that such language favors unscientific populariza-

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tion, and that eclecticism is bound to favor a theoretical and naïve approach. How do you meet these critical voices?

PHE: Yes, it is an ambitious aim to write psychohistorically with a strong preference for non-technical, jargon-free language. We academics love to use elaborate conceptualizations and theoretical formulations, and all too often confuse them with the reality of the human experience. At times, these formulations can be invaluable, but most of the time, they serve to cut us off from people outside of our particular fields, sub-fields, and sub-sub-fields, etc. In classes, we have captive audiences who are trained in how to look like they’re paying attention as professors become even more theoretical.

Certainly, I am aware that my ideal of writing in plain English can be very difficult. This helps to explain why at times we’ve allowed exceptions to the rule, as with our late Editorial Board member Andrew Brink (1932-2011), a literary scholar with some psychoanalytic training who has a great appreciation for the various theoretical approaches to knowledge. Thus, Andrew not only reviewed three lengthy books on object relations, but these were reprinted for many years in the various compendiums of our journal. I suspect most readers are aware that whenever somebody uses the term “object relations,” I suggest some way of eliminating or downplaying the concept. However, the author remains devoted to the term, and it usually ends up that a substitute term is followed by a parenthesis that states: “object relations in the language of psychoanalysis.”

Regarding the charge that “such language favors unscientific popularization, and that eclecticism is bound to favor atheoretical and naïve approaches,” it might make sense to have a debate about this on Clio’s Psyche’s Online Forum and subsequently in print. I doubt that there is enough general interest in the subject for us to have a Saturday Workshop meeting on this topic.

JI: What changes do you foresee for Clio’s Psyche?

PHE: Even though many colleagues compliment our short article format, it needs to be supplemented more with long articles so as to lessen the work of the Editor. We also need to bring additional colleagues into the editorial processes.

JI: Your own first steps, in an academic setting, toward psychohistory were taken at the Ambler Campus of Temple University in

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the History Department when you were writing your doctoral dissertation. In 1968 you met the historian of ancient times Professor Sidney Halpern who helped you overcome some obstacles. What did you learn from him?

PHE: To listen to myself and see value in my ideas. Sidney Halpern opened up the world of the unconscious to me, as we talked about how we were differently teaching a course on Western Civilization with the same name. He had been in psychoanalytic training, but instead of becoming an analyst built a successful business and then became a professor.

When I sought assistance overcoming my obstacles to writing my dissertation, I remember sitting together and that brilliant colleague’s affirmation of my ideas for organizing the voluminous materials I was working with enabled me to move forward again. My dissertation had been getting shoved to the back burner amidst my full-time teaching load, part-time jobs driving trucks, working in warehouses, cleaning offices, and adjuncting at a distant community college, to say nothing of my parental responsibilities. In the end, it was his reflecting back to me what I said about my research materials on the English Industrial Revolution that helped me regain confidence in the project. My first memories of writing were of not being able to do it: as a young child I was told to write a letter to my maternal grandfather, whom I didn’t know and my father disliked. When conflicted, self-doubt and writer’s block came easily to me.

JI: What works were important in your self-education at that time?

PHE: Self-education is ultimately the most important type of learning. I jumped into reading Freud, Erikson, and the popularizing psychoanalyst Edmund Bergler. The last’s applied psychoanalysis appeared to me before very long as quite reductionistic, but it was valuable for my developing a fuller understanding of how the unconscious works. Remembering this, as a teacher and colleague, I’ve often bit my tongue to inhibit my inclination to criticize a particular author that was mentioned to me in a most enthusiastic manner, since I decided we so often gain vital knowledge from less than perfect exponents. I scanned the entire psychoanalytic and applied pscyhoanalytic literatures to find any and all books and articles that dealt with the psychological study of history and society. In those days before the Internet, it was a much more tedious task than it is

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today, but it also was extremely beneficial to my growth.

JI: You have also mentioned that when you were introduced to psychoanalysis at Temple University, you felt that psychoanalysis had the “power of poetry and music” in reaching the “subjective heart of the human condition.” Concerning psychohistory, on a personal level, was there a similar kind of feeling? Was it a straight “plunge-in” or a more gradual growth into the field?

PHE: Poetry and music can get to the emotions quite quickly and powerfully. Psychoanalysis opened me to the understanding of what lays behind so much of the intellectualizations that academics and polite society generally thrive on. Psychohistory offered the opportunity to go to a much deeper, more profound level of understanding of history and society that I had always been fascinated by. Although I read a lot of bad, mostly theoretically-based or poorly written studies, I kept coming to a deeper knowledge. Naturally, my growth into the field was a gradual process, as I struggled to overcome my own resistances and understand conflicting theoretical viewpoints.

JI: Were there some more personal early (childhood/parental/family) backgrounds to your way to choosing certain psychohistorical themes (e.g., presidents, family secrets)? You have given some personal clues in your works about immigration and your own family history. How do you construct your emotional/autobiographical memory in your present life situation?

PHE: The basis of all knowledge is to, as Socrates says, “know thyself.” Psychoanalysis helped me to see that the exploration of the self was not a matter of self-indulgence, but a vital part of the learning process, since we see the world through our own perspective based on our past history, personality, life traumas, and so forth. It is true that in the course of writing, I often seek to humanize the subject I’m encountering by discussing my own past in relationship to the subject. It is clear to me why I wrote on my own family secrets as part of my lost therapy upon the death of so many of my loved ones in a short period of time. My family was a contradictory mixture of honesty and secretiveness, with much of the latter being related to the dangerous climate of America during the McCarthy period. I’ve never thought too much as to why I’ve focused upon presidents, beyond the fact that they have so much power over me, my loved ones, and society, but I will give it some more thought. Perhaps part of the answer will show up in my

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dreams. When I was researching President Jimmy Carter, and had a dream of being his psychoanalyst, I came to realize some of my motivation for studying him. (In retrospect, before he was even elected, I recognized his self-defeating tendencies and thought that he needed a psychoanalyst more than a political analysis.)

JI: You are more into psychobiography than group psychohistory or fantasy analysis. What are your guidelines for doing psychobiographical research?

PHE: Exploring the psychobiography of a single individual, or two individuals comparatively—as I have done with candidates for the presidency—is quite challenging, but far more manageable than getting involved in fantasy analysis. The problem with fantasy analysis is that it is hard to know about large groups of people, and the ability of the analyst to project her or his own fantasy onto the subject matter is an ever-present danger. Together with Henry Lawton and George Luhrmann, I organized a fantasy analysis research program back in 1985 and, in using a questionnaire sent out to a variety of pscyhohistorically inclined colleagues, we were able to establish that there was some merit in the methodology. I then put in for a major grant, which would provide for some in-depth analysis by people who were experts in the unconscious to further test the system. Regrettably, this support was not forthcoming. In conversation, I’ve often likened doing fantasy analysis to brain surgery, in which the surgeons are using instruments not specifically refined for the process. In doing psychobiographical work, I usually start with childhood, family dynamics, life crises, and the mechanisms of defense such as denial, projection, regression, repression, reaction formation, splitting, and intellectualization.

JI: You seem to prefer doing psychohistory by theorizing autobiographically, through your own life, and not by one guiding master theory. Is this impression right?

PHE: I’m not sure I understand what you mean by “theorizing autobiographically” throughout my life. Certainly, I prefer to deal with concrete situations and individuals than to wander much into grand theory. In a published exchange with my late friend Rudy Binion (1927-2011), I, falling back on the usage by Leo Tolstoy and Isaiah Berlin, refer to being like a fox who sniffs around and knows many separate things, as opposed to an intellectual hedgehog who looks out over the prairie and makes grand statements. Karl Marx was a striking example of such a hedgehog. The broad

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generalizations that I do have are usually arrived at over time after extensive research and I am slow to put them in print.

JI: You also try to avoid pathologizing and labeling the subjects with diagnostic categories that support expertise and authoritarian psychopower rather than insightful understanding about human subjects and their doings. However, occasionally you have yourself used diagnostic and clinical terms, for example, when writing on Jimmy Carter and his “narcissistic personality with obsessive compulsive defenses” and his childhood “oral rage characteristic of narcissistic personalities.” Certainly, you have to refer to some psychological concepts (for example, “disorders,” “defenses,” etc.), but how can you use them without the danger of forced labeling?

PHE: Your term “authoritarian psychopower,” both baffles and bemuses me. What do you mean? It is true that occasionally I use diagnostic and clinical terms, although far less than in my initial psychojournalistic article, “Three Days in Plains,” where I became very insecure about what I was presenting regarding a sitting president of the United States and wanted to cover over my insecurity by labeling Carter a “narcissistic personality with obsessive compulsive defenses.” I remember my insecurity regarding publishing and these ideas came to me as I sat in a psychoanalytic course on narcissism and borderline personalities. Before the article was even in print, I realized that the labeling, on which I have occasionally been complimented, was a defensive act on my part. Subsequently, when I had the same impulse, I sought to find out why I was thinking of putting technical terminologies into print. You will find that many of my subsequent usages are suggestive, rather than diagnoses of my subjects. Thus, in writing about William Jefferson Clinton, I suggested that he, like perhaps all presidents, was similar to a Rorschach test for much of the electorate, and that the term “superego lacunae” was perhaps a helpful idea to understand some of the anomalies in his behavior.

JI: You stress empathy and countertransference as important research tools. Other researchers also use these tools. Why do you choose these tools above others in the psychoanalytical toolbox?

PHE: Empathy is an essential tool, I’m almost tempted to say the essential tool, of the psychobiographer. We need to get as close to our subject’s reality as possible if we are going to do a good job. Like a psychoanalyst with a patient, a psychohistorian needs to understand the feelings induced by the subject, as well as those

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brought to the situation out of his or her own past or emotional needs.

JI: What kind of psychology of research/researchers do such methods imply?

PHE: A methodology in which the researcher is willing to probe deeply into the self. Because I have chosen to write on presidential candidates and presidents, this has been extremely important. I have strong feelings about the direction in which my country is going and where certain individuals would take it.

JI: What has guided you in your teaching of psychohistory? I read your interesting early paper “Helping People Learn” (Psychohistory: Bulletin of the International Psychohistorical Association, 3 [1], 1979) in which you confess, “I know down deep I’ve never been able to teach anyone. My function is helping others to learn.” You have also mentioned that the quest for knowledge means integrating powerful emotion with intellect, and for that purpose you have sometimes taken advantage of a “teachable moment,” deviating from pre-conceived plans and focusing on seemingly unrelated materials on your students’ minds. Can you elaborate on that special “moment”?

PHE: On a number of occasions, I’ve written on the process of teaching psychohistorically and of teaching psychohistory itself. Indeed, at the request of the editor of the Journal of Psychohistory, I am writing a collaborative article with two students on this very subject. Helping others to learn is a complex business because people have both an enormous quest for knowledge and great resistance to it. “Teachable moments” occur on many occasions. For example, September 11, 2001 occurred while I was teaching a class some 30 miles from Ground Zero. I kept on teaching, and indeed was able to start the next course, which happened to be on psychohistory, working to get the students to have some understanding of their feelings on this tragedy. In the next two years, I taught four sections of senior seminar, called “9/11 and the Psychology of Terrorism,” which the students started by writing a 10 page paper on their experience of the events. I discarded this course when too many of the students showed that they had their personal reality overwritten by the collective memory that was formulated by our political leaders and reflected in the media. Another teachable moment occurred when my students responded to the Challenger spaceship disaster.

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JI: Have you had supervision concerning your teaching?

PHE: Teaching supervision is an excellent idea, which was never directly available to me early in my career. Indirectly, some of it occurred in the course of my own psychoanalysis and in lengthy conversations with colleagues. In the 21^st century, my college has added a Resource Center for teachers, which includes “Teaching Circles” in which colleagues share their experiences in the classroom. Peer supervision in teaching is quite valuable, as I had found it to be in psychoanalytic practice where I had a number of lengthy supervisions.

JI: What kind of training do you see suitable for psychohistorians?

PHE: Self-trained pscyhohistorians have done a wonderful job of enlarging our knowledge. In an ideal situation, a psychohistorian would be trained in both an analytic institute and history department, something that Peter Loewenberg, now retired to do other things, did at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with those grad students who were open to it. Most colleagues come to psychohistory when they are working on a specific project and need to deepen their knowledge, or they uncover a new source. There’s no single route to doing first-rate psychohistory, but if one could do only one thing, I would recommend an in-depth personal analysis as a starting point.

JI: First, Lloyd deMause maintained the independence of psychohistory among the academic disciplines, but later many academics wanted to place psychohistory out of academia, claiming psychohistorical research equaled unfounded personal fantasizing that “shrinks history.” How do you see the academic position of psychohistory in the present?

PHE: History and psychology departments are inclined to be hostile to the idea of psychohistory, but in fact individual scholars are inclined to use psychohistorical methodologies and concepts when they confront problems in their work. Anthropology, literature, political science, and sociology departments are inclined to be more open to our concepts and methods.

JI: With the death of Henry Lawton and Lloyd deMause’s illness, you are the only colleague to have taken part in every annual convention of the International Psychohistorical Association (your first presentation was “The Childhood of Jimmy Carter”). You

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have also presented in the convention quite intensively. In addition, there is the Psychohistory Forum (started in 1983) that you direct. What kind of historic and cultural roles (connected to splits, loyalties, urges, dependencies, differentiations, and autonomies) do both of these organizations play on the stage of your mind?

PHE: Compared to other organizations, there have not been many splits in the IPA; rather, there has been an inclination for people to drop out and do other things, sometimes in other fields, and sometimes within psychohistory. Like a family, this organization is complex, and I suspect someday, someone will write a psychohistory of it.

JI: Psychohistory has traditionally applied psychoanalytic and/or psychodynamic theories and methods in its endeavors. Rudolph Binion called the clinical psychoanalytic inclination, the speculative linking of historical events with clinical material, a “false start” for psychohistory. It included a shortage of historical material on childhood, the failure to immerse both intellectually and emotionally on the subject of human history and culture, and their motivational underpinnings. It also prioritized individual psychology over group psychology and pathology over normalcy. What is your relation to such criticisms against applying psychoanalysis to psychohistory?

PHE: My brilliant and erudite friend Rudy Binion certainly viewed our field very differently than I do. I learned an enormous amount from him and he, for all of our differences, liked to say that Clio’s Psyche was the one journal he picked up and read from start to finish.

JI: Could a renewal of psychohistory navigate it toward cognitive research and even toward neuroscience? Some humanities (for example literary research) are trying to find interdisciplinary allies in natural sciences. Lloyd deMause has called for using neurobiological knowledge for psychohistorically examining the dissociated (traumatized) neural network and its manifestations on the social stage and through the “social alters.” I once proposed a prospect for (evolutionary) “neuropsychohistory” that would gain from cognitive, attachment, and neurodevelopmental research; brain studies; and evolutionary psychology. Do you find such a prospect possible?

PHE: Yes, but there are more knowledgeable colleagues to speak to about these issues so I will pass.

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JI: What about applying quantitative techniques to historical data? For example, Dean Keith Simonton has reminded psychohistorians about the assets of utilizing what he has called “historiometry” (measurement and statistical techniques) in the service of psychological-historical analysis.

PHE: Facts are quite powerful, and I have great respect for them. Dean Keith Simonton is a brilliant colleague who sometimes writes for and subscribes to our journal.

JI: You have a keen and profound interest in the history of psychohistory, and you have already written many exciting articles in that area. What are you working on now concerning the history of psychohistory? Are you planning to publish a compilation work on that subject?

PHE: Yes, I have a profound interest in the history of our field and will finish writing my book, Pioneers of Insights: The Makers and Making of Psychohistory.

JI: How can we invite new people to the field?

PHE: By doing good work and using electronic media more effectively.

JI: The contexts of American and European historical research are not identical, which gives possibilities for not only fruitful dialogues but also for splits and estrangement. This traditional divide is not the only one. The “growing economies” of China, India, Brazil, and parts of Africa present new challenges for research cooperation. How can we advance multicultural and multidisciplinary psychohistorical research? Are we still narcissistically unipolar (for example, American-centered and self-satisfied, claiming that “we already have a long history of immigration and multicultural experience”), and defensive against “them,” while the strict division into “us” and “them” has actually disappeared?

PHE: I am heartened by the spread of psychohistory around the world. This last summer there were valuable psychohistorical activities in Germany and France. I know of several colleagues in Brazil doing similar work. It is promising that the new Book Review Editor of the Journal of Psychohistory is located in China. Also, we have added the category of International Membership to the Psychohistory Forum.

JI: Just shortly (because you have already written on this),

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what kind of thoughts do you now have about the future of psychohistory? In Clio’s Psyche (March 2000), you looked back and detected the partial success but also “bright prospects” of psychohistory since “psychoanalytic, psychological, psychohistorical, and therapeutic concepts permeate all aspects of society, and have transformed the way that we see the world.” Is this assessment still valid, or has the “psycho” become “psychobabble”? More popular, indeed, but without natural scientific backing?

PHE: I remain optimistic about the prospects of our field, although not as enthusiastically so as in 2000. So many of our ideas, concerns, and much of our language has gone mainstream in society. Our last issue has considerable discussion of the past, present, and future prospects of our field.

JI: The classic question that you perhaps have not answered before: Which three of your works are you most proud of, and why?

PHE: What I am working on at the moment is usually my favorite. When I look back at my more than 300 articles (most rather short), chapters, edited volumes, etc., there are a few that stand out. In terms of my 25 articles on presidents, presidential candidates, and elections, my favorite is on Paul Tsongas, “Character, Cancer and Economic Regeneration in the 1992 Presidential Campaign of Senator Paul E. Tsongas.” This is because I found the late senator to be the most genuine and open human being of all those I have studied. He dealt with an extremely important subject of economic regeneration and his friends and relatives whom I interviewed were extraordinarily open, honest, and positive in discussing him. I do have a fond spot for my chapter, “Lies My Parents Told Me: The Impact of Immigrant Parents on Their Son” in my co-edited book Immigrant Experiences (1997). “The Successes and Obstacles to the Interdisciplinary Marriage of Psychology and History,” in Cristian Tileagă and Jovan Byford, eds., Psychology and History, Interdisciplinary Explorations (Cambridge University Press, 2014), took an enormous amount of work and is a piece I take great pride in having written.

JI: An important aspect in applying psychohistorical knowledge is the perspective for intra- and interpersonal change and human constructive potential worldwide. How has psychohistory changed you in your personal development, and how do you see its influence on worldwide psychosocial and psychocultural

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change under corporate fundamentalisms and emerging anti-corporate rebellion?

PHE: It is impossible for me to separate my long personal and group psychoanalysis, which was completed before the foundation of our journal, from my growth as an individual and editor. I certainly have a much greater knowledge and confidence in the direction we have chosen to follow than when we started in 1994. It is hard to definitively show any influence of psychohistory on worldwide change. If you see it happening, as well as an “anti-corporate rebellion,” perhaps you would like to write this up and submit it to Clio’s Psyche as an article.

JI: What future special issues of Clio’s Psyche do you have in mind?

PHE: I always have a variety of ideas for symposia, special features, and special issues. At the present time I am interested in publishing on the psychology/psychoanalysis of the following:

• Psychobiography; Election 2016 Candidates, Emotions, and Political Illusions
• The Impact of Celebrity Culture on America
• Dependency and Independency in the Family, Politics, and Society
• TV as Object Relations: Our Emotional Connection to Fantasy
• Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Business Success
• Images and Psychology of Enemies and Hatred through the Ages
• The Intrapsychic and Societal Processes of the American Acceptance of Homosexuality
• Environmentalism and Anti-Environmentalism
• The Contemporary American Fascination with Animals
• Anti-Government Fantasies and Civilization

The problem is not coming up with ideas, but finding authors to write on them from a psychohistorical perspective. When guest editors come up with good ideas I am delighted to assist their endeavors, provided they are willing to do the serious work involved.

Thanks for sending me these questions several years ago and checking the interview.

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