An Exuberant Voice among Many Psychohistorical Voices

Review Essays on Paul H. Elovitz, The Making of Psychohistory: Origins, Controversies, and Pioneering Contributors (New York and London: Routledge, 2018), ISBN 978-1-138-58749-6, 138 pages, paperback, $38.95, hardbound, $140.

Because of his long career as one of the central actors in the field of psychohistory, Paul H. Elovitz has collected a large knowledge base concerning the history of psychohistory. He has managed to build a concise and well-structured presentation of this interdisciplinary field, which has lived through insights and impasses, and is still developing despite often facing heavy academic resistance. His own approach has shunned extremisms, both in research and in publishing.

He expresses his appreciation and criticism about the events, relationships, and dilemmas in organizing, teaching, and supporting (or “nurturing”) psychohistory. On the other hand, following Eriksonian “disciplined subjectivity,” he does not evade reflecting on his personal history from childhood forward, and its effects on his career.

Besides “prominent” and “outstanding” psychohistorians, Elovitz lists many other builders, mostly those he has known or had contact with. Thus, the narration is often imbued with the intimate

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feeling of “as I knew them.” There are so many actors that it is, of course, difficult to have more than an impressionistic glance by means of this kind of probe of the actors and their works. Even some highly valued makers of psychohistory are only briefly named, and some are left out altogether. This is understandable in the pioneering introduction. At the same time, Elovitz generously encourages others to choose their paths to elaborate the missing parts. For example, in the future, the U.S.-centeredness needs to be balanced by a focus on European, especially German, psychohistory. Its contributors and contributions should be analyzed.

The early history of psychohistory is seen by Elovitz primarily through the Freudian psychoanalytic lenses, less through post-Freudian theories, and still less through some other currents of thought. This approach ignores the late-18^th and early-20^th century influential conceptualizations of psychological history that were proposed by such philosopher-historians as Wilhelm Dilthey and Karl Lamprecht in Germany and Lucien Febvre in France. For example, Lamprecht considered history as “primarily a socio-psychological science” and as “nothing but applied psychology” (What is History? Five Lectures on the Modern Science of History, 1905, 3, 29). Febvre co-founded the Annales school, which later influenced the history of mentalities.

In the U.S., such German and French ideas first gained support among the progressive school of “New History” at the beginning of the 20^th century, though the Freudian approach later replaced them. However, other than psychoanalytic paradigms that can even today advance psychological history, there are also pitfalls caused by too restrictive movements. Aptly, Elovitz criticizes the current “affective turn” in history. Its proponents, unfortunately, seem to advocate sterile and abstract perspectives that intellectualize human motives and actions rather than reach toward their emotional and unconscious undercurrents.

Elovitz’ work concentrates mainly on individuals, organizations, publications, research, and teaching. It mentions certain key concepts, more from the “insider” perspective, without explicating them to the “outsiders.” Psychohistorical theories, methods, and results are still waiting for thorough critical historical evaluation. Elovitz’ strong area is psychobiography and partly the history of childhood, but he mainly bypasses the important area of large and small-group research and analysis, which was also an important starting point in psychohistory.

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Although the idea of the “fetal origins of history” does not get Elovitz’ approval, primal therapies, primal integration, and pre- and perinatal psychology have some historically interesting points of contact, as well as parallels of success and failure, with psychohistory and some psychohistorians. It is a curious historical detail that the International Primal Association (also abridged as IPA!) and The Journal of Primal Therapy both started in 1973. Even deMause went through a period of primal therapy, which ended in personal disappointment and a return to psychoanalysis.

In relation to deMause, Elovitz obviously still, after a long co-operation, has mixed feelings and attitudes, which leave crucial questions open. Hurting and becoming hurt in the extended-family-style organization and its meetings has had long- and short-term consequences for many participants, as Elovitz exemplifies. Who hurt whom and why must be based on historical evidence that may be hard to gather. Autobiographical reflective writing can be one form of the self-interpretative task and the therapeutic working through that can be helpful to psychohistorians.

The conceptual history of psychohistory will undoubtedly be furthered by Elovitz himself. He promises, in a note, to write more on the early uses of the terms “psychohistory” and “psychobiography.” The earliest use of the word “psycho-historical” that Elovitz has found so far is from 1840 (the same information has been given in the Oxford English Dictionary). However, I happened to find an earlier use of the German word Psychohistorie, dating from 1810 in the work of Carl Christian Erhard Schmid (1761–1812), the pro-Kantian professor of theology and philosophy in Jena, and a friend of romantic poets. In his treatise Allgemeine Encyklopädie und Methodologie der Wisseschaften (which translates to General Encyclopaedia and Methodology of the Sciences), Schmid posits Psychohistorie as a part of “natural history” (Naturgeschichte), making a distinction between “general” and “special” psychohistory, the former referring to the “internal differences of the human temperament in healthy conditions” and the latter to such differences in “sick conditions” (1810, 156–157).

Sigmund Freud opposed becoming the object of biographers. In his letter to the Austrian writer Arnold Zweig, Freud warned: “Anyone turning biographer commits himself to lies, to concealment, to hypocrisy, to flattery, and even to hiding his own lack of understanding, for biographical truth is not to be had, and even if it were it couldn’t be used” (May 31, 1936; Ernst L. Freud,

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ed., Letters of Sigmund Freud [1873–1939], 1960, 430). The “sins” of a biographer, as depicted by Freud, can be traced in many poorly researched works. Elovitz, however, offers the reader the enjoyment of well-founded narrative truths, sounding the “exuberant” journey and intriguing atmosphere of the psychohistorical enterprise, and, finally, letting other voices fill the lacunae of evidence. To him, psychohistory is “an art” using scientific methods “to get at the truth” (The Making of Psychohistory, 96)—or, should we say, to better navigate between different narrative truths?

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