Keeping the Psychohistorical Flame Burning (article)

The major problem that psychohistory faces as the millennium unrolls is not so much hostility as it is lack of awareness of its very existence. To be sure, there is a deeply entrenched hostility to psychohistory within the strongholds of the current intellectual establishment—almost certainly fueled by the anti-Freud, anti-psychoanalysis tide that runs so powerfully within these same circles. But beyond these circles, what the mention of psychohistory is likely to provoke is a blank stare or “What’s psychohistory?” or a tired joke, “The history of crazy people?” (to which I always respond, “Yeah, the human race”). But it should be noted also that inside and outside the establishment institutions, there are pockets of strong interest and acceptance. At least, so my personal experience suggests to me

The most instructive experience I’ve had with hostility to psychohistory (or, in my case, psychobiography) was the reception (or non-reception) given to my book on Frederick Law Olmsted (landscape architect and pioneer environmentalist, best known for his work on Central Park in New York City). Both The New York Times Book Review (NYTBR) and The New York Review of Books (NYRB) ignored the book, even though both of them review everything else about Olmsted that comes along, including books they have strongly disliked. NYRB has been notoriously hostile to Freud and psychoanalysis, while NYTBR has been somewhat less so. Two newspapers (in Washington and Boston) attacked the book because they said it used Freudian arguments with the purpose of destroying Olmsted’s reputation. My book is far more Winnicottian than Freudian and actually displays a “vast admiration for Olmsted and his works” (to quote a quite favorable review in the Journal of American History [JAH]). And “Freudian,” of course, is the code word for anything that smacks of psychoanalytic theory. Other than the JAH, the historical publications did not review the book. Interestingly, two Olmstedian publications published very favorable reviews, as did both psychohistorical publications (the Journal of Psychohistory and The Psychohistory Review). With all of this, I have to admit that my book may well have been too academic (a danger for a work whose origins are a dissertation) to be accessible to a general audience and that this may well have accounted for its neglect in the broader media. Accessibility should, perhaps, always be our goal.

A couple of years ago, the head of the Lifelong Learning Department at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) asked me to offer psychohistory courses to their participating seniors. And during several years of teaching in the Elderhostel program of the Jewish Education Commission of South Palm Beach, I have taught numerous psychohistory-based courses, the most recent of which was The Truth About FDR. In both venues, psychohistorical analyses were very well received by the participants. Of course, it should be clear that in these formats, we were really dealing with “psychohistory-lite.” My approach to these classes was centered on the classic psychohistorical questions: “Why this? Why now?” And we worked strongly from the premise summed up by Alice Miller’s evocative phrase, “prisoners of childhood.” These seniors had little trouble dealing with such concepts as repression, splitting, the paranoid and the depressive positions, group fantasy, and delegation. The notion that excited them most of all was that of studying the formative years (including childhoods) of political figures and creative people. Two of my most popular courses were the one about FDR and one on Wagner and the Jews.

All in all, I taught psychohistorically oriented courses to several hundred Elderhostel and Lifelong Learning students mostly in their sixties and seventies, some older, some younger. A large percentage of the FAU students and a small number of Elderhostelers were repeat students in my classes. No more than a handful of them ever heard of psychohistory before encountering one of my courses. (One of these was a woman who had taken a course with Dave Beisel at Rockland Community College and had become a fan of his and of psychohistory!) Several had read something of Erikson’s. In one FAU class, an introduction to psychohistory, they purchased copies of Clio’s Psyche’s special student issue. Of course, I always handed out reading lists. Yet I would say that as interested as these seniors became in the

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subject, I doubt that very many followed up on their own. And I would be very much surprised if I successfully produced any recruits for the International Psychohistorical Association (IPA).

I’d like to conclude this review of some of my experiences in doing psychohistory with an incident that happened to me nearly 20 years ago—one that I believe could still happen today. I was having lunch with some business associates at the Top of the Sixes—a restaurant on top of the office building that ran between 52nd and 53rd streets along Fifth Avenue in New York City. From where we sat, we could see the new building down 53rd Street that was then under construction. Earlier that week, a construction accident high up on this building had sent large chunks of debris showering down into the street. Most of the pedestrians had raced for cover, but at least one man had run into the middle of the street, where he was fatally struck down by a large chunk of falling masonry.

I suggested to my companions that this man may well have had an unconscious death wish, that had sent him running into the street rather than ducking for cover like the others. They hooted and hollered and carried on. It was the stupidest thing they ever heard of! Did I really believe that in the split-second available, this man had calculated the exact point that this debris would fall, etc., etc. I explained, very low-key, that it didn’t work that way. Rather, it was likely that whenever this man had encountered dangerous situations—emergencies that arose so quickly that his choice of response had been guided entirely by unconscious forces—he had invariably chosen the option that had put him in mortal danger, until finally his luck had run out. But my associates would have none if it; indeed, they actually seemed angry that I could suggest such a preposterous thing.

Fade out, fade in, several minutes later. My table companions were now discussing a TV program that had proposed that aliens from outer space were responsible for the wonders of the ancient world ranging from the pyramids of ancient Egypt to the grotesque monolithic statues of the Easter Islands. My associates had no trouble at all in accepting this as gospel truth. Indeed, it triggered a long and (to them) fascinating discussion of the “paranormal.” This included a recent book, The Search for Bridey Murphy about a young woman who, under hypnosis, was able to recall a “prior life.” Again, my associates had no trouble at all in accepting the possibility, perhaps even probability, of reincarnation. Indeed, it seemed that there could be no “paranormal” phenomenon—no matter how far-fetched—that they would not give some credulity to, except for the power that our own unconscious exerts in our lives. Apparently, that was far too scary an idea to permit even a moment’s calm discussion.

I had a special reason to remember that incident a few months ago, when I saw The Sixth Sense—a terrific movie that absolutely devastated me and that still haunts me (for a variety of reasons that would take another article to discuss). But I could not miss the fact that it was almost the perfect embodiment of the mind-set displayed by my long-ago luncheon companions. By the end of The Sixth Sense, what had begun as an apparent psychoanalytic problem proved to be the ultimate triumph of the paranormal!

The popular culture yearns for explanations of things. Over the decades, has not the psychological continuously vied with the paranormal in supplying those explanations? In pessimistic moments, it is tempting to believe that The Three Faces of Eve and Sybil have by now completely given way to The Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch Project. But I suspect that the current cultural scene is far more evenly balanced—repressed memories on the one hand, prior lives on the other. Indeed, I suspect that a rather large segment of the public is devoted at one and the same time to both modes of explanation for the uncanny in their lives. Here in Boca Raton, Florida, I am well acquainted with a sizable number of bright, articulate people who have recourse to both psychotherapists and psychics in dealing with their personal problems. (Of course, I am well aware that the cynic may see little difference between the two.)

At the end of the day (as the current cliché has it), I am optimistic for the long run, though I see a hard road ahead. I very much fear that broad academic acceptance of psychohistory as a discipline will only come after a considerable public interest has been ignited—and perhaps not until the pendulum has swung (as swing it will) on the place that both Freud and psychoanalytic theory hold in American culture and in American intellectual circles. Consider that both women’s studies and African-American studies took hold on campus only after they had become powerful cultural forces in America. Psychohistory (like psychoanalysis) will always have its opponents. But I firmly believe that it can attract a public and that it can make its way in academia, even though it may

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have to begin at the edges and fringes and work inward.

In the meantime, we have to keep the flame burning. What is there to do but keep on preaching to the converted and jumping at every opportunity for a wider audience—writing, teaching, lecturing, debating, working the Internet—whatever. But the trick is to seek out such a public audience while being rigorous in our standards for the practice of good, sound psychohistory—in the quality of psychohistorical work and the integrity of psychohistorical argument. It is awfully tempting to appeal to the public with sensational material based upon wild speculation and unsupported “findings.” In the long run, yielding to such a temptation would be (and has been) colossally self-defeating (though some may well argue that an even worse sin is to be dull). The challenge of the 21st century is to be relevant to the needs of an increasingly complex and increasingly open world, and to be accessible to the broad public audience. And we have to do this while still doing the hard work that any professional discipline requires. If we can do that, and I believe that we can, the cumulative effect can be profound. It’s a long, hard road, but we have to stay the course.

After all, do we not believe, as psychohistorians, that we cannot influence people until they are ready to be influenced? When they are ready, we have to be there.

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