Learning From a Master (response article)

During my long career as an independent psychohistorical scholar, I have been concerned with making psychohistorical theory intelligible and accessible to whomever may be interested. My The Psychohistorian’s Handbook (1988) would have been a better book if I could have used David Beisel’s teaching article for source material. Paul Elovitz deserves our thanks for making this article available to our field, especially those actively engaged in teaching psychohistory. It is the best guide that I have seen for anyone teaching or wanting to teach group psychohistory. The way Beisel helps students see the underlying emotional dynamics of group life seems to me a model of what teaching should be and so often is not. Over the years I have had the opportunity to talk with a number of his students; after reading this article it is easy to see why David Beisel is so strongly respected. He has done the field of psychohistory a major service in showing how he teaches about groups, large and small. David Beisel is a teacher in the best sense of the word.

That said I want to offer some additional elaboration on some of the ideas he offers for our consideration. In discussing the cyclical group-fantasy theory of Lloyd deMause, Beisel notes that in his research he found “no rigid, “lawful” cyclical patterns” in group fantasy. This struck me because the same has been true for my researches on popular film. How can we account for this? Is deMause wrong? No. What I think may be going on is the fact that group fantasy occurs on many more levels than deMause has described. Many popular films seem to reflect fantasies that surface repetitively over long periods of time. In essence, there are many shared fantasies that are always with us, but stay in the shadows as it where until they are called into the light of consciousness. It is as if the society repetitively works through certain fantasies over and over without ever quite coming to terms with them. What I offer here is tentative because I remain unclear as to what brings these hidden fantasies out of the shadows and why they go back to the unconscious darkness from which they emerged. Beisel’s suggestion that “most groups are pretty much in emotional ‘upheavals’ all the time and move out of ‘crisis mode’ by various devices, and then back again as stress levels increase” makes a lot of sense. Though this is beyond his scope I think it merits mention that all media, film especially, offers unconscious communication of shared fantasy. Popular media may be seen as successful communication; that which is not popular is like a trial balloon seeking acceptance. Media does not shape shared fantasy, rather it is an expression of fantasy and popular because what it offers speaks to the shared feelings/fantasies of the group. None of this is easy because of the element of unconscious communication, but it is endlessly fascinating.

Beisel’s thoughts on methodology are very much to the point. We must rigorously practice “disciplined subjectivity” in our work and know ourselves as best we can. Therapy can be helpful here. It is not enough just to read sources; we must try to listen to the voices of the past with as much honesty and respect as we can muster. If we are to understand historical motivation we cannot view our subjects as examples of pathology, we must try to understand them as real people with all their complexities, failures and greatness. This is never easy, which is one reason psychohistory is not for everybody.

While his criticism of deMause’s “insistence that everyone in the group shares one group fantasy rather than several, his search for Immutable Laws of Universal Human Behavior, and his attempt to construct a ‘scientific’ psychohistory, along with the overall rigidity of his model, limit its usefulness as an explanatory tool” has merit, we would do well to remember that the work of Lloyd deMause is a basic building block on which much of what we do depends. Scholars are able to move beyond deMause because of his work. Beisel is right in his insistence that students be familiar not only with deMause but with the work of Lifton, Sam Keen, Dan Dervin, Rudolph Binion, etc. No one person defines what psychohistory is about.

I was quite fascinated by Beisel’s discussion of the importance of media, especially popular film, as a useful tool to aid our comprehension of group fantasy felt by our society. “There’s nothing that students find more upsetting than suggesting

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that films may provide possible roadmaps to their unconscious,” as well as the idea “that popular films can offer clues to the disowned fantasies of large groups.” I had never thought of the notion that shared fantasy is “disowned” but the more I think of it Beisel is right. Working with a more psychologically minded audience, I had not realized that our work on film and media can and does evoke the strong emotions that Beisel describes. I found all this a happy reinforcement of the importance of what we have been seeking to do in the Group for the Psychohistorical Study of Film over the last fifteen years. Sometimes it is hard to know that our scholarly work has had worth in the eyes of others. David Beisel has demonstrated this to me and I thank him for that. It is gratifying to know that our work counts for more than we ever imagined.

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