My Experience with Psychohistory

My first exposure to psychohistory goes back to one of David Beisel’s articles about “The Group-Fantasy of Early German Nationalism, 1800-1815” in the Journal of Psychohistory (Vol. 8, No. 1, 1980, 1-20). I wrote him a letter (no e-mail or texting then) arguing against his point and was then invited to write a response in the Journal. This exchange lured me from history to psychohistory. Dr. Beisel’s response opened the door to seeing the past differently. Although I had corresponded with historians before, it was his openness to my argument that inspired me to explore this then new approach further.

After I attended some of the psychohistorical conferences early on, I continued with my other love, 18^th century Europe and its conferences along the east coast. My colleagues in East-Central Eighteenth-Century European Studies (EC) were not as contentious as those I experienced in the early years of psychohistory; the EC scholars, oddly, were open to men and women from all fields. By contrast to these colleagues, psychohistorians were in a constant tussle, from debates about leaving New York City with the annual conferences to the leadership of certain individuals and, of course,

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the radicalism of some presentations and articles. So, for a time, I escaped from psychohistory to a group that was interested in little else than making sure that its small cohort continued, and presented papers and wrote articles and books.

But once hooked on psychohistory, I kept coming back to it, especially because of Lloyd de Mause’s pathbreaking article, “The Evolution of Childhood” (1974), and then books covering the stages of childrearing. The design and content of the stages appealed to me, even if I disagreed with some of the details and said so in several presentations and articles.

At that point, my exploration of psychohistory did not bother me personally or professionally as a historian, nor did it seem to bother anyone else with whom I worked or otherwise interacted. Most colleagues who have written the subsequent articles in this issue have had the same experience. Even the American Historical Association (AHA) initially embraced the new approach to doing history. As a matter of fact, William Langer said so very specifically in his 1957 “The Next Assignment” presidential address (http://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/presidential-addresses/william-l-langer). The field’s explorative initiatives were protected as if under a large tent; confidence in ourselves and in our field pervaded our discourses. This confidence resided in part in our youth, the excellent training of a whole generation of historians by the very best practitioners from the U.S. and Europe at the finest American universities, the liberalism of American society and, most importantly, the eagerness of almost every field to open itself to interdisciplinary approaches. The word “innovation” was in the air; my university even had a Dean for Innovation and Change.

This openness gradually disappeared as almost all fields hardened into rigid positions and defenses. This retrenchment was lived by older practitioners like me. After the exuberance of the ’70s came the gradual entrenchment of authoritarian voices in America. It showed itself in every aspect of American life really: offices, churches, academic fields, politics, etc. The words “process” and “interdisciplinarity” lost favor. Naturally as well, the members of almost every field grew older, less eager to change, and more defensive. Historians earning their doctorates at less prestigious universities were more cautious than an earlier generation to commit to a field not well established in academia.

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Importantly, budgets were cut, sometimes dramatically in the ’80s, causing uncertainty in departments about retention of faculty. To make things worse, some odd innovations reduced the quality of programs. For example, graduate students were required for long periods to take two foreign languages, that is, if s/he studied Russian history, they at least would be required to take Russian and/or German and/or French. For some this requirement was too onerous, so it was dropped in favor of one foreign language and computing or something similar. Courses in psychology, or even anthropology, became off limits as well; they were “out-of-field,” seen as speculative and not hard sciences like economics. Many historians wanted to be “real scientists” and neutral. At the same time, the number of course requirements were increased so that a student could not readily take courses in other fields.

Another trend made itself felt. Fewer and fewer historians were eager to admit or even knew of their approach to history. The honesty of giving one’s reason for a certain approach, like Marxism, Socialism, or Neo-Capitalism, became lost in the eagerness to publish and be known. We began to assume that we are speaking only from a set of truths, not from a set of past experiences that shaped our opinions and approaches to a certain topic. As every psychohistorian knows, we all come to history with our own set of values based on childhood, parenting, interpersonal relationships, etc. that determine our take of a topic. That is, as Paul Elovitz reminded me in an e-mail recently, “in psychohistorical work at its best, you must confront your own emotions” and be aware of “countertransference, splitting and resistance.”

So, the question that my colleagues raise in the symposium articles now centers itself: Why did most historians become so negative about psychohistory? The answer lies both in the past and the current situation. As indicated, the field of history hardened from a relatively open adventure to one of internal rigidity and massive bordering. Perhaps as a consequence, psychohistorians became distressed about acceptance. Rejection is no fun, but with sufficient self-assurance about what one is doing, rejection is not an issue; said differently, we have allowed ourselves to be influenced by the loss of the big tent and interdisciplinarity. If we as members of our field are sufficiently persuasive, strong, or valuable, then we will survive the recent losses of leaders and the aging of most of the rest of us. If we are not, then there is no loss when it disappears. The passing will be like the loss of several other programs and subfields

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that I have experienced, among them my favorite for years: Russian and Soviet Studies. But Jewish, Holocaust, and Peace Studies took its place.

To me it seems we have nourished a group fantasy that tells us that we are not accepted and we can highlight the culprits of our woe. The reality is that most historians also do not feel accepted by their colleagues and that they too can highlight their tormentors. So, on the one hand, they are projecting their experience on “us.” On the other, we are accepting this moniker and in turn accuse “them” of not appreciating us.

For psychohistorians (and historians) what matters most is Howard Stein’s advice in a recent e-mail to me, which I am paraphrasing, that to write good history, biography, etc. one needs to be sensitive to one’s own opinions about the topic at hand, be attuned to the topic itself and how it changes as we work on it, and finally write or present our discoveries and insights in as clear and humane a fashion as is possible.

I hope that I have become a better scholar because of the insights and examples of my psychohistorical colleagues.

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