Volume 29 Number 2Winter 2023

arts, Charles D. Stein, classical music, Gustav Mahler, Johannes Brahms, poetry, psychoanalysis, psychohistory, Richard Wagner, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky

Through a psychohistorical approach to music and musicians, this symposium specifically focuses on the author’s extensive knowledge of classical music and how it applies to the study of psychohistory. He writes about four examples of stories with musical themes, including his father’s career as a violinist, and musician Dimitri Shostakovich’s role as a “lightning rod” for censorship and terror in Stalin’s U.S.S.R., exploring how they might be translated into the research, scholarship, and writing in psychohistory.

complexity, culture, history, Howard F. Stein, methodology, music, personality, political markers, preferences, psychoanalysis, psychohistory

Howard F. Stein, intrapsychic emotion, melody, music, musician, ostinato, psychoanalysis, psychohistory, Shostakovich, sonata, symphony, tempo, tremolo

classic music, Howard F. Stein, intrapsychic emotion, melody, ostinato, psychoanalysis, psychohistory, Shostakovich, sonata, symphony, tempo, tremolo

art, ideology, Howard F. Stein, Melanie Klein, music, pleasure principle, psychoanalysis, psychohistory, reality principle

In response to his article, I argue that Stein’s psychohistorical approach to music and musicians offers an innovative groundwork for psychohistorical analysis of ideology.

Dmitri Shostakovich, Howard F. Stein, ideology, Igor Stravinsky, music, psychoanalysis, psychohistory, purpose of music, Russia, self-exploration, self-reflection

This article concentrates on the role of historical contexts and subjective inclinations in the reception and interpretation of Shostakovich and his music. The author maintains that ideologically based interpretations restrict the psychohistorical appreciation of music that needs to consider both the changing historical contexts and the personal developmental and transference relationships to the creation and reception of music.

father, mother, music, parent-child relationship, poem, psychoanalysis, psychohistory, singing

countertransference, creativity, music, musical experience, musical expressiveness, nonverbal symbolism, psychoanalysis, psychohistory, shared intimacy, symbolization, transference

This article represents a musician’s embrace of the psychological study of humanity: a description of the shared intimacy of deep feelings that are at the core of the musical experience. The musician seeks to apply some lessons learned to understand psychoanalysts’ complicated countertransference experiences.

guitars, music, poem, psychoanalysis, psychohistory, relationships, rhythm

authenticity, Bruce Springsteen, creativity, depression, dreaming, music, perseverance, psychoanalysis, psychohistory, vulnerability

An exploration of why, from time to time, Bruce Springsteen’s written, spoken, or sung self-revelations surface unbidden in sessions with my patients, many of whom are performing and creative artists.

Franz Schubert, music, poem, psychoanalysis, psychohistory, sea, writer

community, Ezra Pound, folk traditions, melody, melopoeia, music, musical and cultural resonance, poetry, psychoanalysis, psychohistory, resonance, synergy, Woody Guthrie

Words and music are intertwined in song. The power of song brings awareness of the culture and history in which we are embedded. This is a worldwide phenomenon.

creativity, friendship, music, poetry, psychoanalysis, psychohistory, relationships, writers

affects, ambiguity, intersection for thinking, multiple function, music, music and mind, psychoanalysis, psychohistory, Ukraine

The formal structures of music and psychoanalytic concepts provide a vibrant point of intersection for thinking about music theory and theories of mind through affect and shared principles such as multiple function and displacement.

choir, classical music, COVID-19, Episcopalian church, harmony, hymns, melody, music, psychoanalysis, psychohistory, religion, St. Paul’s, Yale

checkers, chess, instruments, music, piano, poem, psychoanalysis, psychohistory

historiography of music, Howard F. Stein, Irene Javors, Jill Kroesen, Ken Fuchsman, Mel Kalfus, music, music therapy, musicians, psychoanalysis, psychohistorians of music, psychohistory, psychological origins, Richard Wagner, Susan Gregory, Tom Artin

This historiographical essay serves as an overview giving credit where credit is due to the work on music and musicians produced by those associated with our circle of psychohistorians.

awareness, Catholic Church, insecure attachment, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), psychoautobiography, restaging, resilience, transmission of trauma, World War I (WWI), World War II (WWII)

In this psychoautobiography, I disclose the influence of family inheritance in my own path of life, discuss the integrating power of awareness, and share broader reflections on the way we can work out painful legacies

death, fear, hidden, hope, intergenerational, loneliness, poetry, psychohistory, resilience, silent, trauma

attachment, autobiography, intergenerational trauma, learning, maternal trauma, paternal trauma, post-traumatic growth, psychohistory, resilience, synchrony object relations, trauma transmission

Within attachment learning, this article discusses two autobiographic experiences: one, a transmitted resolution to paternal trauma, and two, how a repetition of maternal trauma changed the relationship.

Aloisia Clara, Dolomite Mountains, Josef Clara, love in marriage, Marianne Saller, psychohistory, resilience, sophisticated women of 18^th century Germany, transgenerational trauma

This essay pinpoints the transition in one household from the usually abusive relationships and childrearing in agricultural settings to a loving and caring approach.

Babi Yar, children of survivors, Holocaust, Kyiv, massacre, psychohistory, resilience, return of the repressed, Sachsenhausen, trauma, Ukraine, Yevgeny Yevtushenko

The author contends that the mass murder site at Babi Yar is like a scar that does not heal. He applies Freud’s notion of the “return of the repressed” to the happenings there.

ancestral figures, Claude Romano, exit strategy, Giorgio Agamben, Jean-Luc Marion, Martin Heidegger, prehistory, psychical transmission, psychohistory, resilience, revised history, transference, transgenerational transmission of destructive aggression

A subject translates a peremptory ancestral mandate and designs a mental world for it until it threatens one’s own demise. Psychoanalysis becomes a place for negotiating emancipation.

family, Holocaust, intergenerational trauma, mental illness, mourning, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), psychohistory, resilience, survivor mother, transgenerational transmission of trauma

This is an examination of the argument that a person’s experiences can be passed down genetically. It specifically looks at the descendants of Holocaust survivors and their resilience in the face of their biologically passed-down traumas. The author seeks to address incorrect assumptions made about intergenerational trauma and transgenerational transmission.

Charles Darwin, David Beisel, group psychohistory, psychohistory, resilience, Rudolph Binion, Sigmund Freud, transgenerational transmission of trauma, traumatic reliving

Two colleagues discuss the relationship of Binion’s traumatic reliving theory to intergenerational and transgenerational transmissions of trauma.

adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), child abuse, extremism, political violence, prevention, psychobiography, terrorism

Do childhood experiences have consequences in adulthood? If this question is related to politics and society, or even to collective actions such as war, extremism, terrorism, or social developments toward dictatorial regimes, then quite a few people would respond, “No, childhood has nothing to do with it!” Individuals answer in this direct way promptly, but most of the time, they don’t engage or really get involved in reflecting on these connections. I will use among other sources biographies to show that childhood is indeed political and childhood experiences can have political consequences.

Abraham Maslow, avoidance, character motivation, childhood disturbance, emotional disorders, fear, psychobiography, recovery, self-esteem, social anxiety disorder (SAD), social performance

Putting practical application to theory, this paper illustrates how the research techniques of psychobiography are incorporated into a comprehensive recovery program for social anxiety disorder.

academics, Friedrich Nietzsche, Heidegger Forum, Martin Heidegger, metaphysical illusion, psychobiography, shunning, theoretical ideas

An exploration of shunning reactions to psychobiographical accounts of theoretical ideas, this article delves into the question of why this particular reaction is the most widespread, as well as the reactions one of the authors experienced to his own work on Heidegger.

Armenian genocide, American psyche, collective trauma, identity, interethnic relations, interview, Ottoman Empire, psychobiography, religion, trauma, Turks

book review, David Beisel, Ken Fuchsman, The Many Roads of the Builders of Psychohistory, Marc-André Cotton, meta-discipline, Paul H. Elovitz, Peter Loewenberg, psychohistorians, psychohistory

book review, Claude-Hélène Mayer, Elisabeth Vanderheiden, growth perspective, guilt, Paul T. P. Wong, psychoanalyst, psychohistory, self-approach, shame, Shame 4.0: Investigating an Emotion in Digital Worlds and the Fourth Industrial Revolution