Figure 1.--.
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Figure 1.--. |
Some psychohistorians have liked child raising in most historical eras as child abuse evolved from child killing, to child abandonment (early Middle Ages), to
physical abuse, to psychological abuse (Victorian era), to expectations upbringing (bourgeois era), to partnership upbringing (since the 1930s). One of the most elegant spokesmen for this thesis is Lloyd deMause, as he elaborates his thories in the classic Foundations of Psychohistory. DeMause contends that Western society has so far been the only major society to achieve partership upbringing and to break the cycle of trauma of violent child abuse, for pretty large portions of the population. Other civilisations, despite their greatness, didn't, and stagnated. Some of the data strain incredulity (the level of abuse that is maintained is the case in Asian countries), but there is certainly food for thought here.
History is complete with endless events. The actual events are easy to report. Understand why those events occur and the individual's motivation is a much more difficult proposition. The Marxcists tell us that history unfolds according to a virtually predestined series of economically ordained proccesses. The individuals have only a minor role as economic forces frive events. I always thought it was interesting that it was in the Markist societies that individual leaders were elevated to near God-like status with huge posters of Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Sung, or the various local leaders. (Castro's Cuba is a notable exception.) Yet any minimal reading of history tell us that individuals do matter. How easy would it have been for the British to have come to terms with the NAZIs in 1940. They probably would have done so had it not been for Churchill. How different Twentieth Century history would have been had it not been for Hitler. One can but be impressed with the level of incompetence among Americam leaders in 1860. One shining star emerges, Lincoln. One wonders if anyone else could have held the Union together. The examples are endless.
If one excepts the thesis that individual leaders do matter and their discussions can affect history and the lives of millions, then the study of biography becomes critical. Of particular importance is understanding of personality and character. We can not rely on the inviduals involved to provide this information. Many times individuals are not truthful about personal matters. In other cases the individuals themselves may not fully understand or be consiously awar of how their character and world outlook was formed.
It is the evolving discipline of psychohistory that is attempting to address these critical questions. History simply can not be fully understood without understand the ways in which the personality and character of key leaders was shaped. What compleled Hitler to murder millions. What complelled Churchill to stand up to the NAZIs when all logic told the British that they had lost the War? What gave Lincoln the strength to lead the North through the 4 most terrible years of the American national experience.
De Mausehe defines psychohistory as the science of historical motivation. It is the chronology or reasons why events happen.
Motivation: Motivation is often missing or only supeficially addressed in traditional history. Psychohistory attempts to go beyond the superficial commonly accepted reasons. It aims for the much more real, although, often unconscious motivations. These are often the primal reasons motivating behavior. De Mausehe is trained in psychoanalysis. He insists that much introspection is required, than traditional historians often feel comfortable with.
Dark side: Another important attribute, needed by those who wish to ealistivally practice psychohistory, is to believe that everyone has a dark side. Indeed we all, no matter how saintly, have our dark side. Often this is only considered when assessing the great monsters of histoy, which the 20th century has an ample supply. One cannot really learn about ultimate motivations of tyrants, without finding and studying the tyrant in oneself. Dedicated objectivity and empathy toward, and even identification with the subject are essential. When one steps away from our modern era and the leaders we have villified or dified, this is much more easier to see. Leaders like Alexander and Ceaser, despite their many attributes had dark sides and murdered and enslaved huge numbers of people.
DeMause claims that to study ultimate causes of historical shifts and events one must study childhood. Thus, to investigate the foundations of psychohistory, it is necessary to begin a study of how children were treated from earlier times until the present. He believes that the earlier we probe into the history of childhood, we find a lower level of child care. At its lowest levels we find casual sexual abuse and commonplace abandonment and murder. deMause writes that even in the saintly Bible one does not find any empathy expressed toward the needs of children. Child restraints (swaddling) were thought necessary for the child and freed the adults from being bothered by the child's demands. Beatings were quite common, and not infrequently savage. The pater de la familia in Rome had the right of life or death over his children. Beatings were accepted and approved by many until only a few years ago. Corporal punishment is still used in many American schools.
Naturally, these children in turn battered their children in an endless cycle.
DeMause studied the writings and speeches of the leaders involved before the outbreak of World War II and found ideas of birth images appearing quite frequently. Also encountered, as the individual attempts to reenact his birth trauma, are dream images of birth, including, claustrophobia, choking, drowning, suffocating and hanging relating to being stuck in the birth canal. deMause realized that it was not objective reality that was
forcing leaders to feel birth images and the necessity to escape the birth confinement by going to war. The events preceding the outbreak of war are even analogous to the progression of pregnancy until eventually there is a "rupture" of diplomatic relations and the war (birth) is begun, accompanied with feelings of exhilaration and excitement as birth tension is dissipated.
DeMause says that on some level we all know and yet do not know that going to war is attempting to relive our individual birth traumas. He believes that it is only by continuous defense stripping, introspection and analysis, can the psychohistorian reach the deeper, essential levels of our knowledge and behavior. HBC believes that DeMause's thesis seems rather strained, but as the formost proponent of psychohistory, his senario has to be considered.
Are there destinct national characters? HBC as part of its New Zealand E-book, HBC has attempted to assess the New Zealand natinonal character. HBC hopes to eventually make similar efforts for imprtant countries like England, France, Italy, Japan, and the United States. The effort will be to assess national character and the impact on clothing, especially children's clothing.
Is there a distinct American personality? DeMause feels that there is. He examines factors that were in play which made America what it is. DeMause says that historians generally believe that events are caused by preceding events. Instead, psychohistorians ". . . study the psychogenic interaction between mother and child as the ultimate source of psychotypes, that is, new historical personalities."
DeMause says the American Revolution "... was first of all a group-fantasy, an assertion of counter-dependency from mother-England...." The cause of the revolution was not a question of 'no taxation without representation' since the taxes in question amounted to a pittance. Instead, DeMause claims that it is necessary to search for the cause of the revolution in colonial group-fantasy. "Birth imagery infused the everyday
language of politics during 1775-76," some even relating to the birth practices which were common at the time. He concludes that the revolution against mother England was not dissimilar to other historical movements. Our country came into being like others, by national acting-outs of war-as-birth. The author believes that history is "... the final receptacle for the repressed, the final resting-place for infantile traumata, the
group-fantasy which at last re-enacts and makes real that which we would most disown -- our own childhood."
As with biological evolutionary progress, over time a new species of homo-psychologicus is brought into being. deMause believes that the
history of satisfying children's needs have gone through six phases or modes since recorded history. The earliest phase which was anti-child is
described as Infanticidal. The most recent is the Helping phase. These psychogenic stages show the evolution of emotional closeness of the child
to its parents and are illustrated or synopsized by DeMause in table 1.
Table 1.--Six Psychogenic Modes of the Evolution of Childhood
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DeMause believes that as parent-child relationships evolve, they are ultimately translated into historical movements. The embodiment of the
historical movement is the result of the search for love. This evolution does not occur at the same rate throughout the world. Some areas are
further along on the progression to the upper scales of child-closeness than others.
An essential tool of psychohistorians is the examination of public documents and speeches to reduce their words to a small fraction of their
original size, to include perhaps an essential one per cent of words imbued with feeling and action. Negative words are removed and subjects and
objects and group responses, including laughter, unusual breaks, etc. The fantasy analysis of this remaining verbiage reveals that the remaining
words have " . . . to do with body memories, stemming from the primary trauma of all our lives: Birth."
Psychohistorians have been accused of seeing hidden motivations behind each action, and other meanings in each word. This is a charge that they
gleefully accept. The field of psychohistory is criticized by some as being trash and hogwash. More charitable detractors describe it as merely
pretentious and outlandish.
THE FETAL ORIGINS OF HISTORY
In a study of the ultimate origins of history, deMause probes even earlier into sources which help to explain his repressed trauma thesis that the
history and culture of each age lay in the early beginnings of the individual. He believes that those origins can have their beginnings in the
psychological environment of the womb.
He considers this womb-drama so traumatic that it is continually repeated symbolically in historical cycles of death and rebirth. After presenting
obstetrical evidence of this thesis, he begins the analysis of the psychological significance of the placenta to the fetus during gestation. The
author believes that this is so because of its proximity to the fetus and because it's importance in the physiology of the fetus. It thus becomes the
earliest object or fixation of the mental life of the fetus. Interruptions in the relationship between the fetus and its placenta produce the fetus'
earliest feelings of anxiety.
This relationship has two main stages: One in which the placenta is seen by the fetus as nurturing and the other where the placenta is perceived as
poisonous. Events in childhood may influence the effects of the relationship between the fetus and his placenta. Thus a fetal trauma may be
exacerbated or improved by a loving or toxic relationship with the parent. Historical review of many symbolic concepts of both the poisonous and
nurturant placentas with the umbilical cord, both in ancient and modern times are given.
HISTORICAL GROUP FANTASIES
Finally, the author examines the major group-fantasies of each historical period. His objective is to show how the forms of the fetal drama are
changed as parent-child relationships evolve. He believes that as the degree of parent-child emotional closeness changes, these changes are
reflected in historical movements.
These historical group fantasies originate in the individual's psychic conflicts, but are projected to the group and are "connected to the individual's
search for love." The group projection has the effect of alleviating the individual's feelings of rage. The breakdown of the group-fantasy results in
a paranoid break-down with resultant turbulent historical action.
deMause examines several historical group-fantasies including a fantasy analysis of the Nixon tapes, presidential cycles, Carter's presidency, and
major American historical group-fantasy cycles. He feels that with pre-natal knowledge and understanding of both ancient and modern group
fantasies, history becomes understandable. The aim of all the study and analysis in psychohistory is so that we may be able to know consciously
what it is we share unconsciously and thus one day could reduce the decisional holds that these continuing cycles of group fantasies have on us.
A POSSIBLE FUTURE DIRECTION OF PSYCHOHISTORY
When he wrote Foundations of Psychohistory in 1982, Lloyd deMause felt that there was nothing earlier in time to investigate than the fetal
level of conflict. One must wonder where the application of theories of cellular consciousness and of transpersonal psychology to psychohistory
principles would lead! Relating these principles to sperm and ovum life, fertilization, implantation and zygote cell division, would result in
entirely new models of understanding of ultimate motivations. From an individual biographical time perspective, self-analysis of fetal
development by psychohistorians has already approached its practical limits.
Other than Henry Ebel, I have heard of none who have gained insight into psychohistory from primal regression. With the entire field of cellular
consciousness and transpersonal experiences as terra incognito, the first steps in the study of psychohistory, as it relates to these fields of study,
are waiting to be taken.
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