Clio’s Psyche Understanding the "Why" of Culture, Current Events, History, and Society
Volume 5, Number 4 March, 1999
Academia, Psychoanalysis, and Psychohistory 17 Authors Explore the Special Relationship Special Session on The Prospects for Understanding the Impact of Psychohistory and Impeachment Psychoanalysis Paul H. Elovitz On Saturday, March 6, in Manhattan, the The Psychohistory Forum and Ramapo College Psychohistory Forum will have a special session in which a distinguished panel will tackle such It is easy to be quite optimistic or difficult questions as: "What will be the impact of pessimistic about psychoanalysis and impeaching William Jefferson Clinton on the psychohistory and their relationship to academia. politics, Let us first examine some of the facts and
IN THIS ISSUE From Erikson to Lacan in Chinese History...... 137 Lung-kee Sun Academia, Psychoanalysis, and Psychohistory A Conversation in Praise of the Subjective...... 138 The Prospects for Psychohistory and Psychoanalysis .. 117 Charles Fred Alford Paul H. Elovitz An Australian Psychohistory Group ...... 139 My Experiences in Academia and Psychoanalysis . 124 Lyn Baker John J. Hartman A Psychohistorian in New Zealand...... 140 A Freudian in Middle American Academia...... 125 Norman Simms Tod Sloan Psychoanalysis and Academia in the U.K...... 142 Psychoanalysis in the APA...... 126 Robert Maxwell Young Spyros D. Orfanos Understanding the Impact of Impeachment ...... 117 What It Takes to Be A Psychoanalyst ...... 127 Sander Breiner The Dual Character of a President Impeached...... 144 Aubrey Immelman Why Was Freud So Hung-Up on Sex? ...... 128 Daniel Dervin An American in Amsterdam: Arthur Mitzman ...... 146 David D. Lee Research as Autobiography ...... 131 Hilary Clark Showalter on Hysterical Diseases ...... 150 Book Review by David Lotto Why I Left Academia: Psychoanalyst as Artist .. 132 Jonathan Goldberg Analysts on the Couch: Part III: John Bowlby...... 152 Review Essay by Andrew Brink Impossible Knowledge: Teaching Psychoanalysis . 133 Susan Varney Roots of the Jonesboro Schoolyard Killings: Envy of the Feminine...... 155 Biography and the Use of Psychoanalysis...... 134 Garth W. Amundson Linda Simon Good Parenting in the 14th Century: On the Margins of Psychohistory ...... 135 Christine de Pisan...... 158 Peter Petschauer Norman Simms Pioneering Psychohistory in Kansas...... 136 George Kren Page 118 Clio’s Psyche March, 1999 interpretations supporting optimism. Of late, or Another Academic Discipline Special psychoanalysts have been inclining to affiliate with Issue” (September, 1997) demonstrated the the world of the university or to announce their enormous benefits to the academic in terms of presence within it. For example, the University of insight and methodology stemming from California Interdisciplinary Psychoanalytic psychoanalytic training. Consortium has many talented colleagues who This issue builds on the "Dual Training" meet periodically. Lacanians have been spreading one. In it, seventeen authors reflect on important their version of psychoanalysis in the groves of questions related to the marriage of psychohistory/ academia with considerable success, especially in psychoanalysis to academia. Seven of them are English departments. The Journal for the from literary backgrounds, four from history, three Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society (JPCS) is from psychology, one from psychiatry, and -- with now being published by the University of Ohio double and triple counting -- three from Press. Psycho Culture is a newsletter which began psychoanalysis and four from therapy. They are being published in 1997 at Teachers College of about equally divided between having a primary Columbia University. Applied Psychoanalysis is a commitment to psychohistory or to psychoanalysis new journal announced by the Menninger -- several with a strong commitment to both and Foundation. The proliferation of psychohistorical only one sees herself as neither. Thirteen are men publications has been so rapid that Clio's and four are women, with all but one of the women Psyche's “Publishing in Psychohistory Special being in literature. Three of the authors are Issue” (June, 1996) is obsolete because of the Lacanians, presenting a view which has only recent creation of Psychoanalysis and History, recently appeared in this publication, who Tapestry, JPCS, Psychoanalytic Studies, Applied responded to an open invitation on the Internet. Psychoanalysis, and other publications. There are These authors have both very similar and now over ten psychohistorical publications in dissimilar experiences and sometimes hold very addition to older ones in applied psychoanalysis different viewpoints on a diversity of related such as American Imago which is published by subjects. The first two, Hartman and Sloan, are Johns Hopkins University Press. While psychologists who have been affiliated with the psychohistory organizations and publications are University of Michigan, one as a professor, the not usually affiliated with academia, they are other as a graduate student. John Hartman came to thriving and influencing the academy. There are Michigan from Harvard’s famed Social Relations many signs of vitality, growth, and creativity. Department. He specialized in group work, but The pessimistic approach is that some later trained as a psychoanalyst and now works psychoanalysts are reaching out for an academic primarily doing individual analysis. He reports lifeboat in desperation. Psychoanalysts are losing Michigan to be less amenable to psychoanalysis their practices in this age of biological than when he arrived there. Tod Sloan feels determinism, managed care, and miracle drugs. somewhat isolated teaching in a traditional, anti- Psychohistorians never had more than a toehold in psychoanalytic psychology department in the university and that will soon be lost as an older Oklahoma. The Internet appears to help connect generation dies or retires. Lacanians and him to a larger community of Lacanians and deMausians are talking to themselves more than lessened his feelings of isolation. anyone else, psychoanalysis is mostly a big city Spyros Orfanos, President-Elect of the phenomenon, and psychohistory is mostly just a 4000 member-strong Division of Psychoanalysis of New York and West Coast phenomenon. Even the 155,000 member American Psychological The Psychohistory Review, the most academically Association, is a talented advocate for respectable of the psychohistory journals, last year psychoanalysis who warns against the mutual was debating closing down after 28 years of being derisiveness which leads many psychology text published by the University of Illinois and its book writers to refer to psychoanalysis as “a failed predecessor. 19th century form of treatment with a dubious Regular readers of these pages will have no scientific basis” and some analysts to call academic doubt that I stand with the optimists rather than the psychologists “rat psychologists.” With such pessimists, but that I do not ignore the problems. mutual disdain is it any wonder why the great Over a dozen scholars in Clio Psyche’s “Dual majority of psychoanalytic programs are in non- Training in Psychoanalysis and History, Literature, academically affiliated institutes? Like so many March, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 119 practicing clinicians, he loves to teach and adjuncts discussing his view of the requirements for at several colleges. becoming a psychoanalyst, Breiner recognizes that For decades I have noted a strong interest medical knowledge is quite secondary to other in analysis and psychohistory in the State of training and attributes. Michigan and especially the Detroit area. John Psychologists wishing to practice Hartman, Alexander Grinstein, Lloyd deMause psychoanalysis successfully challenged the (who long ago left his home state for Manhattan), psychiatric monopoloy, but usually their and Sander Breiner are the first four names which organizations used regulatory and legal means to come to mind when I think of Michigan's pull the ladder up after themselves. Yet by the contribution to psychohistorical knowledge. time I trained in psychoanalysis the majority of Breiner is a psychiatrist/psychoanalyst of candidates (students) were from social work with a enormous energy and a broad range of interests. sprinkling of those from academia, nursing, the He is part of a psychiatric tradition which stems clergy, and business. And overwhelmingly they back to the time when American medical doctors were women. A master's or doctoral degree and a had a near monopoly on psychoanalysis despite the suitable personality were the minimal requirements admonitions of Freud himself who strongly for applicants. believed in lay (non-medical) analysis. In In late January, a reference librarian at the 42nd Street Branch of the New York Public Library asked me, “Should psychohistory be listed Clio’s Psyche under history or psychology?” I responded with the pros and cons of listing either way or Vol. 5, No. 4 March, 1999 separately. The understandable impulse to lump ISSN 1080-2622 psychohistory under either psychology or history is perhaps unfortunate for at least two reasons. Published Quarterly by The Psychohistory Forum 627 Dakota Trail, Franklin Lakes, NJ 07417 First, most working psychohistorians are in Telephone: (201) 891-7486 neither psychology nor history departments, but are e-mail: [email protected] rather spread throughout the academic and clinical Editor: Paul H. Elovitz, PhD worlds -- and beyond. At my college, the Associate Editor: Bob Lentz colleagues I happen to know of who trained as Editorial Board psychoanalysts come from counseling (two), David Beisel, PhD RCC-SUNY • Rudolph Binion, history, philosophy (two), political science, PhD Brandeis University • Andrew Brink, PhD psychology, and theater (now deceased). Like Formerly of McMaster University and The University most psychoanalysts, few of them have of Toronto • Ralph Colp, MD Columbia University • demonstrated much interest in applying their Joseph Dowling, PhD Lehigh University • Glen psychological insights beyond their patient Jeansonne, PhD University of Wisconsin • George population. When all but one of them does think Kren, PhD Kansas State University • Peter psychoanalytically beyond patients, it is usually to Loewenberg, PhD UCLA • Peter Petschauer, PhD literary characters and seldom, if at all, to Appalachian State University • Leon Rappoport, psychohistory. PhD Kansas State University Second, psychohistory has taken on a life Advisory Council of the Psychohistory Forum John Caulfield, MDiv, Apopka, FL • Melvin Kalfus, of its own. It is a hybrid that is often a part of, but PhD Boca Raton, FL • Mena Potts, PhD Wintersville, more than, history, psychology, politics, literature, OH • Jerome Wolf, Larchmont, NY sociology, and so forth. Trying to fit
Subscription Rate: psychohistory under any one disciplinary umbrella Free to members of the Psychohistory Forum is too limiting at best, and, at worst, the single $25 yearly to non-members discipline approach becomes a Procrustean bed. $40 yearly to institutions (Both add $4 outside USA & Canada) People write valuable psychohistory from many different perspectives. Single Issue Price: $10 The four historians writing for this issue We welcome articles of psychohistorical interest are a varied lot with many things in common. Our that are 300 - 1500 words. specialties are Chinese, English, European, and Copyright 1999 The Psychohistory Forum German history. George Kren and Peter
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Petschauer were born in Austria and Germany, one-half decades of sustained effort I have devoted respectively, and Lung-kee Sun, in China. All are to developing a psychohistorical community at the academics teaching in the U.S., one each in the Institute for Psychohistory, the International Midwest (Kansas), the South (North Carolina), a Psychohistorical Association, the Psychohistory border state (Tennessee), and the Northeast (New Forum and around Clio’s Psyche, have served Jersey). Our senior member is George Kren who, many of my own psychic needs as well as those of together with his colleague Leon Rappoport of the the psychohistorical communities I have sought to Psychology Department at Kansas State nurture. The work of many psychohistorical University, instituted a path-breaking graduate scholars and organizers has created a dynamic program in psychohistory in the 1980s. psychosocial paradigm for many drawn from both Unfortunately, like most new ventures, it failed. In the margins and the mainstream. retrospect, its founders believe that its Achilles’ While a graduate student, Lung-kee Sun heel was a lack of financial support for graduate was excited by the possibilities of psychohistory students. In the process of attempting it, Kren and by the work of Lucian Pyle and Richard Solomon. Rappoport had a stimulating collaboration which The severe criticism by other China specialists has continued down to the present time. their work was subjected to discouraged him, but Peter Petschauer writes of his sense of did not eliminate this interest. With the recent psychohistorical marginality as a historian who emergence of Lacanian scholarship, Professor Sun lives away from the main areas where has found a new community of scholars with psychohistorians live, meet, talk, and research. He whom to dialogue. Could it be that, like many relates this marginality partly to being unable to others before him, he will also find a second teach psychohistory as a part of his normal course community of psychological knowledge with the load. This admired psychohistorian, scholar, and Psychohistory Forum? leader astutely realizes that this marginality is part Political scientists have flocked to the of the self-image of a German who was raised in International Society for Political Psychology and Italy by people who were not his parents, a boy have increasingly taken leadership positions that who attended boarding schools, a teenage previously were occupied by clinicians or “immigrant in New York, and as a Yankee in the academic psychologists. They are a large, South.” In this editor's mind he has always been in important group of academicians who base their the mainstream of psychohistory and I know that I political psychology on many sources including was not alone in feeling disappointed that he chose psychoanalysis. I thought it important that this to step away from the path he was on which would group have some representation in this issue, and have taken him to the presidency of the Charles Fred Alford agreed to be interviewed. He International Psychohistorical Association. His makes the unsettling point that as academic university and the readers of his valuable books are psychoanalysis thrives, "its clinical practice is really the beneficiaries of this decision. disappearing" and speculates upon the causal My own experience as a professor at a connection. Clearly, he values psychoanalysis for small public liberal arts college in New Jersey may it subjective quality. not be very different than Peter Petschauer's at a Jonathan Goldberg was a humanities state university, but my perspective is certainly teacher who reports leaving academia 28 years ago different in that I feel less marginalized in the because he felt it moving away from a humanistic psychohistorical community. While having to base towards a scientific one he deplores in the teach almost entirely out of my area of specialized humanities. Like Alford, he focuses on the need to research and publication, I focus on how much emphasize the subjective. He makes his living as a these, and my analytic training, enrich what I do Jungian analyst and psychotherapist, deploring the teach as well as all of my interactions with tendency for psychotherapists to justify their students. But if I lived far from the land of my existence by "a pseudo-scientific theory of what birth (in fact I was born a New Englander, barely works." 75 miles away from where I live and teach) and if I did not have a psychohistorical friend with whom I Seven of our authors did their graduate meet on a weekly basis, or if I did not run training in literature and it is precisely in the field psychohistory meetings in Manhattan on a regular of literary studies that psychoanalysis is most basis, than perhaps I would share Petschauer’s openly accepted at many institutions of higher sense of marginality. I do know that the two-and- learning. Daniel Dervin, an erudite and prolific March, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 121 psychohistorian, both highlights the differences -- her own experiences, intuition, and observations. he calls psychoanalysis and academia “natural Above all else she is fearful of imposing a enemies” -- and their complementary qualities. theoretical framework on her subject. This is my His intellectual biography and critiques of ideal for how to write good biography and academia (with its gamesmanship) and psychobiography. Simon readily acknowledges Lacanianism are quite incisive. that after she had formed her own view of William Hilary Clark struggles to make a point that James, she read psychoanalytic literature on comes quite easily to many a psychoanalyst but anxiety, empathy, narcissism, and panic disorder. quite difficultly to most academics. That is, that My only disagreement with this Skidmore research interests stem from the psychic needs of professor is that when she presented at the the researcher. She learned this from the Psychohistory Forum and Ramapo College she experiences of her own life as an academic who assumed that psychohistorians necessarily lead has been a long-term user of the mental health with theory. Often this is not the case and it system and had it verified by Phyllis Grosskurth’s certainly is at odds with my ideals. biography of Melanie Klein. But she appears to Psychohistory has many practioners feel quite ill at ease putting it in print, expecting throughout the world, especially in Germany and colleagues will think her approach a “rather France. Our call for papers brought two from paranoid view of academic research,” as if the link Australia, one from New Zealand, and another between the personal and professional is a secret from Britain. The origin of this special issue is in knowledge. To my psychohistorical way of the questions asked last year on the Psychohistory thinking, psychic investment in a subject is what Listserve (
Kohut its chairmanship over 20 years ago. Kohut In the extraordinarily unlikely event that declined the position, but, the last I heard, Solnit psychoanalysis would eventually cease to be a was still holding on to his at about 80 years of age. valued treatment modality, I am confident that as Yet, even if the psychoanalytic pessimists are an intellectual discipline it would hold its own. Its correct, and analysis is a dying form of treatment, value "as a humane 21st-century worldview," "an it would still be a powerful intellectual force in and investigative research method," and "a mode of out of academia. perceiving human interactions, data, events, and behaviors" is spelled out with great clarity in Peter The theme of this special issue assumes Loewenberg's "Professional and Personal Insight" there is a close relationship between in our "Dual Training Special Issue" (September, psychoanalysis and psychohistory. This is true in 1997). Psychohistory, as mentioned above, has the minds of most, but not all, practitioners and taken on a life of its own and, while it is enriched readers. The earliest psychohistories were an by clinical practice, this is not a requirement for its offshoot of those applying Freud’s ideas to society. continued growth and success. Though psychohistory has taken on a considerable life of its own, there is still a close relationship in The many authors of this special issue illustrate the vitality of psychoanalysis and my mind, but not necessarily in the minds of psychohistory and their complex relationships with everyone I know or have read. For example, Alan academia. Most are, or have been, full-time Elms and Mac Runyan write psychohistory from a professors and a minority are part-time teachers. non-Freudian perspective. These scholars are All seem to have had to struggle to find a place. worth reading. As I struggle with the Despite the many obituaries that have been written misinformation regarding psychoanalysis and for psychoanalysis and psychohistory, I remain psychohistory present among my fellow historians, optimistic about their future because of the special I wonder what it is like for Professor Elms in an insight which they offer in the consulting room, academic psychology department? I doubt that it classroom, and quiet time when one is struggling is completely comfortable. Just as all to understand something new. psychohistorians are not inspired by Paul H. Elovitz, PhD, is a founding faculty psychoanalysis, so all, and not even most, member at Ramapo College and formerly a psychoanalysts are interested in applied professor at Temple, Rutgers, and Fairleigh psychoanalysis. Dickinson universities. He is a founding member Fred Alford's statement that clinical practice is "disappearing" is an overstatement as I Hayman Fellowships am sure Professor Alford readily would The University of California acknowledge. Psychoanalytic practice is clearly Interdisciplinary Psychoanalytic Consortium declining, but there remain an enormous number of announces two $5,000 annual fellowships to aid people who come to analysts for one reason or psychoanalytically informed research on the another. Even in the heyday of psychoanalysis, literary, cultural, and humanistic expressions of most people came to analysts for reasons (short genocide, racism, ethnocentrism, nationalism, term marital therapy, for example) other than inter-ethnic violence, and the Holocaust. analysis, but a few slowly realized how valuable The Endowment supports studies in the analysis could be and stayed. When I rented office psychodynamics of personal, group, and international crisis management, de-escalation, space from a practice of three psychologists and a conflict resolution, and peace processes. The psychiatrist -- a behaviorist, an eclectic therapist, fellowships are intended to provide for and two psychoanalysts -- it was the analysts who dissertation research in scholarly resources, always had full archives, libraries, academic contacts, and to practices. A colleague recently expressed provide support for the final writing for considerable concern for people entering private publication of a project whose major research psychoanalytic practice today, noting that managed has been completed. Applicants should be care companies and drugs such as Prozac were advanced to candidacy for the doctorate in their graduate studies or be in a psychiatric residency cutting into the pool of potential patients. But she or fellowship program. has a thriving practice, and she agreed that there Contact: Hayman Administrator, The are far more analysts and analytic institutes today Director's Office, NPI&H, B8-248, Psychiatry than when we were psychoanalytic candidates & Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA, Los together in 1973. Page 124 Clio’s Psyche March, 1999 of the International Psychohistorical Association and a student of both Freud and Jung, had retired as by this time but his influence was still felt. well as a past president. In 1983 he founded the Sociologists Talcott Parsons and Robert Bales had Psychohistory Forum and in 1994 he became been trained as academic associates at the Boston founding editor of Clio's Psyche. Four years Psychoanalytic Institute and anthropologists like after completing his doctoral degree in English John and Beatrice Whiting studied personality and Modern European history he began a ten-year cross-culturally, testing psychoanalytic hypotheses. program of training as a psychoanalyst. Professor Erik H. Erikson had recently arrived at Harvard Elovitz presents papers and writes extensively on a and was teaching his undergraduate course on variety of subjects including historical dream human development and writing his books on work, the history of psychohistory, the Holocaust, Luther and Gandhi. So the application of leadership, methodology, Presidential childhood psychoanalytic notions to groups, to history, and to and personality, psychobiography, and teaching. social issues was a common thread in this He has edited Historical and Psychological interdisciplinary department. Most of the Inquiry (1990) and co-edited Immigrant influential professors and their students regarded Experiences (1997). He may be reached at psychoanalysis as a worthy and useful social
Daniel Dervin vision) is tantamount to reinventing the wheel in an Mary Washington College increasingly anti-wheel culture. The dominant discourse in academia has traditionally been some Freud performs in academia about as nicely variant on Cartesian mind-body dualism, as a courtesan in a monastery -- the two are natural rationalism, or behaviorism, which is bad enough enemies and their worlds don't really fit together. because Freud suggests that all that sweet reason of But throwing them together can produce two equals two, of guaranteed positive unforeseen, exciting results, and in the end you reinforcement for academic and worldly success, is wonder if they might not be complementary. but the barest tip of a continually submerging Having played this game -- and most of what goes iceberg. But, more recently, culture wars have on in academia is a variant on gamesmanship -- for rendered Dead White Males not only suspect but three decades, I had best lay my cards on the table, dangerous seducers-abusers who threaten to repeat keeping any tricks up my sleeve for later. one's experiences of victimization. Thus, I can My academic background is mixed -- contrast a senior seminar I once taught out of the "checkered," as I recall a Columbia University psychology department on Freud and professor calling it, for although I pursued graduate Contemporary Psychoanalysis in which I adapted programs in literature, I supported myself by to the differences of the material by inviting working for a psychiatric unit in an inmate students to discuss their dreams one-on-one and by rehabilitation program in Westchester County, sitting in a circle on the floor to consider Freud's New York, receiving analytic-based supervision problematic views on women. The students back with therapy groups. If other American writers then were reflective and receptive. In the recent sailed the sea or hit the road, I went to the county course on Freud and Feminism, interdisciplinary penitentiary for my apprenticeship. It lasted four but top-heavy with psychology majors, a sea years, and when I came to teach undergraduates in change had occurred. Freud, who had once a liberal arts college in Virginia, my inclination discovered his patients' inclinations to fabricate, was to integrate psychoanalytic approaches into all was now being accused of fabricating his own my courses in ideally seminar-style settings that cases and being hopelessly sexist. Having lost all valued process equally with product. credibility, he retained mere curiosity, and about the best I could do was mark where Freud went off Gradually over the years I siphoned off my the track on women yet was wrong in interesting interest in psychoanalytic readings into specialized and productive ways that have been correctively courses and taught literature more strictly within continued by later analysts, many of who are the confines of its own discipline. The relevant women. courses range from Psychological Dimensions of Literature (encompassing nursery rhymes, jump 2) Simultaneously, I was encountering rope songs, fairy tales, Eskimo myths, and bona disconcerting distortions outside the classroom . fide works of literature like Werther); Literature of Students, as well as psychology faculty, would the Self (during a period of Kohutian interest); casually refer to an Electra Complex and I would Literature of Madness (during a period of interest make an effort to explain there is no such thing. in R.D. Laing and Michel Foucault); a graduate Girls do have conflicts with their mothers, fathers, colloquium with a biologist on Becoming Human and other family members, but the notion of a (in which I improvised psychoanalytic complex complementary to the Oedipus, although anthropology, including deMause, Weston once floated by Jung, was rejected by Freud and LaBarre, Eli Sagan, along with literary works by forgotten by Jung and later analysts. Much to my Wordsworth and Sartre, among others); and an dismay, I found that a wide sampling of current interdisciplinary course, Hitler and the Holocaust: psychology textbooks had grossly misinformed The Psychohistory of Evil; to, most recently, a chapters on Freud and psychoanalysis, including course on Freud and Feminism. All the courses the Electra Complex along with pre-emptive-strike drew on selections from Freud's writings, as well questions such as, "Why Was Freud So Hung-up as from Melanie Klein, D.W. Winnicott, and many On Sex?" My attempts to engage psychology other analysts. What did I learn through all these colleagues on these matters were met with initial permutations? Briefly: indifference followed by a circle-the-wagons reflex. Finally, I interested one of their number, 1) It is axiomatic that introducing Freud Chris Kilmartin, to co-author a whistle-blower on (by whom I mean an evolving psychoanalytic the textbooks where Electra had spread like a Page 130 Clio’s Psyche March, 1999 computer virus (see Teaching of Psychology, 1997, the pitfalls of appropriating a clinical practice to an and I have pursued the phenomenon more fully in academic discipline. Gender and Psychoanalysis, 3:4:1998). But the Nonetheless, because Lacan seems to effort is like stomping on prairie fires, and Electra bridge the gap from the private to the political, the has been reborn in the pages of Steven Pinker's subjective to the social, he has been in great evolutionary psychology in How the Mind Works demand as an arms supplier in the culture wars. (1997). Lacan is made to falsely reassure his disciples that 3) My foray into psychohistory via Hitler they are helpless victims of their past, forced to and the Holocaust received a mixed reception by conform to an alien social order, and lacking the the history department with one colleague being resources to work through conflicts which are not supportive in material ways, others making it so much inner as imposed. In his vocabulary, the difficult to use films and badmouthing the course other pre-empts the drives of the subject; the to students while putting on a friendly smile to me subject is constituted by the other; and the -- all of which I take to be par for the transgression. unconscious is structured like a language. Thus 4) Other colleagues are enthusiastically read, Lacan gives legitimacy to the victim ideology injecting Freud into their philosophy courses, and, and conspiracy theories of the 1990s. Whereas while I wish them well, I cringe at the prospect of psychoanalysis implicates us, Lacanianism Freud being reduced to another contributor to conveniently implicates them. Jacob Arlow's Great Ideas of the Western World. I always ask if admonition that there are no victims on the couch the instructors include his essay on negation, which is anathema among his disciples. proposes that consciousness and, thereby, thinking While Lacan is thus the perfect prophet of per se are defensive. These mental processes may postmodernism, there are signs of changing times. also be adaptive, but unless the integrating of Terry Eagleton, who has played a major role in conceptual processes with more primitive ones -- promulgating these discourses, has had a belated both defensive and instinctual -- occurs, the awakening. "Literary theory," he writes, "is in classroom can easily fall prey to vapid love with failure. It looks with distaste on intellectualizations and facile accommodations. whatever is integral, self-identical, smugly replete, 5) In English and philosophy departments and is fascinated by lack, belatedness, deadlock, to a great extent today, Lacan and other French self-undoing." (London Review of Books, April 16, semiotic-philosophical analysts like Julia Kristeva 1998: 13) This awareness has been a long time and Gilles Deleuze have largely replaced Freud in coming, but if we can realize that our attacks on favor of postmodern discourses. Since POMO culture are returning to injure ourselves, perhaps (postmodernism) means many things to different we can move beyond the unsavory status quo. people, I'll use just one of its meanings, that of 6) In the left field of POMO's ballpark, breaking with modernist narratives of universal Freud, Lacan, Deleuze, Foucault, Roland Barthes, rights and values. Freud's "Where Id was, there and Jacques Derrida, among others, have been Ego shall be" situates him as a modernist; Kohut teamed together in the still evolving academic field and Lacan fall into the POMO camp. of gay and lesbian studies, sometimes conflated as I have profited from some of Lacan's Queer Studies. The Freud who plays in this league theories, especially on the interplay of desire-lack is the exponent of narcissism and polymorphous- of desire and the often perverse strategies that perverse sexuality (see Jonathan Dollimore, Sexual accrue from warding off castration fears by phallic Dissidence, 1991; Earl Jackson, Jr., Strategies of fetishizing. But Lacan's claim to return to Freud is Deviance, 1995; and Jonathan Ned Katz, The transparently deceptive, and his unconscious is a Invention of Heterosexuality, 1996). Deleuze is linguistic system highly structured and readily best known for his Anti-Oedipus (1983), a surreal accessible -- but at a high price -- to academics for attack on the Oedipus complex in favor of a whom language is the be-all and end-all of their tongue-in-cheek schizophrenia (though the term as professional lives. Freud allows one to move from used trivializes the serious plight of the mentally the cooked to the raw; Lacan, who can be clever ill). and entertaining as well as obfuscating, shifts from These texts dovetail with the Author-is- the cooked to the pre-cooked. The absence of Dead tack of Foucault and Barthes. In effect, the affects, of empathy, of clinical-anchoring, and of author's authority is replaced by that of theory, and scientific interest in his theories finally underscores the common denominator is an exclusive March, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 131 cultivation of preoedipal phases as constitutive of mnemonic systems erected against forgetting. psychic structure, as if by avoiding or denigrating What do these connections mean? Is it simply that, the oedipal stage, one strikes a blow against narcissistically, I am interested only in issues that hierarchy, male hegemony, and oppressive resonate with my own experience -- that I see my authority systems everywhere. It's all very life, my experiences with shame, loss, and tendentious. depression, mirrored in everything I (strategically) Yet, while these authors' prose reads like a choose to read and gather into my research? Or piano recital in which only about 12 of the 88 keys might there be, more generally, a connection are engaged, there is no reason why Freud cannot between the story of any academic's life and the be read selectively. (I suspect we all do to a story of his or her research, a relationship that can degree; I'm sure we also read him defensively). be established? I believe that there is, and that And I suppose Freud's allegiance to the scientific psychoanalysis provides the ground for articulating Weltanschauung was an ideal he did not always this relationship. achieve. Psychoanalysis must in any case continue Peter Brooks writes in Psychoanalysis and to be questioned both from within and from Storytelling (1994) that psychoanalysis is "a without. But whether it can ever be enlisted as an 'praxis' of narrative construction within a context agent for social change and still remain true to of live storytelling" (p. 76); it builds its clinical itself is at best open to question. narratives on the basis of life-stories told "live," on Daniel Dervin, PhD, is a prolific the spot, in analysis. Psychoanalysis has built up psychohistorian who has recently written on these clinical stories, developing theoretical Matricentric Narratives (1997) on questions of narratives of development and regression, conflict gender and agency in women's writing. and integration, that in their turn shape analytic practice, the stories it interprets and tells. Guilt and repression, grief and reparation -- such concepts are best understood when embodied in analytic narratives of resistance and transference, narratives that teach us that the past never quite ceases haunting us. An academic research path is also a narrative. In it are implicated all the stories, manifest and submerged, that have shaped the researcher's life. Research can thus be seen as a Research as Autobiography form of life-writing, however indirect. To put it Hilary Clark another way, I would suggest that a research path University of Saskatchewan, Canada has a transferential aspect: it is chosen not in a disinterested manner but rather in response to I am a professor of critical theory and deep-seated needs, enacting or repeating in the literary modernism whose research interests have present unresolved conflicts from the earliest largely been in the area of psychoanalytic theories object relations -- the earliest and always of shame and depression, Kleinian object relations, unfinished stories of love and hate, guilt and and the psychoanalysis of 20th-century culture. I aggression. (Melanie Klein, "The Origins of am also a long-time user of the mental health Transference" in The Selected Melanie Klein, system: for over 20 years, depression and 1987: 206-207) And this is the case, I would antidepressants have been a part of my life; three argue, not only for academic research in years ago, I was diagnosed as "bipolar II" (mixed psychoanalysis but for any research narrative, states of depression and hypomania). There is inasmuch as it is composed by a person whose life certainly a connection between my own is still haunted or shaped by unfinished business, a experiences with depression and psychotherapies narrative that will write itself by whatever means (not always psychoanalytic) and the research path I come to hand. have been following. There is probably also a Perhaps this seems a rather paranoid view connection between my experiences with therapy of academic research. As a further example, and an earlier research interest in memory and its however, I will briefly offer a case that is not my lapses: the problem of forgetting and the own: that of Klein herself. Klein's life story has Page 132 Clio’s Psyche March, 1999 been written by Phyllis Grosskurth in her unreconciled with her daughter, felt that a number absorbing biography, Melanie Klein: Her World of her friends and colleagues had deserted her; as and Her Work (1986). Klein's life was divided always, in "On the Sense of Loneliness" she was roughly in two: the first half comprising a theorizing her own life. conventional girlhood and marriage; the second I have offered Klein's case as exemplifying being Klein's career as a child analyst and object the tendency of a research path, a theoretical relations theorist. There were two turning points in narrative, to re-enact or repeat unfinished business this story of progress from middle-class married in the researcher's life. The research, and, perhaps unhappiness to professional fulfillment: the more generally, the vocation, that one takes up is discontented wife's first reading of Freud (The an analytic arena in which one works through and Interpretation of Dreams) and subsequent entering rewrites unfinished narratives -- attempting to into analysis while still married; and the Kleins' compose conclusions but never entirely being able divorce around ten years later. Klein suffered from to do so. Like Klein, I am (re)writing the story of depression throughout her married life and my life, my depressions that resist conclusion, in frequently beyond as she came to terms with a the research path I have "chosen" -- Klein's work number of losses: besides the loss of her early and its reworking (or working through) of grief -- aspirations, there were the deaths of a sister and a and, no doubt, I will continue to do so in a new beloved brother, the loss of a lover, and the loss of project I am planning on mourning and the body in a son in a mountaineering accident. Most modernist women's writing. strikingly, Klein lost her daughter, Melitta Schmideberg who as an analyst turned against her Hilary Clark, PhD in Comparative mother and waged an unrelenting war against her. Literature, University of British Columbia, teaches English and Women's Studies at the University of In a recent graduate seminar, my students Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada. She has co- and I traced parallels between Klein's life story and edited, with Joseph Adamson, a volume of essays her theoretical narrative, which posits the infant's entitled Scenes of Shame: Psychoanalysis, Shame, development from a "paranoid-schizoid" position, and Writing (1998). Professor Clark has also in which it splits its objects into good and bad, published most recently on James Joyce in her defending itself against that which it has article, "'Legibly Depressed': Shame, Mourning, sadistically attacked, to a "depressive position" in and Melancholia in Finnegans Wake," James which the infant experiences guilt and grief over Joyce Quarterly, Summer 1997. In addition, she the damage it has done and seeks to make has published two books of poetry with Canadian reparation -- to make amends and to mend the presses. Her e-mail address is broken object. Mourning is theorized by Klein, in
One of the ways Freud classified hierarchy, dogmatism, and reverence for psychoanalysis (in "Analysis Terminable and figureheads -- participate in this repression? And, Interminable," 1937) was as an "'impossible' if it does, is it not time to recognize that the biggest profession in which one can be sure beforehand of threat to the future of psychoanalysis might, in achieving unsatisfying results." Psychoanalysis fact, reside in the unanalyzed acting out of its self- was, he wagered, in some way comparable both to proclaimed followers? (A point that makes the education and to government whose status as complete absence of clinical experience in many "impossible" has been known for much longer. academic theoreticians even more problematic.) Having spent a good deal of time over the last few Let us note that part of what characterizes years considering -- in attempting both to learn and the impossible professions is that they are founded to teach -- the theoretical overlap between on a recognition of the necessity of dissent. psychoanalysis and politics, this insight of Freud's Without an inherent tension, analysis, government, is never very far from my thoughts. and pedagogy fail to thrive, fail to sustain the kind If each field taken on its own terms is of frisson upon which they depend for their "impossible," what are we to understand as the aim continued renewal. Without a transference- in the teaching of psychoanalysis and politics? For induced tension, analysis fails; without debate, surely, "impossibility" is another way of liberal government becomes a farce; and without recognizing a certain lack or incompleteness of intellectual debate and disagreement, pedagogy knowledge inherent to the system of thought itself devolves into indoctrination. We could, in other and, if this is the case, then the question is not words, say that the impossible professions are simply one of pedagogy but, in fact, reflects those that are founded on a certain inherent rupture directly back onto the theory underpinning Freud's and thus gloss Freud's statement concerning their point concerning psychoanalysis' "impossibility." "impossibility" as the diagnosis of those fields For Freud, what is clearly at stake is not only the whose ends cannot be conceived of as the transmission of a piece of knowledge but the eradication of opposition, as the erasure of friction. imparting of an impossible knowledge, the When the institution ceases to act as a support of a transmission of a system of thought within which system of knowledge, and becomes instead an end the hole or rupture in knowledge can itself come to in itself (in the same way that the fetishist takes his the fore. It is only in the relation -- or more fetish), it takes itself for a truth -- indeed, the truth precisely the impasse -- between knowledge and -- and demands recognition as such. "impossible knowledge" that the workings of the Now, it is this insistence on the truth of the unconscious itself come to light. The problem that institution that I fear has contributed to the Freud then faces, and we in our turn, is how to continual ruptures that have been the bane of teach a "knowledge" that is, in effect, only in psychoanalysis since Freud's death and the "truth" absentia, that is as a lack or impossibility in of the institution has, for many psychoanalysts, knowledge? It is in overcoming this disjunction taken precedence over its founding "impossible between the unique "knowledge" of psychoanalysis knowledge." and the limits of "understanding" that the experience of one's own analysis becomes Susan Varney is a graduate student in invaluable. It is, no doubt, in the dynamic of the literature at SUNY Buffalo whose dissertation is on treatment itself that the force of "the hole in sexual difference and the liberal state. She is the knowledge" makes itself felt most insistently and founding editor of Umbra: A Journal of the productively. Unconscious and has an article, "Sexing Community, Timing Justice," forthcoming in My concerns are primarily aimed at the Clinical Studies. academic side of the psychoanalytic institution, outside the realm of training analysis. In the latter field, however, I should point out that the problems Biography and the involved in the institutionalization of psychoanalytic knowledge have been repeatedly Use of Psychoanalysis broached, for example, by Balint and Winnicott. Linda Simon tion of non-analytic regulations. To what extent Skidmore College does academia -- which shares with the training institutions a relatively slavish respect for As a biographer, I have resisted applying March, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 135 psychological or psychoanalytical theory or it helpful to read psychological writings about such schema as I research a life because, for me, issues as narcissism, panic disorder, anxiety, and inviting Freud, or Erikson, or Jung, to participate empathy. But I have gone to these works only in the biographical process of discovery would after I drew conclusions on my own. Using a undermine my own sense of authority. If I came to theory as a template may limit the biographer's a subject's life with a theory in my pocket, that imagination. And it is that ranging imagination, theory would necessarily shape my selection of that sense of the astounding and wonderful variety evidence on which I needed to base my of human experience, that results in compelling interpretation. I would have a trove of code terms - and compassionate portraits. - "sibling rivalry," "oedipal struggle," even Linda Simon, PhD, who is Associate "repression" -- that would make their way, Professor of English at Skidmore College, earned intrusively, I think, into my analysis. her doctoral degree in English and American Looking at William James' relationship Literature from Brandeis in 1983. After teaching with his father as a Freudian oedipal struggle, for one year at Emory, she went to Harvard as a example, places the responsibility for the struggle professor in 1983 and then served as Director of on William, who, according to Freudian the Writing Center from 1986 to 1997. Among her assumptions, would have struggled with "any" publications are The Biography of Alice B. Toklas father. Focusing on James in this way might (1977); Thornton Wilder: His World (1979); preclude our asking about the father's experience in Gertrude Stein Remembered (1994); and William the struggle, or examining the repeated challenges James Remembered (1995). Professor Simon's to William's autonomy that his father posed. Genuine Reality: A Life of William James (1998) Someone looking at the same relationship from the received outstanding reviews. Her e-mail perspective of a family systems analyst might see a address is
Since there was a general interest, we Lung-kee Sun taught undergraduate courses in psychohistory and University of Memphis the history of childhood. We applied and received a grant for starting a degree in psychohistory. The When I was a student from 1971 to 1984 at structure for the program was simple. Students the University of Minnesota and Stanford would fulfill the normal requirements for a PhD in University, Erik Erikson was in vogue among a history or psychology, but their dissertation would number of scholars who applied his be on a psychohistorical subject. In addition to the psychobiographical approach to the study of regular courses they would also take courses at the prominent Chinese figures from Wang Yangming Menninger Foundation in Topeka, where they (1472-1529) to Liang Shuming (1893-????). But would do some supervised clinical work. We psychohistory soon fell out of favor. Some planned to work out the details of this once professors said that the field was discredited by the students arrived. works of the political scientists Lucian Pye and The grant enabled us to bring in Richard Solomon who, in the late 1960s and early psychohistorians who gave generally well attended 1970s, theorized that the Chinese were an "oral" public lectures on aspects of psychohistory. I type of people upgraded to the "anal" stage by the recall that it was an exciting series; we had Peter Maoist revolution. However, the decline seemed Lowenberg, Rudy Binion, Lloyd deMause, John to have most to do with psychohistory in general Demos, and Bruce Mazlish, among others. The going out of fashion within the American historical grant enabled us even to pay them decently. The profession. lectures resulted in sensitizing the history When I wrote "Beloved China: The department in particular to psychohistory. Imagery of 'Mother China' in Modern Chinese However, the program did not succeed. In Political Thinking," in Vamik D. Volkan, et al, retrospect the reason for its failure is very clear. eds., The Psychodynamics of International The grant provided money for lecturers, but we had Relationships, vol. 1 (1990), it was for the field of no money to support students and were unable to political psychology. I sometimes adopted a attract students to come here. The grant was not different approach, such as synthesizing, within a renewed after the first year, which in effect framework of my own, the behavioral testings terminated the program. After a few years, interest done on the Chinese in the last 30 years, in order to on the part of undergraduates in psychohistory also study their modal personality in my dropped and in the 1980s we gave up teaching "Contemporary Chinese Culture: Structure and courses in psychohistory and the history of Emotionality," The Australian Journal of Chinese childhood. Psychohistory is still discussed in our Affairs (July, 1991). For my fellow historians I graduate historiography course, but no special simply did the conventional type of history of psychohistory courses are offered. psychology such as in "Social Psychology in the Late Qing Period," Modern China (July, 1992). George M. Kren, PhD, is a distinguished Lately, I have paid more attention to the semiotics, scholar of modern Europe and the Holocaust who or the study of language and signs, of self and is also a member of the Editorial Board of this identity. publication. He may be reached at
French Society for Psychohistory. He has six I think I am right in saying that I hold the books and hundreds of articles to his credit. He only chair that has so far been established in may be contacted at
The History of Psychohistory Clio's Psyche's interviews of outstanding psychohistorians (see "An American in Amsterdam: Arthur Mitzman," page 146) have grown into a full-fledged study of the pioneers and history of our field. Psychohistory as an organized field is less than 25 years old, so most of the innovators are available to tell their stories and give their insights. Last March, the Forum formally launched the Makers of the Psychohistorical Paradigm Research Project to systematically gather material to write the history of psychohistory. We welcome memoirs, letters, and manuscripts as well as volunteers to help with the interviewing. People interested in participating should write, call, or e-mail Paul H. Elovitz (see page Page 144 Clio’s Psyche March, 1999 is being subjected to so much criticism. president of the International Society for Political Robert M. Young, PhD, was born in Psychology (ISPP), and is the recipient of Dallas, Texas, and studied Philosophy at Yale and numerous honors as are the other panelists. Medical Sciences at Rochester. He won a Contact the Editor at
For a long time he only worked at odd jobs but he it? Because in several of your works you stress the gradually worked his way to more and more importance of biography to understanding what responsible things. He got work at a chemical you term "national mentalities." factory around the First World War. While AM: The people I've written biographies working there he noticed that some factory refuse of were interesting because their creativity might make good roofing material. He bought it revealed something about their societies. This was and went into business for himself selling it and true with Weber, with Flaubert, with Wittgenstein. did quite well. I doubt very much that anyone could find any DL: A real entrepreneur. insight into either American or Dutch society by AM: Yes, that he was! He was also examining my biography. known for his generosity. He was extremely DL: Who at Columbia and Brandeis helpful to family, neighbors, and acquaintances influenced your thinking on history and sociology? during the Great Depression. My father owned the AM: Of course, Fritz Stern [ed., Varieties house we lived in, renting out the lower floor. His of History], from the standpoint of style. There mother died in the house shortly before I was born were some teachers I recall fondly, but if I were to there in 1931. When the downstairs family was look for major influences I would say that the unable to pay the rent, my father let them stay History of Ideas program at Brandeis around 1959 anyway. to 1962 was a very powerful department. It was an DL: I'm hearing that he had a strong sense extraordinary place: Herbert Marcuse, Lewis of responsibility for his community. Was this Coser, and Frank Manuel, who was also a religious in origin? masterful stylist. Apart from that, however, the AM: He was totally irreligious. area which influenced me the most has been outside the university. Two different groups had a DL: Was there a Marxist or socialist more powerful stimulus than my formal schooling origin? between the ages of 16 or 17 and 25. AM: Not that I know of. It came from a DL: Can you describe this? sense of responsibility to his family. Despite the fact that his parents could not bring him up, he still AM: In the first place, the Socialist felt responsibility to the family. Zionist youth group Hashomer Hatzair, of which I was a member, was enormously educational. This DL: What kind of relationship did you was in 1947 to 1948 just before the establishment have with your siblings? of the State of Israel. There was still a certain kind AM: My sister and I shared a rivalry of socialist idealism one could merge with which she felt more keenly than I. I was the Zionism, which in the case of Hashomer Hatzair youngest and I was rather spoiled. With my took the form of arguing for a bi-national state. brother I had a good relationship, but he was, after This, of course, came to absolutely nothing. But it all, nine years older than I. He was the guy who was very useful in opening up my mind, my social took me to the Museum of Natural History when I vision which had already been primed by a certain was about seven. Generally he was someone I awareness of what had happened to the East looked up to a great deal. When he came back European Jewish community during and from the army in 1945 I discovered that he was immediately after the Second World War. I relatively left wing for the time, which I suppose realized with shock that I had come from that wasn't all that unusual for a young Jewish boy in community and it had now largely vanished. That 1945. He very quickly became a lot less left wing, was a sort of primal social-historical experience. fairly conservative, and went into my father's line Hashomer Hatzair was a prolongation of that. It of work. Though he didn't do as well, he did all was an interesting experience. Following right for himself and his family. Hashomer, there was an even more broadening DL: Have you ever written or considered experience in New York City with a libertarian writing an autobiographical piece? Marxist circle that published a periodical called Contemporary Issues. AM: Not really. It's curious, my wife just brought it up today. DL: Were these experiences more influential than your academic interactions? DL: But you've never seriously considered AM: I would say that they preceded and March, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 149 shaped my academic and intellectual interests. For development within his thought became clear to example, I learned about Marcuse and the me. In terms of his psychological development, a Frankfurt School from these groups. One of the certain weaning from paternal authority along with reasons I went to Brandeis was that Marcuse was some striking and obvious oedipal elements was there. evident. I found myself writing a psychobiography DL: Along similar lines, from that period because it seemed to be the only intelligent thing to could you name five books which profoundly do at the time. influenced you? Would Erikson be on that list? DL: To what extent was your decision to AM: I wasn't familiar with Erikson's early approach these issues psychohistorically the work and only read it later, so it didn't influence product of your own development and to what me much. I would certainly include Marcuse's extent the product of larger movements within then Reason and Revolution and Eros and Civilization. current historiography or academia in general? Horkheimer's Eclipse of Reason and Freud's AM: I wasn't much aware of the Civilization and Its Discontents as well. I recall psychohistorical movement. In about 1966 Peter really enjoying Cassirer's Philosophy of the Loewenberg and I appeared together on the same Enlightenment. Also, I learned from panel at an American Historical Association E.P.Thompson's Making of the English Working meeting. So I knew something of his thought, I Class and various works of Marx. I gradually knew his "Nazi Youth Cohort" article, which I've came to realize the limitations of Marx's approach, always admired. I had been teaching Freud as a but his style is fantastic! major figure in intellectual history from 1962 on. DL: How did you come to history as a Freud was in the air at the time. Frank Manuel was discipline and a profession? using Freud. Marcuse had published Eros and Civilization which sensitized many to the broader AM: I didn't originally begin in history, or social implications of Freud's thought. But I even in the humanities. After high school in 1949 I cannot recall specifically when I first encountered enrolled in a pre-medical program at Rutgers psychohistory. I realized that what Erikson was which I failed miserably because I had neither doing with Freud was very important. Erikson's knowledge of nor aptitude for chemistry. So after use of Freud was anthropologically sensitive and, six months I began studying music, as I had played because history was becoming that way, Erikson the violin since I was rather small and wanted to was interesting to historians. To do something learn to compose. I studied music for four years, intelligent with Freud it was necessary to extract did not learn to compose, did not sufficiently him from the therapeutic framework and expand improve my skills as a violinist, and actually the scope of the investigation beyond childhood discovered during the course of my musical experiences and see the entire life course of the training that my real interests were in history, individual. philosophy, and contemporary politics. DL: What does it mean to practice DL: Tell us about the origins of your two psychohistory? major works, The Iron Cage and Sociology and Estrangement. AM: Unfortunately, most of those who claim to be doing psychohistory are extremely AM: In 1967 I was pursuing the limited as historians. It involves either an possibility of publishing my doctoral thesis on emphasis on application of psychoanalytic three German sociologists, Toennies, Sombart, and constructs to an individual's life or some kind of Michels as Sociology and Estrangement. The study in the history of psychoanalysis. My publisher, realizing that these were not well known experience is that a great many psychohistorians in figures, asked if I would add a chapter on a visible mastering psychoanalytic theory have neglected figure, such as Max Weber. I consented, but as other relevant aspects of historical study. this chapter unfolded, it developed into a book of Mentalities, ideologies, and larger socio-economic its own! Thus, The Iron Cage was actually written frameworks of history are usually ignored by as an addition to Sociology and Estrangement. psychohistorians. Psychoanalytically sensitive Reinhard Bendix, whose work I knew, approached historians, such as Carl Schorske and Peter Gay, Weber in what I considered a monolithic way -- as cannot be accused of this. Yet they usually if one Weber existed at all times. As I read wouldn't call themselves psychohistorians. Weber's early work in particular, a steady Page 150 Clio’s Psyche March, 1999
DL: What would you say is your primary A very poignant and potent point. affiliation or identification? Could you comment on your experience as AM: I'm a cultural and intellectual an American academic in Europe? historian. AM: I've taught at the University of DL: What are your researching now? Any Amsterdam for 25 years. Other than guest lectures continued interest in psychohistorical work? here and there, I've remained here. There's AM: What I'm involved with today is obviously an enormous difference between really quite different from anything I've done in the European and American universities. Not the least past. I have a book on the boards, Beyond of these differences is that there is no liberal arts Prometheus, on freedom and solidarity in the 21st program here. No one expects to learn that kind of century, which is absurdly ambitious. It does have knowledge at universities. The university's a root in everything I've done in the past. You've exclusive function is to train professionals in noticed the strong element of social engagement in particular disciplines. They may be scholarly or my work as a whole. The theoretical root of that practical disciplines, but from the first day at the social engagement is in my notion of a civilizing university you're in training for them. But this is offensive. This is a controversial notion. The changing. There is more attention given here in French have a somewhat more neutral term, Amsterdam to different aspects of the humanities. mission moralisatrise of the bourgeoisie. It's a DL: What is your impression of European concept which is derived from Norbert Elias' book, academic reaction to psychohistory? The Civilizing Process. What it signifies is that AM: Unnecessarily hostile. Many what we now have as civilization is built up on the colleagues reject the idea that psychoanalytic ruins of an infinite number of cultures and constructs could be useful to the study of history in mentalities which from the standpoint of our any way shape or form. Their standard criticisms notion of civilization didn't cut the mustard. They are either that it is a bankrupt set of ideas, or if were either too lazy or too licentious. They lacked they're more cautious and sympathetic, they'll say, discipline, the proper sense of authority. In place it's all right as a therapy, I suppose, and possibly all of all those we have our present, quite marvelous right for analyzing Freud's own background, but world. This world is coming apart at the seams, trying to apply it before Freud brings you into partly on a short-term basis because of the lunacy anachronism. They find psychohistory too of its economic constructions and its myths of pure culturally bound. individualism when historians know that individuals do not exist without a social nexus. On DL: What value do you place on a long-term basis, the natural environment is childhood in your work? reacting to our failures. The strange weather we're AM: In working on Flaubert, which I did having all over the world is producing phenomena for a number of years without publishing more never seen before. All the pollution problems, for than a couple of articles, I came to the conclusion example, acid rain, are coming from this marvelous that there were two aspects of Flaubert that were victory of civilization, which is leading us to a wall decisive motors for his creativity. One was his beyond which we cannot go without taking another adolescent relations with friends which continued course. The Beyond Prometheus project is a look throughout adulthood. The very close peer group at what the wall consists of and what resources was continually determinant for his creativity and there are for finding a way around it. keeping him alive. And the other, very DL: I hear in your new project a very specifically, was his relationship to his sister, similar ring to what you wrote in Sociology and which I'm convinced verged on incest. It's an Estrangement: aspect of the pressure-cooker, bourgeois family structure of his class, his area, and his time. I think It seems to me of great value for the you can see a great deal in his work in the light of social scientist and the humanist to return to these motor forces to his creativity. In the few the obscured origins of contemporary studies of individuals I've done, I've found sociology where they may find not only childhood important because it revealed something perspectives for the delineation of new about their society. Weber, for example, critical approaches to the analysis of society, illuminates the paternalistic and authoritarian but also examples of the courage that they aspects of German society. This is where will need to face their responsibilities. March, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 151 psychohistory can contribute to the larger project Showalter on of history. Hysterical Diseases DL: Do you have any observations on the dynamic of contemporary political violence and David Lotto terrorism? What does psychohistory have to offer University of Massachusetts discussions of this nature? AM: I don't see these as psychohistorical, Review of Elaine Showalter, Hystories: Hysterical but as political and social, problems. These are Epidemics and Modern Media. New York: issues whose magnitude transcends the therapeutic Columbia University Press, 1997. ISBN 0231104596 (pb.), x, 244 pp., $11.96. limitations of psychoanalysis. Elaine Showalter, a Professor of DL: What, then, would you say, is the Humanities and English at Princeton, describes value of psychohistory to cultural, intellectual, herself as a literary critic, a historian of medicine, even European, history? and a feminist. In her previous book, The Female AM: I often find psychohistorical works Malady (1986), she argued that “epidemic to be fundamentally misguided. Approaching hysteria” is an extreme and self-destructive form of political history as the larger manifestation of one feminine protest, a body language expression of individual's psychic history will never be very women’s rebellion against patriarchal oppression. convincing. I have always steered clear of trying Her present book, published in 1997, looks to understand a phenomenon, such as Nazism or at certain current phenomena in a historical context Stalinism or any major political movement by a using a psychoanalytic approach. Showalter’s psychoanalytic understanding of its leading figure. position is that hysteria and hysterical epidemics When it comes to these major movements, the are cultural symptoms of anxiety and distress. She leaders are more symbolic than anything else. sees hysteria as something that has been with us for They're symbolic of a very profound feeling a long time, continues today, and will be with us in among those who bring them to power. It's never the future, as long as there are group fantasies and seemed to me that you can understand anything fears. Her central thesis is that hysterical about either Bolshevism by understanding Stalin's epidemics involve the coming together of three paranoia or Nazism by understanding Hitler's factors: vulnerable people who can become distorted childhood experiences. In both of these patients; doctors and and theorists who define the cases the only recourse for the historian is a very syndrome; and a supportive cultural environment. broad social, economic, and political understanding She believes that hysteria, while primarily of the entire context from which they come and the psychogenic, is quite real and universal. Her masses who support and accept them. That is attitude toward those suffering from the symptoms crucial. And where the individual becomes of hysteria is consistently respectful and empathic significant for psychohistory is most of all where he reveals something about his society that we throughout the book. would otherwise not know. The use of The book has three sections: “Histories,” psychoanalysis in cultural history can be highly reviews the history of the concept of hysteria from valuable. This is why I so admire Carl Schorske's the 17th century until the present; “Cultures” new book, Thinking With History (1998). examines the presentation of hysteria in literature, theater, and film; while the third section, David Lee has just completed his PhD in “Epidemics,” gets down to cases. The last is the modern European history on the life and work of longest section of the book and the most the Protestant pastor/psychoanalyst Oskar Pfister controversial. Showalter has a chapter each on six at UCLA under the direction of Peter Loewenberg. phenomena which she labels as hysterical He is currently on fellowship in the Department of epidemics: chronic fatigue syndrome, Gulf War Psychology at the University of Groningen in the Syndrome, recovered memory, multiple Netherlands and is writing comparatively on the personality disorder, satanic ritual abuse, and alien standardization of methodology in psychoanalysis abduction. and behaviorism. He may be contacted at
hysterical disorders to compensate for the truth, and in helping support an atmosphere absence of adventure and challenge in their of conspiracy and suspicion. lives and to deal with real sorrows, Her concluding chapter is entitled “The dissatisfactions, and disappointments. Crucible,” a reference to Arthur Miller’s play She answers the question, in regard to about the Salem witch trials. I would like to memories of sexual abuse, Why would anyone conclude this review with the author’s closing choose to take on the pain and turmoil of being a exhortation, with which I am in agreement: survivor if it were not true?, by suggesting the Men and women, therapists and operation of “a combination of suggestibility and patients, will need courage to face the hidden social coercion” along with “the availability of fantasies, myths, and anxieties that make up these explanations for a variety of anxieties and the current hysterical crucible; we must look discontents in women’s lives.” into our own psyches rather than to invisible Men are the primary sufferers of Gulf War enemies, devils, and alien invaders for the Syndrome and the PTSD diagnoses related to the answers. trauma of warfare. They have to deal with the David Lotto, PhD, is a psychotherapist and additional burden that developing a psychological psychoanalyst in private practice in Pittsfield, illness in response to the trauma of war is regarded Massachusetts, in the Berkshire Mountains, as well as unmanly. It is far more acceptable to be as an adjunct professor at the University of suffering from a physical illness caused by germs, Massachusetts. He is a longtime member of the poisons, or damage to the nervous system. Psychohistory Forum and of the International While Showalter does not identify herself Psychohistorical Association (IPA) as well as a as a psychohistorian, both her methods and frequent contributor to these pages and the conclusions are psychohistorical: Journal of Psychohistory. Modern forms of individual and mass
hysteria have much to tell us about the anxieties and fantasies of Western culture, especially in the United States and Europe. Analysts on the Couch: Part III: We can use our knowledge of the past to John Bowlby interpret what is happening today.... And we can lead the way in making distinctions Andrew Brink between metaphors and realities, between Psychohistory Forum Research Associate therapeutic narratives and destructive hystories. If hysteria is a protolanguage [Editor's Note: In Clio's Psyche's last rather than a disease, we must pay attention September and December issues, Professor to what it is telling us. Andrew Brink wrote in-depth review essays of psychobiographies of the prominent She is quite forceful about the dangers of psychoanalysts Donald Winnicott, Ronald mistaking metaphor for reality: Fairbairn, and Harry Guntrip. In this issue he Whether the details of these narratives concludes the series with a review of a recent book are demonstrably true may not be as on John Bowlby. Though Bowlby was more of an important as their imaginative and spiritual enigma than are most people, Brink found him to resonance for the individual. But extending be "a dear man, generous and helpful to me over private psychoanalytic or artistic testimonies many years" with "one of his last generous acts" to the media and the courts is risky. We being to work to "get better distribution in the must exercise caution as a society when U.K." for Brink's "psychobiography of Bertrand hystories take on that political, judicial form, Russell, which he really liked and wanted to see when they stop being therapeutic and cross readily available."] the line into accusation and prosecution…. Review Essay of Suzan van Dijken, John Bowlby: …the hysterical epidemics of the 1990s have His Early Life, A Biographical Journey into the already gone on too long, and they continue Roots of Attachment Theory. London/New York: to do damage: in distracting us from the real Free Association Books, 1998. ISBN: 1853433934 problems and crises of modern society, in (pb.), viii, 214 pp., $20.00. undermining a respect for evidence and Page 154 Clio’s Psyche March, 1999
Is a biographical assessment of John Bowlby was a post-Victorian Darwinian Bowlby's contribution to psychoanalysis yet liberal; he had strong reforming inclinations, hating possible? Compared to the contributions of war and human discord of all kinds. Yet he was a Winnicott, Fairbairn, and Guntrip, Bowlby's are of privileged product of his class, confident in his the greatest magnitude and the most scientific, the formidable power of intellect, and somewhat most exportable to other fields. Yet, Bowlby the military in manner and bearing, reflecting his time man is less known, and less knowable, because he as an army psychiatrist. Non-English people have did not wish to be known. Despite psychoanalytic a hard time knowing how to take such persons, training and a lifetime of practicing child analysis, even when they are internationally known analysts. Bowlby seemed uninterested in the intricacies of Bowlby's latest and fullest biographer, Suzan van his own personality, nor did he leave evidence of Dijken, is a researcher at the Centre for Child and an ongoing struggle for which further analysis was Family Studies at Leiden University, the sought. He achieved enough sense of personal Netherlands. security to become a confident, even aggressive, Her English is exceptionally good, but she scientist of infant and child development -- perhaps does not know England from the inside, nor did the leading English-speaking psychological she know Bowlby himself. The advantage of being innovator this century. His Attachment and Loss is an outsider is that her biography is meticulously a classic. built up from research data gathered from family, Throughout much of his 83-year life, colleagues, and archives. She has ordered and Bowlby (1907-1990) was controversial and consolidated her gatherings with great skill and the embattled, an uncomfortable presence in his narrative moves well (though her study is taken profession. He not only staunchly defended the only to 195l, which is when Bowlby's famous rights of children, whom he saw often tragically World Health Organization report on the mental separated from their parents by illness, death, health of children was published). The divorce, and wars, he also pursued the theory of disadvantage is that Ms. Van Dijken's documentary separation and loss. His acknowledged starting thoroughness takes her away from speculating point was Freud's (atypical) paper, "Inhibitions, much on the enigma of Bowlby's personality. Hers Symptoms and Anxiety" (1926), which countered is fittingly an "intellectual biography" and she Otto Rank's theory of "birth trauma" with one of wonders why Bowlby should have chosen to study anxiety generated by the infant's fear of separation separation and loss as his life's work. Bowlby from mother. Bowlby's studies of juvenile himself gives strong indications of the reasons as delinquents and children separated from parents in being in his personal development and is quoted as wartime, later reinforced by primate studies, led saying of his parenting that he had been him to postulate an instinct for attachment. This "sufficiently hurt but not sufficiently damaged." (p. put into question Freud's drive theory and showed 11) What exactly did he mean by this? Instead of the importance of pre-oedipal development in the speculating, Van Dijken quotes analysts Eric Trist emotional well-being of children. While Bowlby and Jock Sutherland about Bowlby's "'protective had no intention of attacking Freudian shell'" that "'John's own early experience must fundamentals, he was seen by many analysts as have included a degree, if not of actual deprivation, doing so. Similarly, Melanie Klein and her of some inhibition of his readiness to express followers were annoyed with Bowlby for affection'." (p. 11) Her "Overview" questioning the primacy of "phantasy" in infants disappointingly emphasizes Bowlby's separations and insisting upon observed details of what went from his army surgeon father and being sent away on between mothers and their infants. Bowlby, the to school, though she does mention the early loss empiricist, preferred to see emotional disorders of of his "much loved nursemaid, Minnie" as adults in terms of actual relational precursors in sensitizing him to separations. (p. 154; see also p. their early attachment experiences. Thus, a 26) But Bowlby's main interest was not with culturally determined mind-set of Bowlby's, fathers or even nursemaids but with mothers and reinforced by his Cambridge and London their infants and children. More should have been education in the biological sciences and medicine, said, in terms of Bowlby's own categories of put him at odds with the middle-European founders anxious attachment, about the consequences for of psychoanalysis. When World War II brought children of mothers, especially those some of them as refugees to London, the stage was temperamentally distant as May Bowlby was, who set for a clash which has not yet been resolved. give up primary care to nurses and nannies. The March, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 155 concept of anxious avoidant attachment, as when he writes, "Attachment Theory might be seen developed by Bowlby's followers, Mary Ainsworth as a return by Bowlby to the values of his mother and Mary Main, would have been especially apt to which he had rejected when he became a discuss. psychoanalyst. Disappointed with his mother's Several attempts have been made by self-preoccupation and favoritism, he turned to the interviewers to elicit personal information from many mothers of psychoanalysis -- Klein, Rivière, Bowlby, none of them satisfactory. Rosemary and Payne. But these, too, partly through their Dinnage's "Understanding Loss: The Bowlby own limitations, partly because they contained his Canon" (Psychology Today, May, 1980) calls him hostile projections, disappointed in their turn. By "one of the most reticent of men," likening him to marrying the biology of ethology with Freudian "a retired military or naval gentleman of the old theory, he managed to reconcile the discordant school." (p. 56) Dinnage obviously had a thin elements in his personality: his country-loving [lean, unrewarding] time with Bowlby, not mother with her respect for nature, and the experiencing his capacity for engagement and intimidating urban medical father whose success warmth. Similarly, Nora Newcombe and Jeffrey and intelligence were inspirational but whose C. Lerner were kept at a distance when Gradgrindian [excessively practical and interviewing for "Britain Between the Wars: The unimaginative] devotion to fact and duty Historical Context of Bowlby's Theory of dominated his life." (pp. 27-28) Bowlby was Attachment" (Psychiatry, February, l982). This profoundly attuned to the natural world, a lover of astute paper focuses on Bowlby's theories' taking trees and plants, and a skilled bird-watcher; he was their rise in an era of wartime separations and a kind of nature mystic who saw no use in losses; but Bowlby managed to elude the organized religion. Nature was maternal and interviewers by not imparting how very close to nourishing, while paternal intellect was necessarily home such experiences were. Christopher Fortune instrumental in dealing with uncomfortable met with Bowlby to talk about childhood sexual emotion. He somehow managed to draw together abuse, publishing "Psychoanalytic Champion of these two aspects of being into an incomparable, 'Real-Life' Experience: An Interview with John unified personality which was both distant and Bowlby" (Melanie Klein and Object Relations, warmly reassuring. Bowlby was a December, l99l). Fortune was somewhat more psychobiographer of Charles Darwin (1990) and he successful, beginning his taped interview while must have realized that a similar attempt would be walking to a London pub. Later at the Tavistock made for himself. The task of putting such a man Institute he found Bowlby's manner "unpretentious on the psychobiographer's couch remains, but we and down-to-earth," despite "his characteristic should be grateful for the partial efforts so far upper-class British accent." (p. 70) This is a wide- made. ranging and informative interview, but still not Andrew Brink, PhD, is a literary scholar very personal as to Bowlby's motivation for being and psychohistorian who taught at McMaster the crusader he was on behalf of children. University in Hamilton, Ontario, from 1961 to Robert Karen's Becoming Attached: 1988, and from 1988 to 1993 he directed the Unfolding the Mystery of the Infant-Mother Bond Humanities and Psychoanalytic Thought and Its Impact on Later Life (l994), an excellent Programme at Trinity College at the University of introduction to the theory, also contains the Toronto. From 1979 to 1988 he helped to edit the rudiments of a good biography. Karen rightly papers of Bertrand Russell and also published reports Bowlby as having seemed "emotionally Bertrand Russell: The Psychobiography of a distant," yet "very direct, admirably, almost Moralist (1989). He serves as a trustee of the touchingly, incapable of being devious, and ... Holland Society of New York and of the possessed of an unshakable integrity." (p. 29) Still, Psychohistory Forum. His other books include the best assessment of Bowlby's inner life is Obsession and Culture: A Study of Sexual Jeremy Holmes, John Bowlby and Attachment Obsession in Modern Fiction (1996), which studies Theory (1993). While Holmes lacked the array of writers H.G. Wells, Hermann Hesse, Vladimir information with which Van Dijken works, his Nabokov, John Fowles, and John Updike, and the English training as a psychotherapist gave him forthcoming, The Creative Matrix: Anxiety and the special powers of insight. Holmes shows the real Origin of Creativity, which will show how starting point for a psychobiography of Bowlby Freudian and Kleinian theories of creativity are giving way to an attachment model, owing to the Page 156 Clio’s Psyche March, 1999 research of John Bowlby and others into how were lifelong residents of this area. They shared anxiety arises in human development; the study their enthusiasm for the economically prosperous will offer a theory of creativity as adaptational for Jonesboro, and listened to our descriptions of the Avoidant/Con-trolling personality organization Chicago. Eventually, the discussion turned to the typically found in our culture. Westside tragedy about which the man, in an apparent attempt to protect his community (and himself) from what he believed to be the critical Roots of the scrutiny of a Northerner, commented, "Everyone Jonesboro Schoolyard Killings: talks about how violent the South is, and this will Envy of the Feminine just fuel the fire." Indeed. I would be less than honest to say Garth W. Amundson that I am unaware of the South's perverse love Psychohistory Forum Research Associate affair with authoritarian social and political structures, the latest example of which is arguably Just after the Jonesboro schoolyard the mania for state-sponsored executions now murders, I arrived in northeast Arkansas early last occurring in Texas. The South's earlier embrace of April with my wife and baby daughter. I was slavery and, following that, its legally instituted anxious to assume my post as clinical psychologist policy of racial segregation, go without saying. In and director of a small but active community my own job, I was often harshly criticized by both mental health center in Paragould, a town supervisors and colleagues for such things as approximately 20 miles north of the now famous giving clients copies of the psychological (or, if you like, infamous) town of Jonesboro. I evaluation which I wrote about them and was lured there from my position in a state-run attempting to establish group supervision to psychiatric hospital located in Chicago, Illinois, by facilitate discussion about work-related problems, a federal government agency called the National including staff conflicts. The response of various Health Service Corps. This agency is a kind of colleagues to these and other practices and ideas white-collar Peace Corps which places health was to inform me, directly and indirectly, that professionals in "underserved," mostly rural, areas those at the top of the organizational hierarchy of the nation. In return for two years of service, disapproved. In a discussion about this issue with the National Health Service Corps pays off the one of my staff, a social worker, I once asked individual's student loans. rhetorically, "They made me a director. Shouldn't The mass murder in the schoolyard at I direct?" Her response was, "You mean well. Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, in which But, don't forget, this is the South." five girls and a female teacher were shot and killed Her comment returned to my memory on by two fellow classmates, boys a mere 11 and 13 various occasions. One of those times was the day years old, occurred in late March of last year, just I decided to find out what the office space next prior to our arrival. This article contains some of door to our clinic was used for. I walked there to my preliminary thoughts regarding the meaning of see the words "County Department of Community this tragedy. To be clear, I do not claim to have Punishment" etched on the glass door. I suddenly definitive answers regarding the possible social remembered having seen a court-referred client and psychological roots and meaning of this tragic who had commented to me that he was sent "by the incident. Rather, I wish to raise preliminary guys next door," a comment which confused me at questions about the possible effects of the social the time but which I failed to query. Now I was no and cultural climate of the American South on the longer confused. At that moment I realized that psyche of people living there. I write from the our clinic offices were located directly adjacent to perspective of a psychoanalytically oriented what, in other parts of the country, would probably psychologist with an interest in anthropological be referred to as the County Department of Adult and sociological theories of human nature. Probation. As a clinician I never want my work to Two days after moving into our be associated with punishment. condominium in Jonesboro (we settled in the I wondered at the roots of this largest town in the region hoping to smooth the authoritarianism. Over the following months, I transition from Chicago), my wife and I met some began to identify a possible source in the older neighbors of about 55 or 60 years of age who widespread prevalence of Protestant March, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 157 fundamentalism. For example, our baby-sitter, a founded. Specifically, I mean the construction of woman of 19, once explained to me that her maleness along, or perhaps I should say opposite, Christian church was, in her words, "pretty liberal" the lines of all that is fluid and ambiguous, or in comparison to other area congregations. I asked "natural," including the psychological qualities of what she defined as liberal and was told, "Well, emotion, empathy, and the desire for interpersonal we're not allowed to dance. But singing is all right, mutuality and attachment. This vision of as long as it's during church services." Further, I masculinity is manifested in, and perpetuated by, have regularly been asked by total strangers if I the unconscious misogyny of our social and would come to their church for a visit, on the political structures. For example, feminist scholars premise that this is the appropriate way to become such as Mary Daly (Gynecology: The Metaethics of integrated into the community. Also, I became Radical Feminism, 1978) and Camille Paglia accustomed to seeing Jonesboro residents donning (Sexual Personae, 1990) argue that normative T-shirts with various evangelical slogans such as American visions of the "healthy" or "well "What would Jesus do?" and "Saved." Local adjusted" self valorize assertiveness, self- churches have been extremely politically active in sufficiency, and achievement. Further, they state, Jonesboro and throughout the area, with the result these idealized psychological characteristics are that the entire county is "dry" (that is, alcohol sales one-sidedly ascribed to males, with the result that are forbidden). Finally, the realtor who showed us females are viewed as intrinsically less healthy or our condominium once noted that Jonesboro is a less well adjusted. These writers also note that, for "family-oriented" community. When I asked her all the superficial bravado of this construction of to explain the reason for this, she cited the political masculinity, it is one built on psychological involvement of various ministers who, as she said, quicksand. Specifically, they state that it is a "keep the bad element out." vision of selfhood formed largely on the basis of an A defining feature of Protestantism -- opposition to the "feminine" values of intimacy particularly in its fundamentalist forms -- is its and empathy which challenge notions of the self as vision of God as cosmic father figure, the ultimate a well defined, self-contained entity, rather than on authority who, as the Nicene Creed says, will the basis of an affirmation of its own unique "come to judge both the quick and the dead." I creative potentials. These scholars also echo the began to wonder, Is it possible that the shadow of psychoanalytic formulation that we secretly long this heavenly Father falls over the entire region, to for, and even identify with, the qualities which we be expressed, albeit covertly, in even the most consciously most despise or fear in others. Based apparently secular activities? If so, I reasoned, on this premise, Daly, Paglia and others assert that then the authoritarianism I experienced in some the one-sidedness of popular American concepts of form everyday, might be traceable to the existence masculinity imply, not simply that socially- of a heavily patriarchal social organization. This dominant men loathe "feminine" qualities, but also patriarchal social system would ultimately be that as a group they are deeply desirous -- and even derived from a Protestant Weltanschauung, with envious -- of these qualities. which the citizenry would be unconsciously I suggest that events such as the Jonesboro identified. For example, is it possible that the two schoolyard murders should cause us to think more boys accused of this crime were responding, at deeply about if and how we Americans instill this least in part, to the psychologically suffocating "normative" masculine identity in our young boys. effects of growing up in a social environment in For example, is it possible that this tenuous which conformity, particularly of the kind rooted construction of masculine identity creates and in an attitude of subservience, is emphasized one- maintains a uniquely "American" vulnerability to sidedly? narcissistic injury among males? Can we infer that The problem may not be so much with the the one-sided investment of American males in the South and its social structures, or with peculiarly values of independence and assertiveness leaves "Southern" ways of interpreting reality. Rather, I them with a sense of crushing shame when wonder if it is possible that in the South we find confronted with their own disavowed dependent expressed in unusually concentrated form a more longings? Further, do interpersonal interactions widespread, pathognomic American social and which reveal the poverty of this construction of cultural value, one rooted in the above-mentioned selfhood figure in incidents of explosive, Protestant worldview upon which our nation is retaliatory rage by our young men, as they counter- phobically reassert their wish for dominance and Page 158 Clio’s Psyche March, 1999 independence through violence? describe them as functioning to support a counter- The manner in which the Jonesboro phobic flight from intolerable, unconscious guilt.) schoolyard murders were actually carried out is, in I pose a question. In committing these key respects, a microcosm -- as well as a caricature crimes, is it possible that these boys recreated, in -- of certain of the social values upon which rural, microcosmic form, what is perhaps the key and particularly rural Southern, communities are psychological flaw of a one-sidedly patriarchal founded, values which themselves are rooted in the organization of society and culture -- namely, that long tradition of Western patriarchy. For example, in attempting to subjugate frightening "feminine" an examination of the events both leading up to forces, patriarchy ultimately succeeds in doing no and surrounding the murders implies that the more than revealing the brittleness, instability, and accused harbored profound contempt for ultimately self-undermining qualities of a "feminine" psychological qualities. First and worldview built upon the aggressive disavowal and foremost is the fact that all of the victims were rejection of things "female"? Looked at from the female, and that the older of the two boys had above perspective, the tragedy at the Westside proposed the murders following his having been Middle School represents a tragic intersection of "dumped" by a girlfriend. The boy's use of guns, the public and private spheres of existence, one particularly their reliance on so-called "long rifles" which acts as a mirror of key social and to carry out the assault, is of such phallic psychological underpinnings of the cultural milieu significance as to barely warrant mention. Second, which spawned it. By killing females en masse, prior to the shootings, the older boy was these boys were arguably acting upon some of the investigated by Minnesota police, who suspected premises of the patriarchal worldview transmitted him of having sexually molested a three-year-old to them. girl there (as a young boy he had lived in Garth W. Amundson, PsyD, is a clinical Minnesota with his grandparents). There is also psychologist who took his doctoral degree at the evidence suggesting that throughout their lives Illinois School of Professional Psychology in 1994. both boys had been force-fed a symbolic diet of He is affiliated with the International Federation exaggerated but nevertheless widely popular for Psychoanalytic Education (IFPE) and the American cultural images of maleness by various Chicago Open Chapter for the Study of family members. For example, the younger of the Psychoanalysis which is an affiliate of Division 39 two boys had a reputation in Jonesboro of riding of the American Psychological Association. His about the streets on his bicycle sporting army discomfort with the social structures he fatigues, with a hunting knife strapped to his belt. encountered in Arkansas led him to return to Most of us are by now probably familiar with the Chicago in less than a year rather than after the formal portrait of the older boy, taken when he was two years he had planned. Dr. Amundson is five or six years old. In this picture he, like the currently working in a day treatment program for younger boy, appears clad in military garb, proudly adult and adolescent program operated by York clutching a toy rifle. Health Care in Illinois and he is also an adjunct The idea that the American South is more faculty member at the Institute for Clinical Social likely than other parts of the nation to foster the Work. His research interests include the impact of unmodulated, violent expression of "male" values democratic social structures on psychoanalytic by troubled youngsters is supported by the fact that theory making. three of the last four public school massacres occurring in the U.S. prior to my writing took place in the states of Kentucky, Mississippi, and Good Parenting in the Arkansas. The hypothesis that these killings occur in response to authoritarian and one-sidedly 14th Century: moralistic social structures rooted in a specifically Christine de Pisan Protestant worldview is supported by the facts that the high school students murdered in Kentucky Norman Simms were attacked as they gathered in a school hallway University of Waikato, New Zealand for an impromptu prayer and the assault on It is usual to find that important women in Mississippi high school students was orchestrated history are known only in shadowy and dependent by a group of teenagers who had formed a Satanic cult consisting of self-proclaimed social outcasts. ways -- their fathers, husbands, or sons being the (Psychologists who study such cults regularly real center of attention. But in some instances, March, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 159 such as that which I am going to discuss, it works For all Christine's praises of her father as a the other way around: it is because of the daughter great thinker, however, it is her loyalty to him that the father enters the history books. As I hope rather than his actual place as a scientist or to show, too, this is as it ought to be in the case of philosopher that makes him worthy of our attention Tommaso da Pizzano precisely because the success as psychohistorians. If we are concerned to find of his daughter, Christine de Pizan (ca. 1364-ca. out both how and why societies change in their 1430), marks his success as a father. The little we way of caring and rearing of children, particularly can piece together of his philosophy of parenting females, then we should want to know more about comes together in the career of this late 14th- and Christine's homelife and education. Why was she early 15th-century female poet. able to achieve success as an independent, Tommaso today can be found only in intellectual woman at a time when other females, if footnotes to the biographies of other people, but they achieved artistic recognition, had to do so Christine, even before she was rediscovered by either within the confines of an ecclesiastical or an feminist literary historians in search of women aristocratic system? Aside from her public poets to rank with Chaucer, Machaut, and denunciation of the misogynist traditions in life Boccaccio, had 19th- and early 20th-century and literature -- it was Christine de Pizan who studies devoted to her. If there are entries about initiated and sustained the controversy surrounding Tommaso in encyclopedias, they are brief notices, Jean de Meun's Romance of the Rose -- and this is, while Christine gets columns, if not pages. Yet in of course, no inconsiderable part of her female his own time, Tommaso was a distinguished independence! -- her poetry and thinking are, like physician, astrologer, and alchemist who spent her father's, more of the previous age than of the much time in official capacities at the court of emerging Renaissance. Nevertheless, after both Charles V in Paris. After a distinguished double her father and her husband died, she forged a career, first as professor at the University of Bologna and then as medical officer in Venice, he chose to reside in Paris rather than Hungary, where Forthcoming in the June Issue Louis XII was also urging him to come. It was the Interview with a Distinguished combination of medical skills and precision in Featured Psychohistorian what today are taken as occult sciences that made "The Insane Author of the Oxford him so attractive to these great figures of the early English Dictionary" Renaissance. Perhaps it is precisely because he was not in the vanguard of the new sciences that "Jews in Europe After World War II" overwhelmed the old systems of knowledge during "A Psychohistorian's Mother and Her the course of the 15th century that made him so Legacy" forgettable in the modern world, recalled only because Christine was consistently so full of praises for him in her autobiographical writings. career for herself and raised her children by dint of her writing; it was more by what she did, than by Yet we cannot totally dismiss him as old- the specific content of her poetry, that she marks fashioned thinker. His role was more transitional. the transition out of medieval categories of thought The students at Europe's most prestigious medical and social relationships, including, of course, school, Bologna, had voted him professor at an gender. early age. The city of Venice called him to be part of one of the most advanced sanitation projects My point is that Christine would not have after suffering from the plague. The French court been what she became had it not been for her valued him as physician, as well as adviser in state father, and this must include, given the period of affairs because of his knowledge of astrology and her childhood, the care and attention of her "tender alchemy -- not the quack pursuits they would later and loving" mother. In the domestic politics of the become but then sciences of process and influence, age, the fact that she nursed Christine is credit to unlike the safe Aristotelian natural philosophies of Tommaso as much as it is to the mother. Though fixed category and contingent power. In other there are four crucial years between Christine's words, he was one of those great men who help birth and her journey to Paris to join her father reshape society and culture so it can move forward when she was under the exclusive care of her in radically new directions. mother in Bologna -- it took that long for Tommaso to decide that he would remain with Page 160 Clio’s Psyche March, 1999
Charles V -- the influence of the father is not for the sake of financial or social gain. It was what absent in her upbringing. If it were up to her we would call a "love match." Christine mother alone, Christine recalls many times, her emphasizes that his attentions were to make her intellectual talents would have been put down in feel at ease and he was so gentle with the favor of a more conventional domestic education. adolescent that he did no "outrage" to her on their Her father always, even in his letters, promoted the wedding night. I would suggest that Etienne's training of her mind and her literary talents. At the childhood had also been influenced by Tommaso's University of Bologna he had known the French point of view, and the tragedy of his early death canonist Jean André whose daughter Novella was was mitigated to some extent by the way his allowed to lecture in his place, albeit behind a attitude towards her had reinforced her sense of curtain, and he also was aware of -- and probably self-esteem developed in her father's care. Neither himself was the product of -- a more liberal attitude Christine nor her father, Tommaso, could change towards children in Italy than in either France or the world they lived in and both were committed to England during the 14th century. the prevailing intellectual and religious ideas that But it was more than the example of surrounded them. But because they were Novella or the Italian acceptance of children's concerned to love and respect their children and noise and playing in the household that makes those around them, they helped create a world that Tommaso stand out as a father -- and as a figure was far different from both the medieval and the who represents one of those parents who mark the early modern periods they bridge. In doing so, long and often painful route into loving and they help us understand how the human race has respectful families. It may be something special been able to survive and eventually begin to about his character which also attracted Charles V transform the nightmare of abuse and violence that to him and made him -- and Christine -- an psychohistory reveals to us as the unfortunate lot intimate of the royal household; and then, almost of most people at most times in most places. tragically -- both for himself and his family, as [See author credit on page 142.] well as for the smooth development of progressive childrearing practices -- why the passing of the monarchy into the hands of the mad Charles VI meant an end to Tommaso's influence at court, and Bulletin Board from there to the rest of French society. This special quality was Tommaso's rejection of physical punishment and humiliation as disciplinary tools. Christine always referred to her Call for Papers father as "kind." Special Theme Issues In her own pedagogical essays, Christine 1999 and 2000 recommends that children, especially young girls, Our Litigious Society should be allowed to play often and be taught through stories rather than formal lessons. PsychoGeography Children should be rewarded with trinkets when Meeting the Millennium they are good, and when they need correction they should not be beaten or locked in closets, but Manias and Depressions in spoken to gently, so as to avoid "rebellion." Economics and Society Without her drawing the connections, we can see The Psychology of America as the that these lessons she learned from her father made World's Policeman it possible for her to note that the cause of war was "cruelty" and the way to prevent conflict was Truth and Reconciliation in South through "justice." Africa When it came time for Christine to marry 600-1500 words at the age of 15, which was normal for the year Contact 1379, the groom was someone she chose herself, Paul H. Elvoitz, PhD, Editor with the backing of her father, namely, Etienne du 627 Dakota Trail Castel, who, though somewhat older, she had Franklin Lakes, NJ 07417 known since infancy. She was not forced to marry March, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 161
The next SATURDAY WORK-IN-
Forthcoming in the March Issue Special Theme: The Relationship of Academia, Psychohistory, and Psychoanalysis Next Psychohistory Forum Meeting Additonal papers are still being
Saturday, January 30, 1999 accepted. Contact the Editor -- see page
Charles Strozier 71.
"Putting the Psychoanalyst on the Couch: A Also: Biography of Heinz Kohut" Interview with Arthur Mitzman, author of The Iron Cage: An Historical Interpretation of Max Weber Ralph Colp, Jr.'s Review of Vadim Z. Rogovin, 1937: Stalin's Year of Terror
Call for Papers Special Theme Issues Call for Nominations 1999 and 2000 Halpern Award The Relationship of Academia, for the Psychohistory, and Psychoanalysis Best Psychohistorical Idea (March, 1999) in a The Psychology of Legalizing Life Book, Article, or Computer [What is this???] Site PsychogeographyIndepndent Varible of Internal Stabilty – May, 1945 Stagnat/Disntegrating Negative TrendStable/Creative Positve Trend This Award may be granted at the level -5-Meeting4-3-2-10+1+2+3+4+5 the Millenium of Distinguished Scholar, Graduate, or Nazi GermanyUSA Undergraduate.
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Letters to the Editor
The History of Psychohistory Clio's Psyche's interviews of outstanding psychohistorians (see "An American in Amsterdam: Arthur Mitzman," page 146) have grown into a full-fledged study of the pioneers and history of our field. Psychohistory as an organized field is less than 25 years old, so most of the innovators are available to tell their stories and give their insights. Last March, the Forum formally launched the Makers of the Psychohistorical Paradigm Research Project to systematically gather material to write the history of psychohistory. We welcome memoirs, letters, and manuscripts as well as volunteers to help with the interviewing. People interested in participating should write, call, or e-mail Paul H. Elovitz (see page 119).
Awards and Honors Professor Janice M. Coco, Art History, University of California-Davis, erican Psychoanalytic Association Committee on Research and Special y prize, will present her paper, "Exploring the Frontier from the Inside ies," at a free public lecture at 12 noon, Saturday, December 20, Jade New York City. Forthcoming in the March Issue rd for the Best Psychohistorical Idea • The Psychohistory Forum is Michael Hirohama of San Francisco for starting and maintaining the Special Theme: g list (see page 98). The Relationship of Academia, Student Award • David Barry of Fair Lawn, New Jersey, has been Psychohistory, and Psychoanalysis bership in the Forum, including a subscription to Clio's Psyche, for his Additonal papers are still being accepted. part of the Makers of the Psychohistorical Paradigm Research Project Contact the Editor -- see page 71. Also: Interview with Arthur Mitzman, author Next Psychohistory Forum Meeting THE MAKERS OF PSYCHOHISTORY RESEARCH PROJECT To write the history of psychohistory, the Forum is interviewing the founders of our field to create a record of their challenges and accomplishments. It welcomes participants who Psychohistory Forum Presentations will help identify, interview, and publish September 27 accounts of the founding of psychohistory. George Victor on Hitler’s Masochism November 15 Michael Flynn, “Apocalyptic Hope — Apocalyptic Thinking” Call for Nominations THE MAKERS OF PSYCHOHISTORY Call for Papers RESEARCH PROJECT
Independent Variable of Internal Stability – May, 1945 Stagnant/DisintegratingFree Subscription Negative Tr end Stable/Creative Positive Trend -5 -4For every -3paid library-2 subscription-1 ($40), 0 +1 +2 +3 +4 +5 Nazithe Germany person donating or arranging it will receive a USA year’s subscription to Clio’s Psyche free. Help us spread the good word about Clio. The Psychohistory Forum is pleased to announce Clio’s Psyche March, 1999 The Young Psychohistorian 1998/99 Membership Awards Page 167 John Fanton recently received his medical degree and is doing his five year residency in Providence, Rhode Island. Currently, he is at the Children's Hospital, Women and Infants Hospital, and the Butler Psychiatric Hospital. His goal is to become a child maltreatment expert working in the area of Preventive Psychiatry. At the IPA in 1997 he won the Lorenz AwardTo Join for histhe paper Psychohistory on improving parenting List in Colorado. send e-mail with any subject and message to
Dreamwork Resources homosexuals into it. He disarmed the The Historical Dreamwork Method is available to help the biographer better Call for Nominations understand the dreams of the subject and other aspects of psychobiography. Clio's Psyche Halpern Award welcomes papers on historical dreamwork for for the publication and for presentation at Best Psychohistorical Idea Psychohistory Forum meetings. Contact Paul in a H. Elovitz (see page 43). Book, Article, or Computer Site This Award may be granted at the level of Distinguished Scholar, Graduate, or Undergraduate. Forthcoming in the March Issue Special Theme: American People with the Brady Bill. The Relationship of Academia, Psychohistory, and Call for Papers Indepndent Varible of Internal Stabilty – May, 1945 Stagnat/Disntegrating Negative TrendStable/Creative Positve TrendPsychoanalysis Special Theme Issues Additonal-5-4-3-2-10+1+2+3+ 4+5 papers are still being 1999 and 2000 accepted.Nazi GermanyU SAContact Paul H. Elovitz, Editor - see p. 71. The Relationship of Academia, Also: Psychohistory, and Psychoanalysis (March, 1999) Interview with Arthur Mitzman, author of The Iron Cage: An Historical Our Litigious Society Interpretation of Max Weber PsychoGeography Meeting the Millennium Having previously chickened out of the Manias and Depressions in Economics and Society Letters to the Editor Contact the Editor at military, he demoralized it by integrating
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Saturday, January 30, 1999 Letters to the Editor on Charles Strozier Clinton-Lewinsky-Starr "Putting the Psychoanalyst on the Couch: A Biography of Heinz Kohut"