Clio’s Psyche Understanding the "Why" of Culture, Current Events, History, and Society

Volume 7, Number 3 December, 2000

IN THIS ISSUE Group Psychohistory Symposium Nemine contra dicente: Group Process...... 102 The Sponsors of the , 1678-1681 ...... 122 Rudolph Binion Francis Steen and Tord Østberg Responses ...... 144 A Sceptic's Notes on Presidential David Beisel Jay Y. Gonen Theories...... 124 Norman F. Cantor John J. Hartman Melvin Kalfus Samuel Kline Cohn, Jr. Peter Loewenberg Assassination, Repression, and Subversion: Lloyd deMause Howard F. Stein Grist for the Conspiracy Mills...... 127 Paul H. Elovitz Terrence Ripmaster Reply ...... 154 Conspiracies, Racism, and Rudolph Binion In the African-American Experience...... 129 The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories Henry Vance Davis, S. Virginia Gonsalves Domond, and Tilahun Sineshaw Some Psychohistorical Thoughts...... 102 Dan Dervin Conspiracy and Common Ancestry Theory In Japan ...... 131 Conspiracy Thinking and Studying ...... 104 David G. Goodman Alasdair Spark Nationalism in Japan: A Fertile Ideological Field...... 133 JFK and the Love Bug: The "As If" Solution...... 106 Brian J. McVeigh Peter Knight The Cosmic Watergate and Possibility Thinking ...... 135 Mind Control and the Disappearing Individual...... 107 Alasdair Spark Fran Mason The "Hidden Hand": Who Needs Conspiracies? The Comfort of Notes on the Perpetuation of Jewish Conspiracy Theories... 136 Paranoid Delusions...... 109 Andrew S. Winston Paul Hamburg Conspiratorial and Revenge Fantasies of Racist The Desire for Cognitive Consistency ...... 111 Ideologues in The Turner Diaries and Hunter ...... 138 Thomas Blass Maria T. Miliora Some Effects of Conspiracy Thinking and Radio Demagogues and the Radical Roots of the Paranoid Labeling...... 112 "Paranoid Style" ...... 140 David J. Harper Michael Cohen Folk Theories of Power ...... 113 Presidential Election 2000 William McMurtrie Election 2000 Hindsight...... 155 Accepting and Rejecting Conspiracy Theories...... 114 Herbert Barry III George Victor Personality Is the Main Issue...... 156 Hofstadter Revisited: How Conspiracy Theories Aubrey Immelman And Paranoia Have Become Mainstream...... 115 Review Essay by David Lotto Presidential Free Associations...... 158 Paul H. Elovitz Historical Evolution of Conspiracy Theories In the West...... 117 From the Eye of the Hurricane: Book Review by Marcus LiBrizzi The View from Palm Beach County ...... 160 Melvin Kalfus The Paranoid Style: Alive and Well in the 21st Century ...... 118 Election Poem: "It Could Be Worse?" ...... 161 Review Essay by Charlotte Kahn John V. Knapp An Athenian ...... 120 In Memoriam: L. Bryce Boyer ...... 162 Robert Rousselle Howard F. Stein Page 102 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000

Group Psychohistory The Psychology of Symposium Conspiracy Theories Some Psychohistorical Thoughts Group Process About Conspiracy Theories Rudolph Binion Dan Dervin Brandeis University Mary Washington College, Emeritus How can a group of people act in concert It may never be possible to explain why to a given end of which they are unaware as indi- some people construct conspiracy theories and oth- viduals? This is the problem of group process. ers don't, not necessarily because the reasons are so Historians of all stripes tend to explain obscure but because they are so many. People group action by a supposed concurrence of individ- prone to conspiracy modes don't comprise a dis- ual motives. This approach is radically wrong. A tinct grouping, as common experiences often re- simple example will show why: the epochal de- veal the perfectly normal person we are sharing a cline of fertility across Europe that began in the cocktail or plane ride with suddenly rolling out a 1870s (after a head start in France). As individu- grassy-knoll scenario for the latest catastrophe. Or als, the Europeans of the 1870s had no better rea- just as plausibly, the person who chronically sus- sons for adopting marital birth control than did pects the FBI of nefarious deceitfulness is vindi- their predecessors from time immemorial. To- cated in the cases of the falsely accused Richard gether, on the other hand, they needed to defend Jewel in the Atlanta Olympics bombing or of Wen against an imminent, and unprecedentedly massive, Ho Lee in the Alamosa atomic secrets fiasco. threat of overpopulation due to a recent sharp drop Conspiracy buffs never quite qualify as in the death rate, especially in child mortality. paranoids. The latter believe themselves to be tar- Their spontaneous collective defense was to cut gets of concerted machinations of some powerful back on births within marriage as much as they organization -- FBI, CIA, the United Nations, the could without self-extinction and as fast as they telephone company, etc. The former believe cer- could without social disruption. As that steep ag- tain prominent figures have been unjustly targeted gregate cutback was also smooth and steady, it fol- by any of the above groups. This may be a minor lows that all married couples were in on it from the distinction within one's psychic economy -- no first, whatever their particular baby count. more than the result of distancing and displacement Human behavior in concert to an uncon- -- but it allows for a relatively adaptive and pain- scious end smacks of animal ethology. But if it is free social discourse. indeed of a kind with group behavior by other ani- Yet while the media and other cultural mals, what is its biological basis? Where some or forms further distance and legitimize these dis- all individuals in a given animal group act in that courses, they enter the purview of psychohistory group’s direct interest rather than their own, biolo- by aligning reality in terms of dangerous aggres- gists speak of “group selection” and call it sors and delegated victims. Following this familiar “altruistic. ” Also, because nonhuman animals co- pattern, they also adhere to a few less familiar ordinate their daily lives within groups, theorists of rules. “group selection” tend to regard at least nonhuman In the supposedly accidental death of Prin- animal groups as functionally equivalent to organ- cess Diana, for example, three kinds of responses isms. However, the concept of an organism does prevail: 1) an overwhelming sense of loss, demon- not readily admit of some of its parts serving the strated by the initial outpouring of grief and whole to their own relative detriment. (The pio- mourning and the later construction of a permanent neer group selectionist V.C. Wynne-Edwards saw shrine; 2) a devaluing cynicism, which portrayed partway around the contradiction of an organismic her as shallow, vain, ruthless, unfaithful, and men- group with some members sacrificing for others. tally unbalanced; and 3) a conspiracy theory, tar- His monumental Animal Dispersion in Relation to geting "people who did not want Diana and Dodi Social Behavior, 1962, which focused on fertility, to be together," as claimed by Dodi's father, Mo- Continued on page 141 hamed Al Fayed, who has pressed lawsuits against December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 103 the U.S. Federal Government for allegedly harbor- alive as a fantasy figure in the collective psyche, ing secret documents. preventing the work of mourning to accomplish As personages like Princess Diana and closure and playing into sacrificial scenarios that President Kennedy become fantasy figures through release feelings of revenge or martyrdom. the media and group fantasy, they also become On an individual level, to a greater or delegates for this threefold response: JFK was lesser degree, conspiracy theory emerges as the widely mourned, devalued for philandering and preferred psychic organizer by means of which the associating with the mob, and subjected to elabo- person interprets their experiences with the social rate conspiracy scenarios; Martin Luther King, Jr., environment. For some, one conspiracy is suffi- was mourned, accused of womanizing, and held, cient to perform whatever psychic work needed; especially by his family, to be victim of a larger for others, conspiracy thinking operates as the conspiracy; Robert Kennedy was mourned, ac- skeleton key to unlock almost any mysterious or cused of playing around, notably with Marilyn threatening event. Dick Gregory told a Washing- Monroe, and portrayed as victim of a larger con- ton Post (October 9, 2000) reporter that not only spiracy. were Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert Kennedy, and While these three conflicting versions com- John Kennedy "taken out" by the "people who con- pete for dominance, the historical person is kept trol the system," but also John Kennedy, Jr., "because he was using his magazine to investigate the murders of his father and his uncle."

Clio’s Psyche This lateral movement leads to a second rule: what's going on out there is secretly intercon- Vol. 7, No. 3 December, 2000 nected, and conspiracy theory provides the most authentic mode of interpretation for exposing the ISSN 1080-2622 secrets. Once this worldview is granted, nuances Published Quarterly by The Psychohistory Forum and discriminations can be tolerated. True to form, 627 Dakota Trail, Franklin Lakes, NJ 07417 Gregory believes that Princess Diana was killed, Telephone: (201) 891-7486 e-mail: [email protected] not, however, by the usual U.S. suspects, but by the "British royal family, which feared she would Editor: Paul H. Elovitz, PhD Associate Editor: Bob Lentz marry her [mixed-race] boyfriend." Internet Co-ordinator: Stan Pope In classical psychoanalysis, the paranoid

Editorial Board compensates for loss of a centered self and vital David Beisel, PhD RCC-SUNY • Rudolph Binion, ties to reality by placing him/herself at the center PhD Brandeis University • Andrew Brink, PhD of a vast, malevolent conspiracy. The conspiracy Formerly of McMaster University and The University buff also buys into that construction of the world of Toronto • Ralph Colp, MD Columbia University • but enjoys a narcissistic triumph by using his/her Joseph Dowling, PhD Lehigh University • Glen superior mental powers to expose the malevolent Jeansonne, PhD University of Wisconsin • Peter forces. In both instances, conspiratorial thinking is Loewenberg, PhD UCLA • Peter Petschauer, PhD symptomatic of the reality loss in severe trauma Appalachian State University • Leon Rappoport, and psychosis, and both replace reality testing with PhD Kansas State University projection. Advisory Council of the Psychohistory Forum Shifting from classical drive-defense the- John Caulfield, MDiv, Apopka, FL • Melvin Kalfus, PhD Boca Raton, FL • Mena Potts, PhD Wintersville, ory briefly to object relations theory, one might OH • Jerome Wolf, Larchmont, NY discern a slight shift from psychopathology to

Subscription Rate: primitive emotional development. Melanie Klein Free to members of the Psychohistory Forum held that infants initially experience a paranoid- $25 yearly to non-members schizoid phase in which gratifying experiences (the $40 yearly to institutions mother's good or nurturant breast) are not assimi- (Both add $4 outside USA & Canada) lated to frustrating ones (the bad or persecutory Single Issue Price: $10 breast).

We welcome articles of psychohistorical interest Supposedly for all of us, unbearable that are 300 - 1500 words. stresses and traumas may induce a regression to a Copyright © 2000 The Psychohistory Forum paranoid level. Thus, when we attempt to interpret Page 104 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000 ostensible conspiracy phenomena, we need to stay the 1990s? It seems indisputable that this was so, in touch with any anxieties thereby aroused. We ranging from the now complete acceptance by the need to entertain ambivalence and to tolerate ambi- great majority of Americans of a conspiracy to as- guity in order to avoid the extremes of the know- sassinate President Kennedy, through the claims nothing borderline ("Stuff happens") and the all- made by militias about a “New World Order” and knowing conspiracy expert ("Bad stuff happens, United Nations’ plots, to African-American suspi- and I'll explain why"). Early in 1998, Hillary Clin- cions of a CIA plan to flood the ghetto with drugs, ton thought she knew why bad things were happen- and speculations about UFOs and secret installa- ing to her husband and went on national television tions such as in Nevada. Capping it all to cite a "vast right-wing conspiracy." She wasn't was the popularity of conspiracy-driven entertain- entirely wrong, for there were powerful people on ment such as "The X-Files." We now live in what the Right doing their best to discredit Clinton's might well be called a “conspiracy culture” within rule, but there were also Monica and Bill's unruly which lurks a virtual reflex -- the almost instant libidos helping things along. With Clinton as liar suspicion that any event has a deeper, darker, con- and sex addict but also as victim, we need only spiratorial explanation: the death of Princess mourn his departure to complete the threefold dis- Diana, the crash of TWA 800, the bombing of the course with which this inquiry began. Loss engen- Federal Building in Oklahoma City, the extent of ders three basic options: 1) enshrinement, accom- BSE (“Mad Cow Disease”), or even the most mun- panied by mourning; 2) devaluation, often with dane meetings of the World Trade Organization. manic features; and 3) conspiracy scenarios, with It seems unlikely that a mass psychological paranoid implications. derangement can be held responsible for this, since Dan Dervin, PhD, is a prolific psychohis- what is at work here is defined not by clinical para- torian whose recent books are Enactments: noia but instead by a prevalent sense of suspicion - American Modes and Psychohistorical Models - the feeling that things cannot be relied upon to be (1996) and Matricentric Narratives (1997) on what they are said to be. Some help can come questions of gender and agency in women's from the most often quoted explanation, given in a writing. He may be contacted at famous article by historian Richard Hofstadter .  (The Paranoid Style and Other Essays, 1965, 1996), namely the long existence of a “paranoid style” in American politics. However, Hofstadter Conspiracy Thinking and stressed the marginality of believers and the sus- Conspiracy Studying ceptibility of certain status-deprived groups to paranoid suspicions, namely those on the extreme Alasdair Spark Right. However, as our current circumstances King Alfred's College, United Kingdom show, conspiracy thinking is no longer confined to the few or to the margins (unless we are to count In July, 1997, the supplement to the Oxford society so hopelessly fractured that only margins English Dictionary included the term conspiracy exist any longer). One clue for the rise in conspir- theory for the first time. This inclusion recognized acy theories since the early 1960s is that a succes- that conspiracy theories have become increasingly sion of genuine conspiracies have been revealed to popular in recent years, most overtly in the United the public, with the many revelations of the Viet- States, but also across the rest of the world. Just as nam War, CIA assassination plots, Watergate, Iran- striking is that this outpouring of suspicion has not Contra, domestic surveillance and wire-tapping, been ignored or dismissed out of hand by academ- involuntary radiation testing, and the Tuskegee ics. Indeed, the opposite has been the case -- it has syphilis experiments. In effect, this parade led to been matched by a relative feast of serious work the collapse of public trust and the legitimization studying conspiracy theory (seeking to theorize of suspicion: “If this is true, then why not this conspiracy theory, if you will) and at least a dozen too?” Furthermore, the focus of these revelations books have been published, with more to come. has meant that the Left, too, has gained its own Why has this union of interest come about and conspiracy reflex, as Hillary Clinton attested in what can it tell us of the nature of this contempo- claiming that a “vast right-wing conspiracy” was rary phenomenon? arrayed against her innocent husband. First, why was there an apparent rise in the However, any approach based on assessing status of conspiracy as a explanation for events in the genuine would only legitimate certain conspir- December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 105 acy thinking as rational and therefore worthwhile -- of who have seen the rise of conspiracy thinking as in other words, suggesting that the meaningful task less of a contamination and more of an opportunity is to be able to distinguish between real and false -- for both victims and scholars alike. For instance, conspiracy theories. This is no doubt valuable, but Dean, in her seminal work, argues that those it is not all that is required of scholarly enquiry. women who claim to have been abducted by aliens What also demands academic attention is an appre- have actually gained a beneficial self-awareness ciation of the sheer tendency of conspiracy think- and identity. All of these authors note the free- ing to imagine. To take the other extreme, the floating ability of conspiracy thinking to connect more baroque the conspiracy theory, the stronger together disparate elements into narrative strands. our need to appreciate the psychological satisfac- They see this ability to sort through the contempo- tions of conspiracy thinking for individuals today, rary avalanche of information as important, despite and the pleasing connections which conspiracy ap- its often recidivist, extremist, or trivial results. pears to provide. Indeed, some academics have As this creditworthiness suggests, the sig- come to see in conspiracy’s curious methodology a nificant baseline seen for any study of contempo- new means of appreciating the contemporary rary conspiracy thinking must be the uncertainty world. It is in the tension between these two posi- and dissonance of the post-Cold War world. Al- tions -- between studying conspiracy for its facts ready, before the events of the late 1980s, it was a and studying conspiracy for its fictions -- that trope of postmodernism to characterize modern much of the recent academic work has found itself. culture as defined by fragmentation, incoherence, In the rationalist corner stand authors such and a resistance to meta-narratives. In our contem- as Jerrold Robins and Robert Post (Political Para- porary world, the new order of the globalization of noia: The Psychopolitics of Hatred, 1997), whose economy, polity, and information, which has so basic claim is that conspiracy needs to be under- rapidly accelerated in the wake of the end of the stood and combated as a fatal contamination of the Cold War, demands that individuals and groups body politic and the fertilizer for extremist acts seek even more the reassurances of connection and such as the Oklahoma City bombing. Daniel Pipes meaning, but these satisfactions seem unable to (Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes cohabit any longer with ideological fixity. Instead, and Where it Comes From, 1998) agrees that a as Manuel Castells (The Rise of the Network Soci- threat exists in conspiracy theory’s power to urge ety, 1996) has argued, we find that the computer political action, but he is less certain of the domes- network is the typical interface between the local tic risk. He finds that in the United States, conspir- and the global, and it is more than mere coinci- acy thinking, while prevalent, is a largely a confec- dence that the Internet has been the breeding tion, with the real danger resting in areas such as ground for many current conspiracy theories. It is the Arab world. Elaine Showalter (Hystories, a fertile locale for wildfire speculations, and, as a 1997) finds the plethora trivial, but sees this as evi- technology through which any item of information dence of the corrosive emotional self-centeredness is potentially connected to any (and therefore and trophy victimhood of contemporary America, a every) other, it models conspiracy theories per- condition revealed by the false claims of satanic fectly, offering message and medium as one. We abuse, Gulf War syndrome, ME (“Yuppie Flu”), might almost see conspiracy theories as the search and . In her aptly titled book, she engines of the popular imagination, sorting through calls for a new public rationality and responsibility, the billions of bits of the contemporary to find lost and for academics in particular to stand up and be meaning. Therefore, in the conspiratorial imagina- counted. In much the same vein, the late Carl Sa- tion's willingness to plot connections and to con- gan (The Demon Haunted World, 1997) saw Amer- nect plots, what we can actually see (and should be ica on the verge of a new Dark Age, haunted by studying) is a literal “common sense” emerging as demons of ignorance and irrationality. an attempt to re-cohere and re-determine meaning However, in the other corner stand cultural in the absence -- perhaps permanently -- of authori- critics and historians such as Mark Fenster tative institutional alternatives. Of particular inter- (Conspiracy Theories: and Power in est is that what conspiracy theories most often at- American Culture, 1999), Timothy Melley (Empire tempt, is to map the future through the past -- or of Conspiracy: The Culture of Paranoia in Post- better, to “reverse map” history, since so much of War America, 1999), Peter Knight (Trust No-One, the effort lies in laying tracks backwards, in popu- 2000), and Jodi Dean (Aliens in America, 1998), all lar, and even desperate, attempts to narrativize how things got to be this way. Equally, therefore, the Page 106 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000 sheer thrill of these speculations for the individual freebie music-sharing Napster community -- some- must be acknowledged. thing the industry had failed to do through the Thus, the new prevalence of conspiracy courts. Noting that the virus also attacked image theory and its method of processing information to files, others insisted that the porn industry would produce popular knowledge not only forms the ba- have most to gain from a virus which would re- sis for further study, but also points to a sympto- quire users to download all their illicit images matic feature of the contemporary condition. Con- again. Some pundits speculated that the antivirus spiracy culture figures a more widespread collapse software industry are the ones who are most likely of distinctions between the literal and the meta- to benefit from such a virus: nothing like creating a phorical, the factual and the fictional, the paranoid little paranoia in order to drum up business. Fi- and the persecuted, the diagnosis and the symptom, nally, some pointed the finger at Microsoft, sug- the personal and the political, the trivial and the gesting that it had unique access to the source code worthwhile, and the plausible and the incredible. It of the e-mail program involved in the case, as well is the loss of these distinctions which has served to as a mammoth grudge in the wake of court rulings disable traditional outlooks and politics (including against its monopoly position. cultural politics). So, whether the differentiation As conspiracy theories go, these were not between conspiracy as legitimate revelation or de- very impressive. For one thing, it turned out that luded mystification is possible, or even desirable, the virus didn’t destroy either music or image files. is something as yet unresolved. What’s more, de Guzman’s digital fingerprints Alasdair Spark, PhD, is Head of the Ameri- were all over the viral software, and he even admit- can Studies Department at King Alfred's College of ted to creating it (though he never intended to Higher Education, Winchester, England. He is the cause such wide scale chaos, he said). Unlike the author of numerous articles on subjects such as the traditional kind of right-wing extremist “paranoid , contemporary America, and con- style” described by Richard Hofstadter, conspiracy spiracy theories, most recently “A New World to theories about the Love Bug didn’t seem the prod- Order” in Alan Sandison (ed.), Histories of the ucts of a rigid demonological outlook which seeks Future (2000). Professor Spark organized a suc- to blame current woes on often blameless minority cessful international conference on conspiracy scapegoats. These were idle, not ideological, theories in 1998 and runs an academic-centered speculations. Neither did these theories fit the fa- conspiracy Web site at . He may be contacted at piciousness about the authorities and the intelli- .  gence agencies. Casual talk of a “patsy” in this case was a far cry from the detailed investigations into ’s role in the Kennedy as- JFK and the Love Bug: sassination. Rather, the conspiracy rumors that circulated around the Net in the wake of the epi- The “As If” Solution demic were on-the-fly reactions to a calamity in Peter Knight the making; they were the gossip of the global vil- University of Manchester, United Kingdom lage, part joke and part anxious commentary. Now, it might be tempting to dismiss this In May of this year the ILOVEYOU kind of ad hoc cyberparanoia as an insignificant ("Love Bug") computer virus hit computer net- example of conspiracy thinking, small fry com- works across the globe. Almost as speedy as the pared to the deep sea catches of political assassina- chain reaction of the e-plague itself, conspiracy tions, anti-Semitism, or the militias. I would sug- theories about the episode ricocheted around the gest, however, that these sorts of everyday, take-it- Internet (Net). Although I didn’t receive the Love or-leave-it rumors are precisely what makes con- Bug itself (and yes, I felt aggrieved like other Neti- spiracy talk so prevalent -- and also so hard to pin zens that somehow I was out of the loop), I did re- down. These stories, it must be admitted, were not ceive several multi-forwarded “explanations” of without a certain resonance and wit. Pinning the the event. All agreed that Onel de Guzman, the blame on Microsoft or the anti-Napster campaign, Filipino computer student charged with the crime, for example, cut to the chase of many current de- was only a fall guy. Some argued that the music bates about the future of the Internet, that symbolic industry had created a virus which infected MP3 product of atomic age paranoia that was hijacked music files as a clandestine way of destroying the December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 107 once by the utopian but aging boomer generation, two traditional explanations for conspiracy think- and then hijacked once more by commerce. ing. The first insists that talk of conspiracy is the Although these conspiratorial e-mails symptom of deluded scaremongering -- a spontane- might originally have been written with paranoid ous but ultimately rigid product of something akin conviction, by the time they reached my inbox in a to mass paranoia, in short. But diagnosing talk of convoluted passage through cyberspace they had conspiracy as the outpourings of a troubled taken on barnacled layers of irony. Did the person (collective) mind only works if people actually who forwarded them to me believe in them? Well, fully believe in the allegations -- if the theories are I suspect not, but at some stage down the line unconscious symptoms, in effect. The other stan- someone might have, of a fashion. Did I believe in dard theory of conspiracy theory argues that de- them? Not really. Or rather, not totally. Even monological rumors are often cynically promoted though I knew that they were (probably) false, nev- by the powers that be in order to legitimate their ertheless I felt a momentary attraction to them. own sinister policies. But this view also requires What if they were true? But then again, what if that the gullible masses are still totally taken in by they weren’t -- could a college boy’s prank acci- the scaremongering stories they’ve had forced up dentally bring the world to its knees? on them -- hardly true in the case of the typical take-it-or-leave-it toying with conspiracy theories I suspect that I am not alone in my half- in the case of the JFK assassination or the Love ironic, half-serious engagement with such conspir- Bug. acy-minded rumors. Although the Kennedy assas- sination inspires both passionate endorsement and If I am right that many people don’t really dismissals of clandestine explanations, like many believe or fully disbelieve in the conspiracy stories other people I find myself caught somewhere be- they circulate and consume, then much of the cur- tween the two poles. Some of the conspiracy re- rent earnest alarm about the gullibility of the search strikes me as compelling in its discovery of masses is misplaced -- as is the equally earnest discrepancies in the official record, or of evidence celebration of a savvy popular scepticism towards of various possible plots. On the other hand, I sus- authority. Admittedly, there are many examples of pect that, given infinite time and patience, I could delusional and dangerous conspiracy-mongering, knock holes in most of these theories. But the case but not everyone who tunes into the culture of con- all too quickly enters an infinite regress of faith spiracy is a gun-toting militiaman or a dope-addled and doubt, sucking the amateur inquirer into its counterculture rebel. Quite possibly many people labyrinthine complexity. Each seemingly defini- are, like me, partly a half-ironic participant and tive revelation in the end contributes only to a partly an armchair sociologist searching for signs sense that the truth will be endlessly postponed, of popular paranoia. It’s always other people who leaving most investigators in perpetual hermeneu- are the really paranoid ones, we comfort ourselves, tic limbo. I find myself thus suspended between as we watch an episode of "The X-Files." not really believing that there was a conspiracy to Peter Knight, PhD, teaches American kill President Kennedy, and not really disbelieving Studies at the University of Manchester, England. it either. Even if it turns out to have been the lone He is the author of Conspiracy Culture: From the gunman all along (even though, as a card-carrying Kennedy Assassination to “The X-Files” (2000), cultural studies scholar, I would claim that the and editor of Conspiracy Nation (forthcoming source and meaning of any action is never purely 2001). He may be contacted at “lone”), the alternative theories retain some plausi- .  bility. Adapting Freud’s term, we might say that the event is overdetermined: even if one particular explanation turns out to be true (though how would Mind Control and the we ever know for certain?), in many cases the rival Disappearing Individual theories might as well be true. Even when we know (or should know better) that there isn’t a con- Fran Mason spiratorial explanation to current events, we might King Alfred's College, United Kingdom still sometimes believe in the stories as if they were true. Mind control narratives offer a very inter- esting subset of conspiracy theory but also present This form of provisional, self-undermining a postmodern perspective on conspiracy theory. belief is hard to pick up on the radar screens of the They seem to speak directly to contemporary Page 108 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000 threats to individuality and ask whether reality is attending a garden party where they discuss things fully knowable any more. While paranoia has most such as flower arranging with prim middle-class often been seen as the quintessential form of iden- women in floral dresses. Indeed, none of them tity or psychological profile in relation to conspir- "see" Raymond kill another soldier because they acy, the notion of the mind-controlled individual is are so enmeshed in the group fantasy that has been perhaps more significant. created for them. Mind control constructs reality While mind control is the product of a and subjectivity by determining how the individual paranoid sensibility, there are many differences perceives the world. What appears to be both an between the paranoid and the mind control objective reality and a self-constructed individual- "victim." One key difference is that while paranoia ity is exactly the reverse. clearly exists as both a pathological and existential Conspiracy theory and conspiracy fictions condition (there wouldn't be so many conspiracy are full of similar stories of people whose actions theories otherwise), there is no substantive evi- have apparently been determined for them through dence to suggest that mind control exists as any- mind control or implanted technology. Alex Con- thing other than a fantasy, despite the claims made stantine claims that Sirhan Sirhan, like Lee Harvey by Alex Constantine (Psychic Dictatorship in the Oswald, was a “hypno-patsy”; Timothy McVeigh U.S.A., 1995). A further difference is that in para- claimed to have had an implant placed in his but- noia the paranoid is always outside the proposed tocks; and Cathy O’Brien tells of her "experience" conspiracy and claims to be able to see it objec- as a CIA-controlled prostitute and drug courier tively and in its entirety. The paranoid individual is (with Mark Phillips, Trance: Formation of Amer- untouched by the hostile external world of the con- ica: The True Life Story of a CIA Mind Control spiracy. Indeed, paranoia can be seen as an at- Slave, 1995). These narratives also suggest the tempt to posit an unproblematic notion of the self entry of the conspiracy into the individual. The in contemporary society and in this sense is a last conspiracy is internalized and does not just exist as ditch individualism, holding the self together by a threatening but recognizable external agency. It holding the world at bay. is both inside and outside, with the implant or mind Mind control conspiracies, however, have a control trigger acting as an on-off button. The con- more problematic position as regards individuality spiracy is outside until the implant or mind control and identity because of their less clear-cut position trigger is activated at which point the subject be- in relation to conspiracy. Mind control and im- comes part of the conspiracy. The claims that the plant conspiracy theories suggest an uncertainty CIA has developed "remote viewing" technology about the nature of reality and the individual's per- (whereby the implanted victim becomes the eyes of ception of it. This is made abundantly clear in a distant receiver) are the clearest example of this John Frankenheimer's 1962 film The Manchurian type of conspiracy fiction. In this instance, the Candidate, which deals with the story of Raymond "victim" apparently sees the world through the Shaw who has been brainwashed by a Russian- eyes of the conspiracy agency and becomes a Chinese "conspiracy" in order to assassinate a stooge or puppet during the period they are under Presidential candidate so that his stepfather, control -- what Ron Patton, a mind control be- Johnny Eismann, a Red-baiting Senator in the liever, calls the “Marionette Syndrome” ("Project McCarthy mould, can gain the Presidential nomi- Monarch: Nazi Mind Control," Paranoia: The nation. Two other characters are significant: Ray- Conspiracy Reader, 4:3, 1996). mond's mother, who is his American controller and Mind control narratives represent the indi- who controls Raymond through his unconscious vidual under threat, struggling to maintain identity incestuous desires, and Major Ben Marco, Ray- in the face of an intrusive conspiracy. Mind con- mond's superior during the Korean War, who is trol "victims" are thus unsure whether they can call also brainwashed after his company is captured by their thoughts their own. Knowledge and self- the enemy. knowledge become uncertain. Again, The Man- The scenes where the American soldiers churian Candidate offers an example of this in are being brainwashed by enemy forces are par- Major Marco's dreams: he doesn't know where ticularly indicative of the problematic nature of they come from, or whether they are a product of reality under mind control. The soldiers do not see his own unconscious or evidence that his thoughts the conference room where they are being brain- have been shaped for him by someone else. Such washed, but perceive a "reality" in which they are concerns with the invaded body (whether by im- December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 109 planted thoughts in mind control conspiracies, of cinematic misinformation when Raymond turns alien probes, or by actual implants) signify a fear the gun on Johnny and his mother and shoots them about threats to "the rights of the individual" and instead. the sanctity of the individual’s mind. They also In other words, the camera, in moving into map a fear that individuality means nothing and subjective mode at the end, makes Raymond’s mo- that everyone is treated as a functional unit, a tives and identity ambiguous. It is only when he thing, or a commodity in contemporary society. reveals to Marco that he did it because no one else The individual no longer functions as a distinct and could have stopped Johnny and his mother that the meaningful agent, but is simply a carrier of infor- viewer knows that he has clearly faked a brain- mation or a robotized unit. In this sense, mind washed personality. Thus, mind control is as much control narratives represent a concern with the in- about a way of generating one's own self as it is creased technologization of society either through about the fear of a loss of self. After all, one thing the popular fear of the cyborg and the possibility mind control "victims" never admit is that they in- that data chips will turn people into automatons or vented the conspiracy that has apparently invented through concerns with the way in which informa- their selfhood. The relationship between individ- tion society has transformed the individual into ual and reality (and between mind control victim someone who simply processes and transmits data and conspiracy) becomes circular. Each invents (in effect the individual as a biochemical com- the other so that neither can be said to exist as a puter). separate or objective reality. Both, therefore, exist Mind control fantasies also, however, sig- only as simulations or as inventions of the other -- nify a concern with the inability to keep the outside as the "real fake" or the "fake real." world at bay. Mind control conspiracies collapse Fran Mason, PhD, is Senior Lecturer at the distance between the individual and an external King Alfred's College, Winchester, England, where reality. In mind control, not only is the individual he directs study in the Master of Arts in Contempo- inside conspiracy, the conspiracy is also inside the rary Popular Knowledges program. His major individual. Identity no longer clearly belongs to research areas are popular knowledges (including the self and is potentially a product of others. The cyberculture and conspiracy), postmodernism, and individual, in the traditional sense of an autono- film . He has published on Thomas Pyn- mous agent with an inner self, disappears. The chon, on the cyborg and , and on Los individual becomes unsure whether reality is Angeles, and is currently working on a book on shaped inside or outside the mind and as such gangster movies. He may be reached at whether identity and selfhood are generated inter- .  nally or externally. This is the case with the construction of Raymond Shaw as an assassin in The Manchurian Who Needs Conspiracies? Candidate. The film maps contemporary anxieties The Comfort of about identity by suggesting that Raymond has no control over his own identity. However, the film Paranoid Delusions suggests an ambiguity in that the apparent mind Paul Hamburg control seems to have allowed Raymond the oppor- Harvard Medical School tunity to fake a brainwashed persona in order to achieve his own ends -- at least after his meeting At the threshold of a new millennium with Marco in the hotel room. Nevertheless, the dominated by rationalism, the world nonetheless ending is more problematic than this. In the final resonates with daily inventions of plot and intrigue, scenes, the camera, in order to create suspense over of implausible paranoid explanation, each one whether Raymond will fulfil his mission, colludes stranger than the last. No single psychological or with the notion of Raymond as mind control victim social theory can fully explain the remarkable se- by concentrating on his supposed target as he lines ductiveness of conspiracy theory to contemporary up the sights on his rifle. Usually, such a camera communities. However, a number of specific psy- shot is indicative not only of what the character cho-social uses help make paranoia a compelling sees but also signifies the character’s intentions -- discursive temptation. Here are a few of the most in this case that Raymond will shoot the person in significant: his sights. However, this is revealed to be a piece Dispelling Doubt Page 110 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000

The apparent randomness of highly signifi- manufacturers in order to justify the poisoning of cant events -- whether murder, earthquake, or pes- children with psychostimulant medication; and re- tilence -- creates diffuse and pervasive anxiety. An current assertions that natural “cures” for cancer unknown, unnamed, and unlocatable enemy is es- are suppressed by a medical industry hell-bent on pecially terrifying. Amidst this chaos, naming a profit. In each instance, complicated situations sinister, powerful, imagined enemy crystallizes without clear solutions become instantly simplified danger into a more predictable form. Rendered by means of conspiratorial invention. visible and nameable, the enemy is already on the Exporting the Demonic way to being contained. An enemy with intention Inventing conspiratorial explanations frees and will is less terrible, because passion makes it individuals from their own ambivalence, personal humanly vulnerable, unlike an intentionless, purely responsibility, and the need for self-reflection. statistical catastrophe. Negative regard would Evil has been relocated elsewhere -- it is no longer seem easier to bear than the emptiness of a random lurking within us. The imagined enemy serves as wound. Paranoia soothes loneliness. Perhaps this an unburdening repository of guilt, shame, self- is its most haunting hidden appeal. doubt and ambivalence. Projection -- this whole- A forgotten, friendless old woman imag- sale throwing forth of unbearable wishes, images, ines that her upstairs neighbors plot her demise, and other miscellaneous contents of the self -- is a mimicking her every step as she walks from bed- primitive psychic sanitation system. Of course, side to refrigerator down below. She is tormented what has been eliminated by projection inevitably by her imagination, but never entirely alone. What returns, making this process repetitive, incomplete, would she face if she gave up the delusion that and habitual. keeps her such unwelcome company? "Godless Communism" and its fantastic Creating Meaning domestic conspiracies against the integrity of In a time of waning faith, community, and American culture provides an example of how use- ideological certainty, people face the complexities ful the demonization of one’s enemy can be to fos- of war, epidemics, economic insecurity, and rapid tering a sense of national purity. Whatever the ac- social change alone. Meaninglessness looms large. tual threat of Soviet hegemony and subversion, the Creating a myth of conspiratorial design creates myth of an invincible, evil enemy served to further order out of chaos, predictability out of random- passionate, nationalist agendas for Ronald Reagan ness, and potential action out of passive despair. and Western ideologues. The demise of the Soviet People desperately want the world to make sense, Union and its allies has left a vacuum of available even if making sense requires the wholesale distor- demons only partially replaced by hatred of Sad- tion of reality. Of course the paradox of paranoia dam Hussein or fear of pan-Arab terrorism. is that the meaning it creates actually disempowers Promoting Group Solidarity individuals and generates absurdity rather than co- Conspiracy theories are ready-made tools herence. Declaring African AIDS a conspiracy to promote political cohesion. If “The brigands are ultimately increases victimization by virtue of ab- coming!”, then we upstanding citizens should surd responses against imaginary human enemies unite, forget our petty differences and squabbles, instead of appropriate precautions against real viral and mobilize against a common danger. Conspir- ones. acy theory can be an instrument to coalesce rebel- Simplifying the Complex lion or reaction to rebellion. By delineating a dan- In the face of intricate and ambiguous re- gerous “them,” it fashions a collective identity. Of alities, people become too anxious to hold onto course, fear, hate, and aggression primarily fuel complexity. Conspiratorial solutions not only offer such an identity. meaning in the face of the potentially absurd, but Religious nationalism in many parts of the they typically offer singular, unambiguous mean- world epitomizes this strategy. Pakistanis are en- ings. Fiction, of course, can afford to be far sim- couraged to forget immense grievances against pler than real life. their own government’s ineptitude and instead mo- Examples include simplistic government- bilize to hate Indians. Indians are encouraged to plot explanations for the debacle at Waco, Texas; hate Pakistanis in similar fashion. The recent dis- Scientologists’ demonization of psychiatric treat- integration of Balkan states that has fueled such ment for mental illness; recent claims that Atten- terrible outbreaks of nationalist paranoia illustrates tion Deficit Disorder has been invented by drug that ever-smaller national identities may engender December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 111 paradoxical fragmentation even as they fervently Consistency Encourages unite their adherents. Conspiracy Theories Dividing the Opposition Even as imagined conspiracies unite puta- Thomas Blass tive victims, they can also be a means for the pow- University of Maryland, Baltimore County erful to divide their subjects. Are the factory workers becoming restless? Are the citizens agitat- Thirty-seven years have now elapsed since ing against the state? Conspiracy theories exploit President Kennedy’s assassination, and despite the differences of religion, gender, race, and affiliation passage of time, the painful memory of that event in order to diffuse potential resistance to power. still occupies a special place in the national con- By dividing natural allies from each other, they sciousness. An endless stream of books about the stabilize oppressive power. assassination has certainly figured importantly in keeping that memory fresh. To help the conspir- Managers have long employed such divi- acy-challenged, there are even such books as Who sive measures against their workers, encouraging suspicions along lines of race, gender, and nation- Shot JFK?: A Guide to the Major Conspiracy Theories. Why do conspiracy theories have such ality to obscure common interests that would threaten worker-management relations. Conserva- widespread appeal? tive politicians (Nixon Republicans and their lega- There is often a tendency to associate be- tees) have long known how to divide black work- liefs in conspiracies with the “lunatic” or political ers from white, in a cynical but highly effective fringe. To the extent that conspiratorial beliefs effort to substitute fear for solidarity. dominate one’s thinking, or are central to an ideol- ogy, then we are indeed talking about an extreme. Throwing out the Abject But when they are not all-pervasive concerns, be- Conspiracy theory typically defines its liefs in conspiracies can represent a quite normal mythical enemy in terms of filth, sexual danger, or way of looking at things -- normal in the sense that social deviancy. As such, it offers a convenient such beliefs can meet a very ordinary, non- depository for unacceptable elements of the self -- pathological need. I am not dirty, promiscuous, or rapacious; it is the other who embodies these abject qualities. By hat- One of the most influential social psy- ing him, I can avoid hating myself. chologists, Fritz Heider, has theorized that a perva- sive human need is to maintain a sense of consis- Anti-Semitism throughout the ages has em- tency among our various thoughts, feelings, and bodied this quality of demonizing the unknown actions. The belief that the Kennedy assassination Other. The Nazi image of the hated Jew assembled involved more than one person, it has been sug- every disavowed quality uncomfortable to the anti- gested, can be understood as something that fulfills Semite: greed, ugliness, filth, clannishness, and this need for consistency. stealth. As Tom Bethell argued in the pages of the In summary, conspiracy theory realigns Washington Monthly many years ago, to think that personal and social qualities in ways that reduce such a big, devastatingly important result -- the anxiety, promote social and psychological cohe- killing of a President -- was caused by a very un- sion, suppress opposition, and displace inner dis- important, solitary individual is jarring to the mind. content. Like paranoid states in general, conspira- To believe that a big outcome has a big cause torial thinking affords temporary solace at the in- achieves a sought-after consistency, since there is a calculable price of profound disruptions in reality better fit between cause and effect. Thus, it is testing, ethical values, and humanity. quite easy to accept the possibility that Kennedy Paul Hamburg, MD, is Assistant Professor was assassinated through a conspiracy involving of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and several (or even many) people. Associate Director of the Eating Disorders Unit at A different perspective on conspiratorial the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He beliefs comes from some studies conducted by may be contacted at Clark McCauley and Susan Jacques at Bryn Mawr . College. They presented subjects of their experi- ments with simulated newspaper headlines about The Desire for Cognitive . One headline said that an attempt Page 112 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000 was made on the President’s life and that it was When we adopt conspiratorial theories we successful. Another said that an unsuccessful at- see ourselves as knowing what is really going on. tempt was made on the President’s life. Subjects Conspiracy theories help to simplify a bewilder- were simply asked to indicate the likelihood that ingly complex world. They enable us to connect there was only a lone gunman or that more than apparently disparate events through a narrative that one person was involved. sees the intentions behind mundane happenings. Over a series of experiments, these re- They also personalize events so that we have a fo- searchers found that people were more likely to cus for our suspicion. Conspiracy films, for exam- assume a conspiracy when a successful attempt ple, often have a person or group who are the took place than when the assassination attempt "hidden hand" behind events. By subverting the failed. Rather than a consistency-based explana- taken-for-granted world, conspiracy theories mobi- tion, their findings point to the following one: Peo- lize people into action against perceived threats. ple reason that if an assassination attempt was suc- We know that the rhetoric of war serves to cessful, it must have involved a conspiracy, since a unify disparate national or ethnic groups against an group should be more effective than one person. external threat. This worked well in the West dur- Whatever the best specific explanation, it is ing the Cold War, Desert Storm, and the bombing quite clear that persistent beliefs in conspiracy ac- of Yugoslavia. Conspiratorial rhetoric works in counts of President Kennedy’s death are not neces- similar ways often directed towards groups within sarily a manifestation of human perversity. Rather, a country. At the pinnacle of her power, Margaret they are quite akin to the ways of thinking that fig- Thatcher, drawing implicitly on McCarthyite no- ure daily in people’s attempts to make sense of tions of Communist subversion, talked of British their world. Trades Unions as the "enemy within." This strat- egy of marginalization helped to legitimize her tak- Thomas Blass, PhD, a social psychologist, ing extreme oppressive measures against the un- is Professor of Psychology at the University of ions, culminating in her systematic breaking of the Maryland Baltimore County. His previous National Union of Mineworkers during the year- contribution to Clio’s Psyche was about Stanley long coal strike of the early 1980s. Milgram, and he has a Web site about this controversial social psychologist’s life and work, Conspiracy theories may fill believers with . He may be contact- a sense of purpose and missionary zeal to convince ed at .  others. As the narrator tells us in the 1960s televi- sion series "The Invaders," "Now David Vincent knows that the invaders are here, that they have Some Effects of Conspiracy taken human form. Somehow he must convince a disbelieving world that the nightmare has already Thinking and Paranoid Labeling begun." Alternatively, theories may encourage David J. Harper adherents to withdraw and regroup forces against University of East London, United Kingdom expected attacks, as at Waco. Through such proc- esses, conspiracy theories enable their believers to I have a fascination with conspiracy theo- construct a valued identity for themselves and to ries as evidenced by my enjoyment of films like see non-believers as dupes or allies of their enemy. The Parallax View and television series like "The Some, like Hofstadter, see this position as X-Files." Yet I am quite happy at times to see primarily one adopted by minority political groups. some views as paranoid, usually those I disagree There is some evidence to suggest that those who with. I don't think I am alone in this, and in such adopt a conspiratorial narrative are often from apparent contradiction I believe we can learn powerless groups. J. Mirowsky & C.E. Ross re- something about the ambivalent relationship West- ported that social positions characterized by pow- ern culture has with both conspiracy theories and erlessness and by the threat of victimization and paranoia. I want to examine some of the effects of exploitation tended to produce paranoia ("Paranoia both taking on a conspiratorial position and of po- and the structure of powerlessness," American So- sitioning the Other (individual, group, or nation) as ciological Review, 1983, 48, pp. 228-239). People paranoid. In other words, what do we do by be- in powerless positions may be paranoid then be- lieving in conspiracy theories and what do we do cause it may make sense in a world where others when we call others "paranoid"? really do have power over them. December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 113

What are some of the effects of labeling build group identity in the targets of those agen- others as "paranoid"? In doing so, we simultane- cies. Thus, in the U.S., the conspiratorial accounts ously mark "them" as different and other from on both sides of the Waco siege and the Oklahoma "us," and as abnormally and pathologically suspi- City bombing served to warrant action taken both cious. We simultaneously see them not as by right-wing and minority religious groups and by "knowing what is really going on" but as fringe the Federal government. Following the end of the weirdos. We marginalize them and remove legiti- Cold War we see intelligence agencies refocus macy from their views. Thus, when ex-British their targeting from the U.S.S.R. to terrorism, Prime Minister Harold Wilson referred to a plot by drugs, and "rogue nations" as new dangers. the British Security Service (MI5) to destabilize his Writers like Philip K. Dick have made use Labour administration in the mid-1970s, a Conser- of reality loops where one "reality" is suddenly vative Member of Parliament called him "positive- revealed to be just a surface reality with another ly paranoic" and urged him to see a psychiatrist. reality underneath. This was used to great effect in Similarly, following her interview on British tele- the film Total Recall. In a similar way, we can see vision, where she described her relationship trou- what might be termed "paranoia loops" created in bles, Diana, the Princess of Wales, was said by a attempts to address conspiratorial culture. Reac- Conservative Minister to be "in the advanced tions to movements seen as conspiratorial and stages of paranoia," which helped to deligitimize paranoid can be as overwhelming as the groups' her account. rhetoric. Moreover, such moves themselves can Positioning the other as "paranoid" not become characterised by a paranoid narrative. W. only undermines the legitimacy of that person or Shaw has noted how religious cults' "paranoia group's views but it also serves powerful functions about the outside world feeds on the outside for those doing the positioning. In calling others world's paranoia about cults' paranoia which feeds "paranoid" we construct ourselves as rational, rea- on cults' paranoia" (Spying in Guru Land: Inside sonable, and plausible -- an identity clearly valued Britain's Cults, 1994). A traditional response to in Western culture. such concern is to pathologize those seen as dan- Conspiracies do, of course, happen and gerous by calling them "paranoid" -- a strategy that there are times when suspicion is seen as legiti- Shaw reveals to be double-edged. For those adopt- mate. But paranoia serves as a touchstone of what ing a conspiratorial view, being seen as pathologi- counts as reasonable suspicion. A recent public cal by others decreases rather than increases what- opinion poll in the U.K. found that 24 percent of ever chance there may be that they will adopt a people had lied to others and 64 percent felt they different stance towards the world. had been lied to at least once during the previous David Harper, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in day. Yet to act in the world as if one is being lied Clinical Psychology at the University of East Lon- to on this scale would be to invite accusations of don, England. He is a co-author of Deconstructing paranoia. We know deceit and surveillance occur Psychopathology (1995) and author of a number of but to comment on them is to be seen as paranoid. articles on the social construction and deconstruc- A good example of some of these paranoid traps tion of paranoia and delusion. He may be con- can be found in the work of intelligence and secu- tacted at . rity agencies. Would you believe a small-time Welsh Nationalist who told you that he had been followed by 38 MI5 agents on one day in a small Folk Theories of Power Welsh fishing village? The scale seems ludicrous and yet Security Service evidence in a trial in the William McMurtrie U.K. in 1993 reveals that this actually happened. Higher Colleges of Technology, UAE A discussion of this kind of surveillance would Conspiracies, large-scale conspiracies with quickly take the form of conspiratorial discourse, a significant impact, actually do occur. discourse that would then inevitably and inelucta- bly be read as paranoid. For example, the Gladio conspiracy in post-World War II Italy was a clandestine organi- For the intelligence communities and the zation set up by NATO and recruited from the rem- organizations they infiltrate, conspiracy narratives nants of Italian Fascism in order to combat what are entirely functional: intelligence agencies need NATO feared might be the rise of a popular-Left credible threats to survive and threats of infiltration movement. Commentators have linked Gladio to a Page 114 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000 wider, European "stay-behind network" of similar ideologies are placed inside the dominant ideolo- organizations with a similar agenda. In the Italian gies to render the alternate ideologies harmless and context, Gladio, and its parallel organization, P2, promote the dominant ideologies. have been linked to such actions as the Bologna William McMurtrie teaches communication railway-station bombing in 1980, in which 83 peo- skills to local students of business and engineering ple were murdered, and to the assassination of at Higher Colleges of Technology in the United Aldo Moro. (Moro was disapproved of by NATO Arab Emirates. He reports a long-term interest in because of the "historic compromise" which he the way power works and in the ways in which authored, by which the Italian Communist Party some of the insights of psychoanalysis can be under Enrico Berlinguer was to be invited into the applied to it. He has a special interest in post- parliamentary process.) The existence of Gladio World War II Italian politics and is writing a was at first denied by the Italian government but based on the Red Brigades, the Bologna bombing, then finally admitted by Prime Minister Giulio An- and the Moro assassination. He may be contacted dreotti in 1990. at .  Certainly there are clearly delusional theo- ries of conspiracy, which appear to have the func- tion of creating and sustaining a paranoid sense of Accepting and Rejecting group unity by splitting off and projecting, and Conspiracy Theories which actually seem to flourish in conditions of beleaguerment such as the Ulster Protestant para- George Victor militaries. (The psychology of cults, religious or Psychohistory Forum Research Associate political, is a fascinating field, the way the "anathematizing" of the Other ends up producing a "Highly paranoid" people may see con- fantasized group self-idealization, often expressed spiracies when almost anything "wrong" or unex- in terms of their "purity," racial or doctrinal.) pected happens. "Normally paranoid" people, However, it may also be the case that such delu- those with enough paranoia to protect themselves sional theories are actually distorted representa- by questioning the intentions of others, may see tions of how power works, a kind of "folk theories" conspiracies after misfortune, especially when ex- of power. It may be that while these folk theories treme, and when authorities fail to do what is ex- are clearly pathological, they are themselves symp- pected of them. Unexpected national disasters fos- tomatic of the much larger "pathology" of power ter myths. Given the prevalence of scapegoating, itself. myths with paranoid cores are most dangerous. While it's obviously of great value to un- As has been amply documented (e.g., Carl pack the psychological mechanisms of conspiracy, Friedrich, The Pathology of Politics, 1972), con- at the same time we shouldn't lose sight of the fact spiracy is a basic method by which governments that power is massively and unequally concen- operate. "Conspiracy" means secret planning in trated today, and is often actually beyond account- concert of a wrongful act -- usually an illegal one. ability, in spite of the comforting, media- It includes -- when discovery threatens -- a cover- orchestrated rituals of participation which take up by manipulating information, hiding and de- place periodically. stroying evidence, suborning perjury, and giving perjured testimony. Conspiracy and cover-up are Consider, too, what function the Holly- common in government operations throughout the wood conspiracy (for example, Conspiracy world. Theory and Enemy of the State) serves. Some of these films, like Oliver Stone's JFK, make real Government conspiracies may be classified claims about the functioning of power and advance according to purpose: explanations of historical events. Yet they are sub-  personal gain (e.g., enrichment of officials) merged under the sheer volume of those which  partisan political advantage (e.g., Watergate) don't. Perhaps all the other more fantasized mate-  national interest (e.g., Iran-Contra) rial is serving some kind of cathartic function: dis- Patriotic arrogance, along with government charging widespread anxieties concerning the func- , led Germans to expect victory in tioning of power in order to end up vindicating it, World War I, and they were still expecting it when in line with what media theorists refer to as their government surrendered. The shock and the "inoculation," whereby small pieces of alternate harsh terms imposed on Germany gave rise to the December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 115 stab-in-the-back myth. Many Germans believed spiracies by their government for which evidence that their nation and its noble soldiers, on the verge is ample. of victory, had been betrayed by government lead- Scholars show little acceptance of undocu- ers. Some believed that those leaders were not mented conspiracy theories. They do, however, really Germans -- they were secret Jews engaged in tend to dismiss as conspiracy theories documented an international conspiracy to destroy Germany. historical accounts that attribute and ma- This belief contributed to anti-Semitic measures of nipulation to their own government. the Third Reich, helping prepare the way to the gas chambers. George Victor, PhD, is the author of two books in psychology and one in psychohistory, In 1941 most people in the United States Hitler: The Pathology of Evil (1998). He is at were also biased by patriotic arrogance and a work on The Myth of Pearl Harbor.  stereotype of Japanese inferiority -- especially military inferiority. They thought Japan could be beaten in weeks. The sweeping defeats suffered by Hofstadter Revisited: the United States beginning with Pearl Harbor on December 7 were experienced as an inexplicable How Conspiracy Theories and disaster, and fostered two conspiracy theories. In Paranoia Have Become the "highly paranoid" one, Franklin Roosevelt -- a secret Jew whose "real name" was said to be Mainstream Rosenfeld -- had engineered the disaster at Pearl David Lotto Harbor to save Europe's Jews by getting America University of Massachusetts and Private Practice into the war against Hitler. In the "normally para- noid" one, the Japanese -- an evil, sneaky people -- This essay will briefly review three recent had deceived the United States by mouthing peace- books on the subject of paranoia and conspiracy ful intentions while preparing and launching sur- theories in contemporary thought: George Marcus’ prise attacks. Japanese treachery accounted for edited collection, Paranoia Within Reason: A their victories. Casebook on Conspiracy as Explanation (1999), The thesis that Roosevelt provoked Japan's Nancy Schultz’s edited collection, Fear Itself: Ene- attack, seeking an incident to use in manipulating mies Real and Imagined in American Culture his unwilling nation into the war against Germany, (1999), and Timothy Melley’s Empire of Conspir- has been dismissed for 60 years as a conspiracy acy: The Culture of Paranoia in Postwar America theory. To many people, it has been unthinkable (2000). None of the books is overtly psychohis- that he -- or any President -- would do such a thing. torical but they do address topics and questions Unthinkability is a mark of denial. The world's which are central to the concerns of psychohistori- history of wars contains many such provocations ans. What I will do is look at the explanations sug- but, by customary bias, conspiracies are what other gested by some of the authors represented in these nations engage in, not our own. Most people in the books and then try to expand some of these expla- United States have only a dim awareness of prece- nations from a psychohistorical perspective. dents in their own history. Melley’s Empire of Conspiracy presents In history, all things considered "unthink- the thesis that since World War II there has been a able" -- in the sense of repugnant -- have happened. boom in conspiratorial ways of viewing events in The denial in considering one's government's ac- Western thought and culture. He focuses mainly tions unthinkable probably comes from children's on novelists and social critics. He argues that the problems with deception and manipulation by the of William Burroughs, Joseph Heller, Nor- people they most need to trust -- their caretakers. man Mailer, , Kurt Vonnegut, The problems persist into adulthood, fostering bi- Ken Kesey, Joan Didion, Margaret Atwood, and ases. People who adapt by a hostile-fearful orien- , among others, all share an essen- tation toward their caretakers may generalize it to tially paranoid view of the world. By this he authorities and see government conspiracies where means that these novels are populated by charac- there are none. People who learn scapegoating ters who are the victims of external forces which may see a conspiracy by an ethnic or other group are both beyond their control and full understand- when things go wrong. People who adapt by ex- ing. He does not address the more overtly con- tending credulity to their caretakers may deny con- spiratorial fiction such as The Turner Diaries Page 116 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000

(1978), or the literature on UFOs, alien abduction, establishment of the national security state in the or . [Editor's Note: See "A Por- United States, as key historical events which have trait of the Conspiratorial and Revenge Fantasies," shaped the creation and acceptance of paranoid and p. 138, for a discussion of The Turner Diaries.] conspiratorial consciousness in the post-World In the area of social criticism Melley dis- War II period. cusses various important books that have nourished Knight cites Frederic Jameson’s aphorism conspiratorial and paranoid ways of understanding that "'conspiracy is the poor person’s cognitive the world, some of which include Norbert Wie- mapping in the postmodern age'" (p. 49). This is a ner’s Cybernetics (1948), David Riesman’s The good starting point from which to build a psycho- Lonely Crowd (1950), William Whyte's The Or- historical account of the phenomenon of the prolif- ganization Man (1956), Vance Packard’s The Hid- eration of “conspiracy consciousness.” [Editor's den Persuaders (1951), Herbert Marcuse’s One Note: See Peter Knight's new article in this issue, Dimensional Man (1964), Charles Reich’s The p. 106.] Greening of America (1970), and Michel Fou- As Freud has said, there is usually a kernel cault’s books of the 1970s and 1980s: Discipline of truth contained in even the wildest of delusions. and Punish (1977), The History of Sexuality, 3 If we attempt to explore conspiracy theories as a vols., (1978-1986), and Madness and Civilization, psychoanalyst would look at a dream, we would (1988). want to ask: What piece of truth is being expressed What all of these commentaries have in metaphorically by this way of viewing the world? common is that they share an awareness of the in- So, for example, theories about being manipulated dividual’s sense of loss of control over major as- and controlled by powerful external forces, be they pects of life. Melley calls this “agency panic” small gray aliens, ZOG (Zionist Occupational Gov- which he defines as “anxiety over the way tech- ernment), NWO (New World Order), or devil- nologies, social organizations, [chiefly government worshipping satanists, might be seen as a symbolic and corporate bureaucracies], and communication expression of the fact that we are being influenced systems have reduced human autonomy and by powerful external forces including multinational uniqueness” (p. 7). corporations and the governments that act as agents Corey Robin, one of the contributors in for them, to say nothing of WTO, IMF, and CIA. I Schultz’s Fear Itself, similarly focuses on what he am suggesting that using a psychohistorical calls a “near hysteria among intellectuals” over method, essentially a form of fantasy analysis of threats to and loss of the individual’s autonomy the content of any particular conspiracy theory, and freedom (p. 17). will give us the best understanding of the popular- ity of conspiracy consciousness. From a psychohistorical perspective the most interesting article in the Schultz collection is The analysis presented by Melley, Robin, by Peter Knight, a British academician who writes and others which views the expansion of conspir- on conspiracy culture, entitled A Plague of Para- acy consciousness as resulting from “agency noia: Theories of Conspiracy Theory Since the panic” or hysteria over fear of loss of autonomy is 1960’s. Using Hofstatder’s classic paper, "The fine as far as it goes, but psychohistory needs to Paranoid Style in American Politics," published in look deeper. Freedom and autonomy are threat- 1965, as a launching point, Knight argues that ened, but the crucial question is: What are the real much has changed since that time. Whereas Hof- sources of these threats and why is our anxiety stader could speak from a liberal, rationalist, and about them at such a high level at this time? mainstream position about the excesses of the In connection to the question of why now, right-wing lunatic fringe, Knight contends that this there seems to have been a qualitative shift in the mainstream consensus no longer exists. As he nature of the threat to our autonomy. Being sub- says: “No longer can the consumption of conspir- ject to the influence and control of powerful forces acy narratives be understood simply as evidence of that don’t particularly have our best interests at a paranoid mentality” (p. 28). In his view, conspir- heart is not a new phenomenon. But in times gone acy theories have become mainstream. by we mostly knew who the oppressors were and Knight, as well as George Marcus, anthro- what they were up to. Colonialism was pretty pologist and editor of Paranoia Within Reason, transparent. So was slavery, the exploitative ac- among others, has pointed to the Cold War and the tions of the robber barons, and the military goals of Nazi Germany. What is different now is the degree December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 117 of mystification which has become standard oper- conspiracy theories. "A conspiracy theory is the ating procedure. Advertising, public relations, mar- fear of a nonexistent conspiracy" (p. 21). This keting, spin, double-talk and doublethink have be- definition is counter-productive since it contradicts come far more prevalent than they have been in the the very definition of theory as a concept or formu- past. As so many of the novelists discussed by lation awaiting verification. Further, Pipes does Melley are fond of emphasizing, we are so often not restrict himself to describing theories that have puzzled about who, exactly, it is and how, exactly, been thoroughly discredited, such as anti-Semitic they are doing it to us. This is fertile ground for claims of a Jewish secret hegemony. He also dis- nurturing theories and beliefs that abolish the un- cusses theories whose truth claims cannot be so certainty and give us the answers. easily dismissed, such as the CIA's involvement in We seem to have a built-in affinity for the drug trafficking. This flaw undermines the politi- use of projective mechanisms. When we are anx- cal impact of the book. ious, disturbed, fearful, or guilty, we seem to move The other shortcoming in Pipes' work is easily into a search for something external on historical. It involves his thesis that global con- which to blame our discomfort. Thus, scapegoat- spiracy theories (theories that posit the existence of ing, moral panics, hysterias, and conspiracy theo- a secret group determined to take over the world) ries flourish. are a product of the modern period. Pipes asserts A full psychohistorical explanation in- that, prior to the late 18th century, conspiracy theo- volves looking at the influence of both history (the ries were predominately local in scope (p. 22). external) and the psyche (the internal). When a "One might say that just as the European philoso- particular form of conspiracy theory or hysteria phical tradition consists of a series of footnotes to captures the popular imagination it is most likely Plato, its tradition of world conspiracy theories because it resonates with both powerful internal consists of footnotes to the Enlightenment" (p. 66). anxieties and potent external realities. This assertion, which grounds the concept of a world conspiracy theory in the modern period, can- David Lotto, PhD, is a psychoanalyst/ not stand up to historical evidence, in particular the psychologist in private practice in Pittsfield, huge body of millenarian discourse that predates Massachusetts, as well as an adjunct professor at the 18th century, a body of work premised on the the University of Massachusetts. Dr. Lotto is an existence of a satanic plot for world domination. active member of the Psychohistory Forum and the Furthermore, in the period prior to the 18th century International Psychohistorical Association, who and prior to emerging concepts of nationalism, it is often writes about issues of war and peace, and not possible to claim outright that conspiracy theo- health care. He may be reached at ries are not global in their implications. .  What saves the book and testifies to its en- during value in the theory of conspiracism is the Historical Evolution of scholarship it offers. Although the basic assertions of this text impair its overall historical perspective, Conspiracy Theories in the West Pipes nonetheless succeeds in providing an excel- Marcus LiBrizzi lent close study of the evolution of conspiracy University of Maine at Machias theories in the West. He is sensitive to the cultural determinants of conspiracism, the factors that Review of Daniel Pipes, Conspiracy: How the shaped and informed this body of thought in differ- Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes ent geographical and cultural contexts. Particularly From. New York: Free Press, 1997. Paperback: valuable is his lucid survey of two traditions and ISBN 0684871114, 258 pages, $17.00. their merger -- "what began as two wholly discrete Conspiracy offers a compelling analysis sets of fears has gradually, irregularly, but steadily and in-depth survey of conspiracy theories since merged. Anti-semitic and anti- pho- the advent of the modern period in the 18th cen- bias began an unrelated phenomena with different tury. The book, however, operates under two as- appeals; over time they became ever more simi- sertions that distort its overall political impact and lar" (p. 141). historical perspective. Another valuable dimension to Pipes' work The first shortcoming of the book is foun- is the detailed exploration of what he calls the dational, deriving from Pipes' very definition of "distinct patterns of conspiracism" (p. 38). Typical Page 118 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000 structures include a predilection for the obscure, contain “a critique of the contemporary social or- the reluctance to divulge sources, and the tendency der [and] assume the coming end of a moment to overwhelm the reader with a flood of sources cursed by secret power and a … new beginning and references (p. 41). Other distinct patterns in- where secrecy vanishes and power is transparent clude a basic irony or inversion, in which apparent and utilized by good people for the good of all.” friends are really enemies, and apparent enemies Unfortunately, the theories fail to indicate “how to are secretly friends. These patterns provide more move from the end of the uncovered plot to the than the means of labeling spurious from credible beginning of a political movement” (Mark Fenster, arguments -- although on this count alone Pipes' Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in work is useful. These patterns provide insight into American Culture, 1999, pp. 225-226). the discursive structures of conspiracism and the Conspiracy theories are theories of power, epistemology they support. Out of the format of of the ruling individuals’ power that controls prewritten scenarios derive predictable ways of “virtually all aspects of social life, politics and eco- perceiving the world. nomics” (Conspiracy Theories, p. xiv). Postindus- So while his political impact and historical trial developments have had different benefits or perspective are disabled by his larger assertions, detriments for different groups of people and, Pipes works well on the level of the close reading therefore, different influences on their perception and the fine-grained historical analysis. On this of the increase in technical autonomy relative to level, his work advances the study of conspiracy their personal autonomy and instrumentality. theories and is recommended reading. Doubts “about how knowledge is produced and Marcus LiBrizzi, PhD, is Assistant about the authority of those who produce it” add to Professor of English at the University of Maine at the sense of being manipulated (Empire, p.10). Machias, where he specializes in cultural studies Conspiracy theories reflect that insecurity resulting and the development of political culture through from the simultaneously diminishing personal discursive media. He is a co-author of Maine agency and increasing social controls. They are an Politics and Government (1992). He may be expression of the anxiety Melley calls “agency reached at .  panic” (Empire, p. 1). Melley distinguishes the structural controls vested in governmental organizations and corpo- The Paranoid Style: rate bureaucracies from intentional, “malevolent” Alive and Well in the control by the media “depth boys” (the motiva- tional researchers who employ psychologically- 21st Century inspired “subterranean operations,” for example, to Charlotte Kahn induce a “hypnoidal trance” in shoppers). The con- Private Practice junction of intentional and structural control may significantly diminish individual agency as a result Human instrumentality has always been of individuals having become “emasculated” sub- limited and those limits have always engendered jects of external agencies. The (unconscious) reali- anxiety. However, in the past, anxiety was allayed zation that the individual is a part of a larger sys- by the mythical powers attributed to human prayers tem with a life of its own and the “postmodern and good deeds intended to induce the benevolent transference” that sometimes attributes rationality intercession of a Supreme Being on behalf of an and motives to systems (Empire, p. 40) strengthen individual, clan, or tribe. In the present, the human the perception of having become victims of outside sphere of action has been globalized and extended forces and experiencing exacerbated anxiety. Indi- beyond the illusion of remaining controllable. But viduals or groups may defensively develop con- despite the absence of an expectation of control spiracy theories. “Multiple, interlocking, heteroge- and independent functioning, the extant reality neous systems” that are relatively immutable causes at least apprehension, sometimes suspicion through outside influences are particularly and, in the extreme, paranoia. "subversive of individual agency" and replace the self-relating subject with a self-relating system Conspiracy theories are fears of non- (Jürgen Habermas quoted by Melley in Empire). existent conspiracies (Daniel Pipes, Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Alienated members of a mass society, who Comes From, 1997). Many conspiracy theories may also be estranged from themselves -- from December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 119 their unwanted or unknown (unconscious) parts -- by performing abortions, digress from the “right” may take flight into activism in extreme groups. path. These “politically disaffected and the culturally Since conspiracy theory is frequently unre- suspicious” are likely to subscribe to conspiracy lated to an actual conspiracy, much as a feared fan- theories. Pipes (Conspiracy, p. xii) supports this tasy is unrelated to factual reality, it is important to observation with a reference to Louis Farrakhan, delineate the differences. Pipes suggest some the representative of disaffected blacks, who main- guidelines for distinguishing conspiracy from con- tains that “Jewish ‘blood-suckers’ have success- spiracy theory (Conspiracy, p. 8). Conspiracy fully blocked black advancement” and who asserts theories are characterized by: complexity instead that Jewish participation on behalf of blacks in the of simplicity and parsimony; a “taste for the im- civil rights movement was “self-interested.” Pipes probable”; a reluctance to divulge information and laments that though “some conspiracy theorists are a reliance on forgeries; inconsistencies and filling among society’s otherwise most idealistic, accom- in gaps by “piling on” additional conspiracy theo- plished, sensible and friendly individuals,” they ries; beginning with conclusions and accepting are, in Walter Lacqueur’s words, "fighters of chi- supporting arguments indiscriminately while dis- mera and phantoms … who nurse inveterate malice missing contradictory evidence. Hence, … [and] use pernicious wiles and strata- “conspiracies are understood to be hermetically gems” (Conspiracy, p. xii). sealed … and virtually undetectable.” Members of fringe groups may resort to These characteristic ways of constructing activism not for reasons of alienation or estrange- and maintaining conspiracy theories are similar to ment, but in response to their fear of the monolithic the paranoid process in that both rely more on per- mass society that appears to usurp their traditional sonal needs than observable events. Richard Hof- sovereignty at the individual, local, and state lev- stadter defines the paranoid style as a “…central els. Feeling weak and disempowered, they wish to preconception [of] the existence of a vast, insidi- interfere with or topple the established powers. ous, preternaturally effective international con- Militia movements in the U.S. are an example of spiratorial network designed to perpetrate acts of such a dynamic. According to Kenneth Stern (A the most fiendish character” that its exponents be- Force Upon the Plain, 1996, pp. 246ff.), militias lieve to be the motive force in historical events are a social movement guided by a belief that the (Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in Ameri- government is ruled by incorrigible, evil, “financial can Politics and Other Essays, 1965, pp. 14). And and international” forces which must be “combated he defines fear of a possible conspiracy planned by with arms.” These conspiracy theorists experience activist subgroups in the society as "political para- themselves as vulnerable victims in need of a posse noia" (quoted in Conspiracy Theories, p. 3). The with “special rights and privileges” (Force, p. 246) conspiracy theories of the “New American Right,” to protect themselves and their rights. (Yet, they represented by Joseph McCarthy and Barry Gold- may themselves become part of a conspiracy when water, who feared Communist infiltrators, may ex- they “conspire” to create a “citizens army” to fight emplify political paranoia. the rise of the centralized one-world government they fear.) Characteristic of the paranoid style is to project and impute: the tendency to see difficulties The entitlement to a posse with special and conflicts in terms of external forces, not to ac- rights and privileges reveals the obverse of the in- knowledge personal inadequacies, and to displace feriority implied by the victim stance, namely the responsibility from the self to others. These ma- grandiosity that entitles them to take the law into neuvers preserve self-esteem and assurance of the their own hands, to take up arms -- justifiably and rightness and truth of one’s beliefs. An additional with impunity, of course! -- and defensively to feature of the paranoid syndrome is the grandiosity conspire aggression against the presumed conspira- that serves to deny and compensate for weakness torial aggressors. Individuals who suspect con- and to sustain the conviction of rightness (W.W. spiracies against individualism operating in the Meissner, The Paranoid Process, 1978, pp. 36ff.). society, banding together to form their own con- spiratorial organization, blur the lines between con- Suspicious guardedness and the practice of spiracy theorists and conspirators. A case in point assimilating reality data to the paranoid belief is the extreme right-to-life representatives who serve to protect the paranoid construction, its cer- conspire to kill the evil killers, the physicians who, tainty, consistency, and coherence. In both para- noid and conspiracy-theory dynamics, suspicious- Page 120 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000 ness motivates the attempts to “unearth the hidden “externalization and enactment of an [internal] ca- truth” by interpreting the obvious facts. The dan- tastrophe imposed on others” (Joseph H. Berke, et ger of interpreting and reinterpreting in order to al, eds., Even Paranoids Have Enemies: New Per- understand reality is that “reality” more and more spectives on Paranoia and Persecution, 1998, p. resembles a construct. "Fantastic conclusions are 2). In this case, the internal catastrophe may well argued out along factual lines" supported by the be a sense of inadequacy and an assault on self- coherence of the paranoid mentality, which is “if esteem in the face of another’s success. Construct- not wholly rational, at least intensely rationalis- ing a conspiracy theory that includes a denigration tic” (Paranoid Style, pp. 34 and 36). Both para- of the successful figure would both heap the catas- noia and conspiracy theories are based on convic- trophe on the other and restore the sense of worthi- tion and are not open to modification; evidence is ness in the “conspiracist” (Conspiracy, p. 26). used as corroboration; invalidating evidence is dis- In the end, “paranoia is no protection from missed or ignored, labeled irrelevant to the issue. persecution, nor is persecution immunization This is in contrast to vigilance, a stance based in against paranoia” (Even Paranoids, p. 1), because possibility, probability, and theory rather than cer- Golda Meir was right: “Even paranoids have ene- tainty. mies.” The rigidity and paranoid aspects of con- Charlotte Kahn, EdD, is a psychoanalyst spiracy theories, expressed in social terms as big- and family therapist in private practice in otry, prejudice, and hate, can easily translate into Manhattan and in Englewood, NJ. She has held violence. Having imputed conflicts, difficulties, tenured college and university faculty and weakness to others, passionate dislike of or appointments and has taught at several hostility toward those individuals or groups pur- psychoanalytic training institutes. She is the ported to harbor the unacceptable thoughts or im- author of numerous articles, has co-edited (with pulses comes easily. It is a small step from there to Paul H. Elovitz) Immigrant Experiences: Personal conspire to disempower, even violently to elimi- Narrative and Psychological Analysis (1997) and nate them. Political extremists are vulnerable to (with Judith S. Kestenberg) Children Surviving exhortations to act out their violent tendencies, be- Persecution: An International Study of Trauma cause unlike working politicians, paranoid leaders and Healing (1998). Her most recent book is Ten do not mediate or compromise; “a paranoid leader Years of German Unification: One State, Two is a militant leader” (Paranoid Style, p.31) who Peoples (2000). She may be contacted at focuses on the enemy to mobilize his group’s inner .  resources and maintain its purposiveness (Para- noid Process, p. 805). Why are conspiracy theories so preoccu- The Mutilation of the Herms pied with Jews, Israel, and Freemasons, as well as and the Britons and Americans, asks Pipes (Conspiracy, p. 151). He answers that “Ironically, high ideals Profanation of the Mysteries: make a people or state into a special target of con- An Athenian Conspiracy Theory spiracies,” and “paranoid fantasies” can be aroused by idealistic establishments. Thus, “anti-Semitism Robert Rousselle is a distorted testimony to the achievements of Independent Scholar Jews” (p. 153), to whom some conspiracy theorists ascribe the Industrial Revolution and the control of Allegations of conspiracies tell us more money in capitalism. Similarly, successful Free- about those who believe in their existence than masons, and the United States as well as the United they do about the presumed conspirators. Upon Kingdom, have become the targets of those less close inspection the mere presence of an actual able to deal with modernity. Success is envied and conspiracy can be difficult to identify, much less feared, and unconsciously the idealized figure any of its members. As historians, and students of arouses hate because it is experienced as depriving. human motivation, we are more interested in why a In this regard, one can speculate that the forged group believed in the existence of a conspiracy at a Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion are the particular time, how it coped with this externalization of unconscious, murderous fanta- “knowledge,” and the long-term consequences of sies of vengeful individuals, and persecution the its actions. December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 121

A few weeks prior to the sailing of the named 42 prominent aristocrats who happened to Athenian fleet to Sicily in 415 B.C.E., to conquer be opponents of the democracy. They were ar- Syracuse, an unknown party mutilated most of the rested and detained, until someone pointed out that herms in Athens. A herm was a four cornered pillar the herms were mutilated on a moonless night. topped by a male bust, with an enormous phallus Those implicated were released and Diokleides set off at an angle. They marked roads and bor- himself was executed (Andokides, De Mysteriis, ders, and would be found outside homes and tem- 37-42, 65-66). ples. They served as symbols of power and protec- An aristocratic woman named Alkibiades tion of those within. Those who have reviewed the and several of his close associates as participants in ethological literature have remarked on the similar- the drunken mocking of the Mysteries (Andokides, ity in function to the males of a species of monkey De Mysteriis, 16). Alkibiades’ enemies engineered who sit at the borders of the group’s territory, fac- his recall from the fleet, dispatching a ship to bring ing outside with erect phalli, exhibiting their potent him back to stand trial. Alkibiades managed to masculinity to ward off would-be trespassers. Al- elude them, left the fleet, and joined Athens’ oppo- though Thukydides only mentions the mutilation of nent in the war, Sparta. the faces of the herms, a chance remark in Aristo- phanes indicates that the phalli were chopped off Prosopographical analysis breaks down (Thukydides, 6.27.1; Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 1094). those implicated in the two sacrilegious acts into two main groups. Those alleged to have mutilated Considering this to be a bad omen for the the herms were aristocrats, members of small clubs expedition, the Athenians began an investigation. or associations of anti-democratic, pro-oligarchic Suggestions that a group of young men drunk with men. The Athenian fleet was the main support of wine had committed the act, or that it was done by the democracy, and it was now hundreds of miles the Corinthians (Corinth as mother-city of Syra- away, about to lay siege to Syracuse. One hundred cuse was her ally), were ignored (Plutarch, Athenian ships, thousands of Athenian seamen and Alkibiades, 18.3-4). Most Athenians believed it hoplites, were now unable to protect her from her was the result of a conspiracy, sunomosia, literally internal enemies. In the eyes of the Athenian de- a group leagued together by an oath, which sought mocrats, the mutilation of the herms, the chopping to overthrow the democracy. off of the phalli, was a visible, symbolic attack on Rumors of other sacrileges quickly spread, Athens when she was at her most vulnerable. The and soon several resident aliens and slaves reported perception that this reflected a conspiracy of the to the Athenian officials that a group of drunken oligarchs, while the young, potent military force of young men had mocked the Eleusinian Mysteries, Athens was far away, exacerbated their reaction. one of the most sacred and, to the non-initiate, se- The alleged profaners of the Mysteries be- cret rites in Athens. Implicated in this deed were long to a different group. Though an aristocrat, Alkibiades and several of his close friends, acting Alkibiades had been popular among the Athenian as High Priest, Herald, and Torch Bearer. Ambi- populace and appeared to be a friend of the democ- tious, flamboyant, and of questionable moral char- racy. This earned him the jealousy of the other acter, but a daring and at times brilliant general, democratic leaders, who believed he kept them Alkibiades was one of the most prominent men in from achieving the highest political office. How- Athens. Born into the aristocracy, he was the fa- ever, the recall of Alkibiades required the approval vorite of many of the Athenian common people. of the assembly, and Thukydides notes that the He was also the main proponent of the expedition Athenian populace had become hostile toward him to Syracuse and one of its three generals. Although (Thukydides, 6.61.1). The Athenians apparently he demanded an immediate trial before the fleet feared that Alkibiades, with the help of the fleet, sailed, his enemies, aware of his popularity with might try to become tyrant of Athens if he con- the troops, postponed his trial until the expedition quered Sicily. returned. The political foes of a democracy in an- The investigation into both acts of sacrilege cient Greece were two, oligarchy and tyranny. At continued after the fleet sailed. Denunciations were a vulnerable moment, the Athenians reacted followed by arrests and trials, with those convicted strongly against what appeared to be an oligarchic facing execution and confiscation of their property. conspiracy, the mutilation of the many, the herms, Diokleides alleged seeing 300 conspirators by by the few. They were also quick to believe that moonlight the night the herms were mutilated, and there was a conspiracy to make Alkibiades tyrant Page 122 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000 of Athens, although mimicry of the Mysteries or Nemine contra dicente: other religious rites was not unheard of at other times in sophisticated Athens, where sophists regu- The Sponsors of the larly attacked or criticized the traditional religion. Popish Plot, 1678-1681 The profanation of the Mysteries was certainly not a threat to the democracy, and the mutilation of the Francis Steen herms, though probably an attempt to prevent the University of California, Santa Barbara Sicilian expedition by an evil omen, was certainly and not an attempt to overthrow the democracy. Tord Østberg The result of their prosecution of the University of Oslo, Norway “conspirators” had grave consequences for Athens. Andrew Marvell's An Account of the It deprived her of her most charismatic, daring, and Growth of Popery, and Arbitrary Government in successful leader when Alkibiades fled to Sparta. England appeared in the fall of 1677. It bore the The Athenian fleet, as well as the relief force sent imprint Amsterdam, beyond the reach of the cen- in 413, was destroyed in Sicily, with a devastating sors; in fact, it was printed in London. It pro- loss of manpower for Athens. Most of those claimed: killed, captured, or enslaved were the main support of the democracy. Perhaps as a result of the suspi- There has now for divers Years a cion of an oligarchic conspiracy, the oligarchs de- Design been carried on, to change the posed the democracy in 411 and set up the Council Lawful Government of England into an of 400, which ruled Athens until 410. Soon after, Absolute Tyranny, and to Convert the Alkibiades returned from exile to the democratic Established Protestant Religion into down- fleet at Samos, and after the victory at Cyzicus in right Popery: than both which, nothing can 410 the democracy was restored and Alkibiades the be more Destructive or contrary to the exile was welcomed back to Athens in 407. Interest and Happiness, to the Constitution Alkibiades was exiled again a year later. Athens and Being of the King and Kingdom. soon lost the war and surrendered in 404 to Sparta, By inspiring a fear of change and a loss of who immediately installed a narrow oligarchy, the rights, Marvell appealed effectively to a political “Thirty Tyrants,” who remained in power until the opposition that was fragmented and demoralized. democratic restoration 17 months later. During the previous decades, the Puritan dissenters Thus we see that the baseless fears of a had seized power and executed the king, only to conspiracy had far reaching consequences for Ath- see their Commonwealth crumble in an intermina- ens, as she engaged in self-destructive behavior ble civil war. The absurd had come to pass: that resulted in the deaths of thousands of seamen Charles II had been invited to rule over them, a and hoplites, the exile of her most successful gen- free people. His sheer presence succeeded in es- eral, the institution of a brief oligarchic rule a few tablishing a measure of stability, yet a deep-seated years later, and the eventual loss of a long and ambivalence remained, rooted in the complex psy- costly war that she should otherwise have won. chological function of the king. Robert Rousselle, PhD, an ancient The king appears to have functioned as a historian and independent scholar, is a regular receptor of the public’s unresolved fantasies of ful- contributor to this publication.  filled and frustrated desires, of parental love and control. The monarchy amounted to a theatrical enactment of Hobbes' natural man: in the figure of See Calls for Papers the king, the populace vicariously realized that in- dividual whose absolute and infinite desires would on pages 164 & 165: never be denied. At the same time, as a divinely PsychoGeography sanctioned father figure, he protected an infantil- ized populace, commanding obedience and love. Psychobiography of Ralph Nader Yet these roles, even as they promoted peace, in- evitably caused public frustration at the loss of in- Psychological Uses of Law dividual agency and self-determination. The power Crime and Punishment bestowed on the king inspired at once an almost religious adoration and intense feelings of hostility December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 123 and resentment. Whereas the positive feelings that they are fully satisfied by the Proofs could easily be indulged, rage could not safely be they have heard, That there now is, and for unleashed at the king himself. The psychological divers Years last past hath been, a Horrid cost and the fresh memories of the civil wars pre- and Treasonable Plot and Conspiracy, vented an open rebellion. The situation called for a Contrived and Carried on by those of the suitably designed displacement object. Popish Religion, for the Murthering of His Reality provided a potent backdrop for the Majesties sacred Person, and for Subverting imagination. While the political elites struggled to the Protestant Religion, and the Antient and contain the king's power, Charles himself strove to well established Governement of this enlarge it. At the Restoration in 1660, he had been Kingdom. given a generous allowance and powers fit for a The juxtaposition of the murder and sa- king; however, for his continued supply of both he credness of the king demonstrates the closeness of remained humiliatingly dependent on Parliament. the two components in people’s minds and may France, an unrivalled Catholic and absolutist mon- indicate the satisfaction of unresolved ambivalent archy, became his secret ally. In a private treaty drives in making the two concepts approach each with Louis XIV in 1670, he agreed to turn his back other. Yet this closeness of conflicting components on the Protestant Triple Alliance, to keep England was tolerable only in a fantasy where the aggres- out of France's territorial wars, and to declare him- sive inclination was displaced onto an approved self Catholic as soon as "the state of his country's enemy. It is remarkable that Parliament acted on affairs permit." In return he got two million livres the fantasies of the Popish Plot nemine contra and the promise of 6000 French troops to help dicente, without anyone speaking up against it. quell any resistance. It was, if you like, a plot; the One suspects that the capacity to engage in an in- king was prudent enough never to put it into ac- tellectual debate, potentially facilitating the estab- tion. While Parliament was kept in the dark, much lishment of differentiated and conflicting views, was guessed and more suspected. These events and was disturbed by the intensity of this mobilized their consequences eroded vital trust between the ambivalence. sovereign and his people, preparing the ground for The Popish Plot attained a genuine political group fantasies of hidden conspiracies. significance. Its success as a conspiracy theory can The budding conflict between the king and be traced to an explosive mixture of entrenched Parliament took several years to unfold. Under conflict, political opportunism, and displaced rage. Danby's ministry, England allied again with Prot- Protestants cherished the memories of the Marian estant Holland against Catholic France. In early burnings, the papacy's repeated attempts to deprive 1678, Parliament passed a bill financing the war, Elizabeth of her crown, the infamous Gunpowder only to discover that Charles II had used the occa- Plot, and the "popish conspiracy" of the early sion to negotiate another massive bribe for himself 1640s. While dissenters and other radicals resented from the French king to stay neutral. Matters came their lack of political power, the collapse of the to a head; in a symbolic substitution, Danby was Commonwealth had eroded their confidence as impeached, as nobody dared to touch the king. well as their credibility as a political force. They However, the main force of the putative aggressive lacked the courage and conviction to unseat the reaction to the king’s deceit was shifted towards king; their frustrations could more safely be chan- his brother and heir, the openly Catholic James, neled into "anti-Popery." The aggressive compo- Duke of York. As if to order, an intricately con- nent of their ambivalence provides intensity to the ceived popish conspiracy, fabricated out of whole denigration of the Catholics as receptors of their cloth by Titus Oates and Israel Tong, was dished displaced projective rage. The imagined covert up to the public imagination and presented in all threat of a common enemy provided an opportunity solemnity to Parliament. Oates had spent time at for uniting the various oppositional groups into a the Catholic seminary at St. Omer and claimed to strong and single-minded political movement. have uncovered a vast scheme involving the pope The person who most clearly realized the to assassinate Charles II and crown his brother. On potential of anti-Catholicism to form a political October 31, 1678, the following resolution was base was Anthony Ashley Cooper, First Earl of passed: Shaftesbury, the de facto leader of the so-called Resolved, Nemine contra dicente Country party, an informal faction. Alarmed by the [unanimously], That this House doth declare, prospect of a Catholic king modeled on Louis XIV, Page 124 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000

Shaftesbury championed the story of the Popish of solidarity and a safe outlet for hatred. These Plot to spur Parliament into proposing a bill to ex- emotions were cultivated by crafty politicians and clude the Duke of York from the succession. put to effective short-term use, propelling Shaftes- Charles II reacted in anger, dissolved Parliament, bury and the Whigs into political leadership. and called for re-elections. To the dismay of the The unanimous intensity of the initial reac- “Abhorrers” loyal to the Court, the “Petitioners” of tion to the construed conspiracy might be ex- the Country faction returned with an increased plained with reference to the expediency with popular mandate. "If we do not something relating which it seemed to solve an array of political and to the Succession," Lord Russell defiantly declared psychological knots. Over the next few years, how- in April of 1679, "we must resolve, when we have ever, the excesses of the Popish Plot discredited a Prince of the popish Religion, to be Papists, or their cause. The ensuing collapse of the Whig pro- burn. And I will do neither." Shaftesbury was ap- test seems to reflect that the paranoid fantasy fa- pointed Lord President of the Privy Council and cilitating the outburst of constrained tensions failed held daily meetings with Oates and vigorously pur- to serve as a framework for integrating these ener- sued the allegations. gies into a functional political organization. The Shaftesbury and the other Petitioners -- Whigs’ reliance on false evidence exposed them in soon nicknamed "Whigs" -- ruthlessly used the turn to perjury and political murders. By the end mobilization of the masses to put pressure on the of 1683, opposition to Charles had been success- king and the court. In 1679 and again in 1680, they fully driven underground and abroad. staged Pope-burning processions attended by tens Francis Steen is a graduate student in of thousands of people. In private, they were con- English at the University of California at Santa vinced Charles himself was part of the plot to re- Barbara, specializing in the revolution in print turn England to Catholicism. In public, the collec- entertainment during the Restoration and the 18th tive fantasy of a Popish Plot successfully turned century. He may be reached at James and his fellow Catholics into targets of dis- . Tord Østberg, MD, is a placed rage. The results were murderous: juries master's student in the history of ideas at the convicted innocent men and women on fabricated University of Oslo in Norway, looking into evidence. On the strength of suborned accusations, psychological aspects of the relationship between some 35 prominent Catholics were executed as Socrates and Alcibiades. He also works as a traitors to the kingdom; many more were harassed general practitioner in Oslo. He may be reached and imprisoned. at .  In August of 1680, Tong's son testified be- fore the Privy Council that his father and Oates had invented the conspiracy and forged some of the A Sceptic’s Notes on letters to substantiate it. "No serious historian now Presidential Assassination questions that the Popish Plot was manufac- tured" (Richard L. Greaves, Secrets of the King- Conspiracy Theories dom, 1992, p. 5). Melvin Kalfus The paranoid conviction that high-ranking Psychohistory Forum Research Associate European and English Catholics were plotting to kill Charles II and make way for his brother James In the spring of 1992, I conducted a survey became politically significant for several interact- for the International Psychohistorical Association ing reasons. Despite the relief and public acclaim (IPA) newsletter in which I included some ques- that greeted the Restoration of the monarchy in tions about the various theories related to the assas- 1660, deep-seated hostility towards the symbolic sination of President Kennedy. These questions role of the king persisted; the political situation were prompted by the controversy surrounding the required its containment. During the Exclusion recent release of the movie JFK by Oliver Stone, a Crisis of 1678-1681, the potential strain of co- film that had all the earmarks of feeding a rip- existing feelings of adoration and resentment was roaring American group fantasy. Eight years later, I partly resolved by establishing an approved recep- am still astonished by the fact that far more many tor of displaced rage that would allow the position members shared in the group fantasy as presented of the king to remain inviolate. The hysteria of the by JFK rather than tried to analyze it (e.g., Popish Plot provided at once a conspicuous display "Unworked-through grief creates conspiracy theo- December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 125 ries"). More than 60% of the respondents believed Radicals were said to have acted on behalf of there was a conspiracy to assassinate President Ken- industrialists, who would benefit from nedy -- most of them opting for the most extreme Republican supremacy over a weakened Democ- forms of conspiracy involving the CIA, FBI, Lyn- ratic party. (Jim Bishop’s very popular 1955 book, don Johnson, , etc. It was the first The Day Lincoln Was Shot, suggested that the War time that I realized that I was in the minority on this Department, under Stanton, was well aware of issue not only among my fellow countrymen, but Booth and his fellow plotters but did not interfere also within the psychohistorical community. because the assassination of Lincoln would leave My own experience with conspiracy theo- the North thirsting for revenge and in full support ries in relation to the assassination of Presidents of military occupation of the South.) Over the next dates back to my early teens. I was 14 when FDR two decades, as the nation was rocked by the assas- died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage while sit- sinations of JFK, Martin Luther King, Jr., and ting for an oil portrait in the “Little White House” Robert Kennedy, I kept encountering various ver- at Warm Springs, Georgia. Only a few days later, I sions of the Stanton-Radical Republican conspir- began to hear dark rumors that FDR had been poi- acy theory in magazine and newspaper articles. By soned by the portrait artist -- alleged to be a Com- the end of the 1970s, this thesis was the subject of munist agent. The artist’s Russian surname, a movie called The Lincoln Conspiracy -- and "Shoumatoff," was apparently the only evidence similar “documentaries” -- that continue to turn up for this theory, and I cannot remember what rea- on television to this day. sons, if any, were given for the alleged assassina- It was not until I encountered William tion or for the massive cover-up that would have Hanchett’s article on this subject that I understood been involved. Far more vivid in my mind was a the provenance of the Stanton-Radical Republican similar, and far more grandiose theory, that circu- “grand conspiracy” theories. (See William lated a few months later and was reported by one Hanchett, “The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies: The of my aunts. According to this theory, Shoumatoff, Assassination in History and Historiography,” in still the culprit, was a Nazi sympathizer and part of Gabor S. Boritt, ed., The Historian’s Lincoln: a conspiracy (at the highest levels of the govern- Pseudohistory, Psychohistory, and History, 1988, ment, up to and including Harry Truman!) that not pp. 315-338.) According to Hanchett, the Stanton- only assassinated FDR but also spirited Adolph Radical Republican theory originated with a Chi- Hitler out of his Berlin bunker in the final days of cago businessman named Otto Eisenschiml, who the war and transported him to a magnificent villa published his book, Why Was Lincoln Murdered?, atop a mountain in Argentina. My aunt assured us in 1937. Hanchett credits Eisenschiml with engag- that she knew someone who had actually seen Hit- ing “in the most thorough and imaginative search ler driving in a motorcar in Buenos Aires! for assassination materials yet undertaken.” The I knew better than to argue with my aunt, range of his research included War Department but in the years ahead, I did allow myself to be files, private collections of papers, newspaper and drawn into debates about the assassination of Abra- magazine articles, memoirs, government docu- ham Lincoln. Now it was hardly a secret that there ments, etc. Hanchett argues that no fair-minded was a real conspiracy involved. However, conspir- person “could possibly maintain that this pattern [a acy buffs (sometimes but not always also Civil Stanton-Radical Republican conspiracy] emerged War or Lincoln buffs) assailed the consensus histo- from the evidence.” In fact, Hanchett notes, this rian position that the assassination was a “simple pattern was “imposed upon the evidence, which conspiracy” involving John Wilkes Booth and a was stretched and twisted to establish the pat- small band of ne’er-do-well followers. The truth, tern” (p. 332). Hanchett then proceeds to demon- they argued, was that only Lincoln was the target strate the way in which Eisenschimml manipulated of the real conspiracy plotters -- plotters who had his arguments to make his unsupported specula- used Booth and his friends as mere pawns. Who tions seem like scientifically-proven facts. Clearly, were these backstage plotters? None other than one could make a similar comment about a great Edwin M. Stanton and the Radical Republicans. many of the books that have been produced about Their motivation, it was claimed, was that Lincoln the assassination of JFK. was far too conciliatory with the South and was In his excellent commentary upon the willing to bring the secessionists back into the Un- Hanchett article (The Historian's Lincoln, pp. 339- ion with full political rights. In some versions, the 343), the Civil War historian, James R. McPherson Page 126 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000 lists a dozen “grand conspiracy” theories that had tria and Italy had been assassinated by anarchists. been floated in the century following Lincoln’s Thus, when McKinley’s death touched off a wave death. The earliest maintained that Confederate of arrests and persecutions of American anarchists, and/or Copperhead (Northern sympathizers with it was what we might think of as “reality-based the Confederate cause) leadership instigated the paranoia.” Even though the clearly unstable Czol- plot and aided in Booth’s flight. Some theories gosz had been turned away by the anarchist groups even had a role for Andrew Johnson in this evil he had tried to join, one could hardly blame the conspiracy. Other theories attributed the plot to a average American for subscribing to a group fan- Catholic conspiracy, or “a consortium of [Jewish] tasy of a nation under anarchist attack. A similar international bankers headed by the Rothschilds,” case could be made for the theory that held Con- or Lincoln’s own Secret Service. Indeed, as federate leaders responsible for Lincoln’s death, or McPherson points out, the movie mentioned earlier Castro’s Cuba for Kennedy’s. These, too, could be -- The Lincoln Conspiracy -- manages “without described as “reality-based paranoia.” blushing to incorporate most of these theories into Why did the McKinley assassination never one superconspiracy interpretation” which includes escalate beyond that, into the sort of “grand con- both Northern and Southern political and business spiracy theory” that involved officials and agencies leaders. Again, similar critiques have been made of the U.S. government itself? The major reason, I about Oliver Stone’s JFK. think, lay in the personalities of the assassinated One thing that has intrigued me is the com- Presidents and the people who succeeded them. monalities of popular culture in the eras that first Though popular, McKinley was not in the least a gave rise to Lincoln, FDR, and JFK conspiracy charismatic or forceful presence in national life as theories. Each of these Presidents came to power were Lincoln, FDR, and Kennedy. Furthermore, in a period of great national crisis during which he was the only one of the four who was succeeded there were deep, emotionally-loaded divisions in office by someone who was extremely charis- within the American populace -- divisions that matic, already well-known and greatly admired by made each side believe the other was driven by the most Americans -- Theodore Roosevelt. TR’s most sinister of motives. Each in his own way was powerfully attractive personality stands in stark a larger-than-life charismatic figure that was either contrast with Andrew Johnson, Harry Truman, and greatly loved or virulently despised by opposing Lyndon Johnson -- none of whom were considered segments of the society. Further, in each case the to be the equal of the men they replaced. Thus, “grand conspiracy theory” involved U.S. govern- Teddy Roosevelt was able to step immediately into mental leaders and agencies as well as an alleged the role of delegate and allay national anxieties -- massive cover-up. In each case also, there was at establishing manic rather than depressive group hand a representative of a power hostile to the U.S. fantasies. Coinciding with the turn of the century -- Booth as a Southern sympathizer, Shoumatoff as and a series of international expositions celebrating a “Nazi agent,” and Oswald as a Castro sympa- America’s growing power and the promise of the thizer -- someone that could be employed as a future, TR’s Presidency quickly obliterated the pawn or a patsy. memory of McKinley and brought national mourn- I am not aware of similar grand conspiracy ing to a speedy conclusion. theories being floated after the assassination of the It is my assumption that conspiracy theo- very popular William McKinley in 1901 by Leon ries -- whether reality-based or not -- are formed in Czolgosz, a self-described anarchist -- an assassi- the paranoid position -- for some people a perma- nation that otherwise meets many of the above cri- nent residing place, for others a place we regress to teria. This was during a period of extended social under the impact of terrible anxieties. The belief in turmoil -- labor violence, vast tides of immigrants evil figures who plot monstrous actions against us from Eastern and Southern Europe, the Populist originates in our infancy -- where the monsters that movement, and grinding poverty in urban slums the child fears are the split-off “bad” parts of its and subsistence farms. Anarchists had already parents, leaving it free to love and idealize the been blamed for the Haymarket Square bombing in “good” parents -- a tendency many of us carry into 1886. Emma Goldman’s partner and lover, Alex- adult life. ander Berkman, had attempted to assassinate What we have done with our parents, we Henry Clay Frick in the midst of the Homestead do with authority figures. To the degree he/she Steel strike in 1892. Moreover, monarchs in Aus- offers us group fantasies that allay our anxieties December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 127 and fears, and offer a vent for our suppressed rage, theme section.  the parent/authority figure/delegate is idealized. To the degree that he/she fails to do so (by disagreeing with our worldview/socio-political attitudes) the Assassination, Repression, leader/delegate can become the target of our para- And Subversion: noid fantasies. We can either idealize such figures or demonize them. Grist for the Conspiracy Mills The amazing thing about the “grand con- Terrence Ripmaster spiracy theories” relative to Presidential assassina- William Paterson University tion is that they fulfill both needs. We are enabled to idealize the assassinated “good father” (Lincoln, Many factors contribute to the belief in and FDR, JFK) and demonize the unlovable surviving fostering of conspiracy theories. Prevalent among “bad father” (Stanton and Johnson, Truman, and those factors are assassination, the use of repres- LBJ). How comforting. No wonder even we scep- sion, and subversion. Assassinations trigger inter- tics allow ourselves a recreational wallowing in the est, repression helps to foster myth, and subversion wildest of conspiracy theories -- especially when raises questions. they are offered up by talented filmmakers. Assassinations have played an important The fact is that human life is fragile and part in generating conspiracy theories. John Wilkes contingent, and it unfolds in a messy tangle of Booth, a well-known actor aroused by the prospect strange coincidences and staggering improbabili- of votes for blacks, shot and killed President Abra- ties. How we hate to deal with the chaotic implica- ham Lincoln in 1865. In 1881, Charles Jules tions of all this. Yet Occam’s Razor should still be Guiteau, a disappointed office seeker, shot and our guide. The more layers of complexity one killed President James Garfield. adds to a conspiratorial explanation of life’s messy, In 1901, Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist, shot sometimes tragic events, the more likely it is that and killed President William McKinley. A national the theory is false -- the historic equivalents of all hysteria about anarchists resulted. They were a the complicated mathematical convolutions that small and disorganized group and posed no threat medieval astronomers went through to make their to the nation's security. Yet local and federal po- observations conform to the Aristotelian universe, lice hunted down and convicted people, many of with the earth at its center. No matter how satisfy- who had nothing to do with the anarchists. (These ing it would be to believe so, the earth does not illegal actions ultimately resulted in the creation of stand at the center of the universe and we do not the American Civil Liberties Union.) stand in the center of enormous conspiracies, with During the election of 1912, former Presi- casts of thousands, covering up the “true facts” in dent and third-party candidate Theodore Roosevelt Presidential assassinations from Lincoln to JFK. was shot and wounded during a campaign speech. Melvin Kalfus, PhD, recently retired from There were unsuccessful assassination attempts on teaching and lecturing on history and Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and psychohistory, has contributed numerous articles Gerald Ford. Alabama Governor and third-party and essays to Clio’s Psyche and the Journal of candidate George Wallace and President Ronald Psychohistory. This article combines three of his Reagan were shot and wounded in 1972 and 1982, on-going interests: the Civil War, politics in respectively. America, and the impact of film on our national On November 22, 1963, President John psyche. Kalfus served as Guest Co-Editor (with Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas, Texas. Associate Editor, Bob Lentz) of this issue's Within two hours of his death, J. Edgar Hoover, "Psychology of Conspiracy Theories" special director of the FBI, made a public statement that the assassin was Lee Harvey Oswald. The conspir- acy theories that followed this assassination out- Next Psychohistory Forum Meeting number all others. Oswald was killed two days Saturday, January 27, 2001 later by Jack Ruby in the basement of the Dallas Jay Gonen, Mary Coleman, et al police headquarters, and this fueled even more "Role of Law in Society" theories. In the 37 years since that assassination, three federal investigations have been conducted of Page 128 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000 the assassination and hundreds of books written. gious and political ideologies. Nationalists and Whatever else can be said about Kennedy's imperialists torture and use chemicals to alter assassination, it was a political murder. Theories brains and bodies as well as murder their victims. about it were reflective of many phobias and fears However, just under the skin of even of the times. Because the Cold War was at its "democratic" nations, the inclination to suspect and height, the notion that Oswald was a Communist eliminate the "enemy" is a dark and often psy- was enough for what one author called a "rush to chotic force. Throughout American history, this judgment." The general public and mass media "control" feature has resulted in the systematic accepted, without any critical thought, the govern- elimination and degradation of Native Americans, ment's opinion that Oswald was the lone assassin. Yellow Peril fears, xenophobia of all sorts, and the Kennedy assassination critics, those who disagreed Red Scare. Other examples of the “control ” fea- with the lone assassin theory, came from all sides ture include the internment of Japanese-Americans of the political spectrum and blamed the CIA, the during World War II, FBI and CIA infiltration of Mafia, or anti-Castro Cubans. "radical" organizations, and the maintenance of the The term cover-up came into popular use at largest secret agency in the world, the National this time. Serious investigators into the Kennedy Security Agency. assassination did, in fact, discover cover-ups, and The modern nation state with its electronic much has been written about the CIA's and FBI's and global fingers in every pie and eye generates lack of honesty in providing the federal investiga- and sustains the conspiracy community. American tors with complete information about Oswald and intelligence agencies, and their associates in Latin other matters related to the assassination. America, tracked every step of Ernesto "Che" With the assassinations of Dr. Martin Lu- Guevara. He was hunted down and killed by the ther King, Jr., on April 4, 1968, and Senator Robert Bolivian military completely armed and supported Kennedy on June 5, 1968, the government again by the CIA. On a larger scale, the 1973 overthrow insisted on the lone assassin theory: James Earl of Salvadore Allende's government in Chile, by a Ray for King and Sirhan Sirhan for Kennedy. so-called "generals' coup," resulted in Allende's Concerned about these and other murders, such as death and the murder and torture of thousands of the deaths associated with the civil rights move- people. With the recent arrest of General Augusto ment and urban rioting, a national commission on Pinochet, the American-backed dictator of Chile the causes and prevention of violence published after the coup, evidence of subversion now sup- Assassination and Political Violence: A Staff Re- ports what was once simply considered to be a con- port of the National Commission on the Causes spiracy theory. It is no wonder, given what nation and Prevention of Violence (1970). What was im- states have done and are likely to continue to do, portant about this study was the revelation that that conspiracy theories are so popular and entic- America's history was riddled with political mur- ing. ders and violence. These include the murders of In his book, Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy town and state officials, race riots, union strikes, and Power in American Culture (1999), Mark Fen- company thug attacks, police violence, Ku Klux ster analyzes what he calls the "conspiracy com- Klan killings, attacks on ethnic groups, and even munity." He believes that conspiracy theories in canings and fistfights on the floor of Congress. modern America have resulted, in part, from a The mythology of a peaceful and orderly society deep cynicism about contemporary politics. This was shattered by this report. results, partially, from a century-and-a-half tradi- Any analysis of political murder must be tion of real and attempted political murders, cover- understood in the light of the modern national state up plots, and nefarious national security opera- whose essential purpose is order and control. The tions. This conspiracy community is wide-ranging, methods applied to maintain "national security" and includes Christian apocalyptic theories, white range from benign to brutal, depending on ideol- supremacist theories, and anti-One World theories, ogy and type of government. All individuals or which are promoted and exploited in novels, mov- groups not in sync with the nation state are suspect ies, and television programs. Listening to just one of subversion and must be watched, investigated, Rush Limbaugh radio program provides a daily list criticized, and, if necessary, jailed or eliminated. of shared conspiratorial narratives. They include: The most egregious example of this control ap- President Clinton and others are murderers, femi- pears today in nations dominated by dogmatic reli- nists are Nazis, environmentalists are ruining the December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 129 environment, affirmative action is a Communist tine claimed a singular connection to the one true plot, Janet Reno likes to kill Christians, the left- God. While Dr. Ani's 600-page tome may not be leaning media wants to take our guns away, and convincing to all, the fact of Europe’s domination public education creates stupid kids. of the world cannot be denied. Certainly, her book Given the sheer number of assassinations, has become a favorite of an African-centered intel- and the repressive and subversive techniques used lectual community with a penchant for believing by many nation states to conceal the truth about that "the Man" has conspired against people of assassinations and other theories of conspiracy, it color for centuries. is of little surprise that conspiracy theories enjoy While Ani's theories reflect a cultural he- the popularity they do. When questions arise, an- gemony, much of the most documented intrigue swers are desired. When the answers given do not came from more putative sources. There is ample satisfy the questioner, or are masked through a veil evidence of the American government's involve- of repression and/or subversion, a general distrust ment in various conspiracies against black Ameri- develops. It is out of this distrust that conspiracy cans. Clayborne Carson, author of Malcolm X: theories develop. The FBI File (1991), traces the counterintelligence Terence Ripmaster, PhD, is Emeritus schemes of former Federal Bureau of Investigation Professor of History, William Paterson University (FBI) Director J. Edger Hoover to targets such as in Wayne, New Jersey He may be contacted at Marcus Garvey and Asa Philip Randolph in the .  1920s. Even nonviolent hero Martin Luther King, Jr., was not spared Hoover's plots. David J. Gar- row, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning effort Bearing Conspiracies, Racism, and the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the South- ern Christian Leadership Conference (1986), re- Paranoia in the counts numerous FBI intrusions on the civil rights African-American Experience leader and his supporters. Henry Vance Davis As inner city after inner city went up in S. Virginia Gonsalves Domond and flames in the 1960s, black commentators from col- Tilahun Sineshaw umnists such as Carl Rowen to academics such as Ramapo College of New Jersey Professor Harold Cruse began to believe in the possibility of government counter offensives This article investigates social- against black militants. Time would often confirm psychological explanations for African-Americans' their suspicions. Mary Francis Berry in Black Re- tendency to subscribe to what some term conspir- sistance White Law: A History of Constitutional acy theories, i.e., "the white establishment is out to Racism in America (1994) reports that an FBI in- get us" attitude. Of additional concern are the im- formant, William O' Neal, gave floor plans for plications of such adherence for the new millen- Black Panther leader Fred Hampton's apartment to nium: How will leaders of tomorrow build the the FBI's COINTEL-PRO (Counter-intelligence community of communities, i.e., the meta- program). O’Neal also indicated when the Panther community, in the 21st century given the implica- leader and his followers would be most vulnerable. tions of a conspiracy discussion? We suggest that The Chicago police subsequently fired 83 shots the consideration of the possibility of conspiracy into the apartment, killing Hampton and fellow has an impact and legitimacy in the black commu- Panther Mark Clark, and wounding others. Hamp- nity that is of interest. ton never raised from his bed, and the Panthers fired only one shot in retaliation. Limited neither by education, wealth, or location, conspiracy theories among blacks have a Little wonder that poet/singer Gill Scott long history. Some have proved to be real and Heron's "King Alfred Plan" became a widely- some not so real. Dr. Marimba Ani, author of Yu- played hit among urban black Americans during rugu: An African-Centered Critique of European the early 1970s. The King Alfred Plan was alleg- Cultural Thought and Behavior (1994), an attack edly a government conspiracy to contain blacks to on what she calls "European intellectual imperial- the Ghetto "when the revolution came." When ism," maintains that Europeans have conspired to Heron rapped about the Plan, he was mirroring a control the world since Plato claimed the ultimate long-standing tendency in the black community to knowledge of the truth for his culture and Constan- consider as possible plots to subvert efforts of eq- Page 130 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000 uity and justice that has survived into the 21st cen- came evident that he was one of the Tuskegee tury. While the Plan was never proven, the gov- Men. The study ended in 1972 in the midst of a ernment’s supposed machinations against blacks national scandal when media reports exposed the continue to be deliberated. The CIA's involvement project. By then only 71 of the men were still in the flow of drugs to South Central Los Angeles alive. received congressional attention in the 1980s. Ac- Undoubtedly, this national disgrace has left cusations including redlining of black neighbor- an indelible, psychic wound on the black commu- hoods and profiling of black drivers have been nity. Proven conspiracies such as the Tuskegee ex- proven as the new millennium opens. periment couple with the widespread disparities Among the most sinister of the anti-black between much of the communities conspiracies was the Tuskegee Syphilis Experi- in areas such as family income, infant mortality, ment. The "Tuskegee Study," as it is often called, education, and incarceration to leave blacks ready was one of the most morally bankrupt and racist and willing to consider the possibility, even prob- biomedical research efforts ever undertaken in the ability, of sinister plots against their community by country. It very strongly suggests the existence of "the establishment" in particular and whites in gen- a multi-tiered local, state, and federal conspiracy eral. Acutely aware of the history of conspiracies against blacks. against the life and freedom of blacks, many Afri- The experiments began in 1932 when the can-Americans have come to accept that vigilance United States Public Health Service, in the name of and even resistance are essential to their health and science, needed bodies upon which to study the well-being. ravages of syphilis. The Public Health Service re- An important impact of conspiracy theories cruited 399 African-American men from a rural, on the meta-community can be ascertained by dis- isolated community in Macon County, Alabama, cussing how they contribute to the attitudinal, be- who tested positive for syphilis. These essentially havioral, and cognitive variations between blacks impoverished, unlettered sharecroppers were sup- and whites, i.e., how these theories contribute to posedly in the tertiary stage of their syphilis infec- why blacks and whites view similar events, proc- tion. This stage often results in tumors and skin esses, and phenomena in markedly different ways. ulcers; causes liver, cardiovascular and central That this is true can be seen in both academia and nervous system disorders; and induces paralysis, the daily lives of Americans. blindness, and insanity. The Health Service doc- The 1996 University of Michigan Medical tors were already familiar with the degenerative, School Cultural Diversity Assessment Final Report gruesome nature of the disease, yet they chose to confirms perceptual differences between blacks mislead their patients. The men were told they and whites in the academy. Forty-six percent of were being treated for "bad blood." The term, fa- blacks surveyed felt they were treated with respect miliar to members of the black community, encom- while 88 percent of whites felt they were treated passed syphilis, gonorrhea, and anemia. According with respect. Sixty-four percent of black faculty to James H. Jones, author of Bad Blood: The Tus- agreed that they had witnessed outright race dis- kegee Syphilis Experiment (1996), treatment en- crimination, while only nine percent of white fac- tailed hot lunches on the day of any examination, ulty agreed. Fifty-four percent of black faculty painful spinal taps, bottles of pink aspirin, and agreed with the statement, “I am afraid to speak nominal burial money of $35-50. (Half of the bur- out about what I believe are the inequities that ial money was given to an undertaker to secure women and minorities experience here.” Only 19 cooperation at any autopsy.) percent of whites agreed. Despite the facts that in 1946 penicillin Clearly, blacks and whites occupying the was touted as a cure for syphilis by the same arm same space in the University of Michigan Medical of the government that was conducting the experi- School experience markedly different realities. ment and that by 1954 both state and federal laws Misunderstanding this phenomenon makes even mandated the use of penicillin for individuals in- well-meaning whites less sensitive, and it makes fected with syphilis, these men were denied legiti- blacks feel abandoned. One respondent offered an mate treatment for over 40 years. One of the survi- insightful observation concurring with the impact vors, Herman Shaw, indicated in an hour-long of such differences on the meta-community: “Race documentary titled "Bad Blood" that he was delib- and gender discrimination (differential treatment) erately pulled out of a treatment line when it be- is, for the most part, subtle and related more to dif- December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 131 fering world views than maliciousness. Since literacy, language, and instruction in an white male world views predominate, especially in intercultural and international context.  leadership, ignorance of alternative ones and, hence, differing treatment and discriminatory poli- cies predominate” (p. 19). Conspiracy and Common These differences are not limited to institu- Ancestry Theory in Japan tions of higher learning. The OJ Simpson trial pro- vides a less rarefied example of how the difference David G. Goodman in black-white perspectives shapes the difference University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in group fantasies. The vision of the Los Angles In 1992, Masami Uno, one of the most pro- Police Department as conspirators against Simpson lific anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists in Japan, was easily accepted in the black community: even who has claimed, among other things, that the a powerful, famous black man can be brought United States is run by a Jewish “shadow govern- down by a police conspiracy. The white commu- ment” and that the Jews are out to destroy Japan, nity was as opposed to the notion as blacks were published a book (Kodai Nihon no kokuin [The accepting: justice is being done and the police were Seal of Ancient Japan]) claiming that the Japanese just doing their job. Thus, while blacks rejoiced at and the Jews are in fact related peoples. In recent the verdict, whites were appalled; each looked at years, Uno and other conspiracy theorists have the other with distrusting eyes. blamed Jews for everything from genocide in What is critical to any analysis of the con- Rwanda to the 1995 earthquake that decimated the sciousness of black America is the recognition that Japanese port city of Kobe, but the idea of Japa- black beliefs in conspiracies are not abnormal nese-Jewish common ancestry seems an ill fit with given blacks' reality. They are rational and justi- these ideas. How can it be explained? fied, not paranoid. Failure to clearly factor this The Japanese are a highly educated and understanding into discussions of race will distort cultured people, and as in the West, anti-Semitic the chronicler’s findings. In the meta-community conspiracy theories in Japan have, with some nota- then, scholars must, as the old American Indian ble exceptions, generally been confined to fringe proverb says, "Never criticize a man until you've groups. Moreover, the Japanese have historically walked a mile in his moccasins." Making the jour- been fair in their dealings with Jews. During ney does not preclude objectivity; it enhances un- World War II especially, the Japanese refrained derstanding. from harming the more than 20,000 Jewish refu- Henry Vance Davis, PhD, Associate gees living under their control in Shanghai despite Professor of History at Ramapo College, Nazi pressure to eliminate them. specializes in African-American history with As in other countries, however, anti- research interest in the Black Press, and the black Semitic conspiracy theories have on occasion burst intellectual in predominately white institutions of onto the surface of history and affected the life of higher education. He is editor of Social Changes society at large. Even as the Japanese government in Western Michigan (1996). He is currently was sheltering Jewish refugees in Shanghai, for writing an intellectual biography on historian example, it was simultaneously promoting anti- Harold Cruse. Professor Davis may be contacted Semitic theories within Japan as a means to justify at . the war and suppress domestic dissent. The asser- S. Virginia Gonsalves Domond, PhD, tion that Jews were plotting to destroy Japan Assistant Professor of Psychology at Ramapo helped galvanize the Japanese people during the College, serves as a consultant and researcher in war. More recently, the Aum Shinrikyō religious the field of mental health and education. cult was motivated in part by anti-Semitic conspir- Tilahun Sineshaw, PhD, Associate acy theories when it released poisonous sarin gas Professor of Psychology at Ramapo College, on the Tokyo subway on March 20, 1995, killing conducts research in the areas of Vygotskian 12 people and injuring more than 5,000 others. learning and development as well as issues of The question that is usually posed -- What There are no negatives in the are anti-Semitic conspiracy theories doing in Ja- unconscious. pan, a country that has never had a Jewish popula- tion and even today hosts only a tiny community of Page 132 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000

Jewish businesspeople, diplomats, and students? -- ichir ō Oyabe (1867-1941), expanded on Saeki's makes the wrong assumption. It assumes that anti- work, arguing emphatically that the Japanese and Semitism has something to do with Jews. In fact, their emperors were descended from the Jews. as Gavin Langmuir has pointed out, properly un- “The Japanese and the Hebrews are virtually iden- derstood, anti-Semitism is “chimerical”: it is a tical,” Oyabe wrote in 1929, “particularly in regard product of the anti-Semite’s imagination and has to the pious way in which we observe our religious nothing to do with Jews. The Japanese case con- festivals. These exact correspondences convince firms that this kind of chimerical anti-Semitism (as me that we are in fact one race" (Nippon oyobi distinct from what Langmuir calls “realistic” and Nippon kokumin no kigen, pp. 21-22). “xenophobic” hostility to Jews) is an independent, A third theorist to share Saeki’s ideas about self-perpetuating system of ideas that, while it cer- Japanese-Jewish common ancestry was Eiji tainly has the power to affect Jews, does not re- Kawamorita (1891-1960). His contribution to quire Jews to exist. common ancestry theory was his monumental, Apart from whatever “realistic” or “xeno- two-volume Study of Japanese Hebrew Songs phobic” hostility to Jews there may be in Japan, the (1956-1957), in which he claimed to have discov- reason chimerical anti-Semitic conspiracy theories ered in modern Japanese the remnants of a Hebrew exist there is because they have been useful to a language and poetry that had died out in Japan variety of groups over the course of Japan’s mod- more than a thousand years ago. He wrote in the ern history. Many different groups in Japan have preface: for their own idiosyncratic reasons fantasized I was led to an affirmation of our about Jews, and the bizarre mélange of fantasies, National Polity [kokutai meichō], to wit that including "philo-Semitic” ones that express a sense our Emperor is the undisputed successor to of affinity and even kinship with Jews, have been a the eternal throne of the Great King David of paradoxical part of the mix. Israel, and that without the Emperor System The concept of psychohistorical dislocation Japan will lose its reason to exist. I announce is useful in understanding this strange phenome- this to the Japanese public without hesitation non. The fantasies about Jews that have prolifer- and unashamed before heaven and earth as ated in Japan have been, among other things, an one scholar's cry of conscience (p. 3). attempt to adjust psychologically to the seismic Masanori Miyazawa and I have discussed shifts that have characterized modern Japanese his- at length the significance of these and other com- tory. One example will have to suffice here: the mon ancestry theories in our book Jews in the theories of Japanese-Jewish “common ancestry” Japanese Mind (1995, rev. ed. 2000). Suffice it that emerged in the early 20th century. here to point out that these philo-Semitic theories In 1908, Yoshirō Saeki (1871-1965) be- were in essence desperate psychological strategies came the first Japanese to formally argue that the for dealing with extraordinary historical pressures. Japanese were descended from the Jews. A Scots- All of the theorists mentioned above were born in man named Norman McLeod had made a similar rural Japan during the Meiji period (1868-1912), a claim in 1875 in his book Epitome of the Ancient time of extremely rapid social change. They re- History of Japan, but the Japanese do not seem to ceived their education at Christian academies and have learned of McLeod’s work until much later. seminaries whose curricula were hybrid and idio- Saeki made his startling discovery during a visit to syncratic, and they had lived for at least a while in the Uzumasa Temple near Kyoto, where he sud- the United States. Among the first Japanese able denly realized that the word “Uzumasa” was actu- to travel abroad, they were obsessed with how to ally “Iesu-meshia,” the Japanese pronunciation of reconcile their Japaneseness with Western culture “Jesus Messiah.” The fact that this putative Chris- and how to reconcile their Christian beliefs with tian reference indicated to Saeki the presence of their Japanese identity. Like their contemporary, Jews in Japan in ancient times speaks volumes the Buddhist scholar Daisetsu Suzuki (a.k.a. D. T. about Japanese ignorance of Jews and Judaism at Suzuki, 1870-1966), who worked to reconcile Zen the time, but it was nonetheless on the basis of this with the modern world and articulate it in a West- and similar philological “evidence” that Saeki be- ern idiom, the common ancestry theorists at- came convinced that the Japanese were descended tempted to reformulate and reaffirm the validity of from the Jews. Japanese cultural identity in Western (i.e., Chris- A second common-ancestry theorist, Zen'- tian) cultural terms by claiming an affinity with the December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 133

Jews. In short, by identifying with the Jews, was represented by one term which was invented whose existence antedated Christianity and who by a Japan lobbyist: “Japan-bashing,” which be- were its source, these Japanese Christians were came a media buzz word on both sides of the Pa- able to claim that their beliefs were not derivative cific when criticism was leveled against what were from the West but were authentically and indige- regarded as predatory trade policies and practices nously Japanese. Their identity as Japanese thus which propelled Japan’s economy. did not conflict with being Christian; and being Before the term “Japan-bashing” was ever Christian did not compromise their Japaneseness. used, a general sense that Japan had few friends in This story has many more twists and turns the world probably existed among some Japanese than can be described here, but in brief, as Japan despite there being no evidence that there was ever became more and more nationalistic in the 1930s, an actual conspiracy against Japan. However, in the notion that the Japanese were descended from any case, aware of the “fertile ideological field” the Jews became anathema. While some remained within Japan that would produce genuine belief in firm in their beliefs and suffered persecution, oth- a conspiracy against Japan, some Japanese leaders ers like Zen’ichirō Oyabe began to claim that actu- and bureaucrats cynically employed and deployed ally the Japanese were the original and true Jews charges of "Japan-bashing." On occasion this was and that those people who call themselves Jews are done explicitly, but more often than not, it was car- either descendants of the Japanese or impostors ried out surreptitiously by initiating whispering who claim to be Jews for self-aggrandizement at campaigns that were hard to trace. "Japan-bashing" Japan’s expense. Like Christian Identity beliefs in was cleverly used by Japan’s economic elites as a the United States, which similarly claim that their way of deflecting discussion from the substance of adherents are the true Jews and those people call- any criticism to the motives of the critic. Accusing ing themselves Jews are actually “children of dark- someone of "Japan-bashing" was a tactic that ef- ness” intent on doing harm to them and the world, fectively ended many debates about important in- Japanese common ancestry theories frequently -- ternational issues. A specific hope was that Ameri- although not always -- merged with anti-Semitism. can trade negotiators would change their policies For this reason, in Japan today, it is not unusual to and argumentation in order to avoid being labeled find anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists like Masami "Japan-bashers." Any journalistic coverage, aca- Uno citing Yoshirō Saeki and claiming Japanese demic research, or casual comment considered un- common ancestry with the Jews. The psychohis- fair toward Japan was open to charges of "Japan- torical accommodations some Japanese Christians bashing," implying that anyone critical of Japan made a hundred years ago continue to be played did not understand its customs and history, being out in Japanese conspiracy theories today. insensitive to cultural diversity, or, worse, was a David G. Goodman, PhD, is Professor of racist. Japanese and Comparative Literature at the Why did one term, “Japan-bashing,” be- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His come so supercharged, giving rise to a conspiracy book Jews in the Japanese Mind: The History and theory? For those who accepted this conspiracy Uses of a Cultural Stereotype (co-authored with theory, hearing about "Japan-bashing" was like the Masanori Miyazawa) has recently appeared in an missing piece of an intellectual jigsaw puzzle that expanded paperback edition.  once put in its proper place, made the picture of the puzzle complete. If the missing piece is the key to a more or less coherent view, the other pieces sur- Nationalism in Japan: rounding it constitute the required context, or a A Fertile Ideological Field fertile ideological field that might encourage belief in anti-Japan conspiracy theories. This accusation Brian J. McVeigh received its charge by resonating with nationalist Toyo Gakuen University, Japan sentiments of “cultural uniqueness” and “victim consciousness” within Japan. In the 1980s and into the 1990s some Japa- The use of "Japan-bashing" must be under- nese came to believe that foreigners, either out of stood within the context of nationalist sentiment in sheer ignorance or an irrational dislike of Japan, modern Japan. Nationalism is a term that usually had it in for Japan. The "conspirators" were evokes images of marching troops, chauvinistic vaguely thought to be anyone not Japanese, though threats, and xenophobic speeches. However, the often Americans were singled out. This conspiracy Page 134 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000 modern national state, depending on the place and excuses: the Japanese have "different skin" or historical period, is actually home to a variety of "longer intestines," and test results for products nationalisms, such as linguistic nationalism, racial conducted on non-Japanese are invalid because nationalism, economic nationalism, and cultural "Japanese are different from foreigners." nationalism. Some of these nationalisms, lacking If the beliefs mentioned above that give the aggressiveness, intolerance, or passion of cer- rise to and motivate nihonjin-ron result in cultural tain forms of nationalism, have become so much a exceptionalism, then it is easy to see why a belief part of daily life that they may be described as might develop that non-Japanese cannot adequately “popular” or “everyday.” appreciate or understand Japan. Consequently, One example of popular and cultural na- foreigners might mistreat, even take advantage of, tionalism in Japan is what is called “theories about the Japanese people, especially in times of national Japanese,” or nihonjin-ron. The number of works crisis. that fall into the nihonjin-ron genre is immense. After World War II, many blamed the im- Though this type of work can be traced back to the moral militarist leaders who took the unsuspecting end of World War II, it became especially popular Japanese people down the wrong path of history. when Japan began to obtain economic might in the Many of Japan’s citizens deplored Japan's bloody 1970s and 1980s, and seemed to amount to a na- rampage through Asia and the heavy price they tional obsession. themselves paid for supporting ultra-nationalism. Key ideas appearing in nihonjin-ron in- From this developed “victim consciousness.” clude: the inherently hierarchical nature of Japa- However, some Japanese give a different spin to a nese social structures, a strong proclivity to work sense of victimhood, emphasizing foreign animos- in groups, a lack of individuality, and that Japanese ity towards Japan. Some examples are: Japan, belong to a “homogeneous race/ethnic group.” All forced to defend itself against foreign encirclement these notions, however, seem to point to one mas- and aggression, attacked the United States; the ter idea: the Japanese are unique. The arguments Americans saved the atomic bombings for Japan of such works relate the uniqueness of the Japanese rather than use them on Germany; the Americans to Japan’s special environment and ecology, for played unfairly with nuclear weapons whose hor- example, “only Japan has four seasons”; a rice- rific effects went beyond the bounds of conven- growing, agricultural tradition; social structures tional warfare. Related to victim consciousness is premised on a Confucian legacy; an inexplicable “peace nationalism” (or more cynically, "one- social psychology; or a mystifying language. country pacifism"), which to a large degree is Much of nihonjin-ron is ethnocentric and rests grounded in theories of Japanese exceptionalism, upon unsophisticated theorizing. for example, “only Japan has a peace constitution In an example of how official nationalist forbidding war” and “only Japan has suffered concerns have appropriated and employed manifes- atomic warfare.” tations of popular nationalism, the state has sup- To account for the spread of conspiracy ported nihonjin-ron. This attempt at cultural pol- theories, recognition of the ideological atmosphere, icy should not be surprising, since states (some which encourages the growth of strange stories, is more than others) have regularly attempted to con- vital. Sometimes we search for only one element struct sentiments of national solidarity among citi- in the ideological environment that promotes a zens. The Japanese government has financed the conspiracy theory. The lesson to be drawn is that English publication of some nihonjin-ron classics to be viable, theories of conspiracies do not require for overseas consumption, and the state-funded one “big lie,” but rather a fertile ideological field Japan Foundation and the International Research of small untruths in order to grow. The correct Center for Japanese Studies has supported nihon- ideological atmosphere can turn one phrase into the jin-ron-oriented research. Moreover, corporations most emotive charge, loaded with a visceral im- have seen value in advocating nihonjin-ron, espe- pact. cially those that emphasize cooperation and har- Brian J. McVeigh, PhD, is Associate mony among workers, loyalty to the company, Professor at Toyo Gakuen University in Japan hard work, and dedication. Nihonjin-ron also has where he teaches Japanese culture, anthropology, links to economic nationalism: the Japanese au- and English language. His most recent book is thorities have justified trade barriers and attempted Wearing Ideology: State, Schooling, and Self- to settle economic disputes by resorting to racialist Presentation in Japan (2000). He may be December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 135 contacted at .  about to take place, but something that had already taken place and been suppressed. So, as one short- lived television show, "Dark Skies," put it: "History is an illusion." It was the secret messages from UFOs re- The Cosmic Watergate and ceived in 1952 by one Orfeo Angelucci that fasci- nated Carl Jung and led him in 1958 to publish Possibility Thinking Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in Alasdair Spark the Sky. In it, Jung argued that the phenomenon King Alfred's College, United Kingdom represented archetypes taken from a collective un- conscious which expressed contemporary concerns Conspiracy theories and flying saucers -- about the atomic bomb, the Cold War, and McCar- the two seem inextricably bound together. From thyism. This formulation, he wrote, “leaves the the very first sightings in the late 1940s, UFOs question of seeing open.” This question of seeing have been linked to secrets and cover-ups. Today, (and believing) remains central to the UFO phe- UFOlogy takes it as an absolute that Government nomenon. -- particularly the United States government -- Why, almost 50 years later, should such a knows far more than it is telling. A contemporary paranoid possibility have assumed this general term which has been applied to this is Cosmic Wa- place of possibility? One often cited reason is the tergate, not in the sense of extra-terrestrial bur- often alleged “dumbing down” of America. The glary, but as a set of secrets centered on the Oval late Carl Sagan wrote an entire book, The Demon Office. Indeed, several Presidents are said to have Haunted World (1997), decrying the decline of sci- met aliens, and a whole carapace of covert admini- ence and rationality in the contemporary United stration is claimed to exist, all controlled by a se- States, citing belief in UFOs as one of the prime cret committee known as “.” A Secret indices of the malaise. Journals such as The Skep- History is said to have dominated the latter part of tic (U.K.) and The Skeptical Inquirer (U.S.) like- the 20th century, with its founding event the crash wise seek to combat the credulity of the public. of a flying saucer in July, 1947, outside Roswell, But it is necessary to perceive that a double-edged New Mexico, and the recovery of the wrecked (or scepticism is actually at work in contemporary cul- intact) craft and its dead (or alive) occupants by the ture. There is the rationalist scepticism which Sa- U.S. military. gan eloquently fought for, but there is also a popu- What the various fringe UFO groups think lar, even populist, scepticism at large, which is is important in itself, but it is unlikely to lead to doubtful and mistrusting about government, about actual political consequences -- no one is likely to authority, and about official statements on events. bomb the White House because of these fantasies. The real point to note about the “Cosmic Water- Equally, it is difficult to imagine that populist gate” is not that many people think it is true, but demagogues can exploit these beliefs. Neverthe- that many people suspect that it might be -- it does less, the extent to which an acceptance of the pos- not seem impossible. sibility of a UFO cover-up conspiracy has become What is the reason for this, and why should widespread in our culture, far outside the ranks of it have the de-politicized UFO phenomenon as one the true believers, is clear. Opinion polls vary, of its meaningful centers? First of all, a decline of with different surveys claiming that anywhere be- the public trust is almost the hallmark of contem- tween 40 percent and 80 percent of the public think porary political culture. As Joseph Nye notes, in that the government is hiding evidence of extra- 1964 three-quarters of the American public said terrestrial contact. Whatever the numbers, it is that they trusted the Federal government; today clear that a general free-floating belief in a cover- three-quarters don’t trust it (Joseph Nye, et al, eds., up is out there. Contemporary culture is saturated Why People Don't Trust Government, 1997). with images combining contact with the secret and Doubt extends beyond government to almost all the alien, and in the 1990s dozens of popular mov- authority -- law, business, the media, and science -- ies and television series were premised on this, all are regarded with scepticism. The source for with only the most famous being "The X-Files." this is not difficult to find -- the history of the last The general notion uniting them all was that extra- 35 years has been dominated by revelations of terrestrial contact was not something that was wrongdoing: Kennedy’s links to the mafia, the Page 136 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000

Vietnam War, Watergate, Three Mile Island, CIA an obscure Bavarian group, the , pro- dirty tricks, and secret radiation and germ warfare vided an explanation for the impossible overthrow experiments. But these are all actual conspiracies, of a divinely-ordained political and social order. and while they, too, have given rise to paranoid Founded by Adam Weishaupt (1747-1830) and speculations such as those of the patriot-militias lasting only a few years before being suppressed in about the New World Order, they are nevertheless 1784, the Illuminati vainly hoped to end govern- firmly based in the here and now. Why should ment and religious corruption, and to establish a UFOs have taken a key place in the popular doubt? utopian society through secret activities and con- There are three interesting reasons. One is trol of Freemasonry. The widespread introduction that the history of the Cold War gave rise to a na- of Jews into these conspiracy theories was coinci- tional security culture of secrets, of so-called dent with full Jewish emancipation and the move- “Black Projects.” Hence the speculations about ment of Jews from the ghetto into public life. Roswell, captured alien technology, and secret Theories in which Jews and “Jewish money” were bases such as Area 51 in Nevada represent a logi- the “Hidden Hand” controlling the Illuminati, the cal continuum in a post-Cold War world. Freemasons, and the course of world history could thus be harnessed to explain the rise of socialism Secondly, there is a particular component and the political unrest of the mid-19th century. to contemporary UFO imaginings, the so-called "alien abductions." The scenario that thousands of By the early 1900s, such theories were Americans are being kidnapped and subjected to well-developed and relatively sophisticated, but genetic experimentation is frightening enough, but always rested heavily on “secret” documents that what is often missed is that the rationale asserted revealed the alleged Jewish plan for world domina- for this is that our genetic essence is being given tion and the destruction of Christianity. The House away in trade by our government in return for alien of Rothschild was often featured as the center of technology. In a post-Cold War world in which the nefarious scheme, controlling world events the defining ideology of the United States has through their powerful banking organization. The evaporated with victory, and been replaced by the notorious Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, entanglements of NAFTA, GATT, and WTO, it is forged by the Tsar’s secret police in the late 1890s, not surprising that such barter can be fearfully spread rapidly around the globe. The tract purports imagined. This is particularly true of a fear which to reveal the plan for world domination, and serves simultaneously re-asserts the value of the individ- as an effective legitimization for Jewish Conspir- ual while reducing him or her to a commodity in acy theories. The Protocols has shown remarkable the global economy, one in which clear distinctions longevity, despite repeated exposures of the fraud between enemies within and without are lost. It is and despite Henry Ford’s rather flaccid retraction a fearful possibility to imagine. of his earlier endorsement. Finally, if we are to think of post-Cold War For many Germans at the end of World doubt, mistrust, secrets, and the frisson of possibil- War I, the claims of the Protocols were unneces- ity, then what bigger cover-up might there be, than sary to convince them of the Hidden Hand. The of the fact that we are not alone? Bolshevik revolution, Rosa Luxemburg’s revolu- tionary Sparticist group in Berlin, and the short- See author credit on page 106.  lived Bolshevik republic in Munich in 1919 were viewed as evidence that the conspiracy was closing in, and action was required. It was simple enough The “Hidden Hand”: to find Jews, real or imagined, among the Bolshe- Notes on the Perpetuation of vik leadership, as did Hitler and his associates. Jewish Conspiracy Theories Although most Germans were relatively disinter- ested in these issues, the core of the SS promoted Andrew S. Winston the Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy as the greatest of University of Guelph, Canada all dangers to the Reich. A foundational belief (that has survived to the present among neo-Nazis) Contemporary “International Jewish Con- was that Roosevelt and Churchill started World spiracy” theories have their origin in the conspir- War II at the behest of their Jewish masters, while acy theories which sought to explain the French Hitler wished only a “free hand” to deal with the Revolution. For those devastated by this success- Jewish-Bolsheviks to the East and thereby save ful attack on both King and Church, theories about December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 137

Western Civilization. that Jewish Conspiracy theories are likely to appeal Thus, International Jewish Conspiracy only to the uneducated or the simple-minded. But theories have always functioned to explain social careful study of the wider community in which turmoil and national disappointments, and to pro- Willis Carto and his co-workers produced and dis- vide a sense of order in the midst of disorder. It is tributed their material suggests otherwise. A num- often assumed that such theories serve not only a ber of academics from psychology, history, politi- longing for transcendent understanding and a need cal science, anthropology, and other fields became for simplicity, but also a deep personal pathology. active contributors to Carto’s groups. Most nota- Unfortunately, analysis of the psychological func- ble was Henry E. Garrett (1894-1973), the 1946 tions served by the idea of a Jewish Hidden Hand President of the American Psychological Associa- tends to direct attention away from two important tion and Chair of the Psychology Department at issues. Columbia University from 1941-1955. (See An- drew S. Winston, “Science in the Service of the Far First, such theories are created within and Right: Henry E. Garrett, the IAAEE, and the Lib- preserved by conspiracy communities, not indi- erty Lobby,” Journal of Social Issues, 54, No. 1, viduals. For example, the Liberty Lobby, founded 1998, pp. 179-210.) For Garrett and others, the by Willis Carto in the late 1950s, became the lead- International Jewish Conspiracy had penetrated ing purveyor of Jewish Conspiracy theories, Holo- deeply into academia. He and his circle, founders caust denial, and neo-Nazi material in the United of the journal Mankind Quarterly, tended to see States. With great energy, Carto built an interlock- Franz Boas and his followers as having effected a ing set of organizations with newsletters, maga- Jewish takeover of anthropology and the social zines, books, a publishing house, a government sciences. In their view, the Franz Boas-Otto Kline- lobbying organization, and even a pseudo- berg-Ashley Montagu influence had disastrous ef- academic body, The Institute for Historical Re- fects on the study of race and ultimately encour- view. But the success of the Liberty Lobby de- aged racial intermarriage, which Garrett believed pended on collaboration with and enlistment of a would destroy Western Civilization. He saw inte- wide range of apparently respectable public fig- grated schools, which he fought against vigorously, ures, such as Colonel Curtis Dall and novelist Tay- as leading to intermarriage, and thus introducing lor Caldwell. A steady stream of “news,” analysis, genetic predispositions to low IQ and high crime historical works, and commentary issued from this into the white population. With a bit of effort, it distinct intellectual community, providing a set of was possible to believe that the civil rights move- shared texts and shared meanings. The Liberty ment was an essential part of the plan for Jewish Lobby held rallies, lectures, and gatherings, as any world domination, through the fatal weakening of other activist organization might do, including va- the genetic health of the nation. In this sense, Jew- cation trips to Rhodesia to view firsthand the bene- ish Conspiracy theories often required complex fits of Ian Smith’s white rule. To the extent that analysis of historical and contemporary events. members were persuaded that the mainstream me- What was common to those academics who em- dia was entirely “Jew-controlled,” the Liberty braced a conspiratorial Weltanschauung, in con- Lobby could preach that all outside sources must trast to their colleagues, was their sense that social be distrusted and discounted. The community cre- change signalled an immediate threat to the ated a shared version of Western History, espe- “natural order.” cially of World War II, thus providing a basis for group cohesion as well as political action. To out- Other academic members of 1960s Com- siders, the Liberty Lobby cry of “Free Rudolf munist-Jewish Conspiracy theory circles produced Hess!” during the 1960s might seem quite loony. speeches, articles, and longer works that helped To insiders, Hess was the “messenger of peace,” sustain the early 20th-century ideas of a Jewish who flew to Scotland in 1941. His mission was to plan for world domination, recast within a Cold persuade England to allow Hitler to deal with the War framework. Classics Professor Revilo P. Jewish-Bolshevik menace for the benefit of all. Oliver (1908-1994) of the University of Illinois Thus, an understanding of the shared narratives of was a leader in this regard, and his work had a tre- conspiracy groups is essential for avoiding unjusti- mendous influence on later neo-Nazi groups, such fied attributions of pathology. as William Pierce’s National Alliance. Analysis of Jews was not a “side interest” for Oliver, but was Second, a focus on the peculiar aspects of integrated with his scholarly interests in ancient conspiratorial thinking tends to encourage the view civilizations and their decline. The development of Page 138 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000 the Internet has permitted the preservation and re- therefore to diminish the need for such beliefs. distribution of his extensive writings. For exam- Instead, it is likely that globalized economies and ple, Stormfront, a leading neo-Nazi Web site, fea- corporate culture will nourish the belief in a Hid- tures no less than 174 of Oliver’s articles at den Hand guiding us toward a New World Order. . The notion of an impor- Andrew S. Winston, PhD, is Professor of tant academic contribution to antisemitism and to Psychology at the University of Guelph, Ontario, National Socialism is hardly new. Nevertheless, it Canada, specializing in the history of psychology. is hard to accept that post-World War II academia, He has written on the history of antisemitism and suffused with liberalism, could still be the source racism in academic psychology. He is currently of such views. Although no single academic figure studying the history of psychologists who actively now fills Oliver’s role, neo-Nazi movements can assisted neo-Nazi movements. He may be con- effectively draw support from a variety of contem- tacted at .  porary academic writings, such as the trilogy on Judaism as an evolutionary strategy of Kevin Mac- Donald (California State University, Long Beach). A Portrait of the Conspiratorial I do not mean to minimize the distinct fea- And Revenge Fantasies of tures of conspiratorial thinking and the paranoid style, emphasized by Hofstadter (The Paranoid Extremist Racist Ideologues in Style in American Politics and Other Essays, The Turner Diaries and Hunter 1965), Pipes (Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From, 1997), Rob- Maria T. Miliora ins and Post (Political Paranoia: The Psychopoli- Suffolk University and Private Practice tics of Hatred, 1997), and many others. My argu- ment here is that analysis of the psychological fea- Adherents of extremist, anti-Semitic, and tures and functions of conspiracy theories must be racist ideologies (generally termed "white suprem- supplemented by detailed analysis of conspiracy acy," or neo-Nazism) tend to envision the world in theory communities, including careful analysis of conspiratorial terms. Although there are individual their histories. With sufficient organization, fund- differences among members of a particular su- ing, publishing, and recruitment, a conspiracy the- premacy group and among the various groups ory community may be quite self-sustaining. which comprise the movement, in general, these Thus, International Jewish Conspiracy theories conspiratorial and paranoidal illusions focus on may survive long past the social unrest that gave what the extremists believe is the role of the Jews them their original force. in perpetrating a plot whose aim is the destruction of the "white" race (in this context, Jews are not The Protocols is still distributed around the considered "white"). Those that claim that there is globe, now by Internet. For its modern audience, a world-wide conspiracy to eliminate the white the Protocols maintains the power to explain his- race cite growing cultural degeneracy (including tory as an unfolding struggle, although Zionism is homosexuality and race-mixing), inter-racial mar- now invoked more frequently than Bolshevism as riages, and the darkening complexion of people as the fountainhead of evil. Contemporary conspira- the immigration of people of color to the United torial versions of the Jews in Clinton’s administra- States increases. For a number of supremacists, tion who are said to “rule America” (e.g., see the great fear is that they will lose their access to ) provide the “evidence” for the weapons as the United States government and lib- prophetic veracity of the Protocols. In turn, the erals, the latter including Jews, strive to disarm the Protocols provides the interpretive framework for citizenry. These conspiratorial fantasies, which explaining why a Madeleine Albright or a Joseph express the illusory and paranoid dreads of su- Lieberman is in a position of influence. Although premacists, are countered psychologically by their mainstream antisemitism declined steadily in the invoking revenge and rage fantasies that involve second half of the 20th century, conspiratorial an- the violent destruction of their imagined enemies. tisemitism is unlikely to disappear in the 21st. In- creased migration, the globalization of commerce, These conspiratorial and revenge fantasies, and electronic interconnectedness might be thought expressing both sides of a Janus-faced coin, that is, to diminish the sense of the alien “Other” that per- fear on the one hand and wish on the other, may be vades International Jewish Conspiracy tracts, and termed "political fantasies". A number of the po- litical fantasies in extremist, anti-Semitic, and rac- December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 139 ist ideologies in the United States can be explored cently, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported in two works of fiction: The Turner Diaries (1978) that Pierce and his National Alliance members are and Hunter (1989). These books are very popular infiltrating more moderate groups in order to influ- among adherents of the racist Right. Both were ence them to his point of view. written by William Pierce, whose pseudonym is The political fantasies in these novels, I Andrew Macdonald, and both feature paranoia and contend, are aimed at rousing the passions and, violence directed against people of color, Jews, and thus, generating the collective excitement of indi- liberals. The Turner Diaries and Hunter provide a viduals who are disgruntled with the government. snapshot about at least some of the ideologues and The adventures of the heroes of these books give ideologies of the extreme Right Wing in the United expression to the apocalyptic and racist/anti- States. Semitic fantasies of extremist, right-wing groups. Political fantasies of revenge and retalia- These fantasies include the violent destruction of tion are capable of triggering intense pleasure and the United States, the elimination of Jews and the excitement among individuals to whom the images non-white populations from the earth, and the crea- appeal. Indeed, these fantasies, to the extent that tion of a new world order comprised exclusively of they capture the essential beliefs and experiences the white race, which is imagined to be superior to of a particular community, may have significant others. political and cultural impact. Psychoanalytically, In both of these explicitly racist novels, political fantasies express the conscious as well as there are themes of paranoia, hate, narcissistic unconscious wishes and dreads of ideologues who rage, and violence. The paranoia is conceptualized make up a particular political group. in terms of a threatened loss of self-esteem, power, The Turner Diaries depicts the violent and control, and, thereby, being rendered stupid, overthrow of the United States government as a impotent, and submissive. I suggest that the vio- "Holy War." The book's revolutionary tenor has lence undertaken by the characters -- in effect, a captured the interest of a number of disparate racist "fantasy solution" to their dread of inferiority, pas- and anti-Semitic groups. The Turner Diaries burst sivity, and impotence -- helps them to achieve an into national prominence after the Oklahoma City illusory restoration of their sense of pride, their bombing in 1995, when, reportedly, copies of the manhood, and their sense of status and power in book were found among the possessions of Timo- the world. Moreover, the Vietnam War and the thy McVeigh. In this context, the description of social changes that occurred in the United States the bombing of an FBI building in the book bears a during the last 25 years -- for example, the civil striking resemblance to the tragedy that occurred in rights and women's movements -- are also perti- Oklahoma City, both in terms of the methodology nent in understanding the motivational basis of the used and the destruction that each wrought. fantasies in these novels. Published some 10 years after The Turner Retrospectively, it now seems clear that the Diaries, Hunter portends a different and, perhaps, Vietnam War has been significant in rousing the more frightening kind of race "warrior" -- a "lone ideologues of the extremist Right Wing. In the ranger" -- who wreaks havoc and destruction by novels examined, the American debacle in Viet- shootings and bombings. This hero -- Oscar nam appears to have influenced, in particular, the Yeager -- actually is more reminiscent of Timothy revenge fantasies in Turner while, in Hunter, the McVeigh and other right-wing extremists, who hero, Oscar Yeager, is actually a Vietnam veteran. work alone or in a group with a few others, than of He reveals how his experience affected his per- Earl Turner of Diaries. The exploits that are de- spective on the inherent inferiority of non-white scribed in Hunter include the use of an ammonium races as well as his sense of powerlessness and re- nitrate-fuel oil bomb and a delivery van. Its story- active rage because of what he considers the de- line includes a television evangelist whose role is featist decisions made by the U.S. government. to politicize the public against the Jews. America's loss in Vietnam shattered Yeager's fan- The author of these books, William Pierce, tasy of American military superiority and this was is the founder of the National Alliance, a white su- experienced as a narcissistic injury. Obviously, his premacy organization, and an avowed racist and experience of killing in Vietnam facilitated his ca- anti-Semite. He was involved with the American pacity for murder once he was back home. Nazi Party when it was under the leadership of Indeed, the loss in Vietnam caused a distur- George Lincoln Rockwell during the 1960s. Re- bance of America's heroic warrior myth (see J.W. Page 140 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000

Gibson, Warrior Dreams: Paramilitary Culture in projects including several studies of the speeches Post-Vietnam America, 1994, who discusses the of American right-wing radio demagogues. paramilitary warrior myth and its evolution from Through these speeches, the Frankfurt philoso- early American history). However, in recent years phers closely analyzed the enormous psychological the myth of the heroic warrior has arisen again and power that the agitator’s paranoia and conspiracy in more strident form than ever. In the 1990s, this theories cast over their audience and mid-century myth and the fantasies of American military su- America as a whole. premacy found expression in the growth of the Upon arriving in the United States in the armed militia movement. These novels, which ide- 1930s, the predominately Jewish members of the alize militias as well as individual warriors who Frankfurt School were shocked to find a level of have knowledge of and experience with sophisti- popular bigotry that surpassed their worst memo- cated weapons, are expressions of political state- ries of Germany. Further still, they pointed to the ments and calls to action. The political fantasies broad appeal of fascist movements in America, they convey are depicted in terms of a world con- several of which were led by charismatic dema- spiracy, commensurate with Hofstadter's 1965 de- gogues like Father Charles Coughlin, the Radio scription of the paranoid style in politics. Priest, who broadcast his far right-wing speeches Maria T. Miliora is Professor of Chemistry to a national audience. Hugely popular in their and Lecturer in Psychology at Suffolk University in time, the radio agitators of the 1930s and 1940s are Boston. A psychoanalytic self psychologist, she has the forerunners of today’s talk radio browbeaters, a clinical practice in Boston and is a member of conspiracy theorists, and Christian Right broad- the senior faculty at the Training and Research casters. This combination of reactionary politics Institute for Self Psychology in Manhattan. She is and racist agitation with the high-technology com- author of Narcissism, the Family, and Madness: A munications of commercial radio precisely embod- Self-Psychological Study of Eugene O'Neill and ied the contradictions that the Frankfurt School His Plays (2000). This study was presented to the placed at the very core of an authoritarian society. Psychohistory Forum on October 2, 1999.  Thus drawn to the subject of radio agitators, Adorno drafted an analysis entitled “The Psycho- logical Technique of Martin Luther Thomas’ Radio Radio Demagogues and the Addresses” (1943). In this essay, Adorno estab- Radical Roots of the lished a topology of psychological “devices” used by the agitator to effect what he called a "Paranoid Style” “psychological racket” or “psychoanalysis in re- Michael Cohen verse.” In other words, Adorno claimed that the Yale University agitator is able to build a mass mediated social movement by projecting his own paranoid delu- During their extended war-time exile in the sions on to his listeners in what amounts to a ma- United States, several prominent German philoso- nipulative reversal of the healing relationship be- phers developed a powerful social-psychological tween analyst and patient. theory of paranoia and conspiracy theories -- a the- In 1947, Leo Lowenthal and Norbert ory which reflected far more on their adopted Guterman expanded on Adorno’s methods in American home than on their self-destructing fa- Prophets of Deceit: A Study of the Techniques of therland. Known collectively as the Frankfurt the American Agitator. Lowenthal and Guterman School, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Leo felt that radio fascists like Coughlin, William Dud- Lowenthal and others sought to fuse Marxism with ley Pelly, Gerald L.K. Smith, and Elizabeth Dilling psychoanalysis so as to explain the psychological could only be defeated if their messages and mass sources, cultural manifestations and social conse- appeal could be correctly interpreted rather than quences of what they termed authoritarianism. merely exposed. “The themes [of the agitator’s Convinced that modern capitalism and the bureau- speeches] cannot be understood in terms of their cratic state bred a dehumanizing and manipulative manifest content,” claimed the authors, “they “mass culture,” the Frankfurt School argued that rather constitute a kind of secret psychological lan- Fascism was an extreme resurgence of irrational guage… working from inside the audience, stirring and barbaric impulses within the most technologi- up what lies dormant there.” Lowenthal and Guter- cally advanced capitalist societies. To advance this man labeled this unarticulated frustration and dis- anti-Fascist critique, they undertook a series of content the “social malaise,” and insisted that it December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 141 was a “psychological symptom of an oppressive Cold War demagogues like Joseph McCarthy, system.” However, the agitator is incapable of cor- Barry Goldwater, the John Birch Society and other rectly naming the structures of this oppression, in- manifestations of the “Radical Right.” Hofstad- stead he offers a rhetorically charged series of de- ter’s intellectual debt to the Frankfurt School was lusions, complete with conspiratorial plots and acknowledged when he compares Populist leaders scapegoats who must be eradicated in order to pu- like Ignatius Donnelly to Lowenthal and Guter- rify the national body. Prophets therefore con- man’s radio fascists. So too does Hofstadter’s now cludes that the agitator “distorts and deepens and classic study of “The Paranoid Style in American exaggerates the malaise to the point where it be- Politics” from 1965 reveals the influence of the comes almost a paranoiac relationship to the exter- Frankfurt School in both its methods and its cita- nal world.” Lowenthal and Guterman further rec- tions. But this Americanization of the Frankfurt ognized that the agitator is most successful when School came at the expense of the émigrés’ empha- he manipulates the audience’s suspicions and in- sis upon the social and economic sources of para- complete understanding of social power and his- noia, replacing it with a normative psychology that torical change. “The agitator plays upon and reduced all shades of radical dissent into varieties enlarges the tendency among people who suffer of political pathology. Nevertheless, the power of from a sense of failure to ascribe their misfortunes the Frankfurt School’s critique should be sufficient to secret enemy machinations.” In other words, to compel serious reappraisal of their original theo- paranoia is not only the product of the agitator’s ries of paranoia, both for their complex dialectics contagious fears of conspiracy, but a deeper social and as the radical roots of the “paranoid style in paranoia emerges out of the isolated individual’s American politics.” alienation from the enormous social forces shaping Michael Cohen is a PhD candidate in modern life. The technologically disembodied, yet American studies at Yale. He is currently deceptively intimate voice of the radio fascist ef- completing a dissertation on the “conspiratorial fectively instills paranoid fears and conspiratorial visions” of the American Left in the 20th century. visions in his audience by playing upon the ordi- nary American’s sense of powerlessness. Group Psychohistory As the 1950s began, the Frankfurt School turned away from radio and expanded the scope of Symposium their thinking on paranoia to include a massive em- pirical study of the Authoritarian Personality He may be reached at (1950), and finally to philosophical explorations of  anti-Semitism, newspaper astrology columns and other attributes of the paranoid society. Adorno writes: “People even of supposedly ‘normal’ mind Group Process are prepared to accept systems of delusions for the simple reason that it is too difficult to distinguish Continued from page 102 such systems from the equally opaque one under argued a homeostatic group principle operating in which they actually have to live out their lives.” In all species, short of modern humans, through short, Adorno suggests that thoroughly modern groups so stratified that underlings automatically people fall prey to mysticism, the occult and para- sacrifice for their superiors as the need arises. Fol- noia because the social world is itself irrational, lowing this publication, group selection was re- conspiratorial and manipulative. jected by and large by evolutionary biologists on With each extension of their theory, the the ground that, stratification or no, egoists would Frankfurt School’s studies of paranoia and conspir- wipe out sacrificers within any group. It has, how- acy theories gained in status. By the 1960s, their ever, staged a gradual comeback since the 1980s work was partially absorbed into the methodolo- on the higher ground that groups strengthened by gies and footnotes of prominent American social altruists have a competitive edge on groups of ego- scientists. Inspired by the Frankfurt School’s skill- ists only. For the history and present state of the ful use of social-psychology, liberal intellectuals issue in biology, see especially David Sloan Wil- (and former Marxists) like Richard Hofstadter and son and Elliott Sober, “Reintroducing Group Selec- Daniel Bell appropriated terms like “pseudo- tion To the Human Behavioral Sciences,” Behav- conservative” and “authoritarian” to attack popular ioral and Brain Sciences 17, 1994, pp. 585-604, and Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Page 142 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000

Unselfish Behavior, 1998.) aspects of group process that cry out to be ex- At the same time, to consider that certain plored. members of a group each stand ready to deprive or Population control is not the only, nor even endanger themselves in whatever way the joint the main, instinctive adaptive function of human welfare may dictate -- to breed or feed less, to re- groups. I led off from it because when a clear-cut linquish territory, to tackle predators -- raises example is presented in bare outline, such as late prickly problems of versatility and intentionality. 19th-century Europeans defending unawares against Take a sudden need by a nonhuman group to breed a demographic groundswell, its evolutionary less: for starters, do moose or mice, let alone mi- source shows through with full clarity. The polar crobes, even know, as “group selection” would opposite of an adaptive reflex by human groups is require, that their reproductive acts are reproduc- likewise of apparent evolutionary origin: their felt tive? A simpler hypothesis avoids this whole run need to invite or contrive an intensified renewal of of problems: that while all of a group’s members devastating disasters that they prove unable to han- are equally alert to its needs, those individuals dle by instinct or reflex. Such traumatic reliving meet them first in any given case who are most has been more closely explored in individuals than tractable or amenable in that particular case. in groups even though its group form, presumably “Group selection” would then hold in reverse, with the older of the two, is equally evident from the the group selecting instead of being selected. This historic record, and far more portentous. A trans- is in fact how group process does work in human parent case of it, when viewed likewise in bare out- societies, with no communal altruism showing in line, was the military surrender (technically: the adaptive birth control, belt-tightening, or migra- bid for an armistice) by the German high command tion, and precious little even in volunteer armies. in September 1918 that caught an uncomprehend- To recur to the European demographic transition ing German public off guard: a generation after- that began in the 1870s, none of its participants wards Germans followed Hitler in refighting that practiced birth control for reasons altruistic, on lost war to a still more devastating conclusion. Of Europe’s account, as far as the records disclose; roughly the same vintage is another locus classicus those Europeans who took the lead in baby- of traumatic reliving by a group: a fictional one budgeting were simply those less eager than their crafted to perfection by Luigi Pirandello in his Six neighbors to reproduce. In sum, biological theory Characters in Search of an Author, where a in its present pass has little to teach historians mother’s shock at catching her husband with her about how individuals pursue group purposes un- daughter by another man rivets a loose family of suspectingly. This “how” is psychohistorical, and six together around an inner imperative to replay here as elsewhere, psychohistory is on its own. their “dramma” (as they call it) to a bloody finale. How did Europeans as a whole in the (On traumatic reliving in Pirandello, see Rudolph 1870s pick up unawares on their urgent collective, Binion, “The Play as Replay or The Key To Piran- coercive need to multiply less? The answer, how- dello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, ever it reads in biological theory, would seem to lie Henry IV, and Clothe the Naked,” in Soundings with a relic of our evolutionary past: a group reflex Psychohistorical and Psycholiterary, 1981, pp. against rapid population growth in a stable envi- 127-55.) ronment. If so, what triggered that European reflex Loose as is this Pirandellian family before would presumably have been the experience, con- it is traumatized -- the legitimate and illegitimate spicuous in all social spheres by the 1870s, of more households are wholly separate until that family and more children surviving to adulthood. But shocker brings them under a single roof -- it does whatever cued them into the European need for at least pre-exist in some measure. Just as these reproductive retrenchment, young European cou- two fictional households become one, a trauma ples sensed and met that need with no more clarity will tighten group ties even over and beyond the about it than the dumbest social insects have about specific mechanism of group reliving. The Ger- the choreographic whys and wherefores of the mans’ 1918 trauma of defeat forged a national numberless intricate, vital maneuvers they execute “community of fate” (as the phrase then went) after in groups. For the group effect is, in a word, in- its initially shattering effect on what had been only stinctive, and instinct is, in another slippery word, a fragile national cohesion. At the outside, no unconscious. How that kind of unconsciousness merely adventitious group thrown together how- relates to the individual kind is one of the tricky ever brutally by fate, as in a hostage-taking, will December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 143 relive the experience afterwards in group forma- trols its members that they perform unthinkably tion. For the rest, humans are the species most intricate maneuvers together unthinkingly, even as prone to group trauma inasmuch as they alone those selfsame members can be individually help- group promiscuously. Whereas nonhuman animal less. Army ants separated from their group in groups are monopolistic, or exclude joint member- small numbers go suicidally mad: they just run cir- ships, humans as a rule identify deeply enough on cles until they die (Nigel R. Franks, “Army Ants: several sides and several levels at once to incur a A Collective Intelligence,” American Scientist 77, group trauma on any one of them. The group iden- 1989, p. 139). Human madness and suicide appear tification behind an adaptive, as distinct from a socially detached this same way. Yet, personal and traumatic, group reflex need not be exclusive ei- idiosyncratic as they indeed are, they register sta- ther: while Europeans as such were cutting their tistically as group functions just like fertility -- marital fertility way down beginning in the 1870s their rates strikingly constant, and with the slight (including the French, despite their national anxi- inconstancies patterned to boot. The regularity of ety about depopulation), nationalism was tearing human suicide rates was the ground for Émile the continent apart. To be sure, this paradox lapses Durkheim’s assumption, in his masterly Suicide if the European demographic transition is con- (1895), of a “collective consciousness” (in effect, a strued as a set of roughly parallel national adjust- collective unconscious) dictating conduct of every ments on the ground that its timetable was not kind within each of the multifarious groups and quite uniform across the continent and its relative subgroups of human society. Since Durkheim, progress within comparable subgroups varied frac- more obvious social pathology, such as crime, has tionally from nation to nation. But these dispari- been the social statistician’s delight because of its ties were no more national than regional. (For its easy correlation with other social series. Social national and regional variations, see Ansley J. normalcy is harder to study among humans as an Coale and Susan Watkins, eds., The Decline of animal function because of the rich rationalizations Fertility in Europe, 1986.) Besides, no large-scale that surround its works, obscuring their instinctual human action is all in step across the board, and basis: witness the rhetoric of debates over the likes this one came so close that to deny it its continental of labor laws or zoning laws. No deconstruction of identity would be to miss the forest for its various the intellectual disguises of human animality tops clusters of trees. Friedrich Nietzsche’s of the various, ever-varying Traumatic reliving can be observed in non- reasons that the human beast advances for the pun- human as well as human groups. It would appear ishment of criminals (an inner adaptive function to derive from failed efforts to absorb existential par excellence) so as to hide its animal joy in in- blows -- from adaptive dysfunction. That is, where flicting pain (Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy a group is caught horrifically short, it will relive of Morals, II: 13). Outward group action by hu- the traumatic blow as if in an effort to master it. I mans, especially foreign aggression, is rationalized say “as if” because the evidence from human too, if more flimsily. Army ants forage for dear groups is inconclusive as to whether they are ever life; humans wage war for higher causes. done with any trauma. Maybe the Germans did Rationalizing is fun to debunk, but for pre- cure their World War I trauma through World War sent purposes the crucial point about it is that hu- II; time will tell. Maybe the four of Pirandello’s mankind added a subjective lining to group process six Characters who survive the replay of their -- that, in a huge new departure, the human species “dramma” do drain their traumatic abscess in the mentalized its evolutionary heritage. The human process. However, individuals who are trauma- ideational world hijacked not just normal adaptive tized (and Pirandello himself was one) find no clo- functions, but the traumatic adaptive dysfunction sure; their reliving resolves instead into a painful, as well. Human groups, and ultimately human in- pointless routine that must cast doubt on its origi- dividuals, thereby acquired the means to relive a nal adaptive purpose. trauma figuratively. (More primitive, literal group In traumatic reliving no less than in suc- reliving survives nonetheless. Early in 1975 a cessful adaptive maneuvers, animal groups act in Swiss official administering aid to a flood-prone unison toward the surrounding world. But group settlement in India told me that efforts to induce process also governs their inner doings besides re- flood-stricken survivors to relocate on safer ground production -- their domestic as well as their foreign had proved counterproductive: they dug in only the agenda. At the extreme, an animal society so con- deeper.) A striking small-scale model of figurative reliving is the Dance of Death that was staged on Page 144 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000 the main squares of towns in the wake of the Black Professor Binion has once again offered some chal- Death. But already in antiquity, age-old rituals of lenging observations on the philosophy and meth- evident traumatic origin played out in symbols as odology of psychohistory. His essay points us in subtly configured as in dreams. Nor is that all. To several directions at once. the starkly physical group traumas in which the He is strategically on target when his argu- mechanism of reliving originated -- the Black ment invokes the inadequate ethological model. Death belongs to this perennial series -- humans Today, media coverage of the human genome pro- added purely mental calamities of their own devis- ject, coupled with what seems to be almost daily ing, such as the Death of God. (On this trauma as announcements of new genetic discovery, have relived by Christendom see my After Christianity, strengthened socio-biological arguments against 1986, and Love Beyond Death, 1993.) And of still the argument of environmental causes, traditionally greater historic significance than this all-out men- favored by historians. The current biological fash- talization of traumatic reliving is the basic, normal ion has, of course, further reinforced the denial de- group process to be teased out of crisis-free intel- fense against unconscious process, itself a constant lectual and cultural developments that run their of group behavior. collective course heedless of the individual think- ers and artists who run along. How group process Ethology is a tricky business. Psychohis- on these mental trajectories, rational rather than torians above all know how often the discoveries in rationalized, relates to its earthier existential forms animal behavior have turned out to be the scien- is anyone’s guess -- until, that is, the question is tist’s own projections. Since people are neither elucidated through empirical inquiry long overdue. rats, geese, nor ants, prudent scholarship suggests that animal behavior is best approached poetically, Such elucidation is psychohistory’s job -- as suggestive metaphor. its unkept promise. It bears recalling that by the “next assignment,” handed down to historians in Still, Binion's attempt to prove that 1958, William L. Langer expressly meant the ap- "biological theory at its present pass has little to plication of depth psychology to group phenomena, teach historians" (one agrees in general) had a curi- which he exemplified by the epidemic of religious ously counterproductive impact on me. His strate- and cultural pathology that followed in the train of gic detour into ethology made me think that -- pro- the Black Death (“The Next Assignment,” Ameri- jections aside -- we are indeed animals, share at- can Historical Review 63, 1958, pp. 283-304). tributes with other species, and cannot divorce our- Psychohistorians are still pleased to invoke that selves from nature. The trick (as he implies) is grand summons. The time is ripe to respond to its disentangling the bio-logical from the psycho- terms. logical, and then seeing where and how they inter- sect, when they do. However, it is unfair to ask his Rudolph Binion is the Leff Professor of short essay to deliver more elaborate delineation. History at Brandeis University. He has published widely in and on psychohistory since his massive He rightly reminds us that instinct is un- psychobiography Frau Lou (1968). His latest book conscious, and there's more to instinct than meets is Sounding the Classics, and his latest article is the eye. It's not only "slippery," it's mysterious; the forum piece "Marianne au foyer" in the French while unconscious on individual and collective lev- demographic review Population 55 (2000). els, it is somehow bound up, at least in part, with biology. This means the unknown does "cry out to be explored." Responses to Binion How is it to be explored -- as psychology, biology, or psychohistory? These categories are David Beisel, PhD, teaches history and something of a false start, since there is nothing psychohistory at Rockland Community College inherently contradictory in biological/psycho- (SUNY), is past president of the International logical causality, even though last night (August Psychohistorical Association (IPA), and edited the 22, 2000) on the Health Channel, a psychiatrist Journal of Psychohistory from 1978-1987. He is a dogmatically declared: "Bipolar disorder and uni- contributing editor of Clio’s Psyche and has polar depression are entirely chemical." Both psy- published on a wide range of historical subjects. chiatry and history -- including psychohistory -- As in earlier essays -- "My Life With Frau need to look to current scholarly findings. The Lou" and "Doing Psychohistory," for example -- New York Times recently reported: "A study, show- December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 145 ing that pain administered in infancy can perma- the sense that behavioral outcomes may be less nently rewire the nervous system in rats, may have important in the essay than the ideas driving them. implications for human infants" (July 26, 2000, p. Here the message to historians of ideas is clear: A17). A few days later, it reported a study con- since humans can and do "relive a trauma figura- firming a physiological connection between child- tively," intellectual historians need convincing that hood trauma, depression, and anxiety. part of what they are studying is the "mentalization Women ... who suffered from of traumatic reliving," separate and apart from depression and had a history of child abuse "crisis-free intellectual and cultural developments." showed levels of ACTH, a hormone secreted The message is clear; for a deeper, richer, more by the pituitary gland in response to stress, accurate history of ideas, traumatic six times as high as those in women without "mentalizations" need to be studied and integrated such histories. They also had higher levels into mainstream intellectual history. of cortisol, another stress hormone, and When it comes to our own enterprise, Bin- higher heart rates than women who had not ion is right: "psychohistory is on its own." The been abused" (August 2, 2000, p. A22). evidence for and the consequences of collective Thus, we move from trauma to biology and back. trauma have to emerge from our own empirical (It is evidence like this, rooted in physical reality, studies. Research and reflection over the last quar- which helps convince students that there may be ter century have not only tempered some of my something to unconscious processes.) earlier enthusiasms, but have further convinced me of the centrality of traumatic reliving in history. It is in the area of trauma that Binion is at One agrees, reluctantly, with Binion's tragic obser- his usual best. As he moves the discussion to indi- vation that "the evidence from human groups is vidual and collective trauma, and to traumatic re- inconclusive as to whether they are ever done with living in history, I find his essay hints at a newer, any trauma." (One thinks of the Holocaust, of the richer perspective which organically emerges from English genocide of the Irish, and of American his earlier pioneering scholarship. As he puts it slavery -- on both sides -- and of countless other with characteristic economy: "human groups … intergenerational transmissions as examples to add need to invite or contrive an intensified renewal of to that of the German generation of 1918.) Can we devastating disasters that they prove unable to han- ever get over group trauma? What kind of history dle by instinct or reflex." The definition has never will we be writing if this perspective is ever fully been better expressed. Even evolutionary biolo- acknowledged? gists will sooner or later have to take account of the evidence. Despite an impressive body of research over more than three decades, work that has con- Here, of course, the critical focus is on clusively demonstrated trauma's central historical groups. Even scholars, physicians, and therapists role, Binion's kind of psychohistory has been who think about, respond to, and treat collective greatly admired, but rarely emulated. His kind of traumatic disasters do so most often by treating scholarship demands erudition, immersion in the individuals as individuals, who just happen to be sources, and the ability to make unexpected con- part of a shared experience. An example is the nections, none of which disqualifies serious schol- members of the International Society for the Study ars from following his lead. What has inhibited of Traumatic Stress at the San Francisco earth- psychohistorians from a more serious exploration quake in the late 1980s. Beyond "bonding" (what of collective trauma in the past, I think, has been Binion calls "tighten group ties"), little or no an over-reliance on the group-fantasy model. Bin- thought has been given to what the consequences ion is right; if psychohistory is to begin to fulfill its might be for the traumatized cohort as a whole. promise, "empirical inquiry is long overdue." Still less have historians, who regularly describe group trauma and its consequences, applied a sys- *** tematic model to these processes. Binion's call for Norman F. Cantor, PhD, recently retired more "empirical inquiry" is appropriate, even as it from the History Department of New York Univer- echoes earlier calls which, up until now, have been sity, is currently a writer living in Florida. He has little heeded. published 16 works of history of which there are Perhaps the essay's emphasis on ideas one million copies in print. His forthcoming book, shifts attention away from human actions; one gets In The Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and Page 146 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000

The World It Made, is to be published in May, tion: forget about the Black Death; concentrate on 2001. living. The group unconsciousness wants healing, not gloom. Boccaccio's Decameron (1375) uses Rudy Binion’s paper focuses programmatic the Black Death just as a framing device to get the statements about group unconsciousness. My pa- book going. Once Boccaccio gets into his soft- per will make some empirical comments on the core porn, no more plague. Boccaccio's young three examples he gives. The first concerns itself Florentines, having fled from the plague-ridden with the leveling off of Western European popula- city, are just a bunch of slackers telling sex stories. tion growth (birthrate) around 1870. The second There is no Dance of Death here. Why so much deals with the German collective wish to fight use of the Death motif in art then? Once medieval WWI again to make up for 1918. The final state- artists found a motif that had a market, they mined ment made by Binion deals with William Langer, it forever. the psychohistory of the post-Black Death era, and the Dance of Death motif. The group unconscious at work during the Black Death is one of bewilderment. This is be- The biggest cause of the leveling off of cause of the pandemic after Europe had seen no Western European population growth (birthrate) widespread disease for half a millennium. Where around 1870 was the availability of rubber con- did it come from and why? doms, eliminating the need for the practice of coi- tus interruptus. Condoms became available first in There were three contemporary answers to France, where the phenomenon of lower birthrate this two-part question. The first is God's punish- was initially noticed. Since ancient times, Europe- ment for sin, of course! The second answer lies in ans had wanted to control the birthrate. The upper the weird environmental events involving earth- class Romans had some success, possibly with quakes or serpents, and moving from East Asia to condom sheaths made from lambskin. Europe. The final answer lies in the realm of as- trology -- Saturn in the house of Jupiter. What I In the early Middle Ages, the problem was see in these three responses is collective anxiety, underpopulation. There was no need to control the and that supports Binion's paradigm. birthrate until the big population boom of 1180- 1280. Europeans then had no means of contracep- It is good to see my old friend and col- tion, the population tripled in that century, and all league Rudy Binion carrying the torch for psy- sorts of economic problems followed. These prob- chohistory and developing its structure. It is too lems were resolved only with the Black Death of bad he doesn't have the Ivy League chair he de- 1347-1350. served for his study of Frau Lou, one of the dozen best history books ever written. If he had, psycho- Binion’s second example deals with the history would be further developed now. German collective wish to fight World War I once again to make up for the defeat of 1918. While *** this may have some validity, it is my belief that the Samuel Kline Cohn, Jr., PhD, is Professor majority of Germans didn't want to go to war in of Medieval History at the University of Glasgow, 1939. Only Hitler and his crew did -- if you be- Scotland. He has published seven books, the latest lieve A.J.P. Taylor. According to Taylor, Hitler being Creating the Florentine State (1999), and is blundered into war by inept diplomacy. Because now working on The Black Death in Comparative of Taylor, I doubt the value of this example. Perspective: Disease and Culture to be published The third and final example has to do with in 2002. William Langer, the psychohistory of the post- Black Death era, and the Dance of Death motif. Rudolph Binion’s "Group Process" forces That the motif appears prominently in art is obvi- historians to rethink the dynamics of group behav- ous. However, what is intriguing is how little men- iour. I wish to begin where Binion ends, with Wil- tion is made in literature. The only detailed refer- liam Langer’s "The Next Assignment" of 1958, its ence (about 10 lines of poetry) appears in William call to seek the underlying psychology of group Langland's Piers Plowman (ca. 1830). Geoffrey behaviour, and, in particular, the supposed mass Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales (1395) never hysteria following the Black Death (1347-1351). mentions the Plague, even though his journalistic One question not clearly delineated by Langer or human-interest genre would seem to make him fo- Binion is what constitutes a group within human cus heavily on it. We have here a negative reac- societies, or the possibility that different groups, or even the same group within a society, might re- December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 147 spond to the same external stimuli in radically dif- and women in Tuscany and Umbria became ob- ferent ways. Indeed, as much of Binion’s work has sessed with stockpiling their worldly belongings to illustrated, psychohistory demands a comparative insure well-marked, even monumental graves. approach. This included post-mortem masses, and works of The psychohistory of the Black Death art, for their lasting remembrance both on earth and shows a multiplicity of reactions within the same in heaven. I have recently seen similar trends in societies, across political and linguistic boundaries, the north of Europe in places such as Douai, Tour- and over time. As Giovanni Boccaccio and con- nai, and London. However, in these locations, the temporary chroniclers, such as the Florentine Mat- group to be remembered along side the dying testa- teo Villani, observed, the pestilence in 1348 caused tor was the nuclear family, instead of the male line- two reactions within Florentine society. While a age of dead ancestors. (See my The Cult of Re- minority saw in the plague the wrath of God, and membrance and the Black Death: Six Renaissance thus became more pious and ascetic, others were Cities in Central Italy, 1992; revised ed. 1997.) spurred on to enjoy life while they could. Accord- Finally, unique to the first outbreak of ing to chroniclers and preachers across Europe, the plague, was the close connection among the Black new abundance occasioned by the mass mortalities Death, persecution of the Jews, and mass religious led many who survived to lust after the pleasures hysteria. In over 200 chronicles that I have read, I of the world, from new indecent fashions in cloth- found that this was not a repeat performance. Only ing to illicit sex. in Poland did the 1360 plague unleash a wave of Such charges were commonplace across terror against the Jews, but it appears to have hap- Europe; other differences cut geographically. De- pened in places that had not experienced the plague spite the impressions given by Langer and others, of 1348-1350. Furthermore, the utter despondency the Black Death did not unleash, "universally," and futility of any human response to the pesti- waves of Jewish pogroms and hysterical marches lence’s carnage found in chronicles and medical of flagellants across Europe. Instead, these reac- tracts after the first wave of plague changed there- tions were specific to certain German- and Slavic- after. Doctors, in particular, gained a new confi- speaking regions, parts of Spain, and southwestern dence about their science. They claimed to have France. It did not occur in Britain, most of Flan- cured hundreds of plague victims, and, because of ders, northern France, or Italy. Interestingly, the the plague, to have eclipsed the ancients, Hippo- German chroniclers spent much more space de- crates and Galen included. As a consequence, the scribing the cremation of Jews, and the bloodlet- plague tractates became a new literary genre of the ting of flagellants, than the plague itself. Further, second half of the 14th century, which exploded in in German regions, invariably, the burning of Jews number and significance through the early modern and the mass marches of flagellants preceded the period. plague. For many towns, there is no evidence of Here, the character of the disease more plague before the 1360s or later. than a sub-soil of the unconscious appears to have Meanwhile in Tuscany, Umbria, and other fuelled doctors’ confidence in their plague recipes parts of Italy, instead of mass hysteria, communes and techniques of curing, from herbal regimes to reacted with control. They set up commissions to lancing boils and bloodletting. As the burial re- regulate and record burials, suppressing mass cords, last wills and testaments of the laity, and meetings and funeral processions that would lead necrologies of religious communities chronicle, the to further contagion. They also hired doctors to fatalities caused by plague declined steeply over its perform autopsies and to suggest measures for con- first century. They declined much more steeply taining the plague. In other areas of Europe, such than with smallpox and other infectious diseases. as Flanders, flagellant movements arrived, but The decline also eclipsed the one seen in late me- failed to arouse a following. Instead, locals viewed dieval and early modern Europe. It was also far them with bemusement or disgust. greater than the unfurling of these diseases on vir- gin-soil populations in the New World. Reactions to the plague changed after its first outbreak in 1348. I have studied the plague's As the massive numbers recorded of sur- psychological consequences for burial, funerals, viving plague tracts attest, doctors as well as other and notions of the afterlife, arguing that the first members of society across Europe misinterpreted time around little changed. However, with the sec- this success as the result of human intervention. In ond onslaught in the 1360s (a relived trauma), men reality, it was no doubt brought on by natural se- Page 148 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000 lection, and perhaps in part by acquired immunity; of Psychohistory. As explained in the article, I not by legislative controls or anti-plague recipes. found that the decline in birth rates was limited to Here, so different from the plague’s initial on- the most evolved parents, who first began to value slaught, when chroniclers and doctors saw prayer the kind of childcare they could afford to give. and Godly obedience as the only answers, a new They also began using contraceptive techniques strand of optimism and confidence in human inter- more effectively. Through my historical sources, I vention emerged. It became associated with Ren- have yet to come across a man who withdrew dur- aissance thought and psychology at the beginning ing intercourse because he was worried about of the 15th century. This conscious reading or France becoming overcrowded. To posit this as misreading of the perceived surroundings changed the motivation of millions of parents, none of who the psychohistory of Europe, from its art and reli- were aware of their motivation, is simply an argu- gious history to its medicine. mentum ex silentio. For the Middle East, however, the same It may be that one war, fought by one gen- disease and horrific levels of mortality set off a eration, is a "traumatic reliving" of an earlier war, wholly different historical trajectory -- one of po- fought by their parents. However, a psychohis- litical and economic decline, urban decay, and pes- torian cannot assume the method of transmission simism. Why the difference? What was the mix of between generations. Historians often imagine that material and psychological factors? The time is children are told about the earlier war by their par- ripe for the comparative historian to respond. ents, who rant about a "stab in the back," and "the shame of Versailles," and then go to war. I doubt *** this. Instead, these appear to me as group-fantasies Lloyd deMause is Director of The Institute hiding deeper traumas ("stab in the back" = ene- for Psychohistory, Editor of the Journal of Psycho- mas; "shame of Versailles" = shaming little chil- history, founding president of the International dren). I could be wrong in these conclusions. One Psychohistorical Association, and author of Foun- can only disprove me by showing different individ- dations of Psychohistory and Reagan's America. ual motives in the sources, not by theoretical as- He may be reached at . sumption. As is well known in psychohistory circles, Rudy has done a great deal of wonderful my good friend Rudy Binion's views on group research examining individual motives, and mak- process are the opposite of mine. While he adopts ing historical conclusions based on them. How- something close to the traditional Durkheimian ever, in principle, he avoids childhood as an input "collective consciousness" methodology, I reject to causality of behavior. I think he is mistaken. the idea that groups have motives. Instead, I insist His psychohistorical methodology remains parallel on examining the historical record of individuals' to mine, as long as he concentrates on decoding motives to explain their behavior. Only if the mo- individuals' motives, rather than positing long- tivations of enough individuals collude to produce distance causality between generations. viable collective behavior can they be used to ex- I am yet to encounter a single person who plain history. Motives for suicide are always indi- truly went to war because their parents or grand- vidual, even if historical events trigger them. parents were insulted or mistreated by someone Durkheim is wrong to imagine that statisti- long ago, even if that was their conscious claim. I cal predictability indicates social causes. Suicide have always found sufficient reason to mistrust it, or homicide varies by psychoclass, or childrearing and look to more recent events as causes. I must mode. It changes through the centuries, far more prove my case person by person. Psychohistorians than it does by singular socio-historical conditions. cannot assume one war produces another, simply (See my chart of suicide, homicide, and war death because they follow one another. rates in "War as Righteous Rape and Purification" *** on .) Paul H. Elovitz, PhD, is editor of this pub- What I mainly object to when ascribing lication. "instinct" to something like a decline of birth rates is that it simply bypasses the hard work of looking Sir Isaiah Berlin, inspired by an idea of at the motives and behaviors of the human couples Tolstoy’s, wrote a brilliant essay, "The Hedgehog involved in making contraception effective. I ex- and the Fox" (1977), dividing intellectuals into amine these in an upcoming article in the Journal foxes and hedgehogs (groundhogs). Foxes sniff December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 149 around to know many separate things, but not one European population decline he refers to after 1870 big thing. In contrast, hedgehogs sit on mounds was to “defend against an imminent, and unprece- surveying the prairie in all directions where this dentedly massive, threat of overpopulation.” panoramic vision results in knowing one big thing. Rather, I incline to see it as a function of the Thus, Berlin found Karl Marx to be a hedgehog, changing role of children in urban society. The while he himself was much more like a fox. biblical injunction to be “fruitful and multiply” In examining my own intellectual history, made far better sense on the farm than in the city. predilections, and style, I find that I am a fox. I For example, after their catastrophic defeat in the delight in knowing many specific things, while Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the French feared maintaining caution about the grand vision of domination by the more numerous Germans far hedgehogs such as Marx. more than they feared overpopulation. Such has not always been the case. In my The example of population brings to mind early days of reading Freud, my imagination was the comment by my demography professor at the captured by grand concepts such as the repetition University of Connecticut, that you could always compulsion and the return of the repressed. Per- spot the demographers at sociology conferences haps, I thought, by probing the unconscious, we because they where the ones blushing as a result of can understand its full workings, and be able to embarrassment over previous predictions. Our take steps to better the lives of individuals and so- textbook focused on America’s problem with de- ciety. I was inspired by Lloyd deMause’s “The population at a point when the country seemed to Evolution of Childhood,” and also by his concept be bursting at the seams with new babies and of fantasy analysis. growth. In the short run, these demographers were certainly wrong. This experience helped confirm Separate decades of training as a historian my inclination to avoid the temptations of predic- and as a psychoanalyst have moderated my inclina- tion. tions to explain things mono-causally. As a pro- fession, historians tend to be quite wary of theory; Binion’s references to instinct worry me, sweeping theories incline to make most historians though I must acknowledge being intrigued by his even more uncomfortable. While training as a psy- ethological examples. Animal populations, such as choanalyst for a decade, I paid a fortune to control the chipmunks living in my garden walls, incline to (supervising) analysts who taught me how to un- ebb and flow according to the food supply, the en- derstand the needs of my fellow human beings in vironment, and the existence of predators. The the most effective manner. Central to this learning chipmunks thrive on the seed falling from our bird- is that theories and other grand schemes must be feeders, do not worry much about our fat old cat, put aside to listen effectively, lest I create a theo- and certainly find the local environment very hos- retical procrustean bed for my patients to be fitted pitable. Like our chipmunks, why didn’t the hu- into at the cost of their amputated limbs. Years of man population of France and Western Europe in- reclining on the couch in my own analysis taught crease with the greater agricultural productivity of me that I inclined to reach for theory when I felt the late 19th and early 20th centuries? I suspect weak, vulnerable, self-absorbed, or grandiose. the failure to do what had been done so often in the past, when the food supply allowed, reflected a Am I saying I distrust theory, or that I am change in humankind’s sense of itself, as well as a not the man to write about theories because of my conscious decision based upon the changing role of special training? I am not sure what the answer is children in the modern world and family. to my question. I am sure that theories to me are like scents to a fox. They are leads, which might Though I do not know the answers to these result in a nice juicy, intellectual meal. It makes and many questions raised by Binion’s pathbreak- sense to only follow one at a time to avoid total ing essay, I welcome publishing exchanges about confusion. I am sure that too many people who do them as a step in the process of further developing theoretical work do not seem to look at people, and group psychohistory. that the people who look and see separate people, *** like myself, do not usually work in the realm of Jay Y. Gonen, PhD, a psychologist and theory. expert on group psychology, is the author of A Psy- I find Rudy Binion’s paper to be thought- chology of Zionism (1975) and The Roots of Nazi provoking, but unconvincing. I doubt that the Psychology: Hitler’s Utopian Barbarism (2000). Page 150 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000

He may be reached at . symbolic is very likely to compel action or impose paralysis. Binion’s questions concerning group proc- ess go to the heart of group psychohistory. Would But unlike the case with individuals, this it be that I only could provide a set of razor-sharp dynamic interplay within the group domain plays answers to all these questions and triumphantly itself out as a shared activity of the collectivity at declare, à la Fukuyama, the end of group psycho- large. The individual level of participation in this history. Here are a few tentative thoughts. give-and-take activity at the overlapping public domain of ideas and images varies. Yet, in intri- Individuals are born into a group that cate maneuvers, followers and leaders negotiate shapes them, just as it was able to shape their par- and manipulate what is to be prioritized in the zeit- ents before them. Because of this actual priority in geist. In these negotiations some of the messages time and history the group culture is a major factor are quite manifest but many others are delivered in the psychological formation of individuals. through symbolism, associations and reading be- Even though a good deal of this formative work is tween the lines. Consequently it is possible for the carried on by the parents, the primary determinants participants to dance their way toward group con- of the shaping of identity reside nevertheless in the sensus and collective action without full awareness group heritage and culture, be it old sacred lore or of it. newly sanctified myths. Parental conduct and childrearing modes still count but not as much as All this raises also the methodological is- the historically overriding cultural factor of group sue of how adequate any sampling of the historical belongingness. This is why Jews from Yemen, cultural repository of the group with its Poland, and other diverse countries, and largely changes can be. When is a sample comprehensive regardless of child rearing modes, used to share in enough to satisfy even the more rigorous method- common the deeply traumatizing conviction that ologists that it does indeed represent its population “it is for our sins that we have been exiled from our fairly adequately? My impression is that different land.” scholars may sample differently and come out with different results but that, as long as they do not a The domain where group processes occur priori have an ideological axe to grind, it is quite is the public arena of ideas that contents-wise in- fine. The validity of the results of each work cludes art and politics and form-wise includes the should be judged by whether they manage to come media, public places, and homes. This is where up with novelties which ring true. Of course the dynamic collective developments take place. Here criterion of “it rings a bell” (a combination of a myriad of concepts, images, symbols, and slo- “face” validity and “construct” validity) is never gans float together with powerful prototypical going to satisfy the adherents of rigorous method- ideas which acquired major historical importance ology. But I heard Heinz Kohut once exhorting the in the life of the group. The group mind, so to audience of psychohistorians “to throw caution to speak, is the percolation of an idea or a combina- the wind.” I took it to mean that if you believe that tion of notions and images to the point of mobiliz- group psychohistory is a mingling of science and ing group action. When this happens we some- art you can afford to be daring. times talk of the zeitgeist or “spirit of the time.” What determines when an idea’s time has *** come is not unlike what can be observed in clinical John J. Hartman, PhD, is Clinical Profes- practice with individuals. When an unconscious sor of Psychology, Department of Psychiatry, and idea becomes conscious, or when ideas are acted Research Associate, Center for Russian and East- upon, depends on different factors. The forceful- ern European Studies at the University of Michi- ness of the impulses which the ideas represent is gan. He began his study of small group process one such factor. Concurrent reinforcements from with Richard Mann and Graham Gibbard, first at associated ideas or events that historically happen Harvard and then at Michigan. This resulted in to take place is another factor. The strength or two books, Interpersonal Styles and Group Devel- weakness of behavior controls -- depending on be- opment (1967) and Analysis of Groups (1974). He ing healthy or worn out either physically or emo- has in recent years expanded his interest in group tionally -- is also very important in either individu- process, to problems of anti-Semitism and ethnic als or groups. Finally, a perception of an existen- conflict. Professor Hartman has a private practice tial or a narcissistic threat in the form of an im- in psychoanalysis in Ann Arbor and may be pending or repetitious trauma either physical or December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 151 reached at . The mega trends of Professor Binion's first example are certainly historical, and certainly the It has been my hope for many years that product of group process as he defines it, but not historians would discover the concept of group mentalized in the way he describes his next two process in order to expand the understanding of examples. The major use of the first example is to human motivation in large groups. Historical ac- demonstrate the inadequacy of the historian's at- counts have too often lacked a sophisticated under- tempt to explain group action by a concurrence of standing of human psychology. The concept of individual conscious motives. However, the meth- group process began in the context of small face- odology of psychohistory to this point does not to-face groups, and its application to large groups lend itself to explanation of an example of this constitutes one of the basic challenges for psy- type. This better fits into the frame of reference of chohistory. Professor Binion's paper provides an sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, or perhaps important step in the meeting of that challenge. even physics. Binion points to "a group reflex" as Binion's focus is stated directly -- people an explanatory concept, and he may be right. acting in concert toward a given end of which they While phenotypically unconscious, the genesis of are unaware. It gets more complicated from there. this phenomenon cannot be understood as a prod- I would like to call the reader's attention to the dis- uct of defense, shared fantasy, or a communal dy- tinction between phenotype and genotype, the out- namic unconscious. I submit that Binion's ward appearance of a phenomenon and the origin "instinctive unconscious" is less amenable to un- of its causality. I do so because this distinction derstanding by psychohistorical methods just as constitutes the basis of my discussion of Binion's Freud's instinct is more refractory to understanding examples. by the psychoanalytic method. His first example, the decline of fertility Happily, this is not at all the case in Bin- across Europe beginning in the 1870s, is a most ion's next two examples -- the German military's interesting illustration of group process. It is one surrender in 1918 and its effect on European his- that, because of my more narrow interest in psy- torical group process to the current time, and Piran- choanalysis and small groups, I would not have dello's dysfunctional family saga. For Binion, thought of as a prime example of group process. It these examples highlight a sometimes adaptive, certainly is, and an interesting one at that. Birth sometimes self-destructive reliving of trauma. In rates, suicide rates, and crime rates do involve a these examples, the need to relive trauma can be group process of which the individual participant is seen in "mentalized" forms, thus providing an op- unaware. However, the understanding of these portunity, if not a necessity, for psychohistorical "mega" events is in a different frame of reference explanation. The capacity to relive trauma places from his later examples, and thus may call for dif- us squarely, and a bit more comfortably, in a frame ferent investigative methods and explanatory con- of reference which includes many things. They cepts. Specifically, I am unconvinced that this ex- include childhood socialization, the generation ample lends itself to psychological or psychohis- transmission of trauma and glory, ideology and torical explanation. This week there was a pub- propaganda and mythology, shared unconscious lished account of how groups of people react in a fantasies, shared emotions, collective memory and panic situation in an enclosed space. According to its distortions, and other notions which serve as the this study, the laws of physics better predict this basis of a psychodynamic theory of motivation in behavior than those found in psychology. groups. Freud made two observations, and both While reliving trauma is an evolutionary seem relevant here. In Group Psychology and the "adaptive reflex," the particular examples can be Analysis of the Ego (1921), he cryptically re- analyzed in terms of discrete cause and effect se- marked that group psychology is older than indi- quences, the dynamic consequence of process. vidual psychology, a remark based on his own History proceeds in dynamic relation to conditions ideas about evolution. Then in his paper, “The Un- and events, forming a describable pattern. Pro- conscious” (1915), he made a distinction between gress and regress can be identified and proposals the dynamic unconscious (based then on repres- for amelioration can be considered as in clinical sion) and those processes which are unconscious psychoanalysis. for other reasons and conditions. The dynamic For example, the capacity for groups to unconscious is made possible by the evolutionarily effectively mourn loss, defeats, failures, and disas- later capacity in human beings to mentalize. Page 152 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000 ters I believe to be a crucial factor in overcoming "hard" social sciences, represented by number- group trauma. We have learned this from individ- crunching historians, lies in the demographic preci- ual psychology, and the analogy in the context of sion of generational history. This is coupled with groups seems a powerful one. In this sense, Bin- the historical time specificity of trauma, and our ion's astute observation about the development of a new understanding of post-traumatic stress disor- purely mentalized trauma is a very important one. der. Such clinical diagnostic features as "intense This kind of mental activity can be analyzed and fear, helplessness, or horror" (Diagnostic and Sta- worked through in various kinds of collective ways tistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth ed., -- rituals, literature, film, and even historiography - 1994, p. 424) are also historical data to be inter- - toward a more effective adaptation to trauma and preted. While individuals respond to traumatic death. crises in different ways, wars, famines, genocide, Among the many ways I was inspired by epidemics, economic cycles, revolutions, natural this paper, was by a question which pressed itself disasters, and changes in political and social struc- upon me. It is a question which may only be able tures are the stuff of history that decisively mark, to be understood through psychohistory: Could in specific ways, for the rest of their lives those there be a connection between the concomitant de- who have lived through them (see my "The Psy- cline in European fertility and the increase in na- chohistorical Origins of the Nazi Youth Cohort," tionalism, and the promulgation of a "scientific" 1971, Decoding the Past: The Psychohistorical anti-Semitism? Why did these trends occur at the Approach, 1996, pp. 240-283). same time? Can Binion's concept of a mentalized Theodor Adorno once said: "In psycho- group process help us understand a possible dy- analysis only the exaggerations are true." A classic namic relationship in this chronological contiguity? psychoanalytical approach to group functioning is I think it very well might. This is the excitement based on analyzing leaders and followers. Freud's of Binion's vision. model has two axes: the followers to the leader, in which he serves as an ego ideal and they give over *** to him important areas of their volition and control, Peter Loewenberg, PhD, is Professor of and the group who identify with each other History and Political Psychology at UCLA. He is (Sigmund Freud, "Group Psychology and Analysis the author of Fantasy and Reality in History of the Ego," 1921, James Strachey, et al, eds., (1995) and Decoding the Past: The Psychohistori- Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological cal Approach (1996). He is a Training and Super- Works, 1955, 18, pp. 67-143). The Freud model is vising Analyst of the Southern California Psycho- paternal and based, as was Max Weber's model of analytic Institute and Chair of the Committee on bureaucracy, on the army and the church. I think, Research and Special Training of the American however, that Weber's model of charisma, which Psychoanalytic Association. His forthcoming arti- describes but does not analyze the emotions of in- cles are "John Muir and the Erotization of Na- ternalized object relationships between a leader ture" (Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, and his followers, would have been a stronger case 2:4, 2000, pp. 365-381) and "Freud as a Cultural for Freud. (See Max Weber, "Bureaucracy" and Subversive" (The Annual of Psychoanalysis, 2001). "The Sociology of Charismatic Authority," 1920, As a psychological analysis of group proc- H.H. Gerth and C.W. Mills, eds., From Max We- ess for historians, Rudolph Binion's paper leaves ber, 1958, pp. 196-252). me adrift. When he discusses demographic birth Wilfred Bion gave us a model for under- rate and population decline I look for some consid- standing "leaderless" groups as functioning on un- eration of standards of living, generational expecta- conscious group fantasies or "basic assumptions," tions, and costs of children, including education, or modes of coping with anxiety, which include medical care, and housing. Despite our differ- dependency, the for a leader (Kleinian pro- ences, I continue, as before, to admire Rudy's intel- jective identification), pairing (oedipal/amatory, lectual and personal grace. messianic), and fight-flight (paranoid, aggressive) Jacques Lacan said philosophy has been (W. Bion, Experiences in Groups, 1959). overtaken by psychoanalysis. We would like to Among the richest and most useful model add that positivistic history has been replaced by for historians, and one related to the current inter- the sensibilities of psychohistory. The bridge we est in "deep description" single case studies, is the seek between clinical psychoanalysis and the one using a prominent cultural artifact as a per- December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 153 spective to understand a culture. Erik Erikson contributed to the change from the emphasis on chose themes from the American folk ballad "John plentiful progeny to a greater focus on personal Henry," Hitler's Mein Kampf, and Maxim Gorky's individuality? Reminiscences to, in each case, dilate on the his- Even fertility (and its opposite) can and torical identity, national myths, cultural fantasies, does perform symbolic (ideational, rationalizing) introjects and projections, and family patterns of as well as adaptive biological functions or ends. the American, German, and Russian cultures Ethnic, national, and religious groups, for instance, (Childhood and Society, 1950, pp. 285-402]. can have ideologies of reproduction to revitalize There also remains to be culled and psy- the present and future, in order magically to undo chohistorically operationalized the middle range of past losses. Just as human ingenuity can wonder- theory and applications to communities, small fully address survival, if not flourishing, in the real groups, and families, as was done by the anthro- world, the same ingenuity, drawn from dependent, pologists of Culture and Personality and the Frank- regressed sources, can develop a policy of "circling furt School. the wagons" of group life. It can declare its mem- bers to be the human beings (Erik Erikson's felici- *** tous term, pseudospecies), and spurn reality testing Howard F. Stein, PhD, a psychoanalytic outside the group. anthropologist and psychohistorian, is Professor in The human symbol-maker who brachiates the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine from limb to limb with visions of sugar plums at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences dancing in his (or her) head may miss the branch in Center, Oklahoma City, where he has taught for 23 front of him (or her): group life. The functioning years. of person-in-group (psychodynamically speaking) "Seek simplicity and mistrust it," urged can heighten or diminish reality testing. Anxiety- philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. That is the free spheres of group life can create; anxiety- (or a) challenge of Professor Binion's rich essay, driven realms (such as traumatic reliving) can only which takes us to the heart of group formation -- repeat. Further, traumatic lack of closure directs us what groups are and what they are for. How does to the role of mourning in history. It also leads us one understand the several kinds of group proc- to scrutinize notions of trauma and of group cau- esses Binion identifies, for example, biologically sality. How much of historic "trauma" is property adaptive group identifications, traumatic group re- of the event, and how much is the detritus of ex- flexes (historic repetitions, madness, suicide), nor- pectations and feelings brought (transferred) to the mal group process, rationalization in human (mal-) event from childhood? We are here in the realm of adaptation? He asks at the outset, "How can a over-determinism rather than strict physicalistic group of people act in concert to a given end of determinism. If we are not careful, Occam's Razor which they are unaware as individuals?" may cut us on the fallacy of misplaced concrete- ness (Whitehead)! It is often hard to know when There are even different ways of acting in "simplicity" is not "simplification" instead. If concert. When people began to reduce fertility in repetition is remembering in action, what all is be- the 1870s, they likely did not think of themselves ing so dramatically remembered, condensed into an as a group (entity) in the same way that hyper- nationalists did after a humiliating military defeat. historic event and its symbolic eventfulness? If I understand Binion correctly, the former could Traumatic group reliving is likely one of be retrospectively deduced as a non-self-conscious the driven-by-emergency responses to anxiety group based on their similar adaptive behavior, (regression, reorganization via splitting and projec- while the latter were an ideationally (ideologically) tion, etc.). To use Binion's evocative image, it self-defined, highly self-conscious group. In the sometimes (when?) "hijacks" reality (including former instance, the "group" comes after the fact; historicality) to confirm symbol. It becomes a mat- in the latter, it is the central fact. The threat of ter of careful empirical study, mediated by counter- overpopulation (that is, group consciousness of its transference, to determine how and how much a danger), and altruism in behalf of reducing the dan- calamity is event, and how and how much it is ger, cannot be the driving force(s) for fertility re- symbol (as in Vamik Volkan's concept of "chosen duction, since the same motivation does not occur trauma") that "hijacks" the past to quell anxiety everywhere. This brings us to psychohistory. more present in origin. Could family life and parent-child relations have In sum, there are many forms that group Page 154 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000 identification can take, which points to the possi- impracticable from the word go. That is bility of typology, so long as the psychodynamic why Europeans adopted marital birth control complexity of group process (for instance, Binion's instead, on top of their continuing large- notions of "work" and "basic assumptions" as oper- scale emigration. And that radical ating simultaneously at differing levels) is recog- emergency measure was too little too late at nized. that: they topped it off with the positive check of massive self-slaughter beginning in *** 1914 (Journal of Social History, 27 [4], Rudolph Binion Replies 1994, p. 691). Other animals retrench by the group when First fact, Lloyd, then theory. Europe’s food or space is running short, so why doubt that large-scale marital birth control did not begin with humans do too? Of course, Lloyd, the individuals “the most evolved parents.” No measurable vari- involved don’t retrench for the sake of the group: ables whatever consistently distinguished the early you dismissed my point so fast that you missed it. starters. The monographic literature on this point Individual motives aren’t group motives any more is abundant and conclusive. Paul, if the biblical than particles move like the bodies they compose. injunction to be fruitful and multiply “made far As for group memory, if hunter-gatherers reverse better sense on the farm than in the city,” how direction along a tribal corridor after several gen- come the peasantry took the contraceptive lead as erations, what guides their steps back? Not likely often as not? As for the rubber condom, Norman, oral tradition, since speechless creatures migrate its causality has been written off long since. An- that way too. If we “cannot assume the method of cient Rome depopulated without it. So did the transmission between generations,” neither can we Americans and the French take the fertility plunge ignore the fact of transmission. Or to analogize without it following their two great political revo- with “hard” science again, should the law of in- lutions. When birth control, extramarital since an- verse squares have been repealed over the couple tiquity, went domestic across Europe beginning in of centuries before quantum field theory finally the 1870s, mechanical devices and abortion only established how gravitation is transmitted? (By the brought up the rear behind withdrawal and espe- by, Lloyd, in which individual Germans have you cially abstinence, imposed by wives as a rule and documented that enema behind the “stab-in-the- abetted by prostitution: one less intercourse in ten back,” or shaming little children behind the “shame and the transition was irreversibly on. of Versailles”?) My question, though, was not how fertility The group in my demographic example is plunged, but why. As that plunge was collective, I clearcut geographically: all Europeans and only answered in kind. Or rather, to exemplify large- Europeans. But did it pre-exist psychologically? It scale adaptive group process I drew on some arith- did at the gut level, Howard, in such basics as the metic I once did with Patrick Festy at the French distinctive European marriage pattern, though only demographic institute (INED). I put my findings now is it gaining self-conscious identity. True, more graphically at that time: John, Europeans did not mentalize their baby By the 1870s Europe faced an budgeting the way the Germans defeated in 1918 unprecedented, potentially devastating and Pirandello’s six Characters mentalized their internal invasion. At the peak rate of traumatic reliving. The reason as I see it was not increase it was then running, its population that Europe’s aggregate demographic business was of some 330,000,000 in the 1870s was “mega” (so was World War II), but that it was headed toward a couple of billion over the adaptive. Both traumatized groups -- Hitler’s Ger- next century -- a truly forbidding prospect. mans and Pirandello’s six Characters -- literalized To have stemmed this human tidal wave in their reliving as far as circumstances allowed. the traditional way, by juggling marriage While reliving, both were unconsciously back in rates and ages, to the extent that it actually the original trauma and consciously even thinking did so by conjugal birth control would have Here we go again. It remains that only mentally, called for condemning nearly two out of in the unconscious, is a refought war the same war every three women to celibacy without issue or a restaged dramma the same dramma, whereas a or else forbidding women to marry before reproductive cutback is just that for a population their middle thirties -- both options defending collectively against overgrowth. Still in December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 155 all, inborn unconscious material is no less mental submitted November 10.] than repressed material. The two group impera- Why Bush Won. (1) The voters tend to de- tives of retrench and relive are both alike mental, sire a change after eight or more years of the Presi- with retrench even the more clearly defensive of dency by the same individual or party. This desire the two. And isn’t everything mental the psy- is consistent with the election of Clinton in 1992, chohistorian’s business? Carter in 1976, Nixon in 1968, and Kennedy in What a rich harvest I inadvertently reaped 1960. The desire was especially strong because of by citing Langer’s example of symbolic reliving in the highly publicized sexual misbehavior by Presi- the aftermath of the Black Death. Langer’s is still dent Clinton. (2) Much more money was spent on our next assignment, but one requiring, as Sam the Republican than Democratic campaign. The shows, a comparative approach to sort out a Republicans therefore could afford more publicity “multiplicity of reactions” polarized to extremes of and paid personnel. (3) Bush displayed a gregari- abandon and control. May Sam’s book and Nor- ous, friendly personality. His broad appeal was man’s bring that macabre megatrauma into focus at reinforced by his slogan, “compassionate conserva- last through all the convulsion and disarray that tive.” He attracted votes from many Democrats went with it. Meanwhile, back with Norman to and Independents. Germany’s simpler, smoother traumatic reliving: Why Gore Lost. (1) He is generally re- for once joker A. J. P. Taylor was nearly right, the garded as deceitful and politically opportunistic. German public went to war in 1939 in a spirit not These characteristics were attributed to him mainly of jubilation as in 1914 but of gloomy resignation. because of his association with President Clinton. Such was precisely the mood that heralds a trau- (2) Nader as an active candidate for President at- matic reliving. tracted a substantial number of votes from Gore, Paul, you prefer sniffing around to looking including in Florida, where Gore would otherwise around, but does that make the big picture illusory? have won the state’s electoral votes and thereby the If you mistrust demography because of its false election. Gore also needed to counteract Nader by prophets, why not psychohistory too? And is emphasizing environmental and liberal issues that ethology at higher risk than psychohistory for re- alienated conservative voters. (3) Gore is viewed searchers’ projections? Ignore facts that can be as excessively serious and controlled. His out- misread and learning is at an end. Demography standing intelligence and achievements established and ethology are privileged peepholes into our ani- a barrier between him and some voters. The ma- mal basics in the bulk. That bulk is a fact of life jority of voters probably felt closer identification even if, alas, it does leave individualizers such as with George W. Bush, who is more gregarious and intellectually limited. Presidential Election 2000 Why Gore Almost Won. (1) He is the in- cumbent Vice President during a time of prolonged Lloyd, you, and -- to quote Peter -- Peter himself national prosperity and growth. He has partici- “adrift.”  pated prominently in the Clinton administration, and was supported by President Clinton. (2) He is highly intellectual with a background of major Election 2000 Hindsight achievements. For the past 24 years he was suc- cessively a U. S. Congressman, Senator, and Vice Herbert Barry III President. (3) He campaigned for President pri- University of Pittsburgh marily as a populist, appealing to the larger number of Democrats than Republicans and to the many The election of George W. Bush instead of disadvantaged people who have been left behind Al Gore as President of the United States is a sin- by the national prosperity. gle choice that will make a large difference for many aspects of national life from tax cuts to Su- Why Bush Almost Lost. (1) His political preme Court appointments. This essay identifies and other accomplishments are rather brief and three influences that are the most important reasons meager. His emphasis on social skills is accompa- (in order) for each of four results: victory for Bush, nied by a public impression that his intellect is me- defeat for Gore, almost victory for Gore, and al- diocre. (2) His proposals favor the wealthy few most defeat for Bush. [Editor's Note: Article was and therefore are unpopular with the majority of voters. (3) His emphatic identity as a Texas Re- Page 156 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000 publican who opposes federal government inter- very narrow electoral vote victory of George W. ventions antagonized many voters in the Northern Bush despite the very narrow popular vote victory cities. of Al Gore. With the continuation of small Repub- Many more variables contributed to the lican majorities in the U.S. Senate and House of difference between victory and defeat in the ex- Representatives, members of the Republican Bush tremely close election. I believe they were smaller Administration will probably try to exploit their or less general influences. An example is Gore’s control of the federal government, without cooper- choice of Joe Lieberman, an observant Jew, as his ating with the Democrats. The opposition Democ- Vice Presidential candidate. This decision almost ratic Party will be angry and energized to win con- won the electoral votes of Florida and helped in trol of Congress and the White House in future many other states. The combination of a Christian elections, compensating for Gore’s defeat this year. and Jewish nominee was attractive to ecumeni- I therefore predict that the Democrats will win ma- cally-oriented people of all religions in addition to jorities in the Senate and House of Representatives voters who advocate strict separation of the federal in 2002 and the Presidency in 2004, and that Al government from the Christian church. On the Gore as the Democratic nominee for President in other hand, anti-Semitic Southerners might have 2004 will again have the opportunity to defeat contributed to Bush’s victory in all the Southern George W. Bush. states. Herbert Barry III, PhD, has published on The foregoing influences mainly refer to the Presidents of the United States since 1979 and group fantasy or group psychohistory of the voters is Co-Director of the Psychohistory Forum's rather than to the psychobiography or psychohis- Research Group on the Childhood, Personality, tory of the two candidates. In some respects the and Psychology of Presidents and Presidential rivals are similar. Both are the first son and name- Candidates. He may be contacted at sake of a politically prominent father. Both have a .  strong and prosperous family background. Both campaigns were planned and conducted with the benefit of expert advisors and many public opinion Personality Is the Main Issue polls. Both candidates made very few mistakes. Aubrey Immelman There are notable psychological differences St. John's University between the rivals. A dominant defense - nism of Bush is denial of grief, anxiety, and guilt. As I write this [mid-November], the out- One of the origins was the death of his younger come of the 2000 Presidential election still hangs sister from leukemia when he was seven years old. in the balance as the nation awaits final results He became closely bonded with his grieving from the state of Florida. In stark contrast to the mother and developed a pattern of sociability, hu- uncertainty surrounding the result of this closely mor, and leadership. Symptoms of his denial in- contested race, various prognosticators and self- clude mediocre academic performance and self- proclaimed pundits -- myself included -- confi- destructive alcohol consumption. His emotional dently predicted a clear outcome to the contest. adjustment is fragile, but his self-control is strong, At a March 6, 1999, meeting of the Psy- indicated by his decision to abstain from alcohol chohistory Forum (reported in “Why Al Gore Will following his 40th birthday. Not Be Elected President In 2000,” Clio’s Psy- A dominant defense mechanism of Gore is che , September, 1999), 20 months before the elec- compartmentalization of his personality. In differ- tion, I predicted that Al Gore would fail in his bid ent situations he is an ambitious politician, zealous for the Presidency, “provided the Republicans field scholar, loyal subordinate, introspective philoso- an outgoing, relatively extraverted, charismatic pher, devoted husband and father, and hedonistic candidate.” Specifically, I contended that the Vice prankster. He loyally but ambivalently strives to President’s conscientious, introverted personality conform to the desires of his late father, who was pattern augured poorly for his candidacy “in an era loving but strict and demanding. His compartmen- where political campaigns are governed by satura- talized personality accounts for the erroneous pub- tion television coverage and the boundaries be- lic perception of him as changeable and unstable. tween leadership and celebrity have become in- Future elections will be affected by the creasingly blurred.” December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 157

In the other corner, seven academics at the which elicits a reciprocal response to the candidate. annual meeting of the American Political Science The prototype of the Presidential candidate who Association in August forecast a decisive win for fails to ignite the public's passion in an era of Gore. Using predictor variables such as economic "made-for-television" elections, is the conscien- growth, the public’s perception of economic well- tious introvert -- a character type that has not occu- being, the popularity of the incumbent President, pied the Oval Office since Jimmy Carter, and be- and the candidates’ standing in public opinion fore him, Herbert Hoover, Calvin Coolidge, and polls, six analysts forecast comfortable victory Woodrow Wilson. margins ranging from 52.3 to 55.4 percent of the In my September, 1999, Clio’s Psyche major-party vote for Gore, while a seventh pre- profile of George W. Bush (“The Political Person- dicted a Gore landslide, at 60.3 percent. ality of George W. Bush,” pp. 74-75), I predicted In retrospect, it appears that Bush’s dispo- that the Texas governor’s “personality-based limi- sitional advantage effectively did cancel out Gore’s tations include a propensity for superficial com- considerable situational advantage. It follows that mand of complex issues, a tendency to be easily Presidential forecasting models can be refined by bored by routine, a predisposition to act impul- acknowledging the pivotal role of personality in sively, and a predilection to favor personal connec- contemporary Presidential campaigns, and entering tions, friendship, and loyalty over competence in it into the political-economic equation. staffing decisions and political appointments.” My interest in political personality assess- This inference, too, was largely borne out ment is not, however, limited to its potential as a in the course of the campaign. Indeed, the Gore co-predictor of election outcomes. Of much campaign’s most effective weapon against Bush in greater import, personality foreshadows a candi- the run-up to the election was their charge that he date’s Presidential performance and proficiency as lacked the capacity to be President -- usually a campaigner. Briefly -- and focusing only on their framed in terms of a lack of experience, stature, or shortcomings, for illustrative purposes -- here is readiness to lead the nation. And at least one com- how my personality-based predictions fared in an- mentator attributed Bush’s occasional lapses on the ticipating the two major-party candidates’ behavior stump to boredom with routine. As for impulsive- during the 2000 Presidential campaign. ness, suffice it to say, “major league” (with apolo- In my March, 1999, profile of Gore, I pre- gies to The New York Times reporter Adam dicted that his “major personality-based limita- Clymer). tions” would be “deficits in the important political Most telling, however, was the way that skills of interpersonality, charisma, and spontane- Bush predictably stumbled into the pitfall of favor- ity,” and that “moralistically conscientious features ing personal connections and loyalty in his staffing in his profile” incurred the risk of “alienating some decisions -- a common theme among extraverted constituencies.” That much was evident in the first candidates. Surely Bush’s selection of Dick Che- Presidential debate, which Gore won on raw debat- ney as his running mate -- the very person charged ing points but lost in the court of public opinion. by George W. to lead his Vice Presidential search His debate performance, keenly parodied on and Secretary of Defense in his father’s administra- NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” was widely per- tion -- must count foremost in terms of Bush’s per- ceived as supercilious and overbearing. sonality-based predisposition to favor friendship A critical determinant of whether people and loyalty in his political appointments. The se- form positive or negative personal impressions lection of Cheney may well turn out to have been a hinges on their perception of others as warm and contributing factor should Bush lose an election as outgoing or as cold and retiring, and Presidential closely contested as this one, whereas Pennsyl- politics on television plays a leading role in shap- vania Governor Tom Ridge may well have deliv- ing these perceptions. Since the first televised ered his key battleground state to Bush. (Gore, in Presidential debates in 1960, with the exception of contrast, made a more calculated selection in his Richard Nixon, the more outgoing Presidential choice of Joseph Lieberman as his running mate. candidate with the greatest personal charisma and As I wrote in an op-ed article last fall, "What Gore publicly perceived warmth or likeability has won. really needs is a running mate who can balance his Rightly or wrongly, voters tend to perceive the so- personal deficits in the politically pivotal skills of cial reserve and emotional distance of introverted easily connecting with people…. Lieberman's dis- candidates as indifference and a lack of empathy, armingly warm, engaging manner will stand the Page 158 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000

Democratic ticket in good stead…." ["Vice Presi- Aubrey Immelman, PhD, is Associate dential Nominee Helps Gore More Than Bush," St. Professor of Psychology at St. John’s University in Cloud Times, Sept. 10, 2000, p. 9B]). Minnesota, where he directs the Unit for the Study In closing, for Gore to have captured a slim of Personality in Politics, .  majority of the popular vote is testimony not of his He may be reached at . strength as a candidate, but of the strength of the economy and the collective contentment of the American people. Toward the end of the campaign, Presidential Free Associations Gore seemed more animated and passionate, if not Paul H. Elovitz quite transcending his reputation for stiffness. But Ramapo College and the Psychohistory Forum his performance in the first Presidential debate, noted earlier, offers scant evidence of real personal The Permanent Presidential Election growth in the course of the campaign -- not unex- About a decade ago, when I started using pectedly, given the firm roots of his pedantic, mor- the term, Permanent Election, to refer to endless alistic manner in a deeply conscientious character electioneering for the Presidency, Trotsky’s notion structure. of the “Permanent Revolution” always came to Much the same can be said of Bush. Al- mind. Trotsky in 1904 had criticized Lenin’s at- though he clearly honed his debating skills, his tempt to give the historical processes a push by lack of candor about his 1976 arrest for driving bypassing the stages of historical development and while intoxicated could be indicative of the ten- democracy. In 1917, seeing power to be within dency for outgoing personalities to employ defen- reach, Trotsky joined the shortcut by helping to sive dissociation: a failure to face up to unpleasant launch a coup d’état against the inept democratic reality, accompanied by cosmetic image-making Kerensky government. The willingness of Bolshe- revealed in a succession of socially attractive but viks and other revolutionaries to subordinate their changing facades. Predictably, Bush was unable to democratic ideals to immediate victory contributed overcome his lack-of-“gravitas” problem. to the utter failure of the Communists in Russia.

No matter who is ultimately declared the The lack of conclusion on November 7 to winner, the new President will face an uphill battle. the U.S. Presidential election gives new meaning to Gore will likely have the harder time of it, on situ- this notion of the Permanent Election. The elec- ational as well as dispositional grounds. Situation- tioneering is now being carried out with endless ally, he could face narrow Republican majorities in recounts and legal wrangling instead of by rallies, both the House and Senate. Dispositionally, his debates, and television commercials. The ultimate relative introversion poses an obstacle to the kind loser is also positioned to start running immedi- of coalition building and forging of supportive re- ately for election in 2004. Both the winner and lationships necessary for institutionalizing his pol- loser will be scarred by their willingness to use any icy initiatives. Although Bush for his part will be and all means to claim power in the aftermath of considerably hampered by the slender margins of the 2000 election. The American people appear to the congressional Republican majorities, his less be the ultimate loser. ideological, more conciliatory orientation will aug- Resistance to Political Psychobiography ment his outgoing, “retail” politician’s skills, In the early summer of 1976, at the first which could catalyze his capacity to consummate national psychohistory conference, one of four his policy objectives. panelists dropped off the panel probing the psycho- biography of Jimmy Carter on grounds it was im- proper to proceed since we might hurt Carter’s ca- The Best of Clio's Psyche reer. By its very nature, he felt political psycho- This 93-page collection of many of the biography was negative. Prior to my talk, I was best and most popular articles from 1994 to the approached by the distinguished, pioneer psycho- September, 1999, issue is available for $20 a copy. historian and psychiatrist, Robert Jay Lifton, who It will be distributed free to Members told me in no uncertain terms that it was unethical renewing at the Supporting level and above as and improper for me to write about a political can- well as Subscribers upon their next two-year didate during an election. I justified my research renewal. on the basis of the public’s need to know prior to voting, yet I was shaken by Lifton’s words. December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 159

It is easy to understand the vehemence of resistant many remain to using the insights of our his denunciation of the psychobiography of candi- field to better understand our next President. A dates when we think of the hatchet job performed Texas psychiatrist immediately sent me, as the on the Republican candidate for President in 1964. signer of the request, an e-mail denouncing the Opponents of Senator Barry Goldwater surveyed publication of psychobiographical information on members of the American Psychiatric Association the Presidents as "junk science" and "third-hand about the Arizona Senator’s temperament and its information" which "insult[s] ... the candidates." suitability for a President. The American Psychiat- His indignant accusations had absolutely nothing ric Association’s subsequent stringent rules against to do with the type of research and writing I was such assessments barred Lifton, as a practicing engaged in for my lengthy chapter, “The Empa- psychiatrist, from such investigations. He would thetic and Comparative Approach to the Political have preferred to have us banned from the same Psychobiography of George W. Bush and Albert activity. A. Gore,” nor the type of articles I was soliciting. When I asked myself why Lifton did not Consequently, I attempted to educate him see political psychobiography as worthwhile, I as to the reality of the Presidential psychobiogra- thought back to the roots of the field. Walter phy endeavor, advising him what books and peri- Langer’s World War II Office of Strategic Studies odicals he might read and professional conferences psychobiography of Adolf Hitler was a fine job for he might attend. The psychiatrist, and some of his the time, yet the suggested study of Joseph Stalin online colleagues, seemed surprised that there was was rejected because he was an ally, not an enemy. a serious scholar doing this work. Without reading In the minds of much of the general public, the me- any of the substantial psychobiographical litera- dia, and most of academia, the psychobiography of ture, or to even carefully read my return response, political leaders was and is associated with psycho- they denounced our endeavor as unprofessional, pathology. This is what I call political psycho- unethical, and immoral. We were further accused biography as character assassination. of “political preference” and “ulterior motives” as Thus, when the U.S. was thinking of going we allegedly tried to influence the election process to war against Saddam Hussein in 1990-1991, by “speculations” and "diagnoses" about candi- there was an eagerness to read about Saddam’s dates. psychopathology. But when a talented Turkish- My second contribution to the open dia- American psychohistorian wrote about Ocalan, the logue was a 1400-word e-mail carefully explaining Kurdish nationalist leader, some of my colleagues the field, dealing with the objections, and attempt- characterized it as character assassination by ing to put many misconceptions to rest. Though psychobiography. Presidential psychobiography remained the target Intense criticism of discussion of the per- of an attack joined in by many, a few champions of sonality and childhood of candidates surfaced last our cause came to my defense. They argued that October 11. It came during a forum on the election the public needs to know the personal capabilities at my college. A colleague surprised me by de- and proclivities of the candidates before they vote. nouncing the whole notion of studying the candi- Not one of the many articulate and talented dates’ character. This was unexpected because she professional who devoted so much time or energy is a psychoanalyst vitally interested in issues of to denouncing the political psychobiography of childhood and personality. The essence of her ar- Presidential candidates (and often psychoanalysis) gument, which came from her concerns as a politi- appeared to change his mind. None took me up on cal scientist, is that character and personality are my challenge to read the September Election 2000 distractions from the real policy, political, and eco- issue so that they could make a more educated vote nomic issues at stake in the election. They serve to on November 7 and realize the serious scholarship help justify the media’s obsession with trivialities going into our articles. My recollection is that all of personality. Though I do not think the “baby” ignored my continual mention of my empathetic of studying personality should be thrown out with approach de-emphasizing psychological terminol- the media’s "bath water" of trivializing character ogy, always assuming that a psychopathological issues, I do understand her frustration. model was being pursued. As Thomas Kuhn said Last July, Clio Psyche’s Call for Papers in his classic, The Structure of Scientific Revolu- on the Presidential election created a dialogue with tions (1970), it takes a new generation to accept the psychology professionals, demonstrating just how new paradigm. Page 160 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000

The Popular Use of Political Psychobiography about, demonstrating that my use was really as a Political psychobiography seems to reach sounding board, rather than as an authority on the the public mostly in diluted form. An incident of field. October 24 illustrates my point. A producer for a Paul H. Elovitz, PhD, is Editor of this program on National Public Radio called, request- publication.  ing that I participate in her program. In part, she wanted me to respond to Gail Sheehy, who had recently written "The Accidental Candidate" in the From the Eye of the Hurricane: October 6 issue of Vanity Fair. She said she was looking for water cooler-type pop psychology to The View from Palm Beach have fun with the idea of analyzing Bush and Gore. County She had some concern when I said I would not readily be using psychological terms, because the Melvin Kalfus empathetic approach I took to psychobiography Psychohistory Forum Research Associate specifically sought to avoid jargon and psychologi- cal terminology. I also expressed my apprehension My wife, Alma, was one of the first to about hearing on the radio that Dr. Paul H. Elovitz know there was something seriously wrong. For “calls Al Gore a ______” and “George Bush a 10 years she has worked at a local polling station ______.” (I dared not fill in the blanks lest I be on election day. This was the first year they had a quoted out of context.) Though I indicated I would major problem -- and she encountered it bright and join in via telephone as a commentator on her pro- early (they opened at 7 a.m.) with one of the many, gram, mostly to present a less biased view of psy- many elderly people who vote there. Once she be- chological analysis, she did not call me at the des- came aware of the misleading "butterfly" ballot, ignated time. Obviously, my approach was going she and a colleague (both Democrats) were able to to be too impartial and serious for her purpose. In warn all those who signed in at their desks about my personal experience as a psychobiographer, I the proper way to mark the ballots for President. know that more people expect me to give them the The other poll workers -- all Republicans -- did not “dirt” (the “goods”) on candidates than to provide alert those who came their way. My wife came the type of carefully researched, empathetic under- home late that night extremely upset, and ex- standing of what motivates them that I strive to hausted. By the next morning, we were aware of achieve. the scope of the problem -- across Palm Beach County nearly 20,000 discarded ballots and 3500 My brief career as a “media expert” in the votes for Buchanan, who should have received election was not over. The next week I was con- very few. tacted by a historian working for United Press In- ternational for an article he was writing, “Why Television has undoubtedly made all of People Don’t Like Gore.” The researcher is a you aware of what we have been living with down well-trained American historian who has taught at here ever since. It's just several days until Thanks- some major universities. Two things puzzled me giving. People have been marching in the streets about the interview. First, he personally had met and holding rallies with Jesse Jackson orating and Gore, finding the Democratic candidate to be very leading the way. Court challenges have been pil- bright, well informed, and with a wry sense of hu- ing up and manual recounts have been on-again, mor, which he liked. He never made it clear as to off-again, with those that have taken place finding why he, as someone who liked the Vice President, more votes for Gore. A nation already divided was doing an article on why other people disliked along fiercely partisan lines seems to be ready to him. Second, he had so many of his own interest- divide even more heatedly. Where is Josiah Bart- ing ideas that he barely heard a word I said. His lett of "West Wing" when you need him? What’s a completed article never mentioned what we spoke psychohistorian who’s emotionally involved to the The Makers-of-Psychohistory eyeballs to do? To think? To write? Research Project Everybody’s worst nightmare seems to be To write the history of psychohistory, the coming true. Both candidates are fiercely disliked Forum is interviewing the founders of our field to create by partisans on the other side -- and anything any- a record of their challenges and accomplishments. It one says only fans the flames and inspires the welcomes participants who will help identify, interview, and publish accounts of the founding of psychohistory. meanest of group fantasies. Speaking from Gore Contact Paul H. Elovitz, . country (Palm Beach County), the Democrats think December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 161 that the brothers Bush and the Republicans are try- in 1968, and they helped to give us Nixon. And ing to steal an election that they know they lost. they wouldn’t vote for Carter in 1980, and helped No doubt in Bush country the feeling runs just to give us Reagan. There are group fantasies of all about the same, in the other direction. Each ac- sizes and shapes -- and being members of an elite cuses the other of bad faith. group that would rather lose the good in pursuit of Conspiracy theories abound. One has Re- the perfect is apparently a pretty powerful one. publican Governor Jeb Bush conspiring with Palm See author credit on page 127.  Beach County Superintendent of Elections Theresa LePore, a Democrat, to create the confusing ballot. Republicans are merchandising tales of fraud and Election Poem: falsification during the manual recounts. Each day "It Could Be Worse?" brings new twists and turns that only add to the general anxiety, frustration, and anger. Everyone John V. Knapp longs for it to be over. Everyone fears a “stolen Northern Illinois University election.” As psychohistorians, we have to remem- ber Lincoln’s admonition to his followers in 1860, (With profound apologies to Alexander Pope) when he said that the Southerners were only mak- [Prologue] ing the arguments that “we (the Northerners) would make were we in their situation, and we are Of slippery George, and his Son, who bade making the arguments they should make were they Floridians' count delayed, though half-weighed, in ours.” I sing! Note Muse, their instruments of State, However, as both a citizen and a psy- Called to Impasse by Baker (Nader?) ... And chohistorian, I fear the lasting scars that a bitterly Fate? partisan fight can cause in the national psyche. To the oil bid'ness born, Dubya sits, After all, each of us is engaged in selecting -- in With mein of lemon, and crafted sound-bits. identifying with -- the single most important Since Dubya was rarely Freudened when Jung, “delegate” in American life: the President. To see He's gifted in English, his own special tongue. our chosen leader (whether Bush or Gore) deprived Likewise, Ms Harris stands aloof, b'gosh, of what he seems to have rightfully won, is to wit- Dismissing bad chads with smiling panache! ness an assassination of sorts -- a political assassi- Citizens, unsettled, questioning, cursed: nation. And we are going to be asked to accept the "Would Dunce, the Second, reign like Cynic, empowerment of the “assassins.” To feel cheated the First?" out of what you believe is rightfully yours, and to have to watch the “cheaters” enjoy the fruits of [At the Florida Courtroom] their “ill-gotten gains,” is too much for partisans to "O when shall rise a Leader all our own?" bear. It is no surprise, therefore, that paranoid fan- Sobbed Baker in sad dismay: "Stop the tasies -- and behavior -- abound. The question is Recount! whether paranoid conspiracy fantasies will remain Today, certify!" "But," countered Al's koan: the provenance of the most partisan groups on ei- "Twixt Prince and voter must no barriers ther side, or whether they will spread through the mount." populace at large -- destroying any chance of le- And heav'n agreed to save the Gator State, gitimacy for the new President. Supremely decreeing the count's longer date. As far as what local Democrats feel about Then Baker cried: "O forth in folly brought Nader and those who voted for him -- don’t ask! This is of electile disfunction fraught!" I’ve been through this twice already. I remember In weighed DeLay, with cold visage's fury: all those liberals who wouldn’t vote for Humphrey "Screw the election, WE'RE Judge and Jury! Call for Nominations If Congress decides, we'll move in a hurry ... Halpern Award So Dubya can relax and shouldn't worry!" for the [Meanwhile, back at the Ranch] Best Psychohistorical Idea in a Great Dubya dreamed: The proud Parnassian Book, Article, or Internet Site snear Contact Paul H. Elovitz, . The conscious simper, and the jealous leer, Page 162 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000

Mixed: his "Victoriant" clear. "Surplus return! better than many people I have known "in person." Tax-cuts for the rich; Roe v Wade we'll burn ..." I corresponded with him and with his wife, anthro- Sudden, dream ended. Unconscious, cruel pologist Ruth M. Boyer, for nearly 20 years, and Thoughts rimmed his mind, swirling chad-filled we spoke many times by phone. I regard him as a hot gruel. mentor as well as a scholar and example. I shall "This prize is tainted; who claims it has foes!" deeply grieve his loss. E'en worse: What if the Emperor has no L. Bryce Boyer was born in Vernal, Utah, clothes? and grew up Mormon. He received his MD from [On the Topless Towers of Illium] Stanford University in 1942. He practiced psycho- analysis in Berkeley -- the hub of his work around So what IS the answer, all cried to hear; the world. Initially an orthodox analyst, he was "Is it the Dubya? Will the Stock Market later influenced by Melanie Klein and Donald cheer?" Winnicott, and most recently by David Rosenfeld Or, "Is it Big Al, the Clintonian heir? and Thomas Ogden. At the beginning of "A Con- Can Houston rely on much cleaner air?" versation with L. Bryce Boyer," Sue von Baeyer Dear reader: by publication date You asked him to identify "a few ways his thinking had Will know far more than today I could do! changed over the course of his life work" (in Coun- So whoever gains the high laurel crown tertransference and Regression, 1999, p. 241). Despair not! This winner's up starts one-down! Early in his reply he said, The Republic is strong. We can outlast How can one possibly answer a Bombastic fury and slippery chads cast. question like this, if one doesn't talk about Hence winning is elastic, Gush or Bore! the life influence of having had parents who They must again in a very short four. hated each other, and a mother who hated John V. Knapp, PhD, is Professor in the her children, and a mother who tried to Department of English at Northern Illinois torture her children? Tortured me, not her University and writes about psychology and second son. A person who in childhood has literature. He may be contacted at lived on a farm, lived on the edge of an .  Indian reservation, has investigated gopher holes and bird nests and pulled turds out of turkeys that were constipated. I early learned that there was no possibility of In Memoriam: believing anything I was told. Nothing told L. Bryce Boyer to me by my mother at any rate, and she was (1916-2000) the only one who was really important to me. No -- my father, it turned out, was very Howard F. Stein important to me, even kept me sane, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center although I saw him very little. But my mother was a chronic liar and thief, and In the century since the publication of Sig- sadist. At the same time I adored her. I mund Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, a handful learned from my experience with my mother of psychoanalysts have devoted entire careers to that there was no possibility of believing the exploration of the unconscious from clinical anything I was told. This was combined material together with material gathered via ethno- with her being always grossly hysteric and graphic fieldwork, historical scholarship, folklore, periodically frankly delusional. So I had to religion, art, music, workplace organizations, or discard what I was told, and I learned never other "social" institutions and units. On August 9, to believe anything I was told, that I had to 2000, L. Bryce Boyer, MD, one of the most fertile find out for myself what I should trust and minds in this effort, died in Walnut Creek, Califor- believe. And I was a scientist. I was always nia, at age 84. To the end, he was developing. His a scientist, and I always believed in late works read like the Verdi of Otello and Fal- secondary logic, secondary process logic. At staff, and like the Beethoven of the final quartets. the same time I was highly intuitive. With Although L. Bryce Boyer and I never met, my mother, for example, I could make a I feel that I knew him and was known by him far pretty good guess of when she was going to December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 163

have a temper tantrum, or when she was As Boyer said in the conversation with von Baeyer, going to have a paranoid attack, or when she "You must have the personal, emotional interplay was going to come after me with a knife and of tolerating the introjection of whatever it is that's try to kill me, or wound me in some way. I being projected into you, and you must have the usually got some glimpses, so that I was able capacity to have the observing analytic third [a to divert her attention in some way, concept of Thomas Ogden] at the side of it so that sometimes I was able to show her that what you don't react crudely to it" (p. 245). Counter- she had in mind wasn't so. And I actually transference was a powerful tool of understanding only got one knife cut deep enough to leave throughout Boyer's life work. a scar (pp. 241-242). Although not officially trained as a psy- His clinical writing and scholarship are chohistorian, he was one of its de facto practitio- meticulous. The bibliographies of his papers look ners for decades. He deserves to be more thor- like library holdings. At the same time, his writing oughly read and incorporated into its literature. reveals the presence of writer, patient, informant, Let me offer some concluding thoughts on why I and culture. Boyer's work has been especially think Boyer is so important. He never "applies" well-accepted and influential in Central and South clinical psychoanalysis in a biological, historical, America, where he lectured at conferences fre- or cultural vacuum. His research is as broad as it is quently. Much of his writing has been translated deep. Both in his clinical and cross-cultural work, into seven languages. For most of the 30 years Boyer emphasizes the very early, "pre-oedipal," from 1965 to 1994, Boyer was an editor in various foundation of all human life, and with it, the dire capacities of The Psychoanalytic Study of Society, significance of early family relationships. His em- a series founded by Gézà Róheim. I had the pleas- phasis is on the relationship and emotional atti- ure of co-editing with him and his wife the final tudes toward the baby and child. He then explores volume, Number 19, Essays in Honor of George A. how childhood experience, transformed into con- Devos. scious and unconscious structure, underlies such For 35 years, beginning in 1957, he con- subsequent projective life as folklore, religion, and ducted fieldwork among the Mescalero and Chiri- even adaptation. He includes developmental and cahua Apache, together with Ruth Boyer. He also group process considerations in all discussions of did fieldwork among the Upper Tanana Indians in culture change, acculturation, shamanistic ritual the Yukon, the Yukon Delta Inuits in Alaska, the and leadership, and cultural symbolism. Laplanders in northern Finland, and the Quechua His "clinical" writing is as crucial to any in highland Peru. Focusing on transference and psychohistorian as his "cross-cultural" writing, in resistance, he practiced psychoanalysis among the its emphasis on the use as well as the limitations of Apaches, who adopted him as a shaman. countertransference -- the therapist's or observer's He pioneered in the cross-cultural applica- emotional reaction to others -- in understanding tion of the Rorschach Test. Noticing immense per- other people. One can learn much about the un- sonality differences between the Chiricahua and conscious of others through our sensory, muscular, Mescalero Apaches, who had markedly different dermal, and visceral response to the historical histories, he discovered that the Rorschach cor- situations and material we are encountering and roborated these personality distinctions. He ap- studying. As part of the current social resistance to proached the gifted Rorschacher, Bruno Klopfer, the unconscious in the form of political correct- who tutored him on administering and interpreting ness, it has become fashionable not to speak of Rorschach inkblot cards. Boyer had a knack for emotional or cultural "primitiveness." Yet in seeking out, and working with, the best in any Boyer's clinical and cross-cultural studies alike, field. one of his persistent messages is the emotional primitiveness in us all. A theme throughout his clinical and ethno- graphic work is the role of projection and projec- Were I limited to recommending just two tive identification in clinical work, in individual of his hundreds of articles, chapters, and books, I life, in family life, and in culture and social struc- would suggest two books that deserve to be clas- ture. It underlies his advocacy of psychoanalysis sics: Childhood and Folklore: A Psychoanalytic with regressed patients, people who had been re- Study of Apache Personality (1979) and Counter- garded as unanalyzable. He followed Róheim and transference and Regression (1999). He will be Devereux in the practice of ethno-psychoanalysis. sorely missed by those who were touched by his Page 164 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000 life. His published words are only part of that leg- to the original publication in Clio. If you have any acy. questions, contact this editor.]  Howard F. Stein, PhD, a psychoanalytic anthropologist and psychohistorian, is Professor in Bulletin Board the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences The next WORK-IN-PROGRESS SAT- Center, Oklahoma City. He edited the Journal of URDAY SEMINAR: On January 27, 200l, Jay Psychoanalytic Anthropology from 1980-1988 and Gonen, Mary Coleman, et al will present on the is a contributing editor to the Journal of role of law in society starting with the Ancient Psychohistory. President of the High Plains Sumerians. CONFERENCES: The International Society for Applied Anthropology, he is currently Psychohistorical Association (IPA) meetings are completing a book to be published in mid-2001, on June 6-8, 2000, in New York City. Paper pro- Nothing Personal, Just Business: A Guided Jour- posals are still being accepted by Henry Lawton at ney into Organizational Darkness. He may be . (Note the change of dates from contacted at .  our previous announcement.) The Center on Vio- lence and Human Survival held a November 17- 18, 2000, conference, “The Second Nuclear Age Clio’s Psyche Publishes Only and the Academy,” at John Jay College at the CUNY Graduate Center. UN Secretary General Original Materials Kofi Annan was the featured speaker. RE- An Apology SEARCH: Thomas Blass reports that his Clio’s Psyche article (March, 1998, Vol. 4, No. 4, pp. To the Editor: An article entitled "Fathoming the Weird- ness of History" was printed in Clio’s Psyche, Call for Papers March, 2000, 6 (4), pp. 144-146, and then subse- PsychoGeography quently reprinted as "The Weirdness of History" in the Journal of Psychohistory, Summer, 2000, 28 Special Theme Issue (1), pp. 89-92. Unfortunately, there was no cita- March, 2001 tion stating that the article had been previously "PsychoGeography is the study of human pro- published and copyrighted by Clio’s Psyche. jections upon geographic space and the psychic This is an oversight which I wish to correct, as I do interaction between people and geogra- not wish for either journal to be accused of plagia- phy" (Elovitz). It investigates "how issues, ex- rism or misconduct. periences, and processes that result from grow- The article was written for and initially ing up in a male or female body become sym- published in Clio’s Psyche. Afterwards, a lapse bolized and played out in the wider social and of communication seems responsible for the over- natural worlds" (Stein and Niederland). sight when the article was solicited for reprinting Some possible approaches: in the Journal of Psychohistory. Both the Editor of  The gender of geography (e.g., the Journal and I mistakenly thought the other had "motherlands" and "fatherlands") asked and received permission from the Editor of  Psychogeography of rivers, islands, moun- Clio’s Psyche. tains, etc. There was no intent on my part to publish  Borders and borderland symbolism the same article simultaneously or without permis-  Cities, states, and countries as symbols of sion. Please accept my apologies for the absence grandiosity, growth/decay, etc. (e.g., Las of credit given to Clio’s Psyche. Vegas, Florida, California, and Washing- Jerry Piven ton, DC) Hoboken, NJ  Lightness and darkness, day and night [Editor’s Note: Clio’s Psyche's policy is  Travel and exploration to publish only original materials. Upon written  Illness, hospitals and hospices, and death request, we may grant written permission to repub- lish materials from our pages. If republished, these 500-1500 words, due January 15 materials must be part of a much larger work; there Contact Paul Elovitz, must be a clear reference, with a complete citation, December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 165

109-112) on Stanley Milgram recently led to his Kalfus for co-editing (with Associate Editor Bob signing a contract with Perseus Press to write a Lentz) this issue's special theme section on "The biography of Milgram. TRAVEL: Ellen Mendel Psychology of Conspiracy Theories." Our thanks traveled to Germany in October. GET WELL for thought-provoking materials to Herbert Barry WISHES: To David Beisel. PUBLICATIONS: III, David Beisel, Rudolph Binion, Thomas Blass, Congratulations to Maria T. Milora on the publi- Norman F. Cantor, Michael Cohen, Samuel Kline cation of Narcissism, the Family, and Madness: A Cohn, Jr., Henry Vance Davis, Lloyd deMause, Self-Psychological Study of Eugene O’Neill and Dan Dervin, S. Virginia Gonsalves Domond, Jay His Plays; Mary Coleman, The Biology of the Au- Y. Gonen, David G. Goodman, Paul Hamburg, tistic Syndromes, 3rd ed.; Rita Ransohoff, on the David J. Harper, John J. Hartman, Aubrey Immel- planned publication in the fall of 2001 of Fear and man, Charlotte Kahn, Mel Kalfus, John V. Knapp, Envy: Why Men Have Needed to Control and Dominate Women; and to C. Fred Alford, author Call for Papers of What Evil Means to Us (1997) who wrote “Introduction to Evil” for Mind and Human Inter- Psychological Uses of Law action’s special issue, “Defining Evil” (2000, Vol. Special Theme Issue 11, No. 2 , pp. 84-90). LECTURES: On Septem- ber 28, 2000, Isaac Zieman spoke on “Universal June, 2001 Lessons from the Holocaust,” and on October 2 Possible approaches: conducted a seminar of visiting Germans and New  The diffusion of law into every aspect of York Jews on the Holocaust. ANNOUNCE- life (i.e., "the legalization of life") MENTS: Anie Kalayjiana has been elected Vice  Emotional uses of law (e.g., legal expres- Chair of the United Nations NGO/DPI (Non- sion of anger, law as intimidation) Governmental Organizations/Department of Public Information) for the 54th Annual Conference to be  Jury psychology held in August, 2001. OUR THANKS: To our  Law as a system of gridlock members and subscribers for the support that  Insanity and the law makes Clio’s Psyche possible. To Benefactors  Dysfunctional family courts Herbert Barry III, Andrew Brink, and Ralph Colp; Patrons Peter Petschauer, H. John Rogers, and  Legal rights of children Jacques Szaluta; Sustaining Members Mel Kalfus  The law and individual freedom and Mary Lambert; Supporting Members Anony-  Humor in the law and lawyer jokes mous, Rudolph Binion, and Michael Hirohama; and Members Sander Breiner, Paul Elovitz, Florian 500-1500 words, due April 10 Galler, David Lotto, Margaret McLaughlin, Contact Paul Elovitz, Geraldine Pauling, Rita Ransohoff, Roberta Rubin, and Richard Weiss. Special appreciation to Mel Call for Participants Call for Papers Psychobiography of Role of Law in Society Ralph Nader Psychohistory Forum Seminar Saturday, January 27, 2001, NYC Special Theme Seeking participants with a legal background March, 2001 and a strong psychodynamic interest. Possible approaches: *****  Psychodynamics and childhood Call for Papers  Nader's appeal to intellectuals and Inde- pendents; his campaign style Crime and Punishment  His pro-Arab stance Special Theme Issue  The Psychology of Disillusionment September, 2001 500-1500 words, due January 15 500-1500 words, due July 10 Contact Paul Elovitz, Contact Paul Elovitz, Page 166 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000

Peter Knight, Marcus LiBrizzi, Peter Loewenberg, David Lotto, Fran Mason, William McMurtrie, Brian J. McVeigh, Maria T. Miliora, Tord Østberg, Terrence Ripmaster, Robert Rousselle, Tilahun Sineshaw, Alasdair Spark, Francis Steen, Howard F. Stein, George Victor, and Andrew S. Winston; to Brett Lobbato and Richard Ranaudo for editing; and to Anna Lentz for proofreading. 

December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 167 Page 168 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000 December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 169 Page 170 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000 December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 171 Page 172 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000

Call for Papers Our Litigious Society Special Theme Issue March, 2001 Possible approaches:  Psychodynamics

Contact Paul Elovitz, Editor December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 173

Clio's Psyche of the Psychohistory Forum Call for Papers

 Violence in American Life and Mass Murder as Disguised Suicide  The Future of Psychoanalysis in the Third Millennium (June, 2000)  Assessing Apocalypticism and Millennialism Around the Year 2000  PsychoGeography  Election 2000: Psychobiographies of Bradley, Bush, Gore, McCain, Buchanan, et al  The Psychology of Incarceration and Crime  Legalizing Life: Our Litigious Society  Psychobiography  Manias and Depressions in Economics and Society  The Role of the Participant Observer in Psychohistory  Psychohistorical Perspectives on Loneliness  The Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a Model for Healing  The Processes of Peacemaking and Peacekeeping  The Psychology of America as the World’s Policeman  Entertainment News  Elian Gonzales Between Two Worlds  Television, Radio, and Media as Object Relations in a Lonely World  Kevorkian’s Fascination with Assisted Suicide, Death, Dying, and Martyrdom  The Psychobiography and Myth of Alan Greenspan: The Atlas Who Has Not Yet Shrugged Many of these subjects will become special issues. Articles should be from 600-1500 words with a biography of the author. Electronic submissions are welcome on these and other topics. For details, contact Paul H. Elvoitz, PhD, at or (201) 891-7486.

Call for CORST Grant Applications The Committee on Research and Special Training (CORST) of the American Psychoanalytic Association announces an American Psychoanalytic Foundation research training grant of $10,000 for CORST candidates (academic scholars) who have been accepted or are currently in training in an American Psychoanalytic Association institute. The purpose of the grant is to help defray the costs of psychoanalytic training. The grant is to be administered by the local institute to be paid over three years of training at $3,500, $3,500, and $3,000 per year, or as needed. The application is: a.) A brief statement of 1000 words of the research proposed, b.) A letter from a scholar in the field (e.g., department chair, colleague, or dissertation advisor) attesting to the validity and significance of the research, c.) A letter of endorsement by the Education Director of the institute certifying the candidate is in, or has been accepted for, full clinical psychoanalytic training at an institute of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and d.) An up-to-date Curriculum Vitae. Applications are to be submitted in three copies by May 1, 2000, to Professor Paul Schwa- ber, 258 Bradley Street, New Haven, CT 06511. Page 174 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000

Clio's Psyche of the Psychohistory Forum Call for Papers

 Violence in American Life and Mass Murder as Disguised Suicide  Assessing Apocalypticism and Millennialism Around the Year 2000  PsychoGeography  Election 2000: Psychobiographies of Bradley, Bush, Gore, McCain, Bu- Next Psychohistory Forum Meeting chanan, et al  The Psychology of Incarceration and Michael Britton Crime "Countertransference:  Legalizing Life: Our Litigious Society Royal Road Into the Psychology  Psychobiography of the Cold War"  Manias and Depressions in Economics Saturday, September 23, 2000 and Society Contact Paul Elovitz, Editor  The Truth and Reconciliation Commis- See page 51 sion as a Model for Healing  The Processes of Peacemaking and Peacekeeping  The Psychology of America as the World’s Policeman  Entertainment News  Television, Radio, and Media as Object Relations in a Lonely Call for Papers The Psychohistory of

Conspiracy Theories Special Theme Issue December, 2000 Possible approaches:  Psychodynamics and childhood The Best of Clio's Psyche roots of conspiracy theories This 93-page collection of many of the best and most popular articles from 1994 to the  Case studies of conspiracy theo- September, 1999, issue is available for $20 a copy. ries in American history It will be distributed free to Members renewing at the Supporting level and above as well Clio's  Survey of the psychohistorical as Subscribers upon their next two-year renewal. and psychological literature on Psyche Contact the Editor (see page three). conspiracy theories Now on  Film and television treatment of conspiracy theories Contact Bob Lentz, Associate Editor

December, 2000 Clio’s Psyche Page 175

Letter to the Editor Dreamwork Resources The Historical Dreamwork Method is available to help the biographer better under- stand the dreams of the subject and other as- pects of psychobiography. Clio's Psyche welcomes papers on historical dreamwork for publication and for presentation at Psychohistory Forum meetings. Con- Call for Papers tact Paul H. Elovitz (see page 51).  Group Psychohistory (December, 2000)  Conspiracy Theories (December, 2000) (See page 100)  PsychoGeography (March, 2001)

 Legalizing Life: Our Litigious Society Book Reviews (2001) Howard F.  The Psychology of Incarceration and Stein Crime (2001) (Editor's Note:  Television as Object Relations We welcome Contact Paul Elovitz, Editor scanned pic- See page 51

Life: Our Litigious Society Contact the Editor (see page 3) Letters to the Editor

Clio's Psyche Editorial Policies Now on the World Wide Web at

www.cliospsyche.com

Call for Papers on The Psychology of Incarceration and Crime Contact the Editor (see page 3) The Best of Clio's Psyche This 93-page collection of many of the best and most popular articles from 1994 to the September, 1999, Psychohistorians probe the "Why" of issue is available for $20 a copy. It will be distributed free to Members culture, current events, history, and renewing at the Supporting level and above as well as society. Subscribers upon their next two-year renewal. Page 176 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000

 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 CORST Essay Prize • Professor Janice M. Coco, Art History, University of California-Davis, winner of the First Annual American Psychoanalytic Association Committee on Research and Special Training (CORST) $1,000 essay prize, will present her paper, "Exploring the Frontier from the Inside Out in John Sloan's Nude Studies," at a free public lecture at 12 noon, Saturday, December 20, Jade Room, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York City. Sidney Halpern Award for the Best Psychohistorical Idea • The Psychohistory Forum is granting an award of $200 to Michael Hirohama of San Francisco for starting and maintaining the Psy- chohistory electronic mailing list (see page 98). Psychohistory Forum Student Award • David Barry of Fair Lawn, New Jersey, has been awarded a year's Student Membership in the Forum, including a subscription to Clio's Psyche, for his contribution of a fine paper as part of the Makers of the Psychohistorical Paradigm Research Project last June.

Next Psychohistory Forum Meeting

Saturday, January 30, 1999 THE MAKERS OF PSYCHOHISTORY

Charles Strozier 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 P Call for Papers s Special Theme Issues Call for Nominations y 1999 and 2000 c Halpern Award h  The Relationship of Academia, Psycho- for the o history, and Psychoanalysis (March, Best Psychohistorical Idea 1999) in a  The Psychology of Legalizing Life Book, Article, or Computer Site [What is this???] This Award may be granted at the level of  Psychogeography Distinguished Scholar, Graduate, or Un- dergraduate.  Meeting the Millenium Contact Paul H. Elovitz, Editor -- see p.

Free Subscription THE MAKERS OF PSYCHOHISTORY For every paid library subscription ($40), RESEARCH PROJECT the person donating or arranging it will receive a year’s subscription to Clio’s Psyche free. Help The Psychohistory Forum is pleased to announce Clio’s Psyche December, 2000The Young Psychohistorian 1998/99 Membership Awards Page 177 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 will return from Europe for the occasion. Rather than do a biography of SS General Reinhard Heydrich as originally intended, he is writing on the German protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia under Heydrich's dominance. In the last four years this talented young scholar has been awarded nine fellowships, grants, or scholarships.

Dreamwork Resources The Historical Dreamwork Method is available to help the biographer better under- Call for Nominations stand the dreams of the subject and other as- pects of psychobiography. Clio's Psyche wel- Halpern Award comes papers on historical dreamwork for pub- for the lication and for presentation at Psychohistory Best Psychohistorical Idea Forum meetings. Contact Paul H. Elovitz (see in a page 43). Book, Article, or Computer  Site This Award may be granted at the level  of Distinguished Scholar, Graduate, or Undergraduate. There are no negatives in the unconscious.

Call for Papers The Best of Clio's Psyche Special Theme Issues This 93-page collection of many of the best 1999 and 2000 and most popular articles from 1994 to the  The Relationship of Academia, Psy- September, 1999, issue is available for $20 a chohistory, and Psychoanalysis copy. (March, 1999) It will be distributed free to Members re- newing at the Supporting level and above as  Our Litigious Society well as Subscribers upon their next two-year  PsychoGeography renewal. Contact the Editor (see page 51).  Meeting the Millennium  Manias and Depressions in Econom- ics and Society Letters to the Editor Contact the Editor at

Next Psychohistory Forum Meeting

Saturday, October 2, 1999 Letters to the Editor on Charles Strozier Clinton-Lewinsky-Starr "Putting the Psychoanalyst on the Couch: A Biography of Heinz Kohut" Page 178 Clio’s Psyche December, 2000

 Clio's Psyche of the Psychohistory Book Review Essay Forum Call for Papers Next Psychohistory Forum Meeting Future of Psychohistory and Psychoanalysis in Saturday, January 30, 1999 the Light of the Demise of the Psychohistory Charles Strozier Political Personality and "Putting the Psychoanalyst on the Couch: A Biography of Heinz Kohut" CharacterThe Best of Clio's Psyche The Psychohistory Forum is pleased to announce Additionalthe creation of Articles The Best of Clio's Psyche. Are Requested for the Call for Nominations This 94-page collection of many of the best and mostSeptember popular articles Issue from of 1994 to the for the current issue Clio'sis available Psyche: for $20 a copy and to students using it in a course for $12. Best of Clio's Psyche TheIt will bePsychology distributed free to Membersof at By July 1 please list your favorite arti- the OnlineSupporting levelCommunication and above as well as Two- cles, interviews, and Special Issues (no Year Subscribers upon their next renewal. Call for Nominations Clio's Psyche of the Psychohistory Forum Call for Papers Forthcoming in the June Issue  Violence in American Life and Mass Murder as  Interview with a Distinguished Disguised Suicide Featured Psychohistorian  AssessingAdditional Apocalypticism Articlesand Millennialism  "The Insane Author of the Oxford aroundAre the RequestedYear 2000 for the English Dictionary"  PsychoGeography September Issue of  "Jews in Europe After World War II"  Election 2000Clio's Psyche:  PsychobiographyCall for Papers  "A Psychohistorian's Mother and Her  ManiasThe and DepressionsPsychology in Economics ofand Legacy" SocietySpecial Theme Issues OnlineThe Psychology Communication of Incarceration and Crime 1999 and 2000 Hayman Fellowships  Our Litigious Society The University of California Interdisci- Call for Nominations plinary Psychoanalytic Consortium an-  PsychoGeography nounces two $5,000 annual fellowships to for the  Meeting the Millennium aid psychoanalytically informed research on the literary, cultural, and humanistic The  ManiasBest and Depressions of Clio's in Econom-Psyche expressions of genocide, racism, ethnocen- icsBy and July Society 1, please list your favorite arti- trism, nationalism, inter-ethnic violence, and the Holocaust.  Thecles, Psychology interviews, of Americaand Special as the Issues (no World'smore thanPoliceman three in each category) and send the information to the Editor (see  Truthpage and 3) for Reconciliation the August publication. in South The History of Psychohistory Africa Clio's Psyche's interviews of outstanding 600-1500 words psychohistorians (see "An American in Amsterdam:  Legalizing Life: Our Litigious Society Arthur Mitzman," page 146) have grown into a full-fledged  TheContact Truth and Reconciliation Commission as study of the pioneers and history of our field. a ModelPaul for H. Healing Elvoitz, PhD, Editor Psychohistory as an organized field is less than 25 years  The Processes of627 Peacemaking Dakota Trail and Peacekeeping old, so most of the innovators are available to tell their  The PsychologyFranklin of America Lakes, as NJ the 07417 World’s stories and give their insights. Last March, the Forum