To the Editor:
I am dismayed to learn that the AHA Council approved the deletion of psychohistory as a specialty choice for our members. The recognition of the valence of emotions as a factor in history is currently worldwide in our profession. Why should it be denied by the categories of the AHA? The tent of “history” should be ecumenical, embracing, and offer many options. If even a few of our members choose psychohistory, among others, as a specialty listing, it is legitimate and should not be excised as an area of interest to some members.
Peter Loewenberg
UCLA
To the Editor:
I was surprised to learn that psychohistory had been deleted from the list of subspecialties. If I take the subjects that interest my younger colleagues as any indication of where the discipline is headed, it would seem that psychology is making a comeback—albeit pursued differently from how it was pursued a generation ago. Perhaps the subspecialty should be renamed psychological history.
Judith M. Hughes
University of California at San Diego
Linda K. Kerber, AHA president for 2006, responds to say that psychohistory will stay on the printed renewal form:
The decision to omit psychohistory from the list of fields of specialization printed in the membership renewal form did not indicate a new disciplinary stance minimizing the significance of the field. I—and members of the Council—agree that psychohistory (or history informed by psychological perspectives) is a serious and important area of historical research. The decision was dictated purely by practical considerations—how to make space available in the printed form for new fields that scholars were declaring as their fields of interest. The only way to do this (without reducing the type size beyond legibility or increasing the size of the form) was, it seemed, to de-list the fields with the fewest adherents. Psychohistory, which was a field selected by only four—out of 14,000 people who can each make up to three choices—thus appeared to be an ideal candidate for exclusion from the printed form.
However, it now turns out that thanks to the technical wizardry of our designers, psychohistory can—and will—remain on the printed forms.
I should add that no deletions were planned, in any case, for the online form—which we expect more and more members to use in the coming years, and where space for listing diverse and unique fields of specialization will never be an issue.
Linda K. Kerber