Teaching Psychohistory

As nationwide history enrollments de­clined in the 1970s and early 1980s, the teaching of psychohistory helped renew student interest in history at Rockland Community College.

Over a ten-year period, from 1976-1986, more than 2,000 students opted for my course in psychohistory. For many of these students, this was the only formal history they will ever experience. Following the liberalized curricula of the 1960s, Rockland required students to choose a twelve-credit package of unspecified social sciences. These four courses can be any combination from a variety of offerings in anthropology, economics, geography, history, political science, psychology, or sociology. Con­sequently, most students graduate with­out ever having encountered the US Constitution or the reason why Nazis came to power.

Psychohistory has contributed to re­lieving this trend. If it were not for this course, many students would take no history at all; while others are motivated to sign up for additional and more tra­ditional history offerings.

Since psychohistory will be for many of the students their only source of history, I feel a special responsibility to stress the “history” in the course. This means paying scrupulous attention to the evidence, to the methodology, to the critical reading of sources and interpre­tations, to the logic of historical argu­ment, and to emphasizing respect for the traditions of historical scholarship­—all the things beyond content each his­torian seeks to impart in any history course. This overarching attention to history’s traditions is important, since students bring their own healthy skepti­cism to the course or pick it up from their classroom peers. It is important to demonstrate, not just assert, how psy­chohistory is also rooted in the sources, works from these sources to interpreta­tion, and follows the standard canons of traditional method and argument.

What makes psychohistory “new” is the cross-disciplinary effort to bring the findings of psychology to bear in an effort to better explain the motives of historical actors, individual and group. Historians have always done an exem­plary job fulfilling von Ranke’s dictum by effectively reconstructing what actually happened, and they have often been on target in explaining why. It has been noted by many, and most recently Carl Degler, that historians have always used an implicit psychology. But now, however, psychohistory asks them to be conscious, informed, and intentional about it.

Which psychological method to use is always an issue, not only with psycholo­gists but historians as well. I explain to the students that the course’s purpose is not to resolve all issues, but, as in life, they must live with some uncertainties. Our aim is to learn how psychohistor­ians have resolved such issues.

I divide the course into five parts, which I introduce to the students on the first day. I do not offer an  explanation at the outset of why this fivefold division makes sense, but provide the logic as we begin each new section.

1. Laying the Foundation. Despite the enormous diversity among my stu­dents—PhDs looking for ideas on how to teach the course, PhD history candi­dates, clinical psychologists, retired bus­iness people, teachers on sabbaticals, homemakers returning to college, and traditional high school graduates—I as­sume that the students know no history and know no psychology. Mentioning this at the outset helps reassure them that prerequisites are really unnecessary and that my expectations, while high, conform in some measure to their abili­ties. I also explain that whatever psy­ chology they need will be introduced in class and supported with historical ex­ample.

For those who feel they need one, I provide my own working definition of psychohistory: the application of psy­chological findings to human motives in history or the why of historical record.

Sometimes people are consciously aware of why they are doing what they are doing, for example, when they are asked why they are taking this course. Sometimes people are unaware of what they are doing because the forces at work on them are unknown to them. In this case it is left to historians to later explain the vast climatic, geographic, epidemeologic, or economic trends pressing large numbers this way or that over long periods of time.

There is another class of motives, the kind of which people are unaware or only partially aware, because they have hidden the awareness from themselves. It is the kind of motive we may recog­nize many years later and say, “Is that why I did that? Well, I’ll be damned.”

Historians have done good and often brilliant work on the first two classes of motives, and psychohistorians as well. But psychohistorians spend a great deal of time on the motives people hide from themselves, because they are interested in adding this third dimension to his­ torical study.

Mere mention of such motives, of course, conjures up for many the spec­tre of Freud. For some students, and historians, one might as well be waving a red flag. And that is good.

Teachers must meet students on their own ground; so, if students have ques­tions about Freud, the teacher is obliged to deal with them. In addition a Freud debate is worth having since it is part of current American intellectual life. Still, one does not want to get mired in end­less defensive debate on theory and its (mis-)application.

To move things along, I note that Freud’s aims were to liberate and heal, and his findings and treatment did just that. Just because some of Freud’s theo­ries may be wrong doesn’t mean all of Freud is wrong. Modifications of the early Freud have been made by neo­-Freudians over the past fifty years. Any­ one interested should look at Edwin S. Shneidmans’ essay “Expanding Histori­cal Causality” (Journal of Psychohis­tory, Winter 1985) and Peter Gay’s sen­sible Freud for Historians.

Of the scores of people I’ve talked to who teach psychohistory, many spend weeks on Freudian theory, psychology in general, or both. Because psychohis­tory is history to me, I want to get on with it. Consequently, I spend only a week or two in explaining some of the ways psychologists have found the hu­man mind to work, such as mainly ego defenses: repression, denial, reaction formation, rationalization, projection, fantasy, and so on.

Projection, where unwanted thought and feelings are projected from the self onto other individuals and groups, is familiar as the psychoasis of paranoia. I use the example of “Son of Sam,” serial murderer David Berkowitz, who claimed his neighbor’s dog commanded him to murder. I tell the class that either the dog did tell him, or his own inner voice told him. When he heard it, he projected that inner voice to his neigh­bor’s dog because to “own” his own wish made him feel bad. In this process the auditory hallucination became real. Even if in this case Berkowitz was lying, many documented instances of similar hallucinations prove the point.

Perhaps projection helps us to explain situations like the scapegoat role of Jews in Nazi Germany, especially regarding such Nazi notions as Jews lying in wait to rape Aryan maidens. Was it not the Nazis themselves who had such im­pulses? Do we not use the Russians in similar ways? And they us? Are we not sometimes containers for each others’ projections? Do they really want Central America, or do we?

Ancient maps contain the images of monsters, projected fantasies from the cartographers’ own imagination. And thanks to 500 years of explorations only atavisms like Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster remain. These days lost continents, into which we can project such primitive fantasies, are hard to find. That is unless we look to the con­venient projective screen of outer space, where, for every benevolent being en­countered on The Day the Earth Stood Still or met in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, there are blobs, Body Snatchers, things, and Aliens enough to keep a whole Hollywood subgenre busy for years. Are popular films a way of shift­ing collective fantasies? Paul Monaco thought so for France and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. What about the US?

Examples of individual fantasizing, repressing, denying, and rationalizing, leads into examples of groups doing the same thing, specifically, Germany in post-1918. Germany’s collective humiliation in defeat was so intense, their need to escape it so desperate, that the pain­ful reality of defeat in the Great War had to be  modified. The well-known Stab-in-the-Back legend was born out of a need for emotional relief. Blame was projected on Jews and socialists, who were thought to have betrayed the ar­mies on the front, forming a massive denial and rationalization on a collective scale.

Examples such as the above form the first two weeks or so and get students thinking psychologically and historically. They are interspersed with remind­ers that more than most, this course may lead to intense emotional reactions: an­ger, sadness, and fear. This is especially true when dealing with the history of childhood.

2. The History of Childhood. Clinical and documentary evidence is over­whelming that childhood experience is a major factor in adult behavior. One need not be a Freudian to acknowledge that telling children they’re stupid every day for eighteen years may have some­ thing to do with their lack of self-es­teem.

Covering the history of childhood (Aries, Hunt, deMause, Stone, and oth­ers) invariably stirs up memories of per­sonal childhood experiences. These memories sometimes provoke some startling personal revelations. And whether each individual comes to a conclusion that childhood has either gotten better, worse, stayed the same, or varies from historical period to historical peri­od, the students are stirred by the reve­lations of present and past child abuse: physical, psychological, and sexual. Whether the students believe the revela­tions or not, it provides opportunities to look carefully at the evidence, the kinds of sources, and their use or misuse. On the topic of the widespread practice of infanticide in antiquity, which I remem­ber even from my first encounters with Brinton, Christopher, and WolC one has to agree that it either had an impact on adult behavior or it didn’t.

Three weeks with the history of child­hood better prepares students for han­dling roles of specific childhoods in the lives of important historical figures.

3. Select Psychobiographies. Psycho­ biography is rich in published materials, and students are informed that we’ll cover anyone they’d like to know about (Malcolm X is a particular favorite). Although there are some good studies on several presidents (those on Lincoln by George B. Forgie and Charles B. Strozier come to mind), our formal classroom work is done on Nixon, Car­ter, and Reagan; one week on each.

On the positive side of working on contemporary historical figures: all three subjects are from the students’ own time and place, making elaborate introductory lectures on context unnec­essary; because the students are familiar with the subjects, they are all “relevant”; and an interesting psychohistorical liter­ature has been building around each of the subjects.

Part of the purpose of the course is to show students how psychobiography is done. In some sense it really doesn’t matter much who is studied. I start this section by eliciting answers to the ques­tion: “How do I feel about Richard Nixon?” I write the answers on the · board. Predictably, answers run the gamut: “Would you buy a used car from this man?” “He’s a crook.” “Good For­eign policy maker.” “He just did what everyone else did, only he got caught.” and “I was too young at the time and don’t have an opinion.” Almost no one ever actually answers the question. Di­rect answers would be: “I feel happy about … ,” “I feel sad about … ,” or “I feel angry at … “; rather than the intel­lectual analyses of Nixon’s presidency that are usually offered.

This exercise permits me to show how feelings are sometimes avoided in class­ rooms and in intellectual work, partly because we’ve been trained to avoid them and partly because it is especially difficult to express feelings in groups. The exercise also helps the class take note of how important it is for psycho­ biographers to know how they feel about their subject so that they can better handle their own biases.

The exercise also illustrates how polit­ical leaders serve many functions, in­cluding psychological. One of the func­tions is serving as a screen for the feel­ings and fantasies projected by group members. For example many students who expressed opinions on Richard Nixon know very little about him per­sonally, the name of his father, his mother, how many siblings he had, what rank he was in the family, whether he was in the military, or exactly what he did before becoming president. This, of course, doesn’t stop them from having opinions, which proves firsthand that one of the functions of a leader is to serve as a projective container.

In each president’s case, I illustrate childhood history, making some general points about family history along the way, while interweaving personal his­ tory with public events, touching on various aspects of the relationships be­ tween the leader and the led. Students are then ready to move on to some discussion of the psychohistory of groups.

4. Aspects of Small and Large Group History. The evidence from all the so­cial sciences strongly supports the view that individuals act differently in groups. While there are differences among the findings of small-group re­searchers—like Bion, Slater, and Hart­man–I stress their similarities. For about three weeks I show how both small and large groups often operate on two levels: the rational, conscious “work-group” level, and the irrational, unconscious “basic assumption” level, with the unconscious, emotional agenda sometimes interfering with conscious work-group tasks.

I explore with students the decision­ making of small groups, highlighting Irving L. Janis’ ideas in Groupthink, and historian William Jannen, Jr.’s helpful essay showing how Austro-Hungarian statesmen never considered the possibil­ity of Russian intervention in 1914, since to do so would have been to let reality and restraint enter their calcula­tions.

Finally, the findings of small-group researchers are compared with the find­ings of large-group researchers, espe­cially regarding the ins and outs of large group fantasies. On fantasies I note there are only four options: no fanta­sies, fantasies that play no role, fantasies that play some role, and fantasies that play a major role. From here it is time to move toward integrating the various parts of psychohistory.

5. Toward a Synthesis: Hitler and the Nazis. The Nazi phenomenon is both an important and ready subject for synthesis because of the questions it raises and the abundance of psychohis­torical and other studies

First, the Nazis are put in their imme­diate historical context: the Reichstag Peace Resolution, Brest-Litovsk, 1918, Spartacists, Weimar, Versailles, eco­ nomic crisis, and communists. Added to the narrative are the history of child­ hood (Ende, the Schreber Case, a bit from Alice Miller), competing Hitler psychobiographies (Robert G. Waite, with Langer’s secret OSS report, and Rudolph Binion); and group psychohis­tory (Peter Loewenberg and Rudolph Binion); followed by the students’ ques­tion: “Were the Nazis nuts?” The Wave is mentioned (usually viewed on televi­sion) or Stanley Milgram’s work on obe­dience to authority (from sociology or psychology). With a word or two about traumatic reliving, individual and group, the course is over.

Several things unique to teaching psy­chohistory are almost sure to come up each semester. One issue is feelings, including fears that arise when one learns that not only foreign leaders but also domestic leaders can sometimes be irrational, or when some fantasy is replaced with reality. To relieve some of these feelings, I tell the students of a mother and daughter who took the class at different times. After a particularly intense class, the distraught mother called her daughter. The daughter said, “Look Mom, it’s not psychotherapy. Just feel the feelings, and when they’re gone, the insights will remain.”

Another issue is alternative explana­tions. There are always alternatives, eco­ nomic, political, intellectual, etc. This course is one in psychohistory, and when one enters it, one puts on psycho­ logical glasses. One would not expect psychological explanations in a course in economic history or vice versa.

Another issue is whether I teach psy­chohistory in my other courses. The answer is no. Although as one intro­duces a little economic history when discussing the later Roman empire, it is entirely appropriate to introduce a little psychohistory when discussing Luther, the Great Fear, or Hitler; the students appreciate it, it is historiographically ap­ propriate, and it amounts to keeping up with one’s field.

The last issue is after twenty-five years of college and university teaching, I have never seen students take home a course as they take home psychohistory. One finds oneself talking to concentric rings of people outside the classroom. Parents, spouses, other students, and colleagues are sometimes startled by the fresh insights of psychohistory. It is a frequent experience for a student to return from an encounter with a rela­tive or friend who said, “Psychohistory is suspect.”

When questions emerge about psy­chohistory’s credibility, my experience tells me it comes from people who are usually misinformed, ill-informed, or uninformed, and I offer a few observa­tions. A Ph.D. field is an option for history graduate students at UCLA, and scores of scholars are presently completing psychohistorical or psychobiographical doctoral dissertations at various univer­sities. William Gilmore’s psychohistori­cal bibliography cites over 4,000 books and articles, with hundreds of titles ap­pearing since then. Otto Pflanze, the former editor of the American Historical Review, published his own psychoana­lytic essay on Bismarck, and a few years back the AHR had a special issue on psychology in history. The AHR now regularly reviews books in psychohis­tory, so does The New York Times. The International Psychohistorical Associa­tion recently held its tenth annual con­vention, and the AHA regularly spon­sors papers and panels on psychohis­torical topics and has for two decades. There are several groups in France, West Germany, and the US (like the Institute for Psychohistory and the Psy­chohistory Forum) that hold regular meetings to critique works in progress. Two quarterly journals devoted to psychohistory continue to publish after a decade and a half, and psychohistorical publications continue to issue from places like the Oxford University Press, the Yale University Press, the Harvard University Press, and the Chicago Uni­versity Press.

At this point, students usually wave a hand and shout “enough!” They leave convinced that while controversial, psy­chohistory is here to stay. Historians who want to have fun, expand their horizons, and reach more students might want to consider teaching psycho­history.