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A Reply by Lloyd deMause

to Charles Gouaux - A Critique of deMause's Psychogenic Theory of History

Volume 26, Number 4, Spring 1999

History as the Evolution Toward Love

I am puzzled as to how to address Charles Gouaux's critique. My entire psychogenic theory of history is based upon the concept of history as a slow evolution toward love. He even cites my claim that I offer "the first social theory that posits love as the central mechanism for historical change." Yet when he asks that "one must begin with [love and] emotional health then look at pathology, not the other way around" because otherwise "that fosters hopelessness," I must disagree. One cannot, I believe, find much love at the beginning of history, nor even in New Guinea cannibal tribes today. To posit, as Gouaux does, that love is therefore "repressed" is, I think, clinically untenable. I have never seen a clinical report of a therapist who has found a patient suffering from repressed love. Love is a conscious, not unconscious emotion. And certainly societies, yesterday or today, are not suffering from massively repressed feelings of love. Why repress them? "They are 'too good' to be integrated with those feelings we have/had with our early primary care-givers." Not so. That love and hate can co-exist, even consciously, is an everyday observation. The hate is in fact what gets repressed, not the love. Nearly every abused child claims they love their abusing caretakers - it is the hate they repress. Even Hitler claimed he loved and respected his abusive parents.

The amount of abuse, neglect and hatred in history may "foster hopelessness," but we must nevertheless stick with historical evidence, not warp our theory to avoid despair. I search for loving parents all the time in my historical sources. I find them mostly only recently, and in far fewer quantities than is comfortable to admit to other historians. One cannot "begin with love" if history doesn't.

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