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PHILOSOPHICAL
ASPECTS OF
PSYCHOHISTORY

Henry Lawton
History & Psychological Inquiry - ed. Paul H. Elovitz. NY: International Psychohistorical Association 1990

Psychohistory is a discipline with little or no clearly defined philosophical foundation. The oblivious skeptic might say:- "So what! We in the field have been doing psychohistory quite well for a long time. why should we bother about an arcane issue like philosophy?" A fair question, which I will seek to answer.

"Philosophy... gives logic & coherence to what we seek to do, helps provide purpose and rationale, as well as a sense of value to what we do." (Lawton, 326) Every discipline has to have a philosophical foundation. It helps clarify standards of explanation, how we know something, and "what counts as belonging to the world" (Winch, 15); philosophy is a field's world view, it's intellectual reason for being, its sense of scholarly self. All ways of looking at man and his world have underlying concepts and assumptions about reality, what they do to make the world intelligible, how and why they do it that can be called a philosophy.

The question of philosophy seems especially difficult for a field like psychohistory because of its hybrid nature. We utilize methodology from a number of different fields- most obviously history & psychoanalysis, but also anthropology, sociology. folk lore, political science, economics, etc. All of these fields have their own goals and ways of doing things. Psychohistory borrows from them in service of its own purposes.

In the limited time I have available, any attempt at a definitive statement is not possible, so I will. focus on some of what I believe are the most salient issues. I will begin with Some general considerations, go on to history and psychoanalysis and conclude with our field.

Above all, man is at the center of the Psychohistorical endeavor. Man as active, responsible agent lives & creates his own history. Without man, history would be simple passage of time, with no one but the rocks and sky to notice or care. With man, history is a rich. complex human process. In many of the social Sciences there has been an increasing tendency to conceptualize in terms of structures that seem to exist & operate independently of man. This misses the point that man lives, acts, creates, experiences, interacts, feels, fantasies, alone and in concert with other men.

A Philosophical principle of some importance to psychohistory, in concert with the orientation advocated above, is "methodological individualism." (Broadbeck; Danto; Mandelbaum) This idea holds that "the ultimate constituents of the social world are individual people... Every complex situation, institution, or event is the result of a particular configuration of individuals, their dispositions, beliefs, & physical resources & environments." (Danto, 267) There can be no such thing as a group mind, independent of those in the group. Where would it exist? What happens in groups is due to shared emotion, feeling, fantasy and interaction of members. Theories suggesting otherwise are essentially defenses against knowing the force of emotion and accepting the reality of man as agent.

Any theory is inevitably influenced by the subjective life experiences of the theorist. "Subjective experience, viewed across a variety of situations and over a significant span of time, is always thematically organized around some more or less coherent set of nuclear concerns and... these concerns arise out of critical formative events in a person's life." (Stolorow and Atwood, 43-44)

Understanding is never absolute, because knowers are different, changing, and evolving. No theory is absolute, all truth evolves and changes. Nothing is etched in stone. What is known changes, and this is not just because new facts may come to light. Because of our subjective experiences, the act of knowing is continually renewed as we ourselves grow, evolve, change, and come to see life in different ways. History has meaning both as the past as well as for the present.

HISTORY

Without history we cannot hope to fully understand man & his motivations. Man evolves from the past into the present on his way to the future. History is "both objective and subjective, is ever becoming, never completed" (Novey 18); a reality that exists, irrespective of our ability to know it. "The significance of events develops with time, because today is so much a product of yesterday that yesterday can only be understood as it is explained by today." (Novey 18) We seek to comprehend history not so much because of any abstract interest in the past but because at what seems a deep desire to learn something of ourselves and our kind. Even if we had been there we can never know the past completely; the best' that any historian can do is to attempt reconstruction of the past on the basis of available evidence. But those who claim "that what the historian constructs is not just a theory or account of what happened, but the events themselves,"(Nowell-Smith, 5) go to far. Historical events are "composed of the actual happening and assumptions about the meaning of that happening."(Novey 42) They exist because they once occurred and continue to exist in the hearts, minds, and memories of people. Granted we are discussing two different orders. of existence, but historical events- do not have to be constructed.

Goldstein notes that what we know of the "past can never be confirmed by observation - can never be known by acquaintance - and so can never be put to the test of observation, the method of confirmation which is virtually the only one recognized by science and philosophy." (Goldstein, xii) And yet history is taken seriously because of "the extraordinary amount of agreement as to the character of the past that" it "has managed to achieve under what are clearly epistemologically unpromising conditions." (IBID, emphasis mine) This "extraordinary amount of agreement" is the point. Philosophy may not be the issue, we need to consider that history may be a kind of shared self-image and memory. Historians are the guardians and interpreters of this memory.

I emphasize interpretation because all historical explanation, no matter how objective or scientific it aspires to be, is inevitably interpretive. On some level, the facts and evidence we work from are always selected. (White(1973],281: White[1978]. 47, 51: White[1980],9: White(1982], 113- 37)

For many years, much of the Philosophical dispute in history has centered on the question of what constitutes a proper historical explanation I am increasingly of the opinion that the debate between the partisans of Hempel (1949) and their opponents may miss the point. Most historical explanations are not written in terms of laws. (Weingartner), Hempel has appeal because his view offers historical endeavor an aura of scientific objectivity. In our world, to be scientific has come to be a badge of legitimacy and objectivity. But history is already quite legitimate on its own and does not need such support. In recent years there has been increasing realization that so-called scientific objectivity is no longer as sacrosanct as it was once thought to be (eq. Zukav). One can make a case for the idea that science might be a defense against subjectivity. We marshal our evidence to prove our interpretations, in the hope that "it encompasses what is known in a comprehensive & compelling enough way to warrant... acceptance by the desired public. "(Feeman, 146)

PSYCHOANALYSIS

We turn to psychoanalysis because it is a depth psychology capable of offering the best explanation for man's underlying motivations. Analysis is not only a therapy, but also a theory of man that emphasizes the person as agent of his own action and motivated. more than we realize, by subconscious emotion and fantasy. As such, sensible historians cannot ignore it.

Philosophically speaking, analysis is fraught with controversy on a number of fronts. Dispute persists about metapsychology and its relevance for clinical practice. (PSYCHOLOGY vs METAPSYCHOLOGY) There is controversy about the efficacy of instinct/drive theory vs object relations theory. (Yankelovich & Barrett) And there has been enduring upheaval about the extent to which psychoanalysis is or is not scientific. (Breger)

However it is quite clear that Psychoanalysis is a historical discipline because it seeks to help the person become more deeply aware of his past and its complex meanings.(Wallace; Roth, 10-22) "The more that comes to be recollected from the past, the more its concrete manifestation in the present can be acknowledged" (Freeman138-39) and understood. "The reported historical event is of central importance whether or not it can be validated" (Novey 41) because of its emotional significance.

As with the historian, interpretation is also a key tool for the analyst seeking to comprehend the past. Theory serves, at the very least, as a sort of substratum on top of which or through which interpretation takes place." (IBID,137) But we have more than Just theory- there is our evidence, our feelings and fantasy about it. meaning, and the context of the effort to understand. All these factors effect and influence how we do our interpretive work.

"Most therapists make a genuine effort to understand their patients, that is, to grasp what is really going on and what is the case.. most therapists.. believe that their interpretations and formulations are validly descriptive of their patients rather than merely plausible "stories."" (EagleDl67) If you substitute "historian" for "therapist" and "historical subject" for "patient" the same is equally true for us. No historian or psychohistorian, worth the name, would settle for just a "plausible" story. Interpretations are more than just "constructions," (IBID,165,224-note 67) they are active efforts to explain, describe and understand why. But "if my interpretation or deciphered meaning or empathic grasp is different from and even contradicts yours, on whose empathy or interpretation does one rely for knowledge?" (IBID,164)

Here is my answer. History is real. It happened. What is not so clear, is how we are able to know and can know history At best, we can only know the past imperfectly, we were not there and even if we were we could not know the thoughts and motives of all the actors in the historical drama. How imperfectly depends on the extent and quality of our evidence. as well as what we open to considering as evidence. There are basically 2 orders of evidence- one is environmental, e.g. economic, social, political family influence, natural disasters, etc.; the other may The termed internal or psychic, e.g. individual and shared fantasy and emotion, relationships, perceptions, representations, dreams, etc. These orders of evidence are intimately related, mutually effecting and reinforcing each other. Psychoanalysis has been unfairly accused of giving the psychic prominence and ignoring the environmental. No analyst worth the name would do this in working with a patient to comprehend his past. More so than other disciplines, the psychoanalyst must be aware of the proper balance between inner and outer reality. This is a basic reason we turn to analytic theory. Emotion and fantasy have greater causative power than we often like to realize or admit.

We do not reconstruct a past (Schafer, 8-13), because that would imply obliviousness to our evidence. We do not Just settle for what is plausible, what fits. We have a vested interest in wanting to understand. Yes, we reconstruct a version of historical reality, that is all anyone can do. But we still strive to know as test we can, to make the most thorough reconstruction possible. We do not settle! Full and complete accuracy is never Possible. The more. information and evidence we have to work with the better, but if we have lesser levels of evidence, as is often the case in our field, we should not be dissuaded from trying to know. There are times we will be wrong, eventually we will find out and improve our work. If complete accuracy is not possible what makes an interpretation correct? Each person looks at the question, the evidence, the interpretation and decides if he can accept it. This is a major reason why interpretations change over time. Our criteria for what is acceptable changes as we find out more about our world. History will always be rewritten as long as men seek to understand who and why they are.

PSYCHOHISTORY

As an amalgam of history & psychoanalysis, psychohistory is heir to a fair amount of Philosophical ferment. the point is to realize the fact and not be intimidated or unduly anxious.

Is psychohistory an independent field? Lloyd de Mause (1975) has made a strongly argued case in favor of independence. But since many scholars remain skeptical the question merits further examination. He defines psychohistory "as the science of historical motivation." (164) The respective tasks of history and psychohistory are different, and many of those in the field are not historians. We use research tools and methodology largely different than traditional history. Despite all these plausible reasons, many remain inadequately convinced. Thus it is perhaps more of an emotional than a philosophical/intellectual issue. In my view the problem centers around the emotional issue of separation/ individuation. To assert independence is to break away, to separate and become different. Quite simply this is too anxiety provoking for many people.

Obviously we do not approach our questions as a therapist attempting to cure a troubled patient. But we can & should attempt to use and adapt analytic methods and theories in the service of understanding man's historical motivations. We must also pay close attention to the rules of historical procedure and evidence. That we must pay attention to the standards of both history & analysis in our work is a point that many psychohistorians miss, at least to some extent in their work

History is partially actuality and partially memory. But since "there is no general guarantee of the data produced by our memory" (Freud, 315) it is important to be clear on how we use memory. The therapist uses memory to summon up the past in service of cure. The psychohistorian seeks to make the past manifest to understand motivation. The therapist seeks to cure, while the psychohistorian, realizing that there is nothing he can cure, seeks to understand. The past is, we cannot change it- only our comprehension can change. It is all too easy to get carried away to get carried away with therapeutic fantasies (Feinstein) but it is never productive. A reconstruction of the past is a kind of memory of what was, presented by the psychohistorian on the basis of evidence and feeling If it resonates with the emotion of the scholar's audience it will probably be accepted as what has occurred. If not, the memory may persist in some intellectual emotional limbo waiting to take its place in the sun of belief and acceptance at some future time.

Several years ago I came across an article by Ernst Kris entitled "The Personal Myth." (1956) He describes how some "individuals use their autobiographical memories... as a protective screen... this screen as a whole is carefully constructed, and built as some isolated screen memories tend to be... the firm outline and the richness of detail is meant to cover significant omissions and distortions. " (653) The person's "autobiographical self-image has become heir to important early fantasies which it preserves. "(654) I asked myself what if societies create their history of shared autobiographical self-image to preserve their group-fantasies? Kris makes the point that such a preservative view of the past often serves a defensive function against the true reality of the past by warding off selective features of experience while retaining "essential features of the original experience." (674) Here we have a possible reason why psychohistory is so threatening to many traditional scholars- it seeks to cut through the defenses embodied in the group fantasies of traditional history. We, of course, hope and believe that the alternatives we offer as psychohistorians are more reality oriented and less defensive than the older more traditional views. But I am not sure that we can be certain about the degree to which this may be true.

There is little literature on this point of view. Alvin Frank (1985) discusses "the use of historical events from a person's shared heritage in such a way as simultaneously to represent and conceal his personal past and conflicts in the same way as does a screen memory." (65) Consider the implications if you substitute "society" for "person" in that sentence. Frank goes on to state that "history offers a mass of available impressions like a 'day residue' for the expression of underlying drives and meanings in a way comparable to the use of equivalent daily impressions to represent latent dream content... it is possible to compare personal memories with history because history is no more than more or less shared, more or less stable. organizations of representations of memories. It is not merely an accumulation of data from the past. It is as subject to addition, erasure, J correction, reorganization, reinterpretation, and changes in emphasis as is an individual's equivalent system or organized and discrete, personal and shared memories of his past."(87)

Historian Daniel Biork (1976) meditating on the meaning of the American Revolution argues that we repressed the traumatic aspects of the event with pleasant uplifting memories that were, in essence equivalent to screen memories. He goes on to say that "nations like individuals often experience the eruption of a neurosis when stress awakens an older trauma" (283) such as the shared repressed memory of a revolution. Because the revolution occurred during America's childhood it can be seen as being analogous to a shared childhood trauma. "Neurotic nations like neurotic individuals are fighting an endless battle to keep unconscious drives from erupting into conscious lives. The defenses that the ego and the national creed build prevent the early traumas from breaking through in their original state. Yet the primal material returns to consciousness distorted and neurotic, couched in comforting screen memories about the past. The process of protecting the ego and the national identity from knowledge of the neurosis becomes ritualistic; the defenses are acted out repeatedly. A tradition or continuity of screening occurs in individuals and nations alike.. .the American Revolution appears as the first overwhelming neurotic screen memory, one whose themes were repeated in various guises from Jackson's irrational war against the "monster" bank , to the ideological paranoia of the Civil War, to the populist vitriolic outcries against Jewish bankers, to the emotional hyperbole of McCarthyism and Watergate." (286-69)

Howard Stein (1983) argues that "the psychic function of history is to avoid time , to replace time with substitute memories, screen memories onto which the real past is displaced and by which it is symbolized- to re-present a fantasized reality more compelling than reality... history is our collective way of agreeing not to remember the past but to replace it with a myth, a shared dreamwork about the past.. - we learn history so that we do not have to know the past, personal and group.. history is the... narrative of those human acts deemed by the group as worthy of being immortal. Psychologically stated, those events and sequences in natural and social reality which correspond to dominant themes in the shared unconscious group-fantasy are subsequently adopted into that group's official (sacred) history."(598, 599, 603)

Perhaps these men are voices in the wilderness, but they do raise issues of philosophy and method that we must consider and be aware of, no matter how uncomfortable they make us feel. History is more than just a record of man's past, good and bad. We attach a multiplicity of individual and shared meanings and fantasies (individual and shared) to it. Psychohistorians may be particularly well suited to deal with the full emotional magnitude of history. If a major function of history is to defend against the trauma and pain of the past, perhaps we can at last begin the work of cutting through rather than just substituting another form of defensive group fantasy. This is perhaps the great philosophical and methodological challenge that confronts us today.

The skeptic might accuse me of advocating a fantasy that psychohistorians will somehow succeed where others failed by virtue of their special knowledge; that they are brave revolutionaries advancing man's understanding. We are like Zen maters capable of achieving new and marvelous insights into the mysteries of reality. Anyone believing this would be mistaken. Psychohistorians are fallible human beings like anyone else. We see the issues differently, perhaps more clearly, but it would be wrong to say that this makes us special or brave. We are simply men and women who want to know and have the will to try and find hopefully better answers.

POSTSCRIPT
I would like to dedicate this paper to the memory of Leonard Strahl who had a lot to do with inspiring my interests in the philosophy of history and psychoanalysis.

Henry Lawton is Book Review Editor of the JOURNAL OF PSYCHOHISTORY, Secretary of the IPA, and author of the newly published PSYCHOHISTORIAN' S HANDBOOK.

(BIBLIOGRAPHY below)

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Biork, Daniel W., "The American Revolution as a 'Screen Memory' " South Atlantic Quarterly 75#3 ( Summer 1976). 275-89.

Breger, Louis, FREUD's UNFINISHED JOURNEY. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981. vi, 145pp.

Brodbeck, May, "Methodological Individualisms: Definition & Reduction," 297-329 in PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS & HISTORY, ed. William H Dray. NY: Harper & Row, 1966

Danto, A.C., "The Historical Individual," 265- 96 in PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS & HISTORY, ed. Willam H Dray. NY: Harper & Row, 1966.

de Mause, Lloyd, "The Independence of Psychohistory," HISTORY OF CHILDHOOD QUARTERLY, 3#2(Fall 1975), 163-83.

Eagle, Morris N., RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Univ Press, 1987. xi, 259pp.

Feinstein, Howard M., "The Therapeutic Fantasy of a Psychohistory," PSYCHOANALYTIC REVIEW 69#2 (Summer 1982) , 221-28.

Frank, Alvin, "History & Screen Memories," INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 65(1984). 85-88.

Freeman, Mark, "Psychoanalytic Narration & the Problem of Historical Knowledge," PSYCHOANALYSIS & CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT, 8#2(1985), 133-82.

Freud, Sigmund, "Screen Memories," 301- 22 in STANDARD EDITION, vol. 3

Goldstein, Leon J, HISTORICAL KNOWING. Austin, Texas: Univ of Texas Press, 1976. xxvii, 242pp. .

Hempel, Carl G, "The Function of General Laws in History," 459-71 in READINGS IN PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS, ed Herbert Fiegal & Wilfred Sellers. NY: Appleton- Century-Crafts, 1949.

Kris, Ernst, "The Personal Myth: A Problem in Psychoanalytic Technique," JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSOCIATION, 4(1956), 653- 81

Lawton, Henry W., "Psychohistory Today & Tomorrow," JOURNAL OF PSYCHOHISTORY, 5#3(Winter 1978), 325-56.

Mandelbaum, Maurice, "Societal Laws," 330-46 in PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS IN HISTORY, ed William H Dray. NY: Harper & Row, 1966

Novey, Samuel, THE SECOND LOOK. NY: International Universities Press, 1985. xvii, 162pp.

Nowell-Smith, P.H., "The Constructionist Theory of History," HISTORY & THEORY, 16#4(Dec 1977), 1-28.

PSYCHOLOGY vs METAPSYCHOLOGY, ed Merton Gill & Philip S. Holzman. NY: International Universities Press, 1976. 376pp.

Roth, Michael S, PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AS HISTORY: NEGATION & FREEDOM IN FREUD. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ Press, 1987. 196pp.

Schafer. Roy. LANGUAGE & INSIGHT. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1978. xiv, 208pp.

Stein, Howard F., "Historical Understanding as a Sense of History: A Psychoanalytic Inquiry," PSYCHOANALYTIC REVIEW, 70*4 (Winter 1983), 595- 619

Stolorow, Robert D. and Atwood, George E., FACES IN A CLOUD. NY: Aronson, 1979. 217pp

Wallace IV, Edwin R, HISTORIOGRAPHY & CAUSATION TN PSYCHOANALYSIS. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press, 1985. 284pp.

Weingartner, Rudolph H, "The Quarrel about Historical Explanation," 349-62 in READINGS IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES, ed. May Brodbeck. NY: Macmillan, 1968.

White, Hayden, "Interpretation in History," NEW LITERARY HISTORY. 4#2(Winter 1973), 281- 314.
_________ "The Politics of Historical Interpretation: Discipline & De-Sublimation, CRITICAL INQUIRY. 9#1(Sept. 1982), 113- 37
_________ "The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality," CRITICAL INQUIRY, 7#1(Autumn 1980), 5- 27.
_________TOPICS OF DISCOURSE. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1978. x, 287pp.

Winch, Peter, THE IDEA OF A SOCIAL SCIENCE & ITS RELATION TO PHILOSOPHY. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977. l43pp

Yankelovich, Daniel and Barrett, William, EGO & INSTINCT. NY: Vintage, 1971. xiv, 494pp.

Zukav, Gary, THE DANCING WU LI MASTERS. NY: Morrow, 1979. 352pp.

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