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Psychohistorians Discuss Psychohistory

from the PH_list server
The Journal of Psychohistory V. 25, N. 4, Spring 1998

The following exchange of messages are reproduced from the PSYCHOHISTORY list service, an Internet posting forum and chat room for inquiry into historical motivation where subscribers post messages that then are transmitted to all others on the service by email. You can join PSYCHOHISTORY by sending your name via email to the list owner, Michael Hirohama, at <PSYCHOHISTORY [email protected] indicating you wish to subscribe.
[note: for current PH_list server info. you will want to go to http://www.psychohistory.com .

The messages are selected from those that ran from January 4-6, 1998.

FROM LLOYD DEMAUSE:

The question about prediction of actual political events from group-fantasies has been raised. Like all sciences, psychohistory aspires to predict from hypothesesÑnot because of hubris, but because it is only by predicting and making mistakes that scientific hypotheses can be modified.

The following is from Chapter One of my book-in-process, Psychohistorical Evolution, describing how in 1981 psychohistory classes that I taught at Baruch College, CUNY, and that David Beisel taught at Rockland Community College, SUNY, both predicted from media group-fantasies that President Reagan would be shot. The chapter starts with a detailed description of how my class had studied American group-fantasies before the Kennedy assassination that suggested he should be shot. The end of the chapter reads as follows:

"By this point in our studies, my class began to see how assassinations might be delegated by nations to individuals for national emotional reasons. We noted that six of the seven assassination attempts on American presidents took place either during unusually peaceful periods, like the assassination of James Garfield on July 2, 1881, or after an American peace treaty at the end of a war, like the assassination of Abraham Lincoln on April 15, 1965, six days after the end of the Civil War. It was as if peace was seen by the nation as a betrayal, that nations expressed their rage at their leaders for bringing peace, and that assassins picked up the subliminal death wishes and tried to kill the leaders.

In studying the nation's anger that followed Kennedy's aborted war in Cuba, the class could not help but compare the nation's emotional mood in 1963 to the feelings at that moment in 1980 following the recently aborted war in Iran, just before Reagan was elected president. Furious with Iran over the long hostage crisis, America had been whipped into a war frenzy similar to the earlier one under JFK against Cuba by the media. "Kids Tell Jimmy to 'Start Shooting'" the New York Post headlined, while a commentator summarized the bellicose mood by saying that "seldom has there been more talk of war, its certainty, its necessity, its desirability." Polls showed most Americans favored invasion of Iran even if it meant that all the hostages would be killed, since war, not saving lives, was what the country wanted. When the rescue attempt floundered because of a helicopter crash and Carter refused to send in the American troops, planes and ships that were massed for attack, the nation turned its fury toward him, just as it had toward Kennedy after the Cuban confrontation failed to produce war. Carter was buried in a landslide, rather than in a coffin like Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan was elected president.

The students wondered (as did their teacher) if the nation's fury had really subsided, or if their rage might continue toward the new president. Even though this made no rational senseÑall the hostages, after all, had already been returned safely - it made sense emotionally.

That Reagan might be a target for our death wishes after the aborted Iranian invasion was hinted at by widespread speculation during his campaign regarding a "death jinx" that might strike him. As I mentioned previously, someone had figured out that no American president elected since 1840 in a year ending in zero had lived out his term. Bumper stickers had appeared joking "Re-elect Bush [Reagan's running mate] in 1984." Newspapers began running political cartoons and headlines with subliminal messages similar to those that had appeared before KennedyÕs assassination, such as the cartoon of a guillotine being constructed on ReaganÕs inauguration platform and an Anthony Lewis column in The New York Times headlined "The King Must Die."

The climax for these shared fantasies that "the king must die" came in the final week of March. That week, my students brought in numerous magazine covers, political cartoons and newspaper articles that clearly showed these death wishes. Time and Newsweek ran scare stories about a "wildly out of control" crime wave that was supposed to be occurring - although they had paid little attention to crime in previous months and in fact the actual crime rate had been decreasing during those months - illustrating our angry fantasies and death wishes with identical covers depicting menacing guns pointed at the reader.

The New Republic cover featured graves in Washington. One cartoonist showed Americans constructing a guillotine being built for Reagan (the same guillotine that had been shown chopping off the head of President Kennedy before his assassination). Other cartoonists showed Reagan next to targets and guns in the White House, with the odd suggestion that perhaps his wife might want to shoot him with guns she has stored beneath their bed. The cover illustration of U.S. News & World Report pictured "Angry Americans" with a subhead that was seemingly unrelated but in fact that carried the message of what all "angry Americans" should now do. The headline read: "FEDERAL WASTE REAGAN'S NEXT TARGET," a wording that contains two hidden embedded messages: "WASTE REAGAN" (slang for "Kill Reagan") and "REAGAN'S [THE] NEXT TARGET."

In order to see if our upsetting findings were just our own selection process creating a personal bias, we checked them out with another psychohistory classÑone taught by Prof. David Beisel of Rockland Community CollegeÑwho was also using the fantasy technique to monitor the media and who had also been collecting media material. They told us that they had independently been recently finding a predominance of these death wishes in cartoons and covers.

The next day, one of the president's staff confirmed to the nation that assassination was "in the air." The President's most excitable aide, Alexander Haig, unexpectedly began to discuss in the media "who will be in charge of emergencies" should the president be shot, saying he himself would be next in line of succession, as though succession to the presidency were for some reason about to become a vital question in America. A great furor arose in the press and on TV talk shows as to just who would be "in charge" should the President be incapacitated. That the topic of succession seemed to come out of the blue was totally ignored by the media. Reagan's death just seemed to be an interesting political topic. The students grew increasingly uneasy as they watched the escalating fantasy.

The class wondered if potential assassins might not also be sensing these subliminal messages, since there are always a large number of psychopathic personalities around the country waiting to be told when and whom to shoot, willing to be the delegate of the nation's death wishes. Some students wondered if we should phone the Secret Service and warn them about our fears, but thought they might consider a bunch of cartoons and magazine covers insufficient cause for concern.

The class was not wrong about a potential assassin picking up the death wishes and electing himself our delegate. John Hinckley had been stalking President Carter, President-elect Reagan and other political targets during the previous six months, but just couldn't "get himself into the right frame of mind to actually carry out the act," as he later put it. After all the media death wishes appeared nationwide, he finally got what he called "a signal from a newspaper" on March 30th and told himself, "This is it, this is for me," and, he said, decided at that moment to shoot the president.

I was sitting in our classroom, waiting for the students to arrive, looking over some of the death wish material we had collected. I had been busy during the past few hours and hadn't listened to the radio before coming to class. Suddenly, I heard a group of students running down the hallway. They burst into the room. "Prof. deMause!" they shouted, terribly upset. "They did it! They shot him! Just like we were afraid they would!"

FROM HENRY LAWTON:

Lloyd's comments aside, I remain skeptical that prediction is feasible because too many variables are involved.

Occasionally we are able to make predictions that have proven correct, but not on any consistent basis that I can see. Whether it will prove possible in the future remains to be seen. I remain of the opinion that belief that prediction is possible in any meaningful way is a complex fantasy involving grandiosity, salvationist hopes, etc. I prefer more modest endeavor. Hypothetically what Lloyd says about refining hypothesis has merit, but in actual practice I am not convinced that it often works this way. Certainly for those who aspire to attempt prediction let them do so, but more often than not we end up looking needlessly foolish. Maybe this does not matter, but I just do not see predictive concerns as a main aspect of what we should be about. Show me greater success & accuracy of prediction & I would probably become more of a believer but at this point I do not see that going on.

FROM AXEL THIEL:

We're well advised to stay careful as to predictions till proof of the opposites.

But Mr.DeMause doesn't say he's foolproof, and this makes a difference. He's suggesting ONE tool among others. And it may be in fusing them we will be able to come to some usable predictive policy, ranging from psychohistory to secret-service analyses, from graffiti-research (writings on walls) to medicine and so on.

To feel the "pulse of some society" should be fun and I hope it attracts lots of gifted minds. That things also may work into opposite directions may be seen in the history of Japan's Mr. ASAHARA and his AUM-sect. He, too, was a gifted personÉunfortunately a crackpot one.

There are no dangers more dangerous than intelligent crackpots. And I'm afraid that since a rise in numbers of "narcissistic" personalities (psychological "black holes") we will have to face more of Mr. Asaharas and Hitler types.

FROM MICHAEL HIROHAMA:

What does "prediction" mean? What are its connotations? No one can predict the weather with perfect accuracy. Perhaps because of this reason, many Americans are mildly obsessed with knowing the day's high temperature and the following day's expected highs.

Perhaps "forecasting" is a better model to use when foretelling of the likelihood of future occurrences based on one's experience, logical reasoning skills, and intuition?

FROM LLOYD DEMAUSE:

It is amazing how much anxiety is aroused by one simple example of prediction in psychohistory. If we try to predict, Henry predicts, we will "end up looking needlessly foolish" and are "grandiose and salvationist." Indeed, predicts Axel, we could turn into "crackpots like Mr. Asahara and his Aum-sect." We are "obsessed" with predictions, says Michael, but perhaps could do it if we call it "forecasting."

But one predicts all the time, since we live in the present and aim toward the future. When we vote - or analyze voters - we are predicting what the candidate will do in the future. When we analyze any historical event, we ascribe causality, and so covertly are predicting what would happen should the causes be the same. I am only different in admitting overtly what it is I do and what scientific study of history involves.

Predicting Reagan might be shot from subliminal clues about group-fantasies in the media and from patterns of assassination following military disappointments is no different than a psychoanalyst listening to a patient who periodically beats up his wife tell a set of dreams wherein harm comes to his wife, and then asks him, "Are you angry at your wife?" You can keep the prediction to yourself and play it safe, or you can make it overt and interpret to the patient that every time he gets too close to his wife he has dreams of her falling off cliffs and hurting herself and then soon after actually beats her up - an interpretation and a prediction. Giving a meaning to shared fantasies locates unconscious wishes, and finding patterns of shared unconscious wishes and fears in history leads to predictions as a test of the hypotheses we formulate. Only if our hypotheses are testableÑultimately in the form of predictionsÑare they meaningful. Otherwise they are scientifically meaningless, like most historians' statements ("people react to stress," "people follow leaders," "unless they don't.")

Life is too complicated to predict, says Henry. What empirical evidence does he have for this opinion beyond his oft-expressed skepticism about psychohistory as a science. Let's take a look at a few times I predicted historical events from analysis of repetitive patterns of group-fantasies and see what happened when I succeeded and when I failed.

I cited the case above of predicting the Reagan assassination attempt mainly because it wasn't me who was predicting, but two classes of freshmen, who brought in the material and then predicted the event. No "superman," no "Asahara-sect," just good psychohistorical interpretation of media images. Bill Joseph described in the Journal ("Prediction, Psychology and Economics," in Fall 1987 issue) predictions he and I did for the stock market, where we noticed ("noticed" only because our hard-won theory called attention to it) that whenever national sacrifices occur or when American troops move, the markets leap up. A third successful prediction came when I predicted months in advance of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait that America was asking Bush to find another war to get into ("It's Time to Sacrifice...Our Children" in Fall 1990 issue, sent to print before the invasion). My evidence again was mainly visual, cartoons and magazine covers suddenly showing children being sacrificed, after several years of the imagery being largely absent in the media.

The failure was my book Reagan's America, published in Reagan's third year in office, predicting only that some sacrifice seemed to be awaiting America under this hawkish leader. In fact, America did go to war (we often forget), in the Middle East and in the Falklands, and nearly got into war in Central America. But the actual larger war waited until the Gulf War under Bush. I had, I now think, underestimated how much younger Americans (the new psychoclass, the "Spock generation") had improved in their childrearing recently. In fact, when time came to go to war, although 95 percent of the nation backed Bush, and a large majority wanted to chase Saddam house by house for years and continue the war, one man (Colin PowellÑwhose mother was an exceptionally warm and loving woman) told the President, "We would kill too many Americans" if we continued the war. What? Kill too many Americans? What does he think he was hired to do? That's what wars are for, sacrificing "our boys." But Powell, and others of the new helping mode psychoclass, said stop. New patterns appear in history. But unless we predict from old patternsÑall the time giving our full parameters for doing soÑwe cannot see the new patterns when they appear. Was I embarrassed in being wrong? No, I was proud to be able to modify my theory. And classes still use Reagan's America to teach how to do psychohistory.

FROM JOHN WEBER:

The question of what to do if your prediction indicated war or whatever feels like some offshoot of the time machine paradox and Nietzsche's Amor Fati. Amor fati's meaning in perhaps bastardized form is: "Love of fate, that we would have nothing different; neither backward nor forward nor through all eternity. That we would not despise fate, but love it." Perhaps we have no choice. The tensions that might generate the movement towards war could be a necessary part of the social fabric. Any attempt to waylay it would only make the inevitable more virulent. This is not to say war in and of itself is inevitable. Only within this particular social setting at this particular time.

With the same breath I must also say that a psychologist is ethically and morally required and bound to take action if a client is going to do harm to his or herself or another, so perhaps the psychohistorian has the same duty.

For a client there are means to stave off the harm and perhaps reframe psychotherapeutically or chemically the unwanted behavior. In the social dimension this seems to be a little more difficult. Although it appears we are making some effort biochemically.

FROM LLOYD DEMAUSE:

John Weber brings up an important topic when he asks whether psychohistorians should take action to stop irrational violent historical events they see coming.

I have had my activist days and indeed still try to "take action" before the wars I see coming. I wrote my book Reagan's America and got it out quickly through self-publishing when no one else would publish it in order to hopefully help forestall the war I saw coming. Since it was the only book around that was critical of Reagan early on, perhaps it even helped, a bit, who knows?
There was one book I published and edited that perhaps helped avoid a war: Jimmy Carter and American Fantasy. In it I predicted Carter would be asked to go to war in the Middle East. Carter's sister told Paul Elovitz that Carter had in fact read the book, and of course what finally happened is that he pulled out of the Iran crisis after the helicopter crashed and didn't respond to American media's cries to invade Iran to rescue the hostages. So perhaps the book helped Carter avoid the irrational war he was being asked to start.

I know another instance when psychohistorians may have helped avoid a war. When Reagan was trying to get into a war with Nicaragua, we wrote in the journal about how if two nations went to war both had to agree to fight, in some sense. I was contacted by the NY PR firm who was hired by Manuel Ortega to figure out what American public opinion was (Ortega was a closet psychohistorian, analyzing his enemy's psyche). So once a month for a period of time Casper Schmidt and I met for lunch with this PR firm and discussed how Nicaragua could avoid a war with the U.S.

One particular meeting will give a taste of how we analyzed the emotional situation and "as psychologists ethically and morally required and bound to take action if a client is going to do harm to his or herself" (as John Weber puts it) tried to influence action. Ortega was scheduled to come to NYC to talk before the U.N., and I asked the PR person what he planned to say and do in NY. He said Ortega was planning on visiting Harlem and telling them how they were being manipulated by the Reagan administration, etc. I told him something like: "Please, you won't do any good for the blacks in Harlem nor for Nicaragua if he does this. Look. Nations can't go to war unless their enemies' are pictured as unlike them. Ortega likes baseball, as do most Nicaraguans. Tell him to go a baseball game. He'll seem more human to Americans if he shares their love of baseball." The next morning the NY Times showed Ortega on the front cover with a Mets cap on. Did we help avoid the Nicaraguan War that Reagan was planning? Perhaps.

I wrote a paper on this question of psychohistorians' role in political action once, called "A Proposal for a Nuclear Tensions Monitoring Center" (in our book Heal or Die) suggesting that we set up a set of "Suicide Hot Lines" or Monitoring Centers in each of the nuclear nations, to act as other suicide hot lines do, only with nations heading towards war. Psychohistorians and psychiatrists and psychotherapists could issue bulletins from each of the national centers warning of dangerous international actions. My Institute for Psychohistory now has 16 branches around the world with people who could do this monitoring. But we have no funds for it so far. I once had a U.N. official in Zurich who promised to get funding from the U.N. for such a Monitoring Center, but he was unsuccessful.

Might psychohistorians monitor group-fantasies in various nations and set up international "suicide hot lines"? Why not? If we are really professionals, what is it are we professionals at doing?

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