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Teaching Psychohistory at Tennessee - The Politics and Phenomenology of Trying to do Anything Differently

Karl Jost, Margaret Ribble, Joan Miller, Lois Blais
The Journal of Psychohistory V. 25, N. 4, Spring 1998

This is a tale of an trial course that produced unintended but delightful results far beyond the syllabus material. I am an educational sociologist and a member of a new and experimental elementary education unit at the University of Tennessee called the Holistic Teaching and Learning Unit. The unit was designed to bring people from diverse disciplines into an elementary education unit to teach across subject boundaries and to incorporate the concept of whole language throughout our teacher preparation program. We loosely follow the holistic education philosophies articulated by Ron Miller at the Ontario Institute of Educational Studies at the University of Toronto and John Miller, now working privately in Ashford, Vermont. My contribution to this unit was to bring a cultural and theoretical base and a capstone experience that would help present an initial grounding for our students, as well as developing a synthesizing course in the graduate portion of the unit's offerings. Pursuant to that goal, I reflected back to the continual theme of my sociological research. To wit: Every aspect of the educational enterprise is researched to death, except our victims. No one does much in asking the children what they think about the whole thing and there is not very much literature concerning what children thought about much of anything except the information coming from the psychohistorians, the historicist sociologists, and my original "career changing" group, the phenomenological sociologists of the "new sociology" at the University of London with whom I studied during a Fulbright exchange in 1974. A graduate student of mine was given an independent study course to work with me on gathering together the materials available on aspects of the history and sociology, as well as psychology, of childhood and a cross-discipline theoretical package, and to unite all of these disparate materials loosely within the psychohistory of Lloyd deMause and the historicist sociology of Wilhelm Dilthey. Both theoretical structures encourage an intense phenomenological exploration of what we termed unauthorized influences, as contrasted with official academic knowledge. Dilthey's Leben and Verstehen concepts and DeMause's work on hypothesis-building in psychohistory became the operational tools for our experimental course.

We chose Lloyd deMause's text, The History of Childhood, as the most comprehensive linear presentation of our topic and we added to this a booklet of readings from other sources to round out some topics of interest to the planners. I then set about remedying my academic deficiencies in psychohistory by inviting my wife, Dr. Lori Schmied, an experimental psychologist at Maryville College with a research interest in the history of psychology, to lead us to the place of psychohistory among other psychological theories. The joint presentation had a liveliness that can only be achieved by a husband and wife, one a psychologist, the other a sociologist, team-teaching a section on theory. I held up the theory portion of the course with the presentations of psychohistory and historicist sociology. The three doctoral students who volunteered to take the pilot presentation of the course know both my wife and me, so the intellectual excitement, free exchange of ideas loudly presented, and general academic mayhem existed from the opening class of the course. At this juncture the four major emotional and academic phenomena of the course came to the fore and endured through the rest of the semester: (1) We grappled with the theoretical structures of psychohistory and historicist sociology and the attempt to perceive validity and reliability in the articles and general data of the course. Hypothesis formation as a phenomenological exercise became the continuing vehicle for personal bonding, the growing passions of the topics, and the tie in to the present vicissitudes of childhood. (2) We realized an amazing bonding of the members of the course, including the professor, which led to an intellectual and emotional experience, the likes of which the group of us had not enjoyed for a long time. (3) We struggled with data and emotional closure, with a strong desire of our now rather unique group to reinterpret the data and to engage the challenge of Dr. deMause for a prize for anyone who could find a good mother before 1700. This last point led to a very fertile line of discussion as we read the literature with us continually asking, "Who was documenting these reports throughout history, what were the purposes of the writers of these reports, why do we have so many of these reports from certain centuries connected with certain nations, and what were the other folks doing who were not writing these reports a tentative hypothesis possibly being good mothers? (4) Finally, the bane of any new academic effort, the dreaded curriculum committee and the attendant biases, turfdom, mutual denigration of collegial efforts, and questions of the qualifications of the presenting faculty, were all included in the course content as an exploration in displacement theory for the consideration of the three doctoral students.

The applied connection between psychohistory and historicist sociology came in our ability early in the course to easily connect the horrors of childhood experiences of the past to those same continuing horrors found daily in our local newspapers. This became a portion of the class entitled "Has anything really changed at all anywhere!" As the reader can clearly see by now we had quickly established all of the ingredients for an emotional roller coaster. Early in the class one of the doctoral students, who is also an instructor at a neighboring college, simply said, "I don't know if I can read these materials. I find it so horrible to think that these kinds of things could be happening to my children and grandchildren." Another student, a devout Evangelical Christian, had to face the fact that most of the data was happening in civilized Christian countries and rather much less of it occurred in primal societies. Psychogenic theory and group fantasy constructs were her major struggles in the course as she tried to reconcile her group affiliations with her view of the subject as "it ought to be." We included a number of anthropological articles to give balance to a literature that was primarily European. These reactions were openly explored and we gradually began to include our own childhood experiences, for good or ill, in the academic mix of the classes. This sharing became so open among all of us that I issued the charge of complete confidentiality, slammed the door and got on with having some serious cathartic evenings as we found experience after experience in our own lives emerging from the readings in the course. In these circumstances the traditional role of the professor just disappeared. Being a teutonic sort of fellow, I felt the obligation to do at least an hour lecture for our weekly three-hour course to set the theoretical stage for the evening's readings. These were tolerated by my forgiving students but increasingly I was just interrupted or gently dismissed, and the intense bonding among the three graduate students engaging the literature and revealing their younger lives within that literature became the hallmark of the evening. Finally, I gave up what tattered formality was left and just joined the group and was welcomed into it. What became clear was the teaching of psychohistory must be coupled with the attempt to expand the space and time to discuss personal connections with the data, to see how the "social markers" served as explanations for the students' reception of the readings, and, frankly, deal with the fear of the topics.

The students brought their own reality to the class and their own sources of knowledge. Many of our knowledge sources for this material were unauthorized sources, as we four academics are conditioned to and trained to view knowledge creation. Clearly, we were all profoundly influenced by non-authorized events and initially felt a bit guilty with the amount of class time given to these influences. Our psychology guest lecturer mused about the intellectual integrity of such a course inclusion and we countermused why so little of this goes on, is so powerful, and integral to psychohistory. . . but "is this a real graduate course?"

Whether the dynamic emerged from the theories, the literature under consideration, or a unique group-sharing event, we still have not determined. We do know that we are all far more involved in each others' lives and sense each other as good friends than rarely if ever happens in an academic course at the University of Tennessee. The desire of all of us to do more with this material led to contacting Lloyd deMause over the possibility of presenting at the annual convention and that was quickly decided upon, along with the kind offer to share these experiences with his readers. The students' reasons for joining the course were the usual and all were aware it was experimental, with the encouragement to make their research a combination of a personal case study of an "unauthorized" salient event in their lives followed by the "authorized" research on the topic.

This unauthorized/authorized oscillating metronome we dubbed the "hobby" model of paper writing because of the intense personal interest. Ms. Margaret Ribble, a math instructor from Maryville College, whose initial reaction to the course material was horror, came to grips with the historical data but continued to have trouble dealing with present-day stories of child abuse and neglect. "Motherhood and recent grandmotherhood have made me overly sensitive and protective towards children, and possibly overly squeamish about reading unpleasant accounts of treatment of children. I expressed all these feelings during the first class meeting and as the course progressed, I knew I had to formulate some sort of theory that might show possible benefits from unhappy childhoods." This theory came from her research into the childhoods of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert. William Therivel's thesis that the challenged personality is often a pre-condition for sustained creativity resonated with her own thinking.1 Therivel maintained that certain "challenges" such as the loss of a parent, physical disability, chronic illness, or even mistreatment, if combined with certain "assistance" such as caring adults, education, or wealth, may produce extremely creative individuals such as the three that were studied. Although no one would wish for such adversities in childhood, the resulting gifts may benefit society in ways no one could foresee.

Lois Blais was initially angry with the course material and apprehensive at being the only member with no prior study of childhood and social psychology or history. As with all of us, she ended the course with feelings of confusion and perplexity but with an interest in those unique situations and moments in most societies when the child becomes valuable as a substantive contributor to the system rather than a pawn or plaything for adults. "The computer and this information' age seems to be such a moment with many children cheerfully embracing the technological revolution which scares many adults. The children become literate in the new computer language, which leads to an odd flip of generational competence and power in many families, with a new Ôtemporary' role for children akin to that of some primal cultural where a child had real, and not just artificial or sentimental, roles, as they sort out the computer, a little like Alex in the Doonsbury cartoon." The research is an interesting twist in the present works on the social history of childhood.

Jean Miller struggled all semester with disbelief of the data and the research on the Barbie doll was the revenge. Obviously children must have been somewhat valued if special objects were designed for their play and personal enjoyment but clearly a cycle of national group fantasy can be perceived in the Barbie doll. Thin, blond, blue eyes equals beautiful, and therefore, a female child will be valued by these criteria in this time frame. The interaction exchange and labeling theories, as well as reproduction theory, were helpful in categorizing the mass of conflicting data on "Barbie" necessary since "she" has been imbued with so much meaning by her supporters and detractors as have her human counterparts deemed to be beautiful in our culture.

Karl Jost became the group theoretician gleaning the relevant portions of deMause's and Dilthey's writing for both the course knowledge base and the specific research projects. Being a novice with one's students nicely ended the class authority structure to the enhancement of four minds coming to grips with a new theoretical structure, and my research paper evolved from that role of an equal contributor in the group.

As we four modify our research into presentation form, we are enjoying a new level of work as research colleagues and still involved in each other's lives. The psychohistory course members have become a "group" in the college and considerable interest is growing for a permanent course in the evolution of childhood. For the exciting conclusion to our efforts, we invite you to our session at the 1998 Psychohistory Conference.

1. Therivel, William. The Challenged Personality as a Precondition for Sustained Creativity. Creativity Research Journal, Vol. 6(4), 413-424. 1993.

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