The logic of psychohistorical destiny

Journal of Psychohistory

Volumn 29, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 124-142

  Fanton, John ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0039567334     PISSN: 01453378     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (44)

1. See the following references for discussions of the validity and methodology of psychohistory. I do not wish to argue for its merits as a scientific discipline as this has been done by the first generation. If one cannot accept that psychohistory is a science and insists it is pseudoscience, then he or she would be remiss in not contacting Dr Williams to inquire why he did not include psychohistory in his extensive text "Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience," General Edition. NY, NY: Facts on File, 2000. He managed to list psychosurgery and psychokinesis. Peter Lowenberg. Decoding the Past: the Psychohistorical Approach. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1996; Lloyd deMause. Psychohistory: Childhood and the Emotional Life of Nations. Online at www.psychohistory.com.; Lloyd deMause. "The Independence of Pyschohistory." Foundations of Psychohistory. NY, NY: Creative Roots, Inc. 1982; Henry Lawton. "Psychohistorical Methodology." The Psychohistorian's Handbook. NY, NY: The Psychohistory Press, 1988; Coleman Brazelton. "Is the Psychogenic Theory Scientific?" The Journal of Psychohistory, Vol 13/2 (Fall 1985), 189-196.
2. See the following references for discussions of the validity and methodology of psychohistory. I do not wish to argue for its merits as a scientific discipline as this has been done by the first generation. If one cannot accept that psychohistory is a science and insists it is pseudoscience, then he or she would be remiss in not contacting Dr Williams to inquire why he did not include psychohistory in his extensive text "Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience," General Edition. NY, NY: Facts on File, 2000. He managed to list psychosurgery and psychokinesis. Peter Lowenberg. Decoding the Past: the Psychohistorical Approach. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1996; Lloyd deMause. Psychohistory: Childhood and the Emotional Life of Nations. Online at www.psychohistory.com.; Lloyd deMause. "The Independence of Pyschohistory." Foundations of Psychohistory. NY, NY: Creative Roots, Inc. 1982; Henry Lawton. "Psychohistorical Methodology." The Psychohistorian's Handbook. NY, NY: The Psychohistory Press, 1988; Coleman Brazelton. "Is the Psychogenic Theory Scientific?" The Journal of Psychohistory, Vol 13/2 (Fall 1985), 189-196.
3. See the following references for discussions of the validity and methodology of psychohistory. I do not wish to argue for its merits as a scientific discipline as this has been done by the first generation. If one cannot accept that psychohistory is a science and insists it is pseudoscience, then he or she would be remiss in not contacting Dr Williams to inquire why he did not include psychohistory in his extensive text "Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience," General Edition. NY, NY: Facts on File, 2000. He managed to list psychosurgery and psychokinesis. Peter Lowenberg. Decoding the Past: the Psychohistorical Approach. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1996; Lloyd deMause. Psychohistory: Childhood and the Emotional Life of Nations. Online at www.psychohistory.com.; Lloyd deMause. "The Independence of Pyschohistory." Foundations of Psychohistory. NY, NY: Creative Roots, Inc. 1982; Henry Lawton. "Psychohistorical Methodology." The Psychohistorian's Handbook. NY, NY: The Psychohistory Press, 1988; Coleman Brazelton. "Is the Psychogenic Theory Scientific?" The Journal of Psychohistory, Vol 13/2 (Fall 1985), 189-196.
4. See the following references for discussions of the validity and methodology of psychohistory. I do not wish to argue for its merits as a scientific discipline as this has been done by the first generation. If one cannot accept that psychohistory is a science and insists it is pseudoscience, then he or she would be remiss in not contacting Dr Williams to inquire why he did not include psychohistory in his extensive text "Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience," General Edition. NY, NY: Facts on File, 2000. He managed to list psychosurgery and psychokinesis. Peter Lowenberg. Decoding the Past: the Psychohistorical Approach. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1996; Lloyd deMause. Psychohistory: Childhood and the Emotional Life of Nations. Online at www.psychohistory.com.; Lloyd deMause. "The Independence of Pyschohistory." Foundations of Psychohistory. NY, NY: Creative Roots, Inc. 1982; Henry Lawton. "Psychohistorical Methodology." The Psychohistorian's Handbook. NY, NY: The Psychohistory Press, 1988; Coleman Brazelton. "Is the Psychogenic Theory Scientific?" The Journal of Psychohistory, Vol 13/2 (Fall 1985), 189-196.
5. See the following references for discussions of the validity and methodology of psychohistory. I do not wish to argue for its merits as a scientific discipline as this has been done by the first generation. If one cannot accept that psychohistory is a science and insists it is pseudoscience, then he or she would be remiss in not contacting Dr Williams to inquire why he did not include psychohistory in his extensive text "Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience," General Edition. NY, NY: Facts on File, 2000. He managed to list psychosurgery and psychokinesis. Peter Lowenberg. Decoding the Past: the Psychohistorical Approach. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1996; Lloyd deMause. Psychohistory: Childhood and the Emotional Life of Nations. Online at www.psychohistory.com.; Lloyd deMause. "The Independence of Pyschohistory." Foundations of Psychohistory. NY, NY: Creative Roots, Inc. 1982; Henry Lawton. "Psychohistorical Methodology." The Psychohistorian's Handbook. NY, NY: The Psychohistory Press, 1988; Coleman Brazelton. "Is the Psychogenic Theory Scientific?" The Journal of Psychohistory, Vol 13/2 (Fall 1985), 189-196.
6. Kühn, T. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press, 1997. While I believe Kuhn's observations to be brilliant, I share the opinion of James Franklin in his critique of Kuhn's conclusions that all knowledge, scientific and otherwise, is fallible because it can only be understood by paradigms, and ultimately all paradigms are fallible. That seems, however, too extreme and denies that there exist universal truths, impervious to paradigmatic perspective, such as that there is even such a thing as history. See Franklin's "Thomas Kuhn's Irrationalism" at: www.newcriterion.com/archive/18/june00/kuhn.html.
7. Kühn, T. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press, 1997. While I believe Kuhn's observations to be brilliant, I share the opinion of James Franklin in his critique of Kuhn's conclusions that all knowledge, scientific and otherwise, is fallible because it can only be understood by paradigms, and ultimately all paradigms are fallible. That seems, however, too extreme and denies that there exist universal truths, impervious to paradigmatic perspective, such as that there is even such a thing as history. See Franklin's "Thomas Kuhn's Irrationalism" at: www.newcriterion.com/archive/18/june00/kuhn.html.
8. See www.britannica.com/magazine?ebisco_id=9146&pager.offset=10 for reference and further discussion of how prominent members of the pharmaceutical industry and medical community advocated against promoting Dr Marshall's findings and how the time and delay in transferring his findings into clinical practice cost billions of dollars as well as a lot of pain and suffering in millions.
9. www.aip.org/history/einstein/ Einstein is famous for a number of reasons, but most especially for having conceived of the sociological equivalent of a Copernican revolution three times over with his ideas about relativity, photoelectric effects and the nature of mass as it approaches light speed, all while working as a third class Swiss patent clerk. Freud's "The Interpretation of Dreams" and "The Aetiology of Hysteria" revolutionized the old way of conceptualizing and recognizing the origins of psychic conflicts and unconscious life as they are universally manifest, www.mii.kurumeu.ac.jp/∼leuers/Freud.htm
10. Beisel, David. "Resistance to Psychology in Holocaust Scholarship." Journal of Psychohistory, Vol. 27/2 (Fall 199), pp. 124-135. Professor Beisel presents a concise review of how the social scientific community has resisted exploring psychological motivations to explain historical atrocities such as the Holocaust. It is particularly relevant for those who want to understand resistance as it has been experienced in the social sciences, rather than the biological sciences presented here.
11. Michael Berenbaum (ed.), Abraham J. Peck (ed.). The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998.
12. Beisel, p. 133.
13. Beitman, BD and Yue, D. Learning Psychotherapy: A Time Efficient, Research Based, and Outcome Measured Training Program. New York: WW Norton & Company, 1999. p. 224.
14. Having attended several of the annual International Psychohistorical Association (IPA) conventions, I have been convinced that the more controversial a subject or an argument is, the more deliberate and conscientious the authors should be in stating their case to make any progress towards demonstrating the validity of their claims. Unfortunately, one of the IPA's strengths, the diverse audience they attract, is also one of its weaknesses since many presentations have been given without any psychohistorical relevance, let alone psychohistorical or scholarly merit.
15. "Backlash Against Psychotherapy." The Journal of Psychohistory. Vol.22/3 (Winter 1995).
16. Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. NY, NY: William Morow and Company, 1994.
17. Ibid., p.23.
18. MIT has dedicated a web site to the life and controversies of Chomsky as political, philosophical and academic dissident at http://mitpress.mit.edu/e_books/chomsky/
19. deMause (1982), p. 1.
20. Pinker, pp. 370-403. Dedicates a whole chapter to the nonsensical dedication people he refers to as 'mavens" (Yiddish for 'expert') give to arbitrary rules of 'acceptable' grammar as these types use to justify the "dumbing down of America and other types of arguments that oversimplify and stereotype people to equally arbitrary categories based on prejudices.
21. Beisel, p.129.
22. Alice Miller (translated by Hildegard and Hunter Hannum). For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence. New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1990.
23. Sandra L. Bloom. "When Good People Do Bad Things: Meditations on the Backlash." The Journal of Psychohistory Vol. 22/3 (Winter 1995), pp. 273-304. As director of a psychiatric hospital, Dr. Bloom had a special vantage point to comment on the backlash against psychotherapy and recovered memories from child abuse. She presents cases on how the False Memory Syndrome (FMS) Foundation (which is mentioned in the "Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience") created a number of concerns amongst mental health professionals with their actions in court and support of anti-therapy legislation, even though FMS had not been established as a diagnosable entity. Check out www.stopbadtherapy.com to see some of the latest efforts.
24. Pinker, pp. 25-54. This is how he affectionately refers to children during the active phase of their language development as they are testing out new constructions of words to express meaning.
25. William K. Joseph. "Titanic America." The Journal of Psychohistory. Vol. 26/2 (Fall 1998), p.540-545; Adam J. Green. "Titanic Fever: Why Then? Why Now?" The Journal of Psychohistory. Vol. 26/2 (Fall 1998), p.546-562. Both articles cover the mood and present evidence for how the mania of the late '90's was well symbolized by the Titanic movie and the related fascination with the historical event.
26. William K. Joseph. "Titanic America." The Journal of Psychohistory. Vol. 26/2 (Fall 1998), p.540-545; Adam J. Green. "Titanic Fever: Why Then? Why Now?" The Journal of Psychohistory. Vol. 26/2 (Fall 1998), p.546-562. Both articles cover the mood and present evidence for how the mania of the late '90's was well symbolized by the Titanic movie and the related fascination with the historical event.
27. Diane Sawyer. Good Morning America. NY: ABC, April 18, 2001.
28. Robert McFarland. "Peace On Earth; Good Will Toward Children." The Journal of Psychohistory. Vol. 27/2 (Fall 1999), pp. 200-211.
29. James F. Masterson. The Personality Disorders: A New Look at the Developmental Self and Object Relations Approach. NY: Zeig, Tucker, and Theiser, 2001.
30. Frederic Schiffer. Of Two Minds: The Revolutionary Science of Dual Brain Psychology. New York: Free Press, 1998.
31. Lloyd deMause, "The Psychogenic Theory of History." Psychohistory: Childhood and the Emotional Life of Nations, www.psychohistory.com.
32. Eric R Kandel. "A New Intellectual Framework for Psychiatry." American Journal of Psychiatry. 155/4: pp. 457-469.
33. Bloom, p. 296.
34. Robert Wright. Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny. NY: Vintage Books, 2001.
35. James Gleick. Chaos: Making a New Science. NY, NY: Penguin Books, 1987.
36. Wright, pp. 6-7.
37. Gleick, pp. 20-23. There are also overtones of chaos theory here, as there is in the psychohistorical evidence: sensitive dependence upon initial conditions, i.e. the butterfly effect. The complexity seen at one level must be related to the complexity it derived from, ad infinitum.
38. Wright, p. 328.
39. There is a conspicuous absence of examining how parents have treated children at any time in history in Wright's book. His book is all about how information is transmitted from one biological entity to another, but again, there is nothing here about child rearing. Too bad. One can speculate as to the reasons, but it is a glaring omission to which probably an entire book itself could be dedicated, i.e. an examination of psychohistorical and game theory interrelations and correlates. Another project for future psychohistorians?
40. T. Berry Brazelton and Stanley I. Greenspan. The Irreducible Needs of Children: What Every Child Must Have to Grow, Learn and Flourish. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Perseus Publishing, 2000.
41. Future psychohistorians won't be challenged to create the first journal on resiliency, but they can check it out at http://www.resiliency.com/.
42. Dave Pelzer. A Child Called It: One Child's Courage to Survive. NY: Health Communications, Inc., 1995. One in a series of three where the author writes an autobiographical account of how he was severely traumatized by his mother, but how eventually, through other relations he forms over time with stable care givers, he overcame his hardships and began giving inspirational speeches across the nation.
43. Bonnie Benard. "From Research to Practice: The Foundations of the Resiliency Paradigm." in Resiliency in Action: Practical Ideas for Overcoming Risks and Building Strengths in Youths, Families, and Communities. Resiliency in Action, Inc., 1996.
44. James W. Loewen. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. NY: Simon & Schuster, 1995. Makes a compelling case that should history be taught as it likely happened and not as how textbooks and the industry they represent want to sell it, students might not consistently pick history as their least favorite subject. Certainly another legitimate source of resistance to history in general, if not psychohistory in particular.