Talk:Psychohistory

message: note that Wikipedia is no soapbox. If a new editor feels tempted to soapbox here, please see these excerpts from an archived flaming discussion, originally posted in Wikipedia, that gives the picture of this controversial topic. 
This talk page is only for discussions to improve the Psychohistory article. If anybody wants to discuss Psychohistory issues unrelated to the improvement of the page, please do it in the above-linked forum.
—Cesar Tort 02:07, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Before placing critiques here...

message: A vaguely worded claim that "critics " have called PH a pseudoscience is not good enough to establish this. Who are they? The site linked to in the citation looks like its self published and not a good source. I have removed this sentence. Can we find a substantial source who has said this. Lumos3 (talk) 21:36, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Criticism

message: When I recently archived the whole talk page, I forgot the statement in tag template: "The factual accuracy of this section is disputed. Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page.(June 2008)." Instead of placing the discussion back, I'll rather remove the sentence "Jacques Barzun has called it 'pseudo-historical'"[20] since I cannot see it in the link (or perhaps it's about Freud, not deMause?). Also, I'll make some changes like removing an unsourced phrase so that the tag may be removed. If these sections are placed back, the tag should be added as well. —Cesar Tort 19:42, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archived talk 

message: I was surprised by how little coverage this article gave to Erik H. Erikson, given the importance of his biographies of Martin Luther and Mahatma Gandhi to the development of psychohistory. Also, I wonder whether this article could say more about how academic historians sometimes criticise psychohistory for not taking enough cognizance of social or economic factors in influencing historical processes? ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:12, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: More on Erikson (and also on criticisms)

message: I wonder to what extent the Psychohistorians use the methods of historography.  Psychoanalytics have a long record of drawing premature conclusions which they refuse to accept any empirical evidence against.  Many people with inborn mental aberrations have had their lives destroyed by treatment based on misconceptions about past experiences.  Please note that inborn mental differences are individual and not determined by which group you belong to.  To the extent Psychohistorians don't work like historians they spread misconceptions about mental problems and their causes.  Something people with the mental problems in question may suffer badly from.
2010-02-05  Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.
:Lena you should get an account an edit, you seem to know more on the subject than any of us, its free. --Ishmaelblues (talk) 00:23, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: No, this person should stay well away from the article. So far, this Lena has had nothing to add except massive space-wasting OR, PoV and Freud-war objections. When she has *an actual relevant source* to cite or quote from, a contribution will be welcome. Pfistermeister (talk) 02:36, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Methodology 

message: 1. The emphasis on Lloyd deMause is so massive that one might be forgiven for thinking that there is no other contemporary psychohistorian worth mentioning.
2. One would expect an encycopledia article on a topic like this to state as clearly as possible key underlying assumptions. ('Men - and a few women - make history?' 'Parenting is key to history'?) It should also have something about the various schools of thought within the subject.
3. There ought to be some acknowledgement that other areas of history, especially social history, are also concerned with the history of the family though they don't share the preocupation with physically destructive parenting apparent in the table 'psychogenic modes'. Norvo (talk) 04:35, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problems 

message: So, is psychohistory a taking of modern concepts and projecting them into the past? How is this kind of projection justified? When were the concepts of "family", "childhood" and "abuse" the way we understand them even formulated into concepts? If something we would call "abuse" today is the norm in a society, does it make sense to call it abuse? 
The positions of this psychohistory seem to be really vague. Answering some of these questions might clarify it some. Is the projection of modern ideas into the past something they do as a part of their technique, or do they claim these ideas have existed at all times? Other historians are very careful not to project present into the past as it is not objective, so how do psychohistorians justify doing this? Would they say the concept of Wikipedia existed in the stone age, though it was just latent and not yet brought out into the light? Are we dealing with Platonic ideals here? What in history changes and what is stagnant for them? 
Can any of these questions be answered? It would make the article a lot more interesting and clear up some confusion. --DanielCD (talk) 15:43, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: What an idiotic load of blather! You might as well ask if it's 'justified' or 'valid' to use the concept of 'volcanoes' in discussing the destruction of Pompeii 'because ancient Romans had no concept of "vulcanology"'. Pathetic!  Pfistermeister (talk) 02:35, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Steady on. There's no need to be rude. Norvo (talk) 05:39, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

text:  My question appears to have gone over some heads. If ppl want to believe the Ancient Greeks had mopeds and cell phones who am I to contradict them. Concrete objects like "volcanoes" are not the same as abstractions, and the understanding of abstractions can change significantly over time and space. If this wasn't the case, there would be no cultural differences in the world. The idea of the nuclear family would not have been understood before 150 years ago or so, yet people talk as if people have lived like Ozzie and Harriet for millenia past. At the very least, failure to address it is one of the reasons psychohistory is seen as a pseudoscience. Terms used today can have connotations that they wouldn't have had in the past. Without addressing this, psychohistory is like Biblical literalism, you can literally make up anything you want by twisting the meaning of the words and taking them out of context, with unintended connotations, etc.  --DanielCD (talk) 19:52, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Clarity

message: I think we need to make a crucial and clear distinction in the introduction and definition. Is psychohistory a study of the psychological aspects of historical events and changes in the world and in society? And/or is it also/either a study of a patient's psychological history (ie. childhood, family, abuse?)? The two seem to not be clearly demarcated in the intro though both have been mentioned. The relationship and difference between these two aspects of the study must be clarified. FellowScientist (talk) 06:57, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I second that! --DanielCD (talk) 23:34, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: And I 'third' that! See my comments above under 'Problems'. Moreover, in psychohistory are the 'patients' (to use FellowScientist's apt term) individual 'great men' (plus the occasional 'great woman') or are the 'patients' vague entities like whole societies or, even more mind-bogglingly, whole eras in history, whole stages of human development, or what? Then we also need to know whether psychohistory is wedded to psychoanalyis. The article is at present riddled with unacknowledged problems, fanciful speculation, unstated assumptions and the like. It is singularly uninformative, too. Norvo (talk) 02:32, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Definition of psychohistory 

message: I would think there'd be a more blatant mention of Alice Miller.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.238.60.206 (talk) 19:59, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alice Miller 

message: There was this sentence is the introduction :
"In recent times the relationship between psychology and history has been explored using the study of moral disengagement. The internet history blog Historical Underbelly looks at some of the ways in which the mechanisms of moral disengagement appear to be evident in numerous stages throughout history.http://historicalunderbelly.wordpress.com/manufacturing-scapegoats-moral-disengagement-in-history/"
Moral disengagement seems to refer to a theory distinct from psychohistory, therefore it has nothing to do in the introduction of this article. Maybe it could go into "See also" section, or something else. In the meantime, I simply deleted it.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Goutte de pluie (talk • contribs) 04:27, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moral disengagement 

message: I have just finished translating this wiki into Dutch, and got very familiar with the text while spending many hours on it. I found several points for improvement and already applied these in the Dutch version. Now I'm amending the English text accordingly (and will continue later this week - not completely ready yet). My main effort is to take away bias toward DeMause, and change the order of paragraphs to make the reading more logical. Please have a critical look and check my English (although most changes are just removal or replacements) Lisiduna (talk) 21:01, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thorough review of the article 

message: ethnology is a branch of anthropology, but article seems to imply that they are somehow separate.  76.19.63.222 (talk) 13:24, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  ethnology is a branch of anthropology. 

message: To help students who are studying this topic, psychohistory, I recommend that at least a "see also" link be added from this article (psychohistory) to the articles titled "Julian Jaynes" and the article "Palace Economy
I recommend that a "see also" link to the article titled "Julian Jaynes".  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Jaynes)  He is known for his book "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind". In that book, he argued that before approximately 1000BC, ancient peoples were not conscious, as modern people are, but had a "bicameral mind".  Their bicameral brains produced hallucinations, perceived as communications with supernatural beings or gods.  This is a theory that is probably not possible to prove by any experiment, but is significant, in the field of psychohistory.
I also recommend a link to the article titled "Palace Economy", which also ties into psychohistory.  As I understand it, before the concept of money was invented, a palace economy or redistribution economy was routine.  Most wealth would be turned over from producers to a centralized administration, the palace.  The aristocrats or priests of the palace would redistribute the wealth, in a manner that was supposed to be optimal for all of society.   This made church and state a single theocratic institution, to be obeyed by all.   An example is the concept of Pharaoh, which means "great house".   Another example is some early Christian communities that would give all they had to the patriarch, who would return what they needed to live. This is similar to the ancient concept of Gift economy.  Of course, the obligation of producers to hand over all or most their goods, is borderline slavery, yet another topic.  
68.35.173.107 (talk) 15:51, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recommend add links to "Julian Jaynes" & "Palace Economy" 

message: I think that Erik H. Erikson should be added to the list of "Notable historians"  - his psychological studies of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther probably make one of the most famous names in the field of psychohistory. Vorbee (talk) 15:46, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Erik H. Erikson

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 2 external links on Psychohistory. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The lead article tells me that psychohistory is "an amalgam of psychology, history, and related social sciences and the humanities". Very interesting!
Could somebody, if it's not too much trouble, point me in the direction of the following:
# A work of psychohistorical research, published in a peer-reviewed, mainstream psychological journal, the results of which demonstrate empirical support for the axioms of psychohistory;
# A work of psychohistorical research, published in a peer-reviewed, mainstream historical journal, the results of which demonstrate empirical support for the axioms of psychohistory; and
# A work of psychohistorical research, published in a peer-reviewed, mainstream anthropological journal, the results of which demonstrate empirical support for the axioms of psychohistory?
I'm very familiar with the academic study of psychology, quite familiar with the academic study of history, and reasonably familiar with the academic study of anthropology. Not once in my life, however, have I encountered the academic study of something called psychohistory. The lead paragraph gives prominent reference to the "insights of psychology", along with a footnote about "accomplished and often distinguished psychohistorians".
Given this article is presented throughout as pertaining to psychological science, I am minded to ask: what have these psychohistorians "accomplished" in the field of psychology? In what sense are they "distinguished" in the field of psychology?
If anybody is able to address these questions, please do. While you're at it, consider referring to this evidence in order to support the claims made in the article itself. Alternatively, you might decide instead to simply remove all these unsupported assertions. It's entirely up to you. Foxmilder (talk) 07:38, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why have I never heard of this "amalgam of psychology, history, and related social sciences and the humanities"?