Talk:Psychohistory/Archive 1

message: What about information on critics of psychohistory? Judging by the fact that its founder accuses mainstream anthropologists of advocating pedophilia, I'm sure there must be quite a few of them. Unfortunately, my cursory Google search could not find any -- is anyone familiar with any in academic literature?
Since psychohistory seems strongly influenced by psychoanalysis, and a lot of people think psychoanalysis is psuedoscience, I assume the same people would have similar views of psychohistory. I'm also sure that many historians would view as preposterous the idea that we can analyse the psychology of long dead historical figures at all accurately (as opposed to just taking together whatever lose pieces of information we can find to make a story that fits our ideology).
Actually, if you ask me most 'therapists' are pseudoscientists anyway, but thats another story... -- an.
In fact, none of the several psychotherapists I know of have heard of this guy; also, when I was in college I had a friend who majored in history and talked about "psychohistory" that he had heard about in a few lectures, but the term did not refer to the contents of this page, it refered more generally to historians using psychological theories to explain the behaorior of historical figures.  In other words, this page seems to me to be promoting one man's business.  Unfortunately, I am neither a trained psychologist nor a trained historian and am not in a position to evaluate this stuff seriously.  I would have to do serious research (and I do not think a google search is real research) and I don't have the time.  Anyone who does, however, should! Slrubenstein
The text in this topic seems almost derived from a sales folder. I have neither the expertise nor the time to delve into this, but I was, in another life, a psychology grad student, and I have never heard of this field. I question the NPOV of this text. ~Puffy_jacket
That psychohistory exists as a field of academic study and discussion  surely cannot be disputed - follow the links provided. The page also includes a statement on the differences between psychohistory  and  history.  Can you be more specific than saying that  it ‘seems almost derived from a sales folder’. It sounds as though you disagree with the subject and wish it didn’t exist.   Lumos3 09:52, 19 Dec 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Critics of psychohistory

message: I recommend a book by Jacques Szaluta, "Psychohistory: Theory and Practice," Peter Lang Published it in 1999.  I'm not trying to advertise the book, but it is a good overview of the evolution of the field.  It is also important to note that Lloyd DeMause is mentioned, but he is no such thing as the "inventor" of the field as he claims.  His presence on the web and the way he dominates the one or two listservs I've seen tend to skew the perception.  Here is the publishers description of Szaluta's book:
"This work is the first comprehensive text in the field of psychohistory that presents both the theory and the practice of this interdisciplinary field. The presentation of psychoanalytic theory in this work includes the fundamental contributions made by Freud as well as the post-Freudian developments. Another unique feature of this work, because psychohistory is so controversial, is that the pros and cons are presented, thereby putting the field in better relief. This work accentuates how psychohistory differs from traditional history, and how psychohistory is more insightful in the study of the individual, the family, and the group. In sum, Psychohistory: Theory and Practice demonstrates how psychohistory is transforming the study of history and why psychohistory is so promising for our understanding of mankind."
Finally, in the interest of full disclosure, Professor Szaluta was my History professor in college and wrote me a recommendation for Grad School. I do not see myself as a champion of psychohistory as I have serious doubts about the applicability of post-mortem psychoanalysis, but the field is definately valid.
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Notice of removal of The neutrality of this article is disputed warning
This statement has been here for about 5 months now and the article has matured a lot since than and contains a statement of the field's marginal status . I propose to remove it within 7 days .  Lumos3 21:58, 26 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Psychohistory is a valid, if not entirely recognized, academic field. 

message: Oh my God, I can't believe we have an article on this crap. This Lloyd DeMause guy, (who is the inventor of this neologism masquerading as a legitimate field of science), is the same whack job who reliably informs us that Japanese mothers "masturbate" their infants, that 60% of all children have been molested repeatedly, that 50% of all male children have been forced to touch their mothers' gentiles, and, oh, here's a nice one: Half of all Asian children are killed shortly after birth by their parents. You can always tell a DeMause written paper by the way in which he ingeniously sites other articles written by himself as source material. DeMause is nothing more than another paranoid, megalomaniac like L. Ron Hubbard, right down to the way in which he graciously credits Freud as a co-inventor of Dianetics, er, sorry, I mean Psychohistory. When I can stop doubling over in laughter, I'll consider what is going to be needed in the way of a critisim section for this article. The main Psychohistory link should be about Asimov's famous Foundation novels, with this nonsense pointed to by Psychohistory (pseudoscience) func(talk) 02:54, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you have a specific source for all these statistics which you claim are from deMause?  That quote about Asian children, in particular, doesn't appear anywhere on the web except on this page and another site trashing deMause.  It would be obviously NPOV to call it pseudoscience in the article title.  Please do write a criticism section for this article; it needs one.  There's plenty of criticism out there.  (You'll have to make it a lot less POV than what you wrote above, though.)  Pfalstad 05:09, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Regarding the Main Link to be to Asimov. I agree, although I have been an Asimov fan since high school, but who hasn't? (MartinGugino 01:27, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

text: What research? Have you read his papers? He doesn't research anything, he just makes up theories, ie: he projects his personal obsessions into a formalized set of opinions, and then calls it research. func(talk) 20:04, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, a lot of people think 99% of all Freud did was just made up, and don't consider psychoanalysis scientific. I'll be the first to acknowledge that it's not the most _falsifiable_ of theories, so it may not be completely straightforward to describe it as science. It seems closer to say, literary criticism or "theory" (in the humanities/critical sense). I'm not certain to what extent psychohistory itself pretends to be predictive; most of my readings of it seem to be explanatory and providing a context but falling short of prediction. Not that there's anything wrong with that...as I said, that's kind of what literary criticism and philosophy do. And a field may be semi-legitimate even when its most prominent proponent may be crankish. If this were not so, all of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy would be hub-bub (because of Freud). At any rate, I think people should find out for themselves. I've read some a few articles not written by deMause, and they didn't seem to be written by either lunatics, dimwits, or cranks. And the idea of applying psychological motivation to large-scale group behaviour is not by itself preposterous or patently asinine. Revolver 11:15, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The Journal of Psychohistory was carried by the University of Oregon's library as an academic journal when I was a student there roughly 10 years ago, so either it's semi-legitimate (at least enough for the taxpayers of the state of Oregon to shell out for the stacks) or the standards at these universities have gone way down...take your pick. Revolver 11:21, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia is a Weird Encyclopedia 

message: I'm assuming this in the references: "Sigmund Freud, collecting works" is "Collected works", but I'm noting it here just in case I'm wrong. --DanielCD 15:00, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Typo?

message: The essays I read on this site are biased and in some cases obscenely wrong in their assertions. Almost all the references and citations I saw are internal. I ammended the description so it won't appear that this is an objective site. 
In fact, a lot of these articles seem to be projecting modern ideas into the past rather than actually deciphering the psychology of the past, the exact opposite of what such an endeavor should strive for. --DanielCD 15:09, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: www.psychohistory.com

message: *Why there is still denial in modern societies about the reality of child abuse
This is really loaded. It seems to be there's a rabid insistance on child abuse today rather than denial (depending on which society you are meaning). But this is far from as matter-of-fact as presented in the article. --DanielCD 15:11, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Child Abuse

message: I added an NPOV tag, as this article definitely needs more criticism of this idea. The articles from the site this article is based on are anything but objective. But this one site's POV seems to dominate this article with no alternate views given. Until this is remedied, the tag should remain. --DanielCD 15:19, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The trouble I see with the NPOV tag is that “Psychohistory” is rarely challenged in the academia.  How then will it be challenged in Wikipedia?  Though I don’t subscribe to all of psychohistorians’ claims, I don’t see anything wrong with the article (I wouldn’t see anything wrong with some balancing statements either). Cesar Tort 23:36, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with the idea about Psychohistory. The focus from this one site is what I'm referring to. I mean just what you say, add some balancing statements. --DanielCD 23:44, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I have added some academic criticism I found in a google search. But why pick on Psychohistory, there are hundreds of articles on Wikipedia which describe a fringe subject and don’t give a "balancing" point of view. Take for example Psychogeography which is linked from this article. The same argument would put NPOV there as well. Psychohistory makes the outrageous claim that child rearing affects us in more profound ways than we care to acknowledge and makes most people uncomfortable when they first encounter it. This article describes the subject and does not sell it. I don’t think it deserved the NPOV tag. Lumos3 08:28, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Fair enough. Yes, there are lots of articles that are a little off. As long as there's some mention that there are contrary opinions, I think we can lose the tag. --DanielCD 22:55, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV

message: I see no reason at all why this article should be separated from Psychogenic mode. —Cesar Tort 18:36, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge 

message: I updated the redirect page to send Psychoclass to Psychohistory instead of Psychogenic mode. I noticed the word "psychoclass" appears nowhere in the article, although the word appears frequently in the writings of psychohistorians. Perhaps it should it be mentioned and briefly explained. -- Bookish 23:24, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Absolutely agree! —Cesar Tort 23:36, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Psychoclass

message: Not long ago this article was pov tagged.  See DanielCD’s posts above: in my view, legitimate concerns.  Perhaps what you may add should address such concerns to avoid future tagging?  —Cesar Tort 16:01, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  avoid future tagging 

message: From Bookish 21:12, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good ideas. —Cesar Tort 22:51, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll wait a day or two to see if anyone else has a comment -- Bookish 22:56, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Faculty Bios

message: * Rudolph Binion, Professor of Modern European History, Brandeis University (see faculty bio).
* Lloyd deMause, founder of The Institute for Psychohistory.
* Robert Jay Lifton, a psychiatrist specializing in psychological motivations for war and terrorism.
* Peter Loewenberg, Department of History, UCLA (see faculty bio).
* Bruce Mazlish, Professor of History, Emeritus, MIT (see faculty bio).
* Charles Strozier, Professor of History, Graduate Center, CUNY (see bio at Boston University).
::Good ideas. —Cesar Tort 22:51, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll wait a day or two to see if anyone else has a comment -- Bookish 22:56, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Notable psychohistorians

message: I have now read Lloyd deMause’s books Foundations of Psychohistory and The Emotional Life of Nations.  As promised above, I have now added info to make psychohistory theory more comprehensible —though undoubtedly more utopian for outsiders!  I also removed a reference at the end of the article under the heading “Individual studies”:
:Freud, Sigmund (1967).  "Thomas Woodrow Wilson, Twenty eighth President of the United States: A Psychological Study", Boston, Houghton Mifflin in: Sigmund Freud, Collected Works, supplement, S. 686-692.
The above reference was only peripherally connected to the article content.  Since present-day psychohistory was the product of an American scholar I standardized the text to American English. —Cesar Tort 00:30, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  info added 

message: Mindblindness from the "postmodern times" pulpit:
Political violence of any other sort will disappear as well, along with religion itself, magical thinking, mental disorders, crime, jails, wars and other inhumanities of man against man.
That claim is far too grandiose. Few people will believe there is only one source for all those ills, even if it's true. Think about the readers. Religious people will be offended. Helping mode parents exist in the world today who are religious. They admire Jesus for challenging the status quo. Do you want to alienate everyone who hasn't yet accepted these ideas? -- 81.174.211.214 21:19, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Whether it's grandiose or not is irrelevant.  Are you saying that it's an inaccurate description of what psychohistorians believe?  If so, change it, but don't revert a whole bunch of unrelated stuff in the process.  Pfalstad 22:40, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: A psychoclass for postmodern times

message: Norbert Elias had proposed the formation of a new discipline called "psychohistory" in his opus magnum about civilization. Discussing the subject of rationalisation in the context of European history, he underlined the importance of the rational and irrational aspects of people, their ideas and their habits in building their culture. In "psychohistory" he saw that such a study would become feasible, history would no longer just exclude psychologic facts, neither would psychology just occupy itself with current problems. Searching the net with the question in mind, if this discipline had since developped, I am decieved to find this...
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.176.186.2 (talk) 
:Next time please sign. Also, please remember Wikipedia is not a soapbox.  If you want an open forum to discuss psychohistory issues, you are welcomed here   :) Cesar Tort 06:48, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Norbert Elias' "psychohistory" 

message: The bottom-right section of the table says:
:Children's rights movement, deschooling and free schooling, natural childbirth, Taking Children Seriously and the abandonment of genital mutilation of infant boys.
Is that supposed to be referring to circumcision? If so it should simply say so. As it is it's neither clear nor POV. --Ptcamn 23:41, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I didn't write it but, yes: I'll correct it. —Cesar Tort 00:00, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mutilation 

message: this page completly overlooks the fact that psychohistory has not been a respectable form of historical analysis since the 1950's - expect future edits from me correcting this page 
-ishmaelblues  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ishmaelblues (talk • contribs) 18:44, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: wtf

message: Seems to me that your article is becoming a discussion about the development of the psique, along life (in childhood, as teenager, as mature person and as senior); to me the original definition en your article was:
"Psychohistory is the study of the psychological motivations of historical events. It combines the insights of psychotherapy with the research methodology of the social sciences to understand the emotional origin of the social and political behavior of groups and nations, past and present." And to give to this science a Social Relevance I would add: "...with the purpose of designing and applying methods to promote Humanity to a higher levels of Welfare & Development" 
Therefore, what is all that crap about "Psychohistory derives many of its insights from areas that are perceived to be ignored by conventional historians as shaping factors of human history, in particular, the effects of childbirth, parenting practice, and child abuse. The historical impact of incest, infanticide and child sacrifice are considered."
189.166.31.247 (talk) 02:44, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Definition of psychohistory

message: Recently this appeared on the talk page for Satanic_ritual_abuse:
I totally disagree with the above statement and am looking for help to rebut it.Abuse truth 16:57, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Please remind that WP is not a place for soapboxing. However you are absolutely right. The above sentence: "He believes that all of human history can be explained in terms of child sexual abuse" is absolutely erroneous and only reflects ignorance about deMause and psychohistory. —Cesar Tort 05:09, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Attack on psychohistory 

message: I have archived old discussions dating from 2002. The most recent archived posts of October and November of 2007 were rather soapboxing and have been targeted to be archived as well. (I didn't archive my own 2008 monologues about endnotes style by the way.) 
—Cesar Tort 19:29, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Archived

message: This article seems to puch a fringe POV, in effect promoting one person's view of things.  If there is a real branch of history called psychohistory, does this article provide an acurate NPOV account of it?20:11, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Note, i requested the comment.  But subsequent research leads me to think the answer is "no."  There is a mainstream journal, The Psychohistorial Review and this article doesn't draw on any of the vast number of articles it has published.  Instead this article presents the fringe views of de Mause and The Journal of Psychohistory as if they were they only views! Slrubenstein   |  Talk 19:09, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The Psychohistory Review was put out for a couple of years, one-tenth the number of subscribers as the Journal of Psychohistory, then about 7 years ago stopped publishing. —Cesar Tort 19:36, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is this a notable approach to history 

message: I am retrieving a part of what User:Aetheling posted today in this talk page:
:Some facts about psychohistory as a legitimate domain of inquiry:
* The International Psychohistorical Association, founded in 1977 by Lloyd de Mause, has annual meetings every year for 30 years. I have never attended, but friends tell me that they are well-attended by psychoanalysts, therapists, and authors from around the world.
* The Journal of Psychohistory (founded and edited by deMause) is listed in the 2005 catalog of journals held by 500 or more libraries around the world. Source: 
* The Journal of Psychohistory had an impact factor of 0.47 in 2001. In the list of all social science journals, ranked by impact factor, J.Psychohistory appears on page 17 out of 27 pages. In other words, it ranked higher than 37% of all journals in psychology in impact factor. It was very close to the Journal of Forensic Psychiatry, the Journal of Psychosocial Oncology, and the Journal of Mathematical Sociology. (Impact factor is calculated by dividing the number of current citations to articles published in the two previous years by the total number of articles published in the two previous years, among all journals indexed by the Social Science Citation Index.) Source: 
* At Journal-Ranking.com, which uses a more broadly-based index of journal quality, the Journal of Psychohistory ranks #4662 out of all 8000 journals ranked. Within the category of "Psychology - Multidisciplinary", the Journal of Psychohistory ranked #52 out of 106. Source: 
:For all these reasons it would seem that psychohistory — a discipline founded by deMause — has a legitimate claim to space within Wikipedia. Now let me turn to my view on the notability of deMause himself. [...] 
—Cesar Tort 21:36, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I have never said psychohistory in the de Mausian sense has no place at Wikipedia.  As for notability, well, Journal of Psychohistory is in the category of "Psychology - Multidisciplinary" in The Web of Knowledge citation index.  Just to get a sense of the scale, the second highest rated journal by impact factor, Annual review of Psychology, has an impact factor of 11.706. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 16:12, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Impact factor of  [[Journal of Psychohistory]] 

message: A single document can generate ongoing cascades of historical psychology  --  as example, an Atlas/Gazeteer published by Collier Company in 1907 shows peninsula sinkholes in Golden Gate Park in northern California labeled as "lakes".  The city itself is labeled 'San Francisco' with a continuous Italian emphasis maintained therefrom.  The Atlas/Gazeteer is out-of-print, making it a somewhat rare but also categorically 'banned' book; its contents, however, routinely filter into the minds of American continental populations beginning in early childhood with concomitant mental matches.  The book is an occult influence, and can affect the outcomes of a wide range of endeavors including business scheme, social science research, and travelogue mentalities.   Marcia L. Neil/beadtot   02:07, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Root document(s) of psychohistory journalism 

message: the parts i just added cannot be removed they are direct quotes from University professors.Ishmaelblues (talk) 19:01, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: DeMause has never claimed expertise in psychotherapy. —Cesar Tort 22:45, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

text: This is unresponsive to the issue. Do I have to repeat it again? What if I use sources criticizing Asimov's psychohistory as "criticism" of the content on this page? Wouldn't that be totally out of place? Take for example the source that criticizes Freud's psychohistory: it has little, if anything, to do with Lloyd deMause's psychohistory. Is this now clear? Most of your sources simply don't deal with the content of this page and therefore must go. —Cesar Tort 21:12, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

text: The page is labeled Psychohistory not Lloyd DeMause's psychohistory, infact, i think this goes without saying that the two most famous psychohistory books are Moses and Monotheism and civilization and its discontent, i could find sources you want. You could start a new page labeled Lloyd DeMuse's Psychohistory, and a few of the citations could be removed that i have added but everything i have wrote and especially the last few edits are completly valid Ishmaelblues (talk) 21:41, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I totally agree with you that Freud's views are quackery. That's why I am a big fan of Freud's critic Jeffrey Masson. However, since this article started in 2002 the objective was to present what psychohistory means today: the deMause school. I would recommend you to take all of these critiques of Freud to the psychoanalytical articles. They simply don't belong here. Do a little experiment: if you google the term "psychohistory" it will mostly hit the deMausean school as well as psychohistory (fictional). —Cesar Tort 22:45, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Just added