The Makings of Psychohistory

Though it is sometimes controversial in some places, and in lesser qualified hands can be cheapened and abused, I am convinced that, broadly understood, a psychoanalytic approach to history can yield rich and important insights otherwise inaccessible to us. I have myself attempted such an approach in a variety of places over the past few years, and am in fact finishing an article analyzing ISIS propaganda using Freudian and contemporary psychoanalytic thought, including that of people previously noted on here--especially Charles Strozier and Vamik Volkan. I'm also firmly convinced that psychoanalytic categories are useful in understanding much of the mindset of the Russian Orthodox Church today, and other Eastern Christian groups and issues. When, as so many churchmen have talked for forty years now, about the "healing of memories" among Christians, we and they are invoking insights about trauma first tentatively grasped by Freud in the aftermath of the Great War, and since then very considerably deepened by many clinicians.

For many reasons, then, I am looking forward to reading this new book published in April by Routledge: The Making of Psychohistory: Origins, Controversies, and Pioneering Contributors by Paul H Elovitz (2018),152pp.

About this book the publisher tells us the following:

The Making of Psychohistory is the first volume dedicated to the history of psychohistory, an amalgam of psychology, history, and related social sciences. Dr. Paul Elovitz, a participant since the early days of the organized field, recounts the origins and development of this interdisciplinary area of study, as well as the contributions of influential individuals working within the intersection of historical and psychological thinking and methodologies. This is an essential, thorough reflection on the rich and varied scholarship within psychohistory’s subfields of applied psychoanalysis, political psychology, and psychobiography.

We are also given the table of contents:

1. Introduction

2. My Exuberant Journey

3. The Early History of Psychohistory

4. Resistance and Perseverance

5. Comparing the Early Freudian and Psychohistorical Movements

6. A Psychohistorian’s Approach to Childhood and Childrearing

7. Prominent Psychohistorians Lifton, deMause, and Volkan

8. Outstanding Psychohistorians Gay, Loewenberg, and Binion

9. My Journey as a Psychohistorical Teacher

10. My Role in Creating and Nurturing Postgraduate Psychohistorical Education

11. The Dilemmas of a Presidential Psychohistorian

12. Finding My Voice with Halpern, deMause, Ullman

13. Builders of Psychohistory

14. Concluding Thoughts; Appendices A. Featured Scholar Interviews, B. Memorials