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Idea Transcript


FREUD AND CLIO:

A HISTORIOGRAPHICAL INQUIRY

INTO PSYCHOHISTORY

DISSERTATION

Presented to the Graduate

Council of the

North Texas State University

in Partial

Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

By

Gary Burton Sanders, Denton,

May,

Texas

1976

M.A.

1976

GARY BURTON SANDERS

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Sanders,

Gary B.,

Freud and Clio:

Inquiry into Psychohistory. May,

1976,

299 pp.,

A Historiographical

Doctor of Philosophy

(History),

bibliography, 335 titles.

Although a great deal has been written in psychohistory during the last twenty years,

so far no general

survey and

analysis of the impact of psychoanalysis on historical writing has appeared.

This work is an attempt to examine

the nature of psychohistorical writing after 1958 and to assess the impact of this new discipline in historiography. The year 1958 was chosen as the date of the beginning of scholarly psychohistory for two reasons: the highly respected historian,

in that year

William Langer,

in a presi-

dential address to the American Historical Association, called upon his colleagues to use psychoanalysis research;

and Erik Erikson published Young

Study in Psychoanalysis and History, ever since as the

in their

Man Luther:

A

which has been accepted

finest example of psychohistorical writing.

Nearly all of the psychohistorical writing after 1958 was inspired to some degree by Erikson and Langer. Nevertheless,

the original founding father of psycho-

history was Sigmund Freud who, field of psychology, anthropology,

in addition to writing in the

also wrote several works in history and

such as Moses and Monotheism and Leonardo da

Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood.

Because of his dual

2

influence as the founder of psychoanalysis and as a psychohistorian in his own right,

one chapter

(Chapter I)

devoted to Freud's conception of history.

is

Chapter II deals ideas of

with the debate among historians over whether the

Freud are a valid methodology in the writing of history. The emphasis

in this chapter is on the question as the part-

isans of each side see it and especially on what the goals

of psychohistory are according to its devotees. The other chapters analyze the major areas in which the psychohistorians have written so that the reader may judge

whether psychohistory has fulfilled the goals of its founders. Chapter III,

for example,

deals with the works of Erikson,

who ranks second to Freud as the founder of psychohistory. The two are contrasted and the influence each contributed to later psychohistorians

is examined.

In these chapters on

Freud and Erikson the emphasis is on the purely historical rather than psychological nature of their writing. chapters are on the psychohistory of the family,

Other

the psycho-

history of Western civilization, and the search for pathology among the personalities of the past. The conclusion

is that psychohistory has not fulfilled

the aspirations of its founders, which were probably too ambitious in the beginning.

Progress is obviously lacking

in a field where the first work to be written, Young Man Luther,

is also the best work.

Erikson's

Yet the success of

3

a few researchers in each area of psychohistory, that of Erikson,

as well as

suggests that psychohistory may play a

valuable role in history in the future.

To do this, however,

its practitioners will have to abandon their frequent pretention to having made all

previous history obsolete

accept the more modest, but still significant, psychoanalysis as just historian's

box.

and

role of

one of the many tools in the

PREFACE

Two difficulties psychoanalysis

in procedure arise in any inquiry into

and history.

The first is uncovering psycho-

analytic content in historical writing:

has enough Freudian

influence entered historiography to justify the writing of a lengthy essay? tion that the

The second problem evolves from the assumpideas of Freud have been so pervasive among

historians that any study of them would be almost encyclopedic. be true,

Both of these contradictory views,

this

study rests on the premise

a significant, writing

cannot

and the researcher is free to choose between them

in accordance with his own predilection. milieu,

of course,

though limited,

Taking a juste that Freud has had

influence on historical

since 1958.

The year 1958 has been chosen because it is the publication date a milestone

of Erik Erikson's

study,

Young Man Luther,1

in the application of psychoanalysis

to history

which has served as a model for later historians. in December of 1957 William Langer,

in a presidential

address to the American Historical Association, colleagues to use the

Further,

urged his

insights furnished by psychoanalysis.

1. Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther: Psychoanalysis and History (New York: W. W.

1958).

iv

A Study in Norton & Company,

These two events

stimulated historical interest

ideas during the 1960s the

in Freudian

and promoted a growing acceptance of

term "psychohistory" within the profession by

the 1970s.2

This essay is essentially limited to works in psychohistory,

which is defined as any history

in which elements

of the thought of Sigmund Freud are conspicuous.

The popular

idea that any book which emphasizes sex in history is psychoanalytic has been rejected.

Rather,

among the elements of

Freudian thought which qualify a book for the label psychohistorical are references to unconscious motivation, repression,

frustration,

sexuality.

The best evidence,

sublimation,

and

of course,

some emphasis on is the author's

admission of indebtedness to Freud or the psychoanalytic tradition.

Other

limits on what sources to include have

been adopted for the sake of coherence

or for the reasons

explained below. 1.

If the work is by a professional historian who

claims to be utilizing psychoanalysis, inclusion here is obvious.

If the work

the reason for its is by a psycho-

analyst or psychologist who professes to be writing history, caution has been used.

Psychoanalytic journals frequently

publish psychobiographies and interpretations in history, but these works are addressed to other psychoanalysts and

2. William Langer, "The Next Assignment," American Historical Review 63 (January 1958):283-304. Science fiction writers like Isaac Asimov in his Foundation (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1951) and its sequels also helped to popularize psychohistory.

v

have little

impact on the thinking of historians.

if a work by a nonhistorian has is referred to in historical some level of awareness of

However,

influenced historians,

journals,

if in short,

if it

there

is

it by historians--as is the case

with the work of Erikson--it can

justifiably be included

in

an essay on historiography. 2.

Since the majority of psychohistorical works,

whether on American or European history, in America under the

have been written

stimulus of Langer and Erikson,

psycho-

historical works written by Europeans will be referred to only in proportion to their influence in America. be

seen,

As will

this influence has been strong in some areas of

psychohistory, notably family history. 3.

Because psychohistory is heavily oriented toward

biography, which is itself on the borderline of history and literature,

no psychobiographies of literary figures are

discussed.

However,

figures do compose

biographies of political and religious

a large part of this

study,

since most of

Erikson's works fall within this field.3

3.

Psychoanalytic biography of literary figures is

facilitated by the inherent orientation toward fantasy and emotion in their works. See, for example, Joseph M. Woods, "Some Considerations on Psycho-History," Historian 36 (August 1974):727. Good examples of psychohistorical studies of literary figures are Brenda S. Webster, Yeats: A Psychoanalytic Study (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1973); and K. R. Eissler, Goethe: A Psychoanalytic Study, 1775-1786, 2 vols. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1963). It is well to note that the influence and acceptability of Freud in literary criticism

vi

4.

A

final limitation is the use of certain broad

areas of research to represent the historiography.

scope of psychohistorical

Grouping what previously were isolated

writings into a larger field helps create a better perspec-

tive on the place of psychohistory within historical writing, but no attempt has been made to cover every work in the literature. Erikson, zation,

It is hoped that the chapters here--on Freud,

the psychohistory of the family,

Western Civili-

and the search for pathology--cover the main trends

in psychohistory,

but they are meant to be representative,

not exhaustive. The future of psychohistory is not clear. the promising beginning

of an important branch of history or

it may be a passing fad. study to predict show currents

It is not the purpose of this

the future,

but to survey the

and crosscurrents,

field,

to

and to indicate ways in

which research has been fruitful. to

It may be

The aim of this work is

interest those who have not had time to read the original

sources and to stimulate others to continue research. A more ambitious goal, erally,

but one

advanced only periph-

is to promote debate over what techniques are

suitable in historical methodology and writing.

The method

and research of traditional history have been criticized

far exceeds his influence in history; see Robert R. Holt and Emmanuel Peterfreund, Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Science (New York: Macmillan Company, 1972), pp. 373-91.

vii

recently as

sloppy.4

Many historians have regarded the

writing of history as a mystical experience of creation, amenable to no laws of logic and order. Fischer expressed this attitude "Among my colleagues, is permissible,

David Hackett

succinctly when he

said:

it is common to believe any procedure

as long as its practitioner publishes an

essay from time to time, The unmethodical,

and is not convicted of a felony." 5

often chaotic,

direction of much histor-

ical research has compensating features:

for example,

because historians have not adopted the quantitative

tech-

nique of sociology and political science, history is one of the few academic disciplines which can still be read and understood by the average citizen.

Yet historians have paid

a price for their popularity and verbal clarity by remaining outside the mainstream of research in the social sciences and by accepting research procedures

that are often outmoded.0

Throughout this study the term "traditional history" 4. will refer to historical interpretation which emphasizes rational motivation in human conduct; obvious determinants of behavior such as the desire for power, fame, and wealth; and the influence of ideas, economic forces, and social activities. David Hackett Fischer, Historians' Fallacies: 5. Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (New York: Harper

Torchbooks,

1970),

p. xix.

Alfred Cobban says that sociologists Ibid., p. 37. 6. are always packing their bags for a journey they never take; see his Social Interpretation of the French Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), p. 23.

viii

One of the attractions of psychohistory has been its use as a tool which permits a measure of modern scientific rigor and preciseness while leaving room for the impulse of creative writing.

To its advocates,

it is more traditional

in style and form than such a recent innovation as cliometrics or the extensive use of quantitative data. historian who uses psychoanalysis modern technique,

one

Yet a

is also using a thoroughly

to some extent sanctified by an aura

of scientific precision. A

still more

fundamental reason exists for the recent

appeal of psychohistory: ethos of their times, part of

historians must write within the

and Freud's ideas comprise

the cultural edifice of this century.

an immense

Frank E.

Manuel pointed out in defending psychohistory that

"it is

eccentric in 1970 to go about in satin knee breeches or wear a Prince Albert frock coat even if one

likes the

style." 7

Every modern person who reflects on the nature of ideas must inevitably come to grips with Freud's theories;

the influ-

ence of psychoanalysis has been pervasive in everyday life as well as

in scholarly disciplines.

Where is the twentieth-

century human being who does not search for hidden meanings and unconscious dimensions?

Historians,

no less than others,

7. Frank E. Manuel, "The Use and Abuse of Psychology in History," Historical Studies Today, ed. Felix Gilbert (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1972), p. 229.

ix

have been touched by psychoanalysis.

David Donald and

Richard Hofstadter's "status anxiety" theory would have been impossible before Freud,

and Donald and Hofstadter are not

even considered psychohistorians.8

This essay, however,

is

not directed toward the subtle and general influence of Freud in history, but toward those historians who since 1958 have been consciously trying to apply Freudianism to history in a systematic,

formal,

and explicit way.

The reader may

judge for himself whether they have been more successful than the man who consulted Freud in the e. e.

cummings poem:

my children and you listen shall hear the true story of Mr. Do -nothing the wellknown parvenu who (having dreamed of a corkscrew) studied with Freud a year or two and when Freud got through with Donothing Donothing could do nothing which you and i are accustomed to accomplish.

Robert F. Berkhoffer, A Behavioral Approach to 8. Historical Analysis (New York: Free Press, 1969), p. 70. 9. e. e. cummings, A Selection of Poems Harcourt, Brace and World, 1963), p. 64.

x

(New York:

TABLE

OF CONTENTS

PREFACE..........................-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

1

...

SOME BASIC ASSUMPTIONS.......

PROLOGUE:

Page iv

..

V. VI.

.

IV.

19

.

III.

.

.

.

76

.

. 104

.

.

THE PSYCHOHISTORY OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION

.

. 180

THE SEARCH FOR PATHOLOGY.*...............

.

. 204

-

- 264

-

-

FREUD'S CONCEPTION OF HISTORY THE PSYCHOANALYTIC DEBATE

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

ERIK ERIKSON'S PSYCHOHISTORY ......... .

THE PSYCHOHISTORY OF THE FAMILY

CONCLUSION BIBLIOGRAPHY

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

. .0-. .

. *.a-0-0. & -

xi

..0

.

II.

.

-

I.

-

Chapter

0- -

-

- *- 0- I-

0-

0-

-

*- 0- 0-

-

-

-

145

277

PROLOGUE:

SOME BASIC ASSUMPTIONS

Scholarly psychiohistory scarcely existed in December in a presidential address to the

1957, when William Langer,

American Historical Association,

called upon historians to

make use of the insights of psychoanalysis in their reIn the next year Erik Erikson,

search.1

Harvard University,

a psychiatrist at

published Young Man Luther:

Psychoanalysis and History,

A Study in

a work destined to become the

most famous and controversial of all psychoanalytically 2 oriented histories and, according to many, the best.

Though Langer and Erikson were not solely responsible for the interest in psychohistory in the 1960s and 1970s, they nevertheless inspired many researchers with the possibilities of developing a psychohistory which would go beyond the debunking biographies written by psychoanalysts of an earlier

day.

Of the two,

Erikson's contribution was bas-

ically in providing psychohistorians with a model worthy of imitation,

inasmuch as he succeeded in avoiding the excesses

of his predecessors. William Langer, "The Next Assignment," American 1. Historical Review 63 (January 1958):283-304.

&

Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther: A Study in 2. W. W. Norton Psychoanalysis and History (New York: Company, 1958, 1962).

2

In contrast,

Langer's impact on psychohistory was

chiefly in his having made the

subject respectable

professional historians by his address. rians

among

Pleading for histo-

to abandon their prejudices against modern psychology,

he spoke of the

"iron curtain" between the

two disciplines

and the reluctance of historians to accept the psychoanalysis

as a motivational explanation

legitimacy of

in history.

Langer conceded that a great deal of the pre-1957 psychohistorical work had been unacceptable as history due to its low quality,

but he

argued that the chief reason historians

opposed the trends of modern psychology was the antiscientific bias of most American historians, revulsion against submitting the

an

"obscurantist

sacred mystery of person-

ality to the coarse indignity of exact investigation."3 Langer refused to accept the often-used argument that psychology emphasizes childhood,

whereas the historian fre-

quently has little information on the early years of life. Actually,

Langer pointed out,

a great deal of material is

available if historians were willing to make use of

it,

and

since psychologists after Freud have downgraded childhood in favor of the adult years, should have

this objection to psychohistory

less and less importance

in the future.

Langer

was thus calling for a new type of writing in history and his address deserves the credit it has received for

3.

Langer,

"Next Assignment,"

pp.

286-88.

3

encouraging research.

His own receptivity to psychology

stimulated by his brother Walter,

who was a psychoanalyst

and an amateur student of history,

Langer was fully

familiar

with and an advocate of the most recent psychological knowledge On the other hand,

what impresses the present day

reader about Langer's speech is its conservatism. example, ventional

For

he devoted a major part of his address to the confield of medical history,

calling for an expansion

of research in this neglected aspect of history.

pleaded for more work in social psychology, the Black Death,

of mass movements,

ments in history.

He also

for the study of

and of irrational ele-

Psychoanalysis in his scheme would be

reserved chiefly for use in biography.5 Seen in this perspective, unambitious;

Langer's thesis was decidedly

the role he assigned to psychohistory was

relatively modest.

It is

rather indicative of the primitive

state of research in psychohistory in 1957 work was considered a breakthrough.

4.

Ibid,

p.

His

288; Walter C. Langer,

Hitler:

The Secret Wartime Report

Library,

1973),

that Langer's

speech was well

The Mind of Adolf

(New York:

New~American

p. viii.

5. Langer, "Next Assignment," pp. 291-304; Bruce Mazlish, ed., Psychoanalysis and History (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963), p. 16; Alan C. Beckman, "Hidden Themes in the Frontier Thesis: An Application of Psychoanalysis to Historiography," Comparative Studies in Society

and History 8 (April 1966):361.

4

received,

but his precepts were rarely followed until

several years later. Similarly,

Erikson's Young Man Luther,

the seminal work

in the field of psychohistory, was almost completely ignored by the historical profession when it was published.

Neither

the American Historical Review nor the Journal of Modern History reviewed it,

and the only historian consistently

treat it as a serious work was Roland Bainton,

at Yale,

to

a professor

and author of a biography of Luther himself.

No

detailed and specific criticism of Young Man Luther by a historian appeared until 1973,

when Lewis Spitz,

a

Reformation specialist, published a review article.6 In the intervening years, changed radically.

however,

In 1965 a Group for the Study of Psycho-

historical Processes was formed. Robert Lifton,

a psychiatrist;

the Massachusetts Keniston,

the situation had

It included Erik Erikson;

Bruce Mazlish,

Institute of Technology;

another psychiatrist and author.

a historian at

and Kenneth In 1968 a group

of twenty historians began work on a history of the role of children through the ages.

Their work culminated in a book

called The History of Childhood and a journal they founded to continue their Research,

The History of Childhood

6. Mazlish, Psychoanalysis and History, p. 2; Fritz Schmidl, "Psychoanalysis and History," The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 31 (October 1962):538; Lewis Spitz, "Psychohistory The Case of Young Man Luther," Soundings 56 and History: (Summer 1973) :182-209.

5

the Journal of Psychohistory,

Quarterly;

publication in the summer of

which began

In 1971 three confer-

1973.

and

ences were held on the uses of psychology in history,

Arthur Schlesinger lent his considerable prestige to one the City University of New York.

In addition,

at

psycho-

analytic articles began to appear in the American Historical Review and the Journal of American History, growing respectability of psychohistory.

evidence

of the

And references

mushroomed in popular magazines to research projects begun or contemplated by historians or psychiatrists.7 In

spite of these developments,

the calls for the

writing of psychohistory and the discussions of methodology have probably been more numerous than the actual attempts at writing.

Certainly Langer was on the right track in

attributing

the lack of psychohistorical works to the in-

grained conservatism of historians, but of equal significance

is the lack of training for psychohistory among both historians and psychologists. good psychologists

While there are

and good historians,

a great many

there are almost no

Robert J. Lifton, History and Human Survival: 7. Essays on the Young and Old, Survivors and the Dead, Peace and War, and on Contemporary Psychohistory (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 9; Lloyd de Mauze, ed., The History of Childhood (New York: Psychohistory Press, 1970), p. 1; The Muse and Her Doctors," Jacques Barzun, "History: American Historical Review 77 (February 1972):36; "LBJ Unraveled," Time, 14 October 1974, p. 69.

6

scholars who are both;

or,

as Erikson put it,

who has the

training to "doctor" history? 8 Both historians and psychoanalysts are handicapped by this lack of training but the obstacles for historians who wish to use psychoanalysis are far greater than those

for

psychologists who want to write history because of the differences discipline.

in the formal organization

History is the most open of the social

its conclusions person.

and training in each sciences;

and insights are available to any educated

In contrast,

psychoanalysis,

development as a branch of medical

rigidity of training,

a jargon,

as a result of its

science,

has a certain

and a particular body of

knowledge which tend to limit its effective use only to those who are its initiates.

The inaccessibility and in-

efficacy of psychoanalysis to the amateur may be exaggerated at times,

but there is no denying that substantial caution

in using its methodology is warranted if one does not have adequate training. very time consuming, historian,

And since psychoanalytic

training is

it is not surprising that only one

the late Ernst Kris,

analyst and a trained historian. have merely wanted to inquire

was both a trained psychoEven those historians who

further into Freud's ideas

8. Gale Stokes, "Cognition and the Function of Nationalism," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 4 (Spring 1974):528; Erik H. Erikson, Dimensions of a New Identity (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1974), pp. 14-15.

7

have been deterred on discovering that most works on Freud are written by psychoanalysts and most psychoanalysts write for other psychoanalysts.9

Not surprisingly,

in view of the difficulties in get-

ting adequate training,

the majority of historians have not

responded to the calls for action from Langer and Erikson. Even among those who have

read Freud and have kept track

with the development of psychohistory in the years,

there

last seventeen

is an air of skepticism that psychohistory is

really an attainable objective,

as expressed in the follow-

ing comment by Lawrence Stone: Freudian psychology has not been much use to the historian, who is usually unable to penetrate the bedroom, the bathroom, or the nursery. If Freud is right, and if these are the places where the action is, there is not much the historians can do about it.10 Stone's reservations express the consideration of many historians that the results of nearly two decades of psychohistorical research have not been particularly impressive.

9.

Paul Roazen,

Freud:

(New York: Alfred A. Knopf,

Political and Social Thought

1968),

p.

20; William Langer in

the introduction to The Psychoanalytic Interpretation of History, ed. Benjamin B. Wolman (New York: Basic Books,

1971), p.

ix; Robert Waelder in ibid.,

p. 3;

for an example

of Kris' work see Ernst Kris, Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art (New York: International Universities Press, 1952); Richard Schoenwald, "Historians and the Challenge of Freud," Western Humanities Review 10 (Spring 1956):100. 10. Joseph Dowling, "Psychoanalysis and History: Problems and Applications," Psychoanalytic Review 58 (Autumn 1972) :433; Lawrence Stone, "Prosopography," Daedalus

100

(Winter 1971):53.

8

Quite a few historians

see psychologists as armchair

theorists and idle word spinners while selves as practical,

they regard them-

down-to-earth researchers who use

"common sense" method to arrive at conclusions. to quote the ancient saw that

They like

"men become psychiatrists be-

cause they are afraid of their own craziness."11 ingness

the

The will-

of nearly 2,000 members of the American Psychiatric

Association to diagnose the mental state of Barry Goldwater in

1964 by means of a mailed questionnaire when they had

never interviewed the

"patient" indicates

that the psychi-

atric standard of proof differs considerably

from what is

accepted in the historical profession.1 2 Further,

when psychoanalysts have ventured into writing

history the results have often been disastrous both for the state of historical knowledge, reputation of psychoanalysis,

which suffers,

which is rarely enhanced.

critic has called an often-used procedure the

"cookbook" method,

and for the

that is,

in such ventures

the mechanical adding of

psychoanalytic jargon to a historical narrative. serious mistake of psychoanalytic history, by psychoanalysts or historians,

One

is the

A

far more

whether written

"reductionist"

11. E. J. Hundert, "History, Psychology, and the Study of Deviant Behavior," Journal of the History of Ideas 33 (Spring 1972):454; Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., "Can Psychiatry Save the Republic?" Saturday Review-World, 7 September 1974,

p.

12.

p.

12. 12.

Schlesinger,

"Can Psychiatry Save the Republic?"

9

fallacy,

the reducing of the total complexity of a historical

event or person to a single causation involving certain instincts,

especially sexual ones.

The

reductionist fallacy

usually coincides with a lack of appreciation of perspective in historical toward

occurrences and a callous and cynical attitude

the past.

13

Disturbed by the

simplicity of many psychoanalytic

ventures and the unsophisticated, traditional historians,

certain

even quaint,

scholars have resorted to

revealing the inadequacies of both methods. to give Freud his due

in history as a fine

pioneer in twentieth-century thought, that we have

psychology of

Others profess scientist and

but add the proviso

"gotten beyond" Freud to something better.

Though probably few historians

are ready to declare that all

efforts to fuse psychoanalysis and history must end in failure,

invariably

even some who have experimented with psycho-

analysis have not been converted to its applicability to history,

and one of psychohistory's most devoted prac-

titioners admits that in 'the end it may be no more than a "minor intellectual curiosity." 1 4

However,

for the most

13. Roazen, Freud: Political and Social, p. 48; Frederick J. Hacker, "Freud, Marx, and Kierkegaard," in Freud and the Twentieth Century, ed. Benjamin Nelson (New York: Meridian Books, 1957), pp. 128-29. Cf. Robert Waite in Wolman, Psychoanalytic Interpretation, p. 192; and Gertrude Himmelfarb, "The New History," Commentary 56 (January 1975):78. 14. Peter James Loewenberg, "Communications," American Historical Review 77 (October 1972):1196; Philip Pomper,

10

part,

opponents cite the most glaring blunders of psycho-

historians,

whereas the advocates cite the finest and most

outstanding works in their attempt to find a common meeting

ground for the two disciplines.15 One common factor that devotees of psychological history like to emphasize,when they are issuing calls for new ex-

plorers in psychohistory,

is the methodological similarity

between history and psychology.

Both fields are thoroughly

dependent on past events to explain the present,

and a simi-

larity also exists in the problem-solving nature of each discipline,

in the similar attempts to decipher complexities

of causation. psychology,

In this sense,

historians have always used

or at least some theory of human motivation in

their writing.16

Another similarity between history and

"Problems of a Naturalistic Psychohistory," History and Theory 22 (Winter 1973):371; Theodore Roszak, "The Historian as Psychiatrist," Nation, 24 November 1962, p. 344; Kenneth Keniston, "Psychological Development and Historical Change," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2 (Autumn 1971):330; Prolegomena to PsychoBruce Mazlish, "Clio on the Couch: history," Encounter 31 (September 1968):48; Robert J. Lifton, "On Psychohistory," in The State of American History, ed. Herbert Bass (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970), p. 295. 15. Frank E. Manuel, "The Use and Abuse of Psychology in History," Daedalus 100 (Winter 1971):204; Kurt Eissler's paper, "Freud and the Psychoanalysis of History," Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 12 (October 1963): 675-703, shows how far apart historians and psychologists still are in their ways of thinking and research. 16. Bruce Mazlish, "What is Psycho-History?" Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th Ser., 21 (1971): 98; Hans Meyerhoff, "On Psychoanalysis as History, "Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalytic Review 49 (Summer 1962): 12-13; Manuel, "Use and Abuse," pp. 188-89.

11

psychology is

in the orientation toward people of each.

More so than sociology, other social sciences, and with causation that

economics,

rather,

is often unique to the individual. is there a single cause

the cause is dependent on the unique

circumstances of each occurrence,

since the life of each

historical actor has a past that is his alone. feature

is true of psychology as well,

enhance the

or

history is concerned with particulars

In neither history nor psychology for any event;

political science,

Since this

both fields tend to

importance of the individual.

Transposed

into historiographic terms,

psychoanalytic

interpretation is most compatible with the "great man" theory of history, Carlyle that,

the theory first enunciated by Thomas

for good or bad,

individuals determine history.

It is no accident that Young Man Luther, the best psychohistorical work,

is a biography of one of the

significant creators of modern thought. tation,

however,

psychohistory. great

leader,

is

generally considered

Biographical orien-

a weakness as well as a strength for

By emphasizing the inner experience of a a more sophisticated insight is attained,

almost invariably a tendency exists to slight the milieu as a determinant of the leader's behavior.

yet

social Further,

the great man theory tends to lead to praise or condemnation, and either way the significance of the gerated:

thus,

Luther becomes

individual is exag-

the Reformation,

Calvin is

12

Puritanism,

One is reminded

Hitler is equated with fascism.

of Isaiah Berlin's amusing and cynical quip that great men are no more than "ordinary human beings who are

ignorant and

vain enough to accept responsibility for the life of soPossibly as psychohistory becomes more advanced

ciety."17

in technique, disappear.

the undue emphasis on personal history will

In the meantime,

its devotees can console them-

selves with the reflection that a lot of inferior history is 18 also written with the traditional method.

The traditional method for over a hundred years,

in

fact since the inception of scholarly historical writing as a discipline separate

from moral philosophy,

has been the

technique of intuition or "verstehen" to analyze events which were assumed to have rational or obvious causes.

method,

This

combining a psychology of rational motivation in the

actual occurrences of history with an antirational bias in historical analysis,

is not as contradictory as it might

appear at first glance,

and some great history has been

based on these assumptions,

but psychohistorians are correct

in pointing out that traditional historians often assume a

Spitz, "Psychohistory and History," p. 185; Isaiah 17. Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953), p. 27. 18. Theory:

Fred Weinstein and Gerald M. Platt, "History and The Question of Psychoanalysis," Journal of Inter-

disciplinary History 2 (Spring 1972):432.

Sidney Hook in

A Study in Limitation and Possihis The Hero in History: bility (New York: John Day Company, 1943) argues for the discarding of the term "great" in favor of "significant."

13

rationality in human conduct that is evidence.

by the available

The historian J. H.

supported

inadequately

1 9

Fennell,

said of the

for example,

Russian Tsar Ivan III that "he knew precisely where he was going.

.

.

.

all the deeds of this dedicated,

hard headed

ruler and shrewd diplomat were directed toward one goal only."2

Even if one grants a historian's license

orate the

facts to make a point,

one can

reaction if a psychohistorian had made extreme views and mono causation.

imagine the

such a statement of

Not much is known of

Ivan's obscure reign and even obscurer motives, thing is reasonably certain:

to elab-

but one

Ivan spent much of his life so

hopelessly inebriated that the remarkable perspicacity and singularity of purpose attributed to him by Fennell seems more than a little exaggerated. 2 1 The point here is not to discredit Fennell,

a respected even

and competent historian, but to reveal that historians, antipsychoanalytic

ones,

do make assumptions about moti-

vation and that such assumptions are unavoidable, desirable.

In the past motivational explanations

and even seldom

19. Mazlish, Psychoanalysis and History, p. 3; David Toward a Logic of Hackett Fischer, Historians' Fallacies: Harper Torchbooks, 1970), Historical Thought (New York: p. xxi; Robert F. Berkhoffer, A Behavioral Approach to Historical Analysis (New York: Free Press, 1969), p. 30. 20.

Quoted in Fischer,

21.

Ibid.

Historians'

Fallacies,

p.

200.

14

went beyond

such examples

as attributing Woodrow Wilson's

inflexibility to his puritanical heritage,

but as the

equacy of the traditional method became more apparent light of modern behavioral research, tive.

inadin the

Freud became an alterna-

The attraction of psychoanalysis was enhanced by a

lack of a clearly defined mission among modern historians: Herodotus and Thucydides had no doubts about why they wrote history,

but modern historians are not even sure what the

purpose of history

is.

Such doubts were alleviated by the

logic and coherence of Freud's system, and other ideologies,

there

for,

like Communism

is something seductive about the

attraction of Freudianism to receptive minds.

When one im-

merses oneself in psychoanalysis,

belief in its precepts

becomes essentially

Almost automatically,

trivial events, fall into place,

involuntary.

slips of the

unconscious motivations

and a feeling of increased command of the

affairs of life emerges.

Even if Freud were wrong and his

theories were not universally history,

tongue,

all

applicable to all periods of

no doubt remains that after Freud,

there was a

"Freudian man," because those who read and believed his theories did conform to the motivational parameters model. age;

Nor were historians immune

to this

of Freud's

temper of the

they too eventually turned to Freud.22

22. Abram Kardiner, "Social and Cultural Implications of Psychoanalysis," in Psychoanalysis, Scientific Method, and Philosophy, ed. Sidney Hook (New York: New York University Press, 1959), p. 93; Peter Laslett, The World We Have

15

As historians became more receptive to Freud,

psycho-

analysts moved toward a position of greater awareness of the role of culture and history in determining individual behavior.

Symbolically,

trying to place Luther

perhaps,

Erikson denied that he was

"on the couch"

in Young Man Luther.

While the neo-Freudian psychoanalysts of the post-World War II period developed the

idea that the nature of neurotic

character was determined by society,

evidence was mounting

that patients with the type of neurosis observed by Freud were rarely encountered by mid-century psychiatrists. longer did the patient

suffer from a neurotic

No

inhibition

that was peripheral to his character as in Freud's day;

now

the neurotic factor was rooted in his very character itself. Only by looking at history could psychoanalysts

tell why

this change had taken place.2 3 Another trend in postwar psychology has been toward ecclecticism, of fads.

or in more critical terms,

toward an espousal

Emerging as the most trendy of all sciences,

chology in its quest for relevance has lost much of

psy-

the

Lost (London: Metheun and Company, 1965), p. 239. Herbert Moller's review of Arnold Kunzli's Karl Marx: Eine Psychographie in History and Theory 8 (Autumn 1969):389 reveals a parallel situation in the attitude of the biographer toward Marx. 23. Erikson, Dimensions of a New Identity, p. 14; Karen Horney, The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (New York:

W. W. son,

Norton & Company,

1937),

Childhood and Society

1963), p.

239.

pp. 14-15,

(New York: W.

34; Erik H. ErikW. Norton & Company,

16

In

intellectual grandeur it acquired in the days of Freud. modern academic psychology,

the excellence of experiments is

often judged on the basis of the quantity of deception of the subjects involved;

a typical experiment is to have some-

body pretend to have a heart attack on a busy street to if anyone comes to the rescue.

see

In popular psychological

magazines,

sex,

discourse,

becomes a means to attract readers who are some-

which to Freud was an object of intellectual

times left with the impression that psychologists are interested in nothing else. 2 4 Freud would have deplored the present drift in psychology because his belief

in the efficacy of reason

precluded efforts to gain popularity at the expense of intellectual quality. reason

Psychology he viewed as the tool of

in the endless battle

against ignorance.

Thus,

he

regarded all incumbrances in that quest for the truth-experiments,

methods,

researchers--as mere

all the minutiae beloved by modern tools.

He particularly detested argu-

ments over methodology as barren:

"Freud had little love

for discourses on method.

Those who were preoccupied with

methodology were,

forever polishing their glasses

he said,

and never putting them on."

24.

25

Donald P. Warwick,

"Social Scientists Ought to

Stop Lying," Psychology Today 8 (February 1975):38. 25. H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society: The Reorientation of European Social Thought, 1890-1930 (New

17 Still,

the present state of anything goes in psychology

has by its very nature moved psychologists toward a greater interest in history,

and Freud would have been pleased at

any way in which other disciplines could make use of his

discoveries,

of which he had a high opinion.

Undoubtedly,

he never conceived of the immense influence his ideas would have

in literature,

and political

art,

science. 26

religion,

economics,

psychology,

His influence has been less in

history than in any of the other social sciences,

this he probably would have been disappointed, he was not a trained historian,

and in

for,

though

the history of culture was

one of his lifelong intellectual pursuits.

Now,

however,

the day has arrived that he is no longer ignored among historians,

and every historian must face

Freud's ideas,

some reckoning with

if only to reject them for something better.

Frank E. Manuel,

a historian who has written both traditional

and psychoanalytically oriented history

saw the

situation

clearly:

York: Vintage Books, 1958), p. 152; Joseph M. Woods, "Some Considerations on Psycho-History," Historian 36 (August

1974):733. 26. Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, 3 vols. (New York: Basic Books, 1953), 1:350; Hundert, "History, Psychology, and the Study of Deviant Behavior," pp. 467-68; Roazen, Freud: Political and Social, p. 38. For a bibliographical survey of Freud's influence in history, see, though neither is exhaustive: Hans-Ulrich Wehler, ed., Geschichte und Psychoanalyse (Koln, 1971); and George M. Kren and Leon Rappoport, "Clio and Psyche," History of Childhood Quarterly: The Journal of Psychohistory 1 (Summer

1973) :

151-63.

18

.

A skeptic may rightly be uncertain that the more novel systems are intrinsically superior or truer in an absolute sense than those handed down by the past. The historian is probably always obliged to accept and express himself in the psychological language of his times; and thus, as I see it, there is no escape from Freud's conception, in some form, orthodox or heterodox. 27 It is to this conception, Freud's view of history, shall turn next. 27.

Manuel,

"Use and Abuse,"

p.

205.

that we

CHAPTER I

FREUD'S CONCEPTION OF HISTORY

Sigmund Freud was born in 1856 in Moravia, province of the Austrian empire, Vienna shortly afterwards. revealing

then a

but his family moved to

Through his own frankness in

intimate aspects of his youth,

biographers know a

great deal more of his childhood than is usually the case with great men.

He

appears to have been remarkably preco-

cious both sexually and intellectually,

and the permissive-

ness displayed in his family life exceeded the norm for Victorian times.

By

all accounts,

though,

he was

a model

child who spent much of his time studying in his room, hardly emerging to take time class at school,

to eat.

he read insatiably,

Always first in his acquiring a wide knowl-

edge in the humanities

and in linguistics--he eventually

mastered Latin,

French,

His parents were

Greek,

English,

Italian,

and Spanish.

so awed by his intellectual promise that he

was able to dominate

the family,

even to the extent of

forcing his sister to discontinue her piano lessons because the sound of music distracted him from his studies.1

1. Gerhard Masur, Prophets of Yesterday: Studies in European Culture, 1890-1914 (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), p. 299; Henri F. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry

19

20

The

contrast between the obscurity of his parents and

ancestors,

all

lower middle-class Austrian Jews,

and the

privileged position he acquired in the family puzzled the young Freud.

In later life he saw in himself

with the biblical figure of Joseph, who, adored first-born

son of his mother,

likewise named Jacob.

Like Joseph,

a parallel

like Freud, was the

and whose father was also,

Freud lived to sup-

plant his brothers and father in the esteem of to interpret dreams.

the world and

Freud attributed his astonishing

suc-

cess to the abundance of affection his mother bestowed on him:

"A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his

mother keeps for life the feeling of the conquerer, confidence of success Though Freud's

that

that often induces real success." 2

father was kindly and affectionate,

role in Freud's childhood was somewhat passive.

his

Freud's

respect for him was not as great as his regard for his mother, on his

but a normal father-son relationship did exist, father's death Freud wrote that the event was

(New York:

Basic Books,

1970), pp. 427,

and

"the

457-58; Penelope

Balogh, Freud: A Biographical Introduction (London: Studio Vista, 1971), p. 12; Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, 3 vols. (New York: Basic Books, 1953), 1:8, 11, 17, 18, 21, 22; Erich Fromm, Sigmund Freud's Mission: An Analysis of His Personality and Influence (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959), p. 13. 2. Ellenberger, Discovery of the Unconscious, p. 468; Fromm, Sigmund Freud's Mission, p. 59; Jones, Life and Work, 1:5; Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey, 24 vols. (London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-

analysis,

1953-1975), 4:367.

21

life."

most poignant loss in a man's cally,

however,

Freud's memories of his father were

He remembered as a small child urinating in his

unpleasant. parents'

bedroom and his father remarking,

never amount to anything."4 childhood incident was A more

More characteristi-

"That boy will trivial

The humiliation of this

still with Freud fifty years

later.

serious event occurred when Freud was twelve and a

Gentile knocked his father's hat off in a Viennese

street;

Freud never forgave his father for submitting to this personal outrage.

He came to admire not his humble and modest

father but the great military and political Napoleon, books.

Cromwell,

As

and Hannibal,

leaders such as

that he had read about in

a child he dreamed of becoming a great general.

As an adult,

he would name one of his sons after Oliver

Cromwell.5 Yet the power which Freud sought came to him in the polar opposite of a martial career, medicine.

through a career

in

Attacking the unconscious forces of the mind,

attained more power than any general ever had,

he

but his

initial reason for choosing medicine was eminently practical: since he was a Jew,

medicine was one of the few professions

3. Jones, Life and Work, 1:7, 324; Ellenberger, Discovery of the Unconscious, p. 464. 4. Mission, 5.

Jones, p. 56. From,

Life and Work,

Life

and Work,

1:16;

Fromm,

Sigmund Freud's Mission,

1:22-24.

pp.

Sigmund Freud's

57,

68;

Jones,

22

open to him,

and the

financial recompense was excellent.

Though the immediate inspiration for his decision was a reading of Goethe's essay on nature, liked to practice medicine.

Freud never really

His extensive reading had in-

stilled in him a tendency toward philosophical speculation; most of all,

he wanted to know the riddle of the universe;

his real passion in life was knowledge.

The inventor of

psychoanalysis had such a low opinion of medicine that he did not even require that one have tice psychoanalysis, undoubtedly

an M.D.

degree to prac-

but Freud's medical training was

an indispensable agent in his creation of a new

theory of the mind.

Had he not been exposed to the rigorous

emphasis on controlled experimentation and careful observation,

he probably would have been just another armchair

philosopher. 6 While in medical school, Freud had published several papers on histology which were well enough received in the profession that he won

an appointment at the University of

Vienna as a lecturer.

Wishing to do research more than to

engage in the humdrum routine of family practice, turned to neurology and psychology, fields in the 1880s,

Freud

which were new,

growing

with endless research possibilities.

When Freud began work,

the only accepted treatments medical

6. Jones, Life and Work, 1:28, 32, 346; Freud, Standard Edition, 20:8; Ellenberger, Discovery of the Unconscious, p. 466; Fromm, Sigmund Freud's Mission, p.

5.

23

science had for mental disorders were shock therapy hypnotism. Breur,

and

The latter was the treatment favored by Joseph

most famous psychologist of the day, with whom Freud

began his work.

Under the tutelage of Breur,

Freud began to

develop ideas of his own about the causes of most mental illness.

He was convinced that a sexual etiology was involved

in nearly every case of neurosis.7 In the 1890s Freud developed a friendship with a Viennese quack doctor, Wilhelm Fliess, along the same lines. even weird

(he believed,

was present between the urge),

but Fliess'

upon Freud. viewpoints,

Fliess'

who also was thinking

ideas were wildly

for example,

speculative,

that some relationship

shape of the nose and the

sexual

support probably had a liberating effect

He became more ready to attack traditional with the difference that,

tried to ground his speculations

unlike Fliess,

he

in observed facts. 8

In a burst of energy in the late 1890s Freud made most of his important discoveries. analysis in 1896; analysis.

He first used the term psycho-

in the next year he began his

Full-length books appeared,

self-

the Interpretation of

7. Freud, Standard Edition, 20:12, 16. For a short summary of Freud's early work see Erik H. Erikson, "The First Psychoanalyst," Yale Review 46 (Autumn 1956):40-62. For the case which convinced Freud that his theory was correct, see Jones, Life and Work, 1:223-25. 8.

Erikson,

"The First Psychoanalyst,"

p.

54.

24

Dreams

and the popularly written Psychopathology of

in 1900,

Everyday Life in 1902 of which Richard Schoenwald said,

"It

is a book on evidences of the unconscious in a way not unlike eighteenth century tracts arraying evidences for God's rule."9 Like other great thinkers,

Freud created his theories The

from a multiplicity of influences existent at the time. writings of other psychologists about sex, ground,

the culture of fin de

the Austrian educational

his Jewish back-

siecle Austria,

the nature of

system combining a grounding

in

hard science with an equally good knowledge of the humanities,

Freud's lack of knowledge in late nineteenth-century

psychology which presumably made him more receptive

to new

ideas--all of these have been given credit as influences upon Freud's ideas.

Yet probably no influence was more

sig-

nificant than the nineteenth-century mechanistic view of the human body.

Freud's conception is based squarely upon

9. John Chynoweth Burnham, Psychoanalysis and American Medicine, Scienceand Culture (New Medicine, 1894-1918: York: International Universities Press, 1967), p. 9; Jones, The Man Life and Work, 1:319; Richard L. Schoenwald, Freud:

and His Mind, p. 82.

1856-1956

(New York: Alfred A. Knopf,

1956),

10. Stephen Kern, "Freud and the Discovery of Child The Journal of Sexuality," History of Childhood Quarterly: Psychohistory 1 (Summer 1973):117, 138; Carl E. Schorske, "Politics and Patricide in Freud's Interpretation of Dreams," American Historical Review 78 (April 1973):335-39; David Bakan, Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition (Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1958), p. 25; Martin The Man, His World, Esslin, "Freud's Vienna," in Freud:

25 the applicability of the second law of thermodynamics to the human mind.

This law, which states that all energy exists

in a closed system with a tendency to take is indispensable

to his

sexual theory,

less usable

forms,

and he borrowed it

from the physicists of his time. Freud,

however,

deliberately perpetuated

the view that

his ideas were unique and without antecedents, was done in a vacuum.

that his work

A very sensitive person,

he exag-

gerated the extent of the opposition to psychoanalysis and attributed much of

it to anti-Semitism.

Actually,

he never

submitted an article to a journal which was not accepted, record any modern scholar would certainly envy, Semitism was rare in Austria in the 1890s, dominating the intellectual

a

and anti-

with Jews often

life of the country.

The

sexual

content of his theory could hardly have been shocking to the Viennese since Vienna was one of the most in Europe.

liberated cities

Nor were other psychologists blind to Freud's

abilities as a scientist,

and the empirical efficacy of the

psychoanalytic method in treating the mentally time made it a respected scientific

ill of the

theory.1 1

His Influence, ed. Jonathan Miller (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1972), p. 46; George Rosen, "Freud and Medicine," in ibid., p. 38; Jones, Life and Work 1:366, 371; Bruce Mazlish, "Freud and Nietzche," Psychoanalytic Review 55

(1968) :3 72-73.

11. Ellenberger, Discovery of the Unconscious, pp. 423, 450, 455; Friedrich Heer, "Freud, the Viennese Jew," in Miller, Freud, p. 9; Martin Esslin, "Freud's Vienna," in ibid., p. 52; Abraham Kardiner, "Freud: The Man I Knew," in

26

As with any new theory, did exist,

a certain amount of opposition

even if most of it was nothing more than outraged

moralists occasionally

stopping Freud on the street and

calling him a dirty old man.

Freud definitely appealed to

more people than he repulsed,

and the psychoanalytic move-

ment began to flourish in the first decade of this century. Though some of the early students attracted to Freud came

seeking relief from their own psychological problems, them were eager to learn;

all of

and Vienna would remain the head-

quarters of the psychoanalytic movement until World War II, when Nazi persecution transferred the center of the movement to America, where it has remained since.12 Two of Freud's best disciples,

Adler,

and Alfred

eventually broke with him and formed rival schools of

their own.

Of the two,

ences has been slight. Freud,

Carl Jung

Jung's influence in the Though Jung was

his philosophy and writings were

complex,

social sci-

fully as learned as so vague,

prolix,

and allusion-ridden that his ideas have been

reduced by his followers to a kind of positive thinking in Freud and the Twentieth Century, ed. Benjamin Nelson (New York: Meridian Books, 1957), p. 47; Burnham, Psychoanalysis,

p.

83.

Vincent Brome, Freud and His Early Circle (New 12. York: William Morrow & Company, 1968), pp. 31, 77; Balogh, Freud, pp. 66-67, 116; Zevedei Barbu, Democracy and DictatorTheir Psychology and Patterns of Life (New York: Grove ship: Press, 1956), p. 225; Harry K. Wells, The Failure of Psychoanalysis (New York: International Publishers, 1963),

pp. 50-51.

27

the Norman Vincent Peale tradition. H.

Stuart Hughes,

a

His thought was,

wrote

"doctrine of moral and spiritual uplift,

It has added virtually nothing to what the

little else.

always known." 1

mystics have

3

The influence of Adler is more difficult to assess.

Freud had a higher regard for Adler than for Jung, but the tendency of most post-Freudian psychologists has been to

downgrade Adler's contribution to the discipline. view that neurotic

Adler's

symptoms were caused by disturbances

in

the power relationships among individuals makes his philosophy seem speciously simple minded at first glance. to Freud,

and certainly to Jung, his philosophy has an

Enlightenment

type rationality about it that modern psy-

chology has been reluctant to accept. such as

Compared

When Adler's concepts,

"inferiority complex," are used,

wrongfully attributed to Freud.

they are often

The popular ego psycholo-

gists of the post-World War II period show remarkable

sim-

ilarities to Adler's thought,

though they almost unanimously

deny it. 1 4

subtle influences permeate

In short, Adler's

modern psychology and to some extent social science,

but to

The H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society: 13. (New 1890-1930 Thought, Social European of Reorientation York: Vintage Books, 1958), p. 159. Freud, Standard Edition, 14:60-61; Brome, Freud, 14. p. 217; Ellenberger, Discovery of the Unconscious, pp. 628, Cf. Heinz Ansbacher, "The Significance of the 638-41, 645. Socio-Economic Status of the Patients of Freud and of Adler," American Journal of Psychotherapy 13 (April 1959):

376-82.

28 separate them from Freudian psychology is beyond the scope Let it suffice that the uncelebrated status

of this paper. of Adler's

impact on psychoanalysis

is a measure of the

significance of that influence. of the influences contributing

Nevertheless,

development of psychoanalysis,

none was more

to the

important than

the character and emotional nature of Freud himself,

since

it was from his own experiences that he fashioned psychoanalysis.

In the crucial 1890s Freud endured a psycho-

neurosis which involved physiological ailments migraine,

and indigestion as well as difficulty in his rela-

tionships with other people. 1897,

like sinusitis,

Even after his self-analysis of

his relations with others,

of the psychoanalytic movement, forgave insults, opposition.

as revealed by the history were mercurial.

real or imagined,

He wrote,

He never

and he was quick to take

"My emotional life has always in-

sisted that I should have an intimate friend and a hated enemy.

I have always been able to provide myself afresh

with both." 1 5 for America,

His dislikes,

such as his well-known contempt

could often be merely petty,

and his penchant

for truculence is indicated by his relentless insistence that his followers use the word sex in discussing his instead of euphemisms like eros or

15.

1:169-70,

Balogh,

Freud,

p.

28;

theory

love. 1 6

Jones,

Life and Work,

304, 434.

16. Brome, the Unconscious,

Freud, p. p. 460.

110;

Ellenberger,

Discovery of

29

The philosopher

His

of sex was no libertine himself.

sex life was limited,

inasmuch as it began around age thirty

and lasted only until he was forty,

and his inhibition was

at least as great as that of some of his patients.

In a

famous passage he wrote contrasting the easy morals of

the

lower classes to the stringent ethical code of middle-class morality, one may detect a note of hidden envy.

Since Freud

put all of his passionate energies into his work, ried life was solemnly

sedate,

even by Victorian

His wife was a mother and housewife,

his marstandards.

not a friend,

and

though he loved her dearly, he paternalistically denied her the right to read Tom Jones from solicitude her purity might be corrupted,

and he condemned John Stuart Mill for advo-

cating equality of the sexes;

to Freud a woman should be

youth an adored darling and in mature years

"in

a loved wife."17

The Freud family life was by all accounts a happy one in turn-of-the-century Vienna, golden age.

for the city was then in its

The picture of the capital as decadent and

sensual in fin de

siecle Austria is well known; but Vienna

was also the city in which even the poor went to the opera. Standards were set by the upper middle class, inant in Austria, tudes were

21,

23,

and Freud's atti-

typical of this hard-working class

to which he

Rollo May, Love and Will (New York: W.W. Norton 1969), p. 49; Fromm, Sigmund Freud's Mission, pp.

&

17. Company,

as throughout Europe,

which was dom-

28-29;

Jones, Life and Work,

1:174,

177,

190,

271.

30

belonged.

He exhibited the quintessential nineteenth-century

compulsiveness toward work.

He usually rose at seven and

patients until nine or ten in the evening;

afterwards,

saw

he

worked on his books until one or two o'clock in the morning. Not surprisingly,

his view of a healthy mental attitude

centered on the two attributes he most valued in himself, satisfactory love Thus,

a

life and a favorable attitude toward work.

he wrote that anyone who questioned the value of life

was sick.

In his

Jacob Burckhardt,

spare time he traveled or read works by Heinrich Schliemann,

antiquity and archeology.

or other writers on

These were his only recreations

in a life the continuity of which was virtually unbroken in seventy years in one city and forty years in the same

house. 1 8 In that house Freud made concepts household words.

the discoveries which made his

Using deductive techniques

re-

sembling those of Sherlock Holmes, he observed the emotion-

ally troubled,

the people psychologists called neurotics.

&

18. Martin Esslin, "Freud's Vienna," in Miller, Freud, pp. 47-48; B. Bruce-Biggs, "Against the Neo-Malthusians," Commentary 58 (July 1974):29; May, Love and Will, p. 49; Balogh, Freud, pp. 70-71; Ellenberger, Discovery of the Unconscious, pp. 462, 465; Erik H. Erikson, Identity and the Life Cycle (New York: International Universities Press, 1959), p. 96; Jones, Life and Work 3:465; Sigmund Freud, Letters, ed. Ernest L. Freud (New York: Basic Books, 1960), p. 436; Schorske, "Politics and Patricide," p. 335; Schoenwald, Freud, p. 39; Fromm, Sigmund Freud's Mission, pp. 16-17; Marthe Robert, The Psychoanalytic Revolution: Sigmund Freud's Life and Achievement (New York: Harcourt, Brace

World,

1966),

p.

62.

31

Neurotics were persons with hysterical symptoms, obsessions,

compulsions,

or especially severe anxiety.

Freud found a repressed wish,

usually a sexual one,

nearly every observed case of neurosis, became aware of his underlying desire, usually alleviated.

phobias,

Thus,

in

and when the patient his symptoms were

a considerable

amount of clinical

evidence and efficacy lay behind Freud's theory, but since the turn of the century a radical change has taken place in the nature of neuroses, ular causes,

for they no longer have simple,

sing-

1 and their eradication is much more difficult.

9

It was Freud's good luck that his theory coincided with the character of neuroses of the time. Still,

Freud had discovered a continuity that adhered

to all neurosis, ity

regardless of the historical age:

"rigid-

in reaction and a discrepancy between potentialities and

accomplishments." 2

0

Believing that one's attitude toward

other people was determined during the first six years of life, he argued that neurotics were people who remained at these early stages,

prisoners of infantile fears.

Hence,

the techniques others used to achieve mastery of the outside

19.

Will Herberg,

"Freud,

Reality," in Nelson, Freud,

pp.

the Revisionists,

and Social

144-45; G. William Domhoff,

The Governing Class in America (New The Higher Circles: p. 98; May, Love and Will, 1970), House, York: Random Quest for Identity (New York: The Wheelis, Allen 24-25; pp. W. W. Norton & Company, 1958), p. 41. Karen Horney, The Neurotic Personality of Our 20. Time (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1937), p. 22.

32

world and to reach their potentialities were not open to neurotics,

whose anxiety

their tension,

inhibited action that would relieve

especially that of a sexual nature.

children or primitive people,

Like

neurotics lived in a world of

symbols and signs with their own private magic religion. Since they overevaluated thought, cessive

events always had an ex-

symbolic rather than a real

importance,

and

an

absent-minded failure of a friend to say a word of greeting, for example, might be construed as significant as a sexual

rebuff. 21 Because actions are always associated with anxiety (which Freud defines as any fear not based on reality), neurotic cannot perform the very tasks he wants this inability is the source of his misery, even be aware of his anxiety.

Instead,

and

but he may not

he may

believe he does not like the action itself,

to do,

a

sincerely

or he may so

order his life that he is never faced with the necessity of confronting the action. avoid anxiety

The lengths

to which people go to

suggested to Freud that it was one of the most

unpleasant mental torments known to man, defy actual physical dangers than unknown

21.

fear of anxiety.

Freud,

that men had rather

face the unreasonable

For this reason,

Standard Edition,

13:243,

Freud wrote,

20:66,

89,

and "The

147-48;

May, Love and Will, pp. 20, 211; Erik H. Erikson, "Erikson Among the Indians," Horizon 14 (Autumn 1972):85; W. Ronald D. Fairnbairn, Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality (London: Travistock Publications, 1952), p. 15; Milton R. Sapirstein, Paradoxes of Everyday Life: A Psychoanalyst's Interpretation (New York: Random House, 1955), p. 89.

33

beginning of all mental morbidity is cowardice before, fear of,

mental pain." 2

and

2

Since the world is full of dangers and some fear is unavoidable

and even desirable,

Freud's psychology assumes

that the well-adjusted person differs only in degree the neurotic.

from

He did not consider mental normality a guar-

antee of happiness, of an ideal man.

nor did he presuppose a Freudian model

To Freud,

mental health was

a purely conventional practical concept and has no real scientific meaning. It simply means that a person gets on well: it doesn't mean that the person is particularly worthy. There are "healthy" people who are not worth anything, and on the other hand "unhealthy" neurotic people who are very worthy individuals

indeed.23 The lack of an ideal guide of Freudian behavior presents difficulties

in attaining the objectives of analysis,

for two possibilities are implied:

was Freud trying to make

the neurotic a more satisfactory human being,

or did he

desire merely to encourage the neurotic to conform to the rules of society so as to avoid suffering?24

22.

Horney,

Neurotic Personality,

Freud, Standard Edition, and the Human Dilemma

20:167,

22:89;

(Princeton, N.J.:

pp.

Freudians have

42,

46,

Rollo May,

189,

225;

Psychology

D. Van Nostrand

Company, 1967), p. 117; Paul Federn, Ego Psychology and the Psychoses (New York: Basic Books, 1952), p. 278. 23. R. D. Pantheon Books, J. A. C. Brown, 1963), pp. 212, ysis with Freud

Laing, The Politics of Experience (New York: 1967), p. 10; Freud, Standard Edition, 11:131, Freud and the Post-Freudians (London: Cassell, 216-17; Joseph Wortis, Fragments of an Anal(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954), p. 80.

24. Frederick C. Crews, "Love in the Western World," Partisan Review 34 (Spring 1967):275.

34

usually skirted this issue with a declaration that no conflict exists because prior to analysis the neurotic has no choice:

he cannot help conforming to the twisted dic-

tates of his own character.

Hence,

the

analysis gives one

freedom to choose servility to society or the alternative of open and conscious rebellion from principle.

There is a

parallel here with the Christian idea that one is unable resist sin until grace is received,

to

in

and psychoanalysis

the twentieth century has performed a somewhat religious function in allowing people to reconstruct their lives. Yet a difference is present,

and a very big one,

in-

sofar as individual responsibility is much greater under Freud's scheme than under that of traditional religion. What makes Freudian "sin"

so much more intolerable to the

individual than Christian sin is that the

individual is con-

fronted with the realization that not all people are afflicted with sin, well adjusted.

for some are

free of

it,

that is to say,

All Christians are equal in that all share

a common sinfulness; maladjusted it is his

on the other hand, failure alone,

when the Freudian is

as Rollo May pointed

out: In past decades you could blame society's strict mores and preserve your own self-esteem by telling yourself what you did or didn't do was society's And this would give you some fault and not yours. time in which to decide what you do want to do, or But when the to let yourself grow into a decision. question is simply how you can perform, your own

35

sense of adequacy and self-esteem is called immediately into question, and the whole weight of the encounter is shifted inward to how you can meet the test. 2 5 However,

the responsibility of

the individual under

Freudianism turns out on second glance to be illusory,

or at

the most true only from the perspective of the patient. the analyst's view,

In

human responsibility is definitely

secondary to determinism,

and Freud deduced the present

state of man as a determinant of his past history in both a physical and

social sense.

fore even life itself,

In the beginning,

there was energy,

the second law of thermodynamics,

he said,

be-

governed only by

which states that force

must find expression and take less usable

forms.

The psycho-

logical implication of this inexorable physical law was that the instinctual energies of the personality required an outlet because of the

"economic nature"

of drives.26

If the

outlet was not the one associated with normal human conduct, its expression would be a neurotic symptom. So human personality began with energy seeking discharge of instinctual drives, and Thanatos.

The

of which Freud proposed two:

instinct of love or life,

expression of the desire for sexual union,

25.

May, Love

and Will,

p.

Eros

Eros was the

from which Freud

41.

26. Freud, Standard Edition, 20:265-66. In The Crisis of Psychoanalysis (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1970), p. 32, Erich Fromm points out the similarity of Freud's theory to laissez-faire economics.

36

derived all affectionate other instinct,

and associative tendencies.

Thanatos,

Of the

or the natural tendency of all

living matter to revert to the inanimate state of death from which it came, Freud had much less to say,

but functionally

Thanatos was expressed as aggressive and hostile tendencies. Added as an afterthought when Freud's most creative period was over,

the Thanatos instinct served chiefly to explain

perversions

like sadism and misfortunes

like suicide which

were difficult to reconcile with Eros alone. part,

For the most

the trend of Freudian thought was toward a utilitarian

doctrine that people prefer pleasure to unpleasure, death,

life to

Eros to Thanatos.2 7

The

importance

that Freud attributed to Eros

difficult to exaggerate,

is

for he assigned it the credit

for

the collective co-operation of civilization and the bonds of altruism.28

In this view,

like other philosophers he paid

homage to the power of love and Eros in history,

but he pre-

ferred to use the words sex or libido instead of love to

27.

Freud,

Standard Edition,

20:265,

23:148.

A good

summary of Freud's theory can be found in Standard Edition, 18:235-59, which is an article Freud wrote for the Encyclopaedia Britannica; and in Standard Edition, 20:263-70. An excellent secondary account is Benjamin Wolman, The Unconscious Mind: The Meaning of Freudian Psychology

(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:

Prentice-Hall,

1968),

pp.

85-96.

The best short survey is Calvin S. Hall, A Primer of Freudian Psychology (New York: Mentor Books, 1954). 28. Freud, Standard Edition, 18:103, 14:85. Freud's social theory is usually only implicit in his writings; see Hughes, Consciousness and Society, p. 125.

37

describe

the contents of the Eros instinct because he wanted

people to realize he was suggesting more than merely an instinct toward affection, tact.

friendliness,

and physical con-

He believed all affectionate manifestations were

derived from a primitive desire for actual sexual union, though he recognized that coitus alone was often an quate outlet"

for Eros. 29

Indeed,

he regarded

"inade-

some inhib-

ition of the sexual wish as desirable and necessary since historically the

symbolic value of coitus had assumed much

of the importance reserved in ancient times itself.

Nevertheless,

Freud was uncompromisingly implacable

about using the more direct term "sex" symbolic word "love."

for the very act

instead of the more

Had he used another term,

he wrote,

he would "thus have spared myself much opposition.

But I

did not want to,

for I like to avoid concessions to faint-

heartedness."30

And had he used

accurately

described his

following passage

theory,

from his

"love," as it

collected

is

he would not have revealed

in the

works.

Libido is an expression taken from the theory of the emotions. We call by that name the energy, regarded as a quantitative magnitude (though not at present actually measurable), of those instincts which have to do with all that may be compromised by "love." The nucleus of what we mean by love naturally consists (and this is what is commonly called love, and what the poets sing of) in sexual love with sexual union as its aim. But we do not separate from this--

29.

Freud, Standard Edition,

30.

Ibid.,

18:91,

115.

20:37-38,

11:225.

38

what in any case has a share in the name "love"--on the one hand, self-love, and on the other, love for parents and children, friendship and love for humanity in general, and also devotion to concrete objects and to abstract ideas. Our justification lies in the fact that psychoanalytic research has taught us that all these tendencies are an expression of the same instinctual impulses; in relations between the sexes these impulses force their way towards sexual union, but in other circumstances they are diverted from this aim or are prevented from reaching it, though always preserving enough of their original nature to keep their identity recognizable (as in such features as

the longing for proximity and self-sacrifice.) 3 1 Yet Freud specifically denied that he was a pansexist. All mental processes,

he pointed out, were not mere epiphe-

nomena of an underlying

sexuality;

had he so argued,

he would

have been hard put to explain how he was able to arrive at his own theory.

The only crucial distinction which endowed

sex with marked primacy was the immense hunger,

thirst,

and other drives,

reality that unlike

it could be denied for

significant periods without physiological damage. ingly,

its intellectual value was

Accord-

substantially enhanced

insofar as its physical exercise was curtailed,

but a return

to sexual action would not necessarily remove any underlying mental unhappiness,

for a

"desexualized Eros"

Eros always remained which was as important

or

symbolic

in psychological

disorders as the physical aspect of the instinct. 3 2 the conclusion is

Still,

inescapable that if Freud did not view all

31.

Ibid.,

p.

32.

Ibid.,

19:44,

90.

18:252,

20:38-39.

39

mental activity as sexual,

he certainly envisioned all

mental problems as sexual.3 3

One would think that a philosopher who conferred priority on a benevolent impulse

like sex would be optimistic,

but Freud's thought was in fact profoundly pessimistic. every ignoble and violent segment of life--in war,

In

murder,

the recurring enmity of man toward man--he saw evidence of the death instinct, ethics

Thanatos,

and in his philosophy of

a Zoroastrian dualism of Eros

responsible for good and evil.

He attacked with ascerbic

sarcasm the idea that aggression was amenable to extinction,

and Thanatos was

socially determined or

while a presumption of irrational

depravity is even more manifest in his theory of personality structure.34 On the

level of personality,

three-fold division of the mind.

Freud hypothesized a The

first portion was the

33. Ibid., 20:89. The sexual extremism associated with Freud is also partly due to what Paul Roazen in his Freud: Political and Social Thought (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), p. 26 calls Freud's sense of the dramatic which made him choose more ominous terms than were warranted. See also Horney, Neurotic Personality, pp. 148-49 and Rollo May, The Meaning of Anxiety (New York: Ronald Press Company,

1950), p. 34.

211. Freud,

Standard Edition,

18:101,

22:203-15;

May,

Love and Will, p. 145; Wolman, Unconscious Mind, pp. 131-32; cf. the following: Octave Mannoni, "Psychoanalysis and the Decolinization of Mankind," in Miller, Freud, p. 88; Robert R. Holt, "Beyond Vitalism and Mechanism: Freud's Concept of Psychic Energy," in Historical Roots of Contemporary Psychology, ed. Benjamin B. Wolman (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), pp. 212-14; Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return (New York: Pantheon Books, 1954), p. 152.

40

unconscious

mind, which was,

that part

as its name implies,

since it

of the mind of which the individual was not aware consisted mostly of primitive drives and wishes,

the preconscious mind was the partially

Secondly,

Thanatos.

Eros and

conscious stratum of intellect,

whereas the conscious mind

was what we are cognizant of in everyday life and label When observing the mind dynam-

"mind" in popular speech. ically,

Freud proposed another and parallel cleavage into

parts he labelled id,

ego,

The id was vir-

and superego.

tually coterminous with but not identical to the unconscious mind;

it was the element of personality

first shaped in his-

tory and like the unconscious was a locus of drives and wishes.

The ego was the rational, thinking member of person-

ality since

its function was to insure that only realistic

and responsible

impulses were translated into action.

Hence its role was of its attributes.

analogous to that of a censor in certain The third part,

the

superego,

was the

moral authority of the mind and conforms generally to what we ordinarily call conscience.

The superego,

however,

over-

lapped the id in being irrational insofar as it often punished the ego with feelings of guilt and worthlessness 35 regardless of whether chastisement was deserved.

Though Freud often used parable-like metaphoric explanations of the ego,

35.

Freud,

id,

and superego,

Standard Edition,

20:266.

he apparently

41

conceived of his divisions as real entities and compared himself to an archeologist uncovering strata or

the mind.36

Philosophically, however,

layers of

the actuality of an

unconscious mind and of the id presents an epistemological question of how conscious knowledge can be discovered of an unconscious agency.

Freud answered this doubt by asserting

that the unconscious was never known directly but was inferred to exist from its effects explained dreams,

such as otherwise un-

slips of the tongue,

irrational impulses,

and the like. 3 7 Basically,

however,

Freud assumed the existence of the

unconscious id because he needed a repository of primitive instincts and thought in his theory,

and the id's very

incomprehensibility was the chief reason reality.

It was,

our personality," in which

he wrote,

"the dark,

for presuming its

inaccessible part of

a "cauldron full of seething excitation,"

"the logical laws of thought do not apply

.

.

this is true above all of the law of contradiction." 3 8

.

and It

36. Charts which reveal the dynamic relationships of the ego, id, and superego are in Wolman, Unconscious Mind, p. 49; and Freud, Standard Edition, 22:78. 37. Benjamin B. Rubinstein, "Psychoanalytic Theory and the Mind-Body Problem," in Psychoanalysis and Current Biological Thought, ed. Norman S. Greenfield and William C. Lewis (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press,

1965), pp. 45-48;

Freud,

Standard Edition,

23:259,

22:72-73,

20:45. 38.

23:145-46.

Freud,

Standard Edition,

22:73;

see also

22:74,

42

was our

inheritance from generations of savages--in all a

rather malign and unpleasant niche of the mind. When the energies of the

id were blocked or dammed in

seeking release,

the pressure on the governing agency of the

ego was immense,

leading directly to the consequence of

neurotic behavior.

However,

as Freud assumed that the basic

level of psychic energy was quantitatively the person,

same in every

a neurosis was never caused by an excessive power or

influence of the id in an individual's personality; some malfunction of was

the ability of the ego to control

invariably responsible for mental disorders.

other guard,

rather, the id

Like any

the ego was in a most difficult position,

striving to reconcile the opposing demands of the id for instinctual gratification, istic behavior, Further,

of the external world for real-

and of the superego for moral approbation.

a poorly formed ego,

factory release of blocked

when toiling to allow satis-

instinctual drives,

ceeded only in incurring the wrath of the

often suc-

stern superego,

ever on guard for actions which might offend its irrational sensibilities.

The resulting ubiquitous feelings of infe-

riority and failure

in neurotics were due to the recognition

that their actions were not commensurate with the of their moral conscience,

the superego.

inadequate egos,

(and normal people

neurotics

standards

To bolster their

had to develop certain "defense mechanisms,"

to some extent) such as

43

repressing instinctual demands,

rationalizing wishes,

projecting forbidden desires on to another person,

or

"sub-

limating" a primitive drive into activity which is socially useful.3 9

How well one

succeeds

in this task of sustaining

his ego is a function of patterns learned in early childhood, for the ego and superego were to Freud social, cisely,

family creations,

unlike the

inherent attribute of human nature,

or more pre-

id which was merely an and not a construction

of one's parents. Entering the world as a helpless ward of powerful parents,

a human child is awed by the mystery of why these

benevolent giants should concern needs and with each other. mother,

themselves so much with his

The family triangle of father,

and child was to Freud the paradigm of the situation

of all life,

and the Greek myth of Oedipus, who killed his

father and married his mother,

furnished him with a theory

of the development of the stages of childhood.

Finding in

the Oedipus Complex the central event of history, regarded it as the original sin, the

the

Freud

final ironic tragedy,

inexplicable and innocent absurdity of absurdities in

life.

To it he ascribed the failure of man as an

to achieve his potential,

and the

successful ability of men

collectively to form civilizations.

39.

Ibid.,

18:109,

246,

individual

22:77,

He and his followers

65-66; Robert R. Holt,

"A Review of Some of Freud's Biological Assumptions and Their Influence on his Theories," in Greenfield, Psycho-

analysis, p. 109; Wolman,

Unconscious Mind, pp. 142,

144-47.

44

believed it to be universal among all peoples, and ineradicable. of the Sphinx,

inescapable,

In solving an enigma greater

than that

Freud believed he had discovered what every

man carried within him, but no one had dared to know before.4 0 As repugnant as the Oedipus Complex was to some of his contemporaries,

Freud regarded it as integral to the process

of maturation.

Childhood sexuality he saw as self-evident;

the child,

he said,

lived no "blissful idyll" of innocence,

and even before the Oedipus Complex developed a child already was achieving sexual gratification from oral means, primarily through suckling at his mother's breast. following second stage of development, weaned and toilet trained, through anal

sensations.

veloped in the

third,

learned to associate

In the

when children were

sexual pleasure was derived The Oedipus Complex itself de-

or phallic stage,

when children

sexual gratification with the male or

female organs.4 1

&

40. Freud, Standard Edition, 23:193; May, Human Dilemma, p. 98; May, Love and Will, pp. 165-66; Paul Schilder, Psychoanalysis, Man and Society (New York: W. W. Norton

Company,

1951),

pp. 339-40;

Balogh, Freud,

p. 41; Fred Wein-

stein and Gerald M. Platt, The Wish to Be Free: Society, Psyche, and Value Change (Berkeley; University of California

Press,

1969),

pp.

143-44.

Patrick Mullahy's Oedipus:

Myth

and Complex. A Review of Psychoanalytic Theory (New York: Hermitage Press, 1948) contains more than most people would bother to ask or care to know about the Oedipus complex.

41. Freud, Standard Edition, 18:244-45, 23:152-54.

20:33,

267-68,

11:126,

45

Since the mother was almost invariably physically closer to the child than the father, first infatuation. sensual ardor,

Though a child was not aware of his

and indeed could not be directly conscious of

so primitive a desire, forbidden.

she became the child's

he knew vaguely he wanted something

He also unconsciously feared the jealous retali-

ation of the father,

primarily

in the form of castration.

Eventually the child would give up the unrealistic love for his mother and

identify with the powerful

point he would be on the the age of puberty, tency,

father,

road to maturity.

at which

Afterwards,

until

Freud suggested a period of sexual la-

with gradual development of the ego and superego. 4 2

This entire process Freud viewed as a recapitulation of primal and actual events

in human history.

Though in

modern times the Oedipal conflict was purely unconscious, Freud believed when our ancestors were savages,

still half-human

they had enacted out the Oedipal experience so many

times that its course in childhood development was biologically

set.

The

shame and disgust often associated with sex

and excrement were similar attitudes inherited from our remote

forbears.4 3

Freud's conception of the history of the Oedipus Complex was based heavily on male supremacy,

42. Ibid., 22:190-91, Oedipus Complex, p. 28. 43.

Freud,

18:105,

Standard Edition,

22:62.

7:177.

since he did

See also Mullahy,

46

not believe that Oedipal attachments were as strong in women as in men.

Female children,

after all,

were as dependent

and as close to their mothers as male children;

hence

less

opportunity developed among them to form infatuations with the parent of the opposite

sex.

Though Freud recognized

that the sex drive of women was as strong as that of men, admitted he did not really understand women, their distinction

he

referring to

from men as a "great enigma."44

There

is

in Freud's ideas a relentless refusal to see women in other than a subordinate role; the Oedipus Complex, later)

the central motifs of his thought,

the primal horde theory

(of which more

are masculine problems of human drama,

being mere passive onlookers.

the women

"Anatomy," he wrote,

"is

destiny."45 Still,

Freud's

subordination of women is secondary to

another problem inherent within the Oedipus

Complex:

how

much responsibility should reside in the individual for impulses of which he is only dimly aware and unable to conceptualize?

Ethically,

Freud rejected individual responsi-

bility for unconscious drives,

but what is often overlooked

is that he placed accountability for moral behavior in the

44.

Ibid.,

23:188.

45. Theodore Reik, Of Love and Lust (New York: Farrar, Straus and Company, 1957), p. 380. See also Weinstein, The Wish to Be Free, p. 176. Freud's lecture on femininity would raise the ire of modern women. See Freud, Standard

Edition,

22:112-35,

especially p. 113.

47

rational,

reasoning province of the mind.

human being was able to reason,

Insofar as a

therefore,

he was responsible

for his own conduct and could not mitigate his liability by

assigning it to forces beyond his control.46

Yet this point

is so subtle that a measure of truth exists in the assertion that by destroying the Victorian of will power, skepticism"

illusion of the omnipotence

Freud's theories led unwittingly to a

"blithe

that anything or anybody could really be what

they purport to be. 4 7 The skeptical and cynical attributes of Freudianism are

the theme of Philip Rieff's book Freud: Moralist,

The Mind of the

one of the few attempts to trace Freud's influence

on individual conduct and on historically important insti-' tutions

like the church,

according to Rieff,

state,

and family.

All of these,

were stripped of their moral basis by

Freud because Freud was a moralist without a message. assumed no right conduct,

only wise actions,

He

since man's

chief motivation was economy in reducing his tensions. Accordingly,

Freud's prototype was not the heroic rebel but

46. Sharon MacIssaac, Freud and Original Sin (New York: Paulist Press, 1974), p. 108; Jonathan Glover, "Freud, Moral-

ity,

and Responsibility,"

in Miller, Freud,

pp.

154,

158.

47. Karen Horney, New Ways in Psychoanalysis (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1939), p. 187; Paul Breines, Critical Interruptions: New Left Perspectives on Herbert Marcuse (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), p. 124; May, Human Dilemma,

pp.

113-14; May, Love and Will, pp.

183-84; Arthur Schle-

singer, Jr., "Can Psychiatry Save the Republic?" Review-World, 7 September 1974, p. 16.

Saturday

48

the clever negotiator; priorities

he reversed the nineteenth-century

set by such diverse

utilitarians,

sources as the romantics,

and the Marxists.

the

To him there was no concep-

tion of what a man should ultimately strive

to become.

Whereas in the nineteenth century being human meant the agelong quest to achieve certain human attributes,

after Freud,

being human was merely a condition of humanity.48 As Freud grew older he tried to reconcile the implications of his personality theory to the institutions of

ture,

his

later works deal with prehistory,

religion,

and anthropology.

pessimism and speculativeness, sophistication of his more chology,

Indicative of a growing

they exhibit

little of the

scientific research into psy-

but in writing them,

Freud was

indulging his life-

long proclivity toward philosophic conjecture,

checked while doing clinical research. this change in attitude,

48.

"My interests after making a life-

Row,

Alfred Kazin,

1966),

medicine,

and

returned to the cultural problems which had

in Nelson, Freud, p. Therapeutic:

which he had

In 1935 he wrote of

long detour through the natural sciences, psychotherapy,

social struc-

"The Freudian Revolution Analyzed,"

15; Philip Rieff,

Uses of Faith after Freud

p. 30;

Philip Rieff, Freud:

The Triumph of the (New York:

Harper

&

society;

The Mind of the

Moralist (New York: Viking Press, 1959), pp. xi, 155, 35455. This latter point is the grounds for the Marxian attack on Freud; see Fromm, Crisis, pp. 6-7; Fromm, Sigmund Freud's Mission, pp. 98-99; Reuben Osbert, Freud and Marx: A Dialectical Study (New York: Equinox Co-operative Press, 193-?), p. 143; and George Lichtheim, "Freud and Marx," in Miller, Freud, p. 63.

49

fascinated me long before,

when I was a youth scarcely old

enough for thinking."A9 Freud's theory of history and civilization was an embellished transposition of his theory of personality to the

social scene.

id,

and superego had their counterparts in the world of cul-

ture,

He held that the conflicts of the ego,

that the conservation of energy was the propelling

force in human activity,

and that the Oedipus complex was

the beginning of history,

which itself was nothing more than

"an account of the various methods adopted by mankind for

'binding' their unsatisfied wishes."50 and its Discontents,

written in 1930,

The book Civilization was his most intense

effort to place his psychological theory in historical perspective. Freud's point of departure from other historical, ical,

and

social philosophers

is that he denied Aristotle's

thesis that man was a political animal. first of all an individualist; to the society of others, relationships through society.

If,

To Freud man was

he did not naturally adhere

but must be

"seduced"

some advantage he acquires

as presumed,

polit-

into

social

in joining

primitive presocietal man had

49. Ernst Pfeiffer, ed., Sigmund Freud and Lou AndreasSalome: Letters (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972), p. 21; Fromm, Crisis, p. 35; Freud, Standard Edition, 20:57, 71-72. 50. Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,

1970), p. 62; Freud,

Standard Edition,

20:72,

13:186.

50

this attitude,

the question was what was it which men wanted Putting this question

which compelled them to form society?

it is easy to answer:

in terms of what people want from life,

they want happiness, which means either an enjoyment of pleasure or an absence of pain.

Yet in desiring these

things we often want the impossible, the universe

for the structure of

frequently precludes the fulfillment of our

basic wishes.5 1 Our pleasure, things: ill,

according to Freud,

is limited by three

the inadequacy of our own bodies which age,

become

the arbitrary power of nature to

and ultimately die;

make us miserable or even injure or kill us; lationships to other people.

Of these three,

and our rethe first two

are virtually uncontrollable by human activity, the third source of pain,

our

but it is

interaction with other people,

which causes us the most difficulty of all. 5 2 When we look carefully at the

limitations on our rela-

tionships with other people we see that most of them are imposed by society and often the higher the civilization the greater the restraints.

Defining civilization as all

those achievements which defend people regulate human interactions, given us amenities like

51.

against nature and

Freud emphasizes that it has

science, beauty,

Fromm,

Crisis,

Freud,

Standard Edition,

pp.

30-31;

Freud,

21:75-76. 52.

order,

21:86.

cleanliness,

Standard Edition,

51

and intellectual attainments,

but his point is that all of

these are made possible only by individual renunciation.

The ironic principle which "seduced" man into civilization was the realization that to attain the maximum freedom of creativity,

people had to surrender some freedom of indi-

vidual action;

the freedom surrendered in creating society was

Actually, minimal,

otherwise no civilization could exist at all.

since presocial man was scarcely

defend the freedom he had a surfeit of.

in a position to To Freud the origin

of the contemporary discontent with civilization was that human beings were still savages at heart:

they wanted pro-

tection against the consequences of the exercise of freedom of others, but recognized no derogation of their own right to action.

And their opposition was not always unjustified,

for Freud argued that the restraints of civilization were often excessive.5 3 The economic assumptions of Freud required that energy blocked by the dictates of civilization must reappear elsewhere;

he proposed that it reemerged in art,

politics,

science,

literature,

and all other socially useful creations.

This process of utilization of the creative energy of civilization he called sublimation. terms,

Basically,

in commonplace

it was a matter of transferring energy from Eros or

sex to the business,

53.

Ibid.,

pp.

social,

and intellectual sphere.

91,

103-5.

95,

He

52 hinted,

for example,

that men were

successful insofar as

they denied energy to their families and contributed it to their professional

activities.5 4

In discussing the develop-

ment of a socially useful person Freud wrote What is it that goes to the making of these constructions which are so important for the growth of a civilized and normal individual? They probably emerge at the cost of the infantile sexual impulses [whose] energy is diverted, wholly or in great part, from the sexual use and directed to other ends. . . . Historians of civilization appear to be at one in assuming that powerful components are acquired for every kind of cultural achievement by this diversion of sexual instinctual forces from sexual aims and their direction to new ones--a process which deserves the name of "sublimation." 5 Implicit in Freud's argument was the assumption that psychic and erotic energy was finite.

The quantitative

limitation of energy was his main thrust against the golden rule as a standard of behavior in society. our enemies,

he wrote,

have earned our

love,

We can only love

by deflecting love from those who and most people are unwilling to

cheapen their love by giving it away indiscriminately.

The

maxim that a person should love his enemies because they do not deserve because

love,

he dismissed as an example of

it's impossible."56

"I believe

The only redeeming feature he

saw in the logically absurd golden rule was the consideration that society,

by adopting a standard of conduct totally at

54.

Ibid.,

11:77-78.

55.

Ibid.,

7:178.

56.

Ibid.,

21:109,

111-12.

53

variance with observed behavior, the primal desires to hurt,

was no more irrational than

to maim,

and to kill which the

golden rule was meant to counteract. Freud's interpreters have therefore rightly emphasized his dismal view of the frustrations of civilization and ability of the individual to achieve altruism.

the

Yet Freud's

gloomy thesis that civilization uniquely thwarts individual freedom is

strained,

if not perverse;

in fact,

no one is

more restricted than a savage bound by magic spells and cantations,

in-

and his frustration is not less because he is

unaware of it.

More importantly,

are precisely that:

the frustrations of life

they are limitations

inherent in human

life itself and arise from the situation that society is a necessity rather than a luxury.

A good argument could even

be made that civilization has expanded freedom. this point is obvious, has considerably indeed,

Politically,

but in sexual behavior also the savage

less license than the civilized man.

as Freud argued,

If,

civilization is based on the renun-

ciation of primary sex drives,

one wonders about the

testimony of poets through the ages about the salutary effect of

love on productivity,

. .

creativeness,

and accomplishments

.57

in living.

57. Hughes, Consciousness and Society, p. 138; Paul A. Robinson, The Freudian Left: Wilhelm Reich, Geza Roheim, Herbert Marcuse (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), p. 3; 0. Mannoni, Freud (New York: Pantheon Books, 1971), p. 161; Frank E. Manuel, "The Use and Abuse of Psychology in History,"

54

Perhaps the preceding analysis

is a little too harsh

since Freud did after all recognize the advantageous pulses at the root of civilization.

im-

Insofar as society

restrained violence he regarded it as a definitely benevolent institution and its progress as encouraging. mism was most intense about the possibility the persistent aggressiveness of man, ineradicable.

Freud's pessiof eliminating

which he regarded as

Exhibiting no faith in the

socialist or Com-

munist assertion that aggression was a corollary of property and capitalism,

he wrote,

"Experience teaches us

that the

world is no nursery."58

Peace and good will,

of idealists everywhere,

Freud regarded as poor and ineffec-

the remedies

tive counterweights to violence.

Since aggression could not

be conquered by love or pacifism,

the one

society was the useful actions.

avenue of hope to

sublimation of the aggression into Thus,

socially

a person with unusually strong de-

structive wishes might be encouraged to become a wood chopper or a butcher. The omnipresence of violent and hostile activities by mankind throughout history was proof to Freud that aggression was the outward manifestation of the death instinct,

Daedalus 100 (Winter 1971):198; May, Love and Will, p. 83. On this point see the interesting article by George Gilder, "In Defense of Monogamy," Commentary 58 (November 1974) :33.

58. Freud,

p.

Freud, Standard Edition, 92.

22:168,

213; Balogh,

55 Thanatos.

Since civilization was in the service of the life

instinct of Eros,

aggression was therefore the greatest

obstacle to the development of civilization.

In primitive

times both the death and life instincts were curbed,

tamed,

and utilized for the benefit of society by the brute force of those in control.

Today the same task is performed first

by parents and later,

in maturity,

no case is

by the superego.

the control or utilization ever complete,

But in and his-

tory is therefore the endless recurring strife in every generation between Eros and Thanatos.

Because any reconcili-

ation of conflicting forces is bound to be frustrating,

Freud

assumed that it was a man's tragic circumstance and his exalted opportunity

to be discontented in civilization.5 9

Civilization and Its Discontents,

though grounded in

nineteenth-century mechanistic views of the human body and mind,

is best viewed as a corrective to the optimistic

eighteenth-century Enlightenment view that society could be based on rationality.

Only Freud's pessimism and his bleak

view of human nature attract the attention of the reader today because the purely scientific underpinnings of Freud's thesis--that psychic energy aggression

is innate and limited and that

is inborn--have long since been discredited,

leav-

ing only the standards of history and philosophy with which to appraise the book.

59.

Freud,

Freud was the first to recognize that

Standard Edition,

21:118-19,

124-25,

141.

56 Civilization

and its Discontents might be judged uncharitably;

he called it "superfluous" chology, 6 0

but as the

compared to his work in psy-

forerunner of

the psychohistorian he

demanded the right to make errors which all pioneers are granted. Still,

he wanted to do something more in his historical

research than just survey new ground

cipline.

In Totem and Taboo,

Freud's intention is clear:

for an emerging dis-

first published in 1913, it was no less an ambition than

to unearth the very meaning of history itself.

The import

of all life he found in the earliest event in history,

which

to him was synonymous with the most important event in history.

With inexorable logic he traced his

sonality,

the roots of neurosis,

theory of per-

and the function of

society

to an event which was less historical than cosmic in significance,

a fact which led him to say,

was the Deed." 6

1

What was this deed? Complex.

"In the beginning

It was the deed of the Oedipus

Freud postulated that in prehistoric times people

lived in small groups called "primal hordes" controlled by a dominant male who kept all the females, daughters,

60.

for his own sexual pleasures.

Freud,

Letters,

pp.

his wives and his In suggesting this

389-90.

61. Philip Rieff, "The Meaning of History and Religion in Freud's Thought," in Psychoanalysis and History, ed. Bruce Mazlish (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963), p. 25; Freud, Standard Edition, 13:161.

57 possibility Freud was merely accepting the usual late nineteenth-century anthropological thought since Charles Darwin and other naturalists were of the same opinion.

The

uniqueness of Freud's interpretation was his analysis of the relationships between the

sons and the old man of the

horde. 6 2 The prehistoric father must have been formidable

indeed,

for Freud noted that even today the archaic memory of the powerful but distant father remains a forceful influence in childhood.

In history,

wide,

even magical,

powers have been

attributed to kings and other father substitutes; primitive people

the followers are not even permitted to

look at the ruler lest they incur his wrath. father was grimly potent beyond our

So the primal

imaginations;

fact the Superman Nietzche speaks of:

no one but himself,

his own words.

or other people

he was in

"Consistency leads

us to assume that his ego had few libidinal ties;

his needs."6 3

among some

he loved

in so far as they served

Let us permit Freud to continue the story

in

There is

a violent and jealous father who keeps all the females for himself and drives away his sons as they grow up. . . . One day the brothers who had been

62. Jerome Neu, "Genetic Explanation in Totem and Taboo," in Freud: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Richard Wollheim (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books,

1974), p.

384; Freud, Standard Edition,

63. Freud, Standard Edition, 18:123, 125.

13:10-12,

13:243,

23:109,

125. 13:41-51,

58

driven out came together, killed and devoured their father and so made an end of the patriarchal horde. United they had the courage to do and succeed in

doing what would have been impossible for them individually. . . . Cannibal savages as they were it goes without saying that they devoured their victim as well

as killing him.6 4

But,

horrible as this event is for rational people to

contemplate, wards,

the most significant

feature happened after-

with tremendous consequences

human society. savages,

for the development of

The victorious brothers,

began to experience remorse,

though ignorant

for they had loved

their father just as they had hated him,

and when they

started to quarrel over how to share the women, perceived the necessity of social organization squabbling.

Accordingly,

they dimly to prevent

the brothers devised incest taboos

and some structure of government to prevent the Oedipal conflict from recurring.

As contrition for the enormity of

their murder they developed rituals concerning the dead father and began to worship, according

to Freud.

thereby

inventing religion,

65

Freud was struck by the similarity between his proposed religion of the brothers after the Oedipal crime and what anthropologists call totem cults.

In these primitive re-

ligious systems the clansmen or members are

forbidden to

kill an animal or spirit called the totem or to marry within

64.

Ibid.,

65.

Ibid., pp.

13:141-42. 143-44,

146.

59

the clan.

According to Freud,

these prohibitions

are

designed to counteract powerful impulses to do what is prohibited and to mitigate the guilt of having once in fact killed the totem, primal father. the

which was originally in every case the

The primitive

same guilty knowledge

fear of the dead he traced to

that the dead had been murdered by

the living.6 6 Inasmuch as the primal crime had probably happened numerous times,

all humans shared in the collective guilt.

But the guilt was more than just a mark of collective shame, for from the guilty conscience came individual renunciation and hence civilization. was proof of

The very sensation of guilt itself

incipient humanity,

but more importantly it

contributed to the development of the individual conscience, the

superego.

Before

the superego appeared,

people felt

remorse only after a deed was done, but since the irrational superego made no distinction between an action contemplated and one completed,

each individual after

the primal crime

carried within himself a means of restricting his

activities

as great as the power of the primal father had been. explaining

the awesome power of the

quote Hamlet:

66. 67.

Edition,

In

superego Freud liked to

"So conscience does make cowards of us all." 6 7

Ibid., pp. Mannoni,

21:137;

3-4,

Freud,

2, 140, pp.

31-32,

161-62;

58.

Freud,

Standard

Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy,

p.

190.

60 Did Freud really believe the primal crime was an actual historical event?

Very probably he did,

and one of his fol-

lowers even suggested the precise date when it occurred: just before the last ice age.

Yet Freud was reluctant to

commit himself to a theory which seems so bizarre to common sense.

At one time he referred to it as a "scientific myth,"

and at another as a "just-so"

story.6 8

little doubt he believed it represented

Still, some

there seems

substratum of

actual fact. Critics have had a field day with the primal horde theory.

Anthropologists have been almost unanimous

nouncing it;

Bronislaw Malinowski,

for example,

it on the grounds it was logically impossible:

in de-

objected to if the primal

brothers were men the murder was improbable,

and if they

were animals,

But the main

their remorse was impossible.

objection has not been philosophic but scientific.

From

what little is known of primate behavior among present-day anthropoid apes

and among our remote ancestors Homo erectus

and Australopithecinae,

no evidence exists of a primal horde.

What evidence is available seems to contradict other presumptions of Freud as well. 6 9

68. Hughes, Consciousness and Society, pp. 130-31; Nelson, Freud, p. 129; Freud, Standard Edition, 18:112, 135; Theodore Reik, Myth and Guilt: The Crime and Punishment of Mankind (New York: George Braziller, 1957), pp. 192-93. 69. Neu, "Genetic Explanation in Totem and Taboo," in Wollheim, Freud, pp. 366-93; A. L. Kroeber, "Totem and Taboo in Retrospect," in Mazlish, Psychoanalysis and History,

61 Although apes thrive in a wide variety of terrain and, like people, ments,

have different behavior

none of them appear to exhibit the sexual jealousy

Freud assumed, of one apes

in different environ-

leader.

nor do they as a rule True,

(but not all)

live under the tutelage

there is a dominance

but sex has little to do with it since

these animals appear to enjoy dominance for the

system among some

for its own sake or

satisfaction of the prestige they derive from it.

Interestingly,

even among apes,

there is

engage in mother-son or brother-sister Exactly why

is a mystery, but this

some reluctance to

sexual liaisons.

fact patently contradicts

Freud's assumption that incest is prohibited because people are naturally inclined toward its practice.7 As for our hominid ancestors, Homo erectus,

0

Australopithecinae

and

they probably lived in groups no bigger than

Freud's primal horde,

but there is no reason to believe

their sexual behavior was fundamentally different from their more apelike ancestors. extreme

The internicine

aggressiveness and

sexual jealousy which Freud postulates certainly

seem overstated in view of the consideration that primitive men depended on hunting and had few tools

in severely

pp. 45-49; Bronislaw Malinowski, Sex and Repression in Savage Society (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1927), pp.

153,

164-65. 70.

Derek Freeman,

"Totem and Taboo:

A

Reappraisal,"

The Psychoanalytic Study of Society 4 (1967):9-34; Robert Claiborne,

Climate,

& Company,

1970), pp.

Man,

92,

and History

177.

(New York:

W. W.

Norton

62

hostile environments.

Under such circumstances,

aggressiveness and jealousy would have been deleterious the

survival of the

to

species. 71

Freud went astray in concluding that primitive people were more expressive of their emotions than the civilized; contemporary is true.

anthropologists tell us that just the opposite

Whereas Freud assumed that the ceremonies of the

primitive were derived from past actions, rituals are usually rooted in fantasy.

in fact their

Freud reversed the

primitive process of making a reality of a fantasy because his system assumed a continuity between the history of the primitive man and the fantasies of the modern. pologist fantasies, fantasies;

to Freud,

primitive or modern,

To an anthro-

were always

what are now fantasies had once been

facts.72 The greatest of all fantasies to Freud was religion, which he discussed in his book The Future of an Illusion. Though he called religion fact;

an illusion,

it had once been a

God the father had actually lived here on earth:

primal father was the image of God.

the

Freud wrote in sug-

gestive terms of the relationship between religion and the

71.

Claiborne,

Climate,

p. 111.

72. Freeman, "Totem and Taboo," pp. 21, 27; Mannoni, Freud, p. 133; Sydney G. Margolin, "Freud's Concept of Constitution," in Greenfield, Psychoanalysis, p. 137.

63

primal horde,

and his follower Theodore

Reik elaborated

further upon the theory.7 3 According to Reik and Freud,

the Christian myth of the

fall of man is a distorted memory of the primal crime. was the brother who killed and ate God, of the Bible.

the forbidden

Jesus Christ represented the contrite

to atone for his sin against the father,

and had himself kilted, self.

fruit son who,

renounced all women

thereby becoming God the Father him-

The cross and the Christmas

primitive totem,

Adam

tree were

symbols of the

and the Mass was a commemoration of the eat-

ing of the father.

Hence,

the mainsprings of religion were

guilt and sexual repression,

leading Freud to regard it as a

kind of sophisticated mass neurosis: . . . the neuroses exhibit on the one hand striking and far reaching points of agreement with those great so-

cial institutions,

art,

religion,

and philosophy.

But

on the other hand they seem like distortions of them. It might be maintained that a case of hysteria is a caricature of a work of art, that an obsessional neurosis is a caricature of a religion and that a paranoic delusion is a caricature of a philosophic system.7 4 Freud's unflattering assessment of the function of religion was rooted in the idea that the cure of guilt led to the redemption of man from the curse of history.7 5

73. 175,

Freud,

Standard Edition,

21:42.

74. Reik Myth and Guilt, pp. 21, 283, 305; Freud, Standard Edition, 75.

Rieff,

Psychoanalysis

23, 77, 13:73.

"The Meaning of History,"

and History,

pp.

43-44.

126,

154,

in Mazlish,

64

his attitude toward religion was

Consequently,

invariably antagonistic.

Like Bertrand Russell he believed

it not merely insubstantial but harmful: It has ruled human society for many thousands of years and has had time to show what it can achieve. If it

had succeeded in making the majority of mankind happy, in comforting them, in reconciling them to life and in making them into vehicles of civilization, no one would dream of attempting to alter the existing conditions.7 6 Hostile as Freud was to religion, lessly fascinating.

he found the subject end-

In his conception of history the most

significant event was a religious one, Oedipus Complex,

the myth of the

since the archaic motif of the initially

rebellious but ultimately redeemed sons is common to religions everywhere.7 7

One

is tempted to see

in Freud's

secular eschatology a re-emergence of ancient Jewish prophecy on the virtues of obedience and the transitoriness of defiance. Though a lapsed Jew, history of his people.

Freud was deeply engrossed in the

Toward the end of his career he was

finally able to satisfy a lifelong ambition of writing a book about Moses,

whom he extravagantly admired.

Moses and

Monotheism is a good example of Freud's limitations as a historian,

for though he had evidently consulted

most acceptable sources of his day,

76.

Freud,

Standard Edition,

some of the

such as James G. Frazer's

21:37.

77. Ibid., 21:30-31; Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Essays on Psychoanalysis (New York: W. W. Norton & Company,

1933), p. 88.

65

The Golden Bough and W. the Semites,

Robertson Smith's The Religion of

he consistently disregarded historical methods

in constructing his hypothesis.

When Freud admitted that

Moses was "based only on psychological probabilities and lacked any objective proof"7 8

for

he was being charitable,

his theory about Moses does not follow from his psychologial theory or from his historical research.

In contrast,

the

primal horde thesis can be defended on the ontological argument that it provides the indispensable primum mobile for all subsequent activities of the human mind.

In using this

interpretation Freud may have been wrong,

but he managed to

imbue it with an aura of cosmic grandeur and significance, entirely missing in Moses.

In effect,

the legend of the primal horde,

in Moses we are retold

and history which happens a

second time is always pathetically stale.

His hypothesis, Moses'

name,

supported by the Egyptian origin of

was that Moses himself was an Egyptian.

based on a real probability,

Freud's evidence

Though

for Moses'

Egyptian ancestry is about equivalent to arguing that a slave in the ante-bellum South must have been white because

78.

Freud,

Standard Edition,

23:17.

Cf. the following:

Mannoni, Freud, p. 108; Freud, Standard Edition, 20:67; H. L. Philip, "A Question of Method," in Monotheism and D. C. Heath Moses, ed. Robert J. Christen (Lexington, Mass.:

and Company,

1969), pp. 46-47,

53; Salo W.

Baron in Mazlish,

Psychoanalysis and History, p. 55; Erik H. Erikson, "On the In Search of Gandhi," Nature of Psycho-Historical Evidence: Daedalus 97 (Summer 1968):710.

66

he had the name of a white man.

Moses'

to Freud,

the iconoclastic Pharaoh of

was that of Akhenaten,

religion,

according

the New Kingdom who established the worship of one diety, the sun disk,

but other than the monotheism of the two re-

ligious leaders,

conventional historians have not been

impressed by the similarities obvious to Freud.7 9 Using an old Jewish legend about Moses as his Freud speculated that the Hebrews

source,

"rose against him one day,

killed him and threw off the religion of Aten which had been imposed on them." 8 0 that in this case the

The reader will be relieved to hear conspirators did not eat the victim.

When another prophet arose about five hundred years later to preach the worship of Yahweh, the first Moses with the

the Jews mingled legends

about

second one because of the hidden

burden of guilt they carried.

The Messiah legend developed

from the repentent hope that Moses would return, militant monotheism of the Jews resulted

and the

from the double

measure of guilt they inherited from the killing of Moses and the murder of the primal father.8 1 To what purpose is this unrestrained First,

speculation?

Freud could not believe that so insignificant a group

as the Jews could have contrived monotheism;

it must have

79. 36-37.

9, 24,

Freud,

Standard Edition,

80.

Ibid., pp. 60-61.

81.

Ibid.,

pp. 41,

44,

85-86,

23:10-11,

89.

27,

67

originated with the powerful Egyptians,

since the obscure

desert god of Yahweh could not have been the prototype of the Christian and Jewish diety.

Secondly,

Moses is intended

to buttress the primal horde theory of religion. points,

historically,

rebuttal,

On these

Freud's argument is hardly worthy of

but only in a secondary sense was writing history

Freud's aim.

He once commented that the writers of history

wanted to influence

their contemporaries more

wanted to find objective

truth.8 2

than they

Though in a limited sense

his comment is true of himself--he was always very conscious

of his place in history--Freud wrote Moses basically to appease

a strong inner force of his personality which re-

garded history as a riddle to be deciphered.

themes predominant in his life and work; Joseph legend, Oedipus,

the

Consider the

the irony of the

the enigma of the Sphinx,

the tragedy of

secret of the primal horde,

the duality of

Moses are all mysteries in which causes have the opposite effects from those intended, is as elusive

in which obvious

as the grin of a Cheshire cat.

interpretation If most his-

torians define history as the part of the past which has been remembered to the present,

to Freud history was the

aspect of previous ages which had been forgotten. his task,

he thought,

had been obliterated.

82.

Ibid., pp.

It was

to solve the puzzle of why that memory Perhaps for this reason,

50,

64-65,

20:68,

11:83-84.

he was most

68

at ease writing universal history and anthropology,

areas in

which specific historical facts and events were not of crucial importance. Only twice did Freud endeavor

Thomas Woodrow Wilson:

a remotely

and one of these works,

history,

or analytic

narrative

to write

A Psychological

was such an

Study,

The

egregious failure that Freud's reputation suffered.

other work Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood, is more of a character sketch than a full biography,

but a

considerably more successful work which exposes Freud's abilities as well as his faults as a historian.

Though

Freud had cautioned others against casually applying psychoanalysis to biography,

he could not resist the temptation to He defended his

study so enigmatic a character as Leonardo. project,

even though he recognized the inability of psycho-

analysis to understand genius,

on the grounds

that the

inquisitive Leonardo himself might have blessed

such a

daring and ambitious enterprise.8 3 Freud's point of departure was the only reference Leonardo recorded of his childhood, suckled by a bird. nibbio,

Leonardo referred to the bird as a

which Freud erroneously translated as vulture

ally, nibbio means kite).

83.

p.

a dream about his being

In the medieval legend all

Jones, Life and Work,

285; Freud,

(actu-

3:459; Freud,

Standard Edition, 11:130-31,

be discussed in a later chapter.

Letters,

136; Wilson will

69 vultures were female--thus their association with the Virgin Mary.

Freud argued that the dream was a reflection of

the

situation in Leonardo's childhood of an overly seductive mother and an absent father,

a combination which directed

the Renaissance artist toward latent homosexuality.8 4 The question of Leonardo's homosexuality is much

disputed,

since there is little historical evidence for

overt homosexual behavior. the

Freud was not the first to make

suggestion, but like others his only evidence is

unreliable and circumstantial and,

to sustain the thesis,

he

had to disregard the historical context of Leonardo's times. Thus he theorized that since aggression was a virtue among Renaissance men, normal.

Leonardo's passivity must have been ab-

He argued that Leonardo's practice of releasing

caged birds exposed a deeper sadism,

though such a custom

was a common ritual at the time as a good luck charm. Finally,

Freud discovered psychological significance

Leonardo's veneration of St.

Anne,

a religious

in

sentiment

which was merely the attitude prevalent among the painter's contemporaries.85

84.

Freud,

Standard Edition,

"Leonardo and Freud:

11:61-62; Meyer Schapiro,

An Art-Historical Study,"

the History of Ideas 17

(April 1956):148,

151,

Journal of

155-56;

Robert Coles, "Shrinking History," New York Times Book Review, 22 February 1973, p. 15; Kurt Robert Eissler, Leonardo Da Vinci: Psychoanalytic Notes on the Enigma (New York: International Universities Press, 1961), p. 59. 85.

Schapiro,

"Leonardo and Freud," pp.

158,

175.

70

Freud was on somewhat firmer ground when he concluded that Leonardo's heterosexual life was decidedly abnormal,

and this analysis may be the most valuable part of his work. Quoting Leonardo's statement that "The act of procreation and everything connected with it is so disgusting that man-

kind would soon die out if it were not an old established custom,"86 Freud found in Leonardo a man who had successfully sublimated all of his

As Freud put it,

for knowledge.

of loving." 8 7

sexual desires into a passion "He has investigated

Leonardo exhibited,

instead

one

according to Freud,

of three ways in which sexuality and intellectual curiosity might be combined.

The most unfortunate were

those people

in which both sexuality and curiosity were inhibited.

Sec-

ondly there were those with incomplete sublimation with neurotic symptoms often interfering with activity. third group was the most fortunate since almost total and neurosis was absent. this last group was the artist was

sublimation was

Having the traits of

secret of Leonardo's genius.

The

like a curious child in whom sexuality is latent:

all his life he liked to play, things.88

The

to investigate,

to toy with

Freud spoke of Leonardo's "playful delight" and

Standard Edition,

86.

Freud,

87.

Ibid., pp.

88.

Ibid., pp. 79-80,

74-75,

77. 127.

11:69.

71

proposed that other geniuses might have the same characterYet in Leonardo's genius the defenses used to

istics.89

sublimate his sexuality required that he never stay long on one project;

he had to fly from one thing to another to

maintain the

integrity of his personality.

Whatever one

thinks of Freud's blunders in historical perspective analysis of the great artist,

in this an

Leonardo is nevertheless

intriguing and sympathetic pioneering attempt in psychohistory.90

It stands considerably above much of the even with their advantage of supe-

material his followers,

rior historical knowledge,

Freud

have been able to write.

himself had a high opinion of his works in

anthropology, history,

and religion, but he was aware that,

not being empirically verifiable or capable of clinical testing,

they might harm the progress of psychoanalysis or,

as he put it,

91 upset "the psychoanalytic applecart."

Though admitting the weakness in his reconstructions, nevertheless thought the application of psychoanalysis society worthwhile.

Above all,

that he was not a reductionist. example,

p.

to

he tried to make it clear He was not claiming,

for

that Leonardo was a genius because he was a latent

89.

Ibid., p.

90.

Ibid.,

178; Coles, 91.

he

127.

pp 66-67;

Schapiro,

"Leonardo and Freud,"

"Shrinking History," p.

Freud,

17.

Standard Edition, 11:66;

Political and Social, p.

111.

Roazen,

Freud:

72

homosexual;

he was sufficiently astute as a historian to

recognize that all events have Even when Freud stressed one

a multiplicity of causes.

factor in his analyses, he was

not claiming a simplistic priority for it. 9 2 Several conclusions are derivable from Freud's excursions into history.

First,

nature was everywhere the

assuming as he did that human

same, he used the

same case

method in history that he did in clinical work.93 necessarily,

was a limiting agent in his work,

his preconceptions, have been avoided,

study

This,

but,

given

it is difficult to see how bias could though this method shackled the entire

mass of his work to a Procrustean bed.

Second,

his percep-

tiveness when engaged in personality analysis or in illustrating universal myths was cancelled by an astonishing

lack

of perspective in confronting the specifics of history in time and place.

This combination has thoroughly confused

his followers and enemies,

for neither feel

safe in ignoring

92. Freud, Standard Edition, 23:41; Hughes, Consciousness and Society, p. 131; Freud, Standard Edition, 13:100. Freud's call for moderation has not been heeded by many of his followers. Cf. E. J. Hundert, "History, Psychology, and the Study of Deviant Behavior," Journal of the History of Ideas 33 (Spring 1972):456-57; Michel Certeau, "Ce que Freud fait de l'histoire: a propos d'une nevose demoniaque au XVIIe siecle," Annales, E. S. C. 25 (1970):654-77; Coles,

"Shrinking History," p. 16. 93. Warner Muensterberger, Psychoanalytic Anthropology After Totem and Taboo (New York: Taplinger Publishing Com-

pany,

1970), pp.

83-84; Freud,

Standard Edition,

13:184-87,

18:123; Bruce Mazlish, "Freud as Philosopher of History," Christen, Monotheism and Moses, p. 54.

in

73

In spite of his mistakes,

him.

he was by his lights writing

seriously of problems in the past fundamental to the human

He was no pop history psychologist,

condition.

no Desmond

Morris striving to titillate the masses with fables of our lascivious progenitors.

Thus his

followers have been tor-

mented by whether to believe or not to believe. for example,

lish,

Bruce Maz-

calls Freud's historical writings "merely

hypotheses or useful fictions, heuristic devices to allow for a provisional ordering of the data." maybe they are real events,

But he adds that

or maybe they are psychological,

rather than historical truths.

Finally, the historical works of Freud are considerable distances away from scientific or positivist history;

it is

no surprise to read that amidst his speculations on Moses and Oedipus,

Freud believed firmly that Bacon wrote the

plays of Shakespeare.

Like all novices to any discipline

Freud began not with the method but with himself,

and

in

every historical metaphor of his we can see the mystery of a famous and powerful son of an obscure father, Freud. be his

The temptation own

father,

rises

to state

that

to have created himself.

torical rather than personal terms,

the

story of

Freud wanted Or,

to

put in his-

was history only a

Mazlish, "Freud as Philosopher of History." in 94. Christen, Monotheism and Moses, p. 54; the reference at the beginning of the paragraph is to Desmond Morris's The Naked Study of the Human Animal (London: A Zoologist's Ape:

Cape,

1967).

74

the story of man's desire to chal-

generational conflict, lenge his father? 9 5

No yes or no answer to the question is possible because Freud never addressed himself directly to any conceptual framework of history. psychology,

Essentially a magnification of his

Freud's history existed to explain the

action of the id,

ego,

and superego.

inter-

If the ego and superego

were granted historical existence by our environment and parents,

the id's

the dawn of time.

sanction was to have been in the world from Hence the presentism Freud is often ac-

cused of is misplaced since to him no history was subsequent to the primal energence of the human personality.

Every-

thing afterwards was mere repetition of dynamic relationships constructed eons ago;

there was in his scheme no history,

because there was no room for any. Yet Freud was not Sisyphus, escape from the historical alone he saw grounds which,

for he allowed mankind one

actuality he denied.

for optimism and hope;

through science,

it was the tool

could restore the freedom lost when

the human personality was created. is no illusion.

In reason

He wrote:

"Our science

But an illusion it would be to suppose

what science cannot give us we can get elsewhere."96

95.

Roazen,

Freud:

Political and Social,

pp.

that

Here

176-77.

96. "Unsere wissenschaft ist keine Illusion. Eine Illusion aber w'ire es zu glauben, dass wir anderswoher bekommen k~nnten was sie uns nicht begen kann." Sigmund

75

Freud was not speaking of a narrow science like the minute histological researches he had done as a youth but rather of a discipline inseparable from the great questions about life Psychoanalysis

always asked by religions and philosophers.

could help us to live life because it was a synthetic and combining science;

the good analyst,

Freud wrote,

study the "history of civilization, mythology, of religion and literature." 9 7

should

the psychology

His own credentials to carry

this goal to fruition he believed inadequate: For not but you the

I am not really a man of science, not an observer, I am nothing an experimenter, and not a thinker. by temperament a conquistador--an adventurer, if want to translate the word--with the curiosity, boldness, and tenacity that belongs to that type

of being.98 To others he bequeathed the task of confirming the nonentity of history or of restoring its legitimacy;

in science he

deposited all his hopes for the merit of the human condition; for himself he claimed only the role of a stranger on a new continent.

And the comparison is not inappropriate.

Like

Cortes who learned nothing of the Aztecs from his exposure to them, Freud in all his historical writing never grasped the versatile nuances of historical

inquiry.

Die Zukunft einer Freud, Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse. Cf. Illusion (Frankfurt: Fischer Bucherei, 1971), p. 135. Fromm, Sigmund Freud's Mission, p. 2; Freud, Standard Edition, 21:53, 22:174; Ricoeur, Freud, p. 327; Rieff, Triumph of the Therapeutic, p. 29. Psychoanalytic Edward Hitschmann, Great Men: 97. International Universities Press, 1956), Studies (New York: p. 4. 98.

Jones,

Life and Work,

1:348.

CHAPTER II

THE PSYCHOHISTORICAL

Freud would have been astonished

DEBATE

that

of all

the

countries of the world America was where his theories met their most enthusiastic reception and widest utilization, but little doubt exists that he would have approved of the American attempt to apply psychoanalysis to other disciplines, and especially after 1958,

to history.

Since the beginning

of psychohistory in that year, his followers within the historical profession have engaged in a debate with his opponents over the merits of psychohistorical inquiry,

an

encounter in historiography which is the subject of this chapter.

Insofar as no mandatory and universal theory of

history is recognized within the profession,

this psycho-

historical conflict is indicative of the philosophical eclecticism accepted within the ranks of historians. the

situation

in many academic

disciplines,

Unlike

a historian

of

today has both the freedom and the problem of finding a method and a philosophy as well

as the task of mastering his

subject matter.

1. 0. Mannoni, Freud, trans. Pantheon Books, 1971), p. 181.

76

Renaud Bruce

(New York:

77

Historians of an earlier generation had no such diffiAn apocryphal but revealing tale is that when

culties.

Fustel de Coulanges, plauded by his

an old-fashioned positivist,

was ap-

students after delivering a particularly

rousing lecture,

"It is not I who

he halted them curtly:

2 speaks to you, but history which speaks through my mouth."

To the historians of Coulanges'

time history,

while perhaps

not as precise as physics, was nevertheless a budding science. If Freud,

as a twentieth-century irrationalist,

deserves some

of the blame for shattering that view, his followers perhaps owe to the historical profession some service

toward recon-

structing the edifice of historical thought.

Yet for all

their certainty or maybe because of it the scientific hisone can hardly

torians also had a theory of motivation;

escape psychology in writing history. example,

A.

J. P. Taylor,

for

was espousing a theory of motivation when he charac-

teristically and flippantly said,

"All men are mad who devote

themselves to the pursuit of power when they could be fishing,

painting pictures or simply sitting in the

were sane there would be no history."3

sun.

If men

Or when Sidney Hook

wrote that without Lenin there could have been no Russian

David Hackett Fischer, Historians' Fallacies: 2. Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (New York: Harper Torch-

books, 3. Nation,

1970),

p.

6.

Theodore Roszak, 24 November 1962,

"The Historian as Psychiatrist," p. 346.

78

Revolution,

he too was making assumptions about basic human

behavior. 4 Yet the motivational theories of the great majority of historians

for the

last century,

in contrast to those

twentieth-century depth psychology,

of

have been rationalistic

and oriented toward obvious determinants of behavior. Jacques Rousseau's Confessions,

for example,

Jean

have been

accepted as a reasonably accurate self-portrait of the philosopher's emotions.

To most historians the main thrusts

to action come from basic human desires: its own

sake,

desire for money,

love of power for

loyalty to family,

and sim-

ilar impulses.

Historians have recognized a multiplicity of

causes but have

rarely

seen contradictions inherent in mo-

tives or obvious influences.

Thus we are told that Napoleon

craved power or Robespierre wanted all Frenchmen to be free and virtuous.

Two exceptions do stand out within the tra-

ditional framework,

however;

Catholic accounts of Luther

often read like a parody of psychohistory in emphasizing unconscious motives,

and the prescientific historians with

their emphasis on symbols psychoanalytic history.

anticipate,

though crudely,

And these exceptions indicate that

4. Sidney Hook, The Hero in History: A Study in Limitation and Possibility (New York: John Day Company,

1943), pp.

154,

203,

209,

214.

79

psychological history has and subordinate R. G.

to a degree always played a minor

role in the rationalistic tradition. 5

Collingwood,

the twentieth century's foremost

champion of idealistic history,

concluded that all history

which developed laws was psychological history and he traced its origin to Thucydides.

To Collingwood,

of history was to tell a story through

the real function

"the re-enactment of

past experience, "6 but the fundamental question confronting the psychohistorian

is:

can one re-enact a past experience

entirely in terms of rationalistic motives?

Collingwood

in

advancing the idealistic method is fond of comparing a historical problem to the mystery of solving a murder.7 each case evidence is gathered,

data is collected,

In

and

finally the experience is re-enacted in the investigator's mind,

leading to the

solving of a problem.

Yet,

to continue

5. Erik Erikson, "On the Nature of Psycho-Historical Evidence: In Search of Gandhi," Daedalus 97 (Summer 1968): 701; Alain Besancon, "Psychoanalysis: Auxiliary Science or

Historical Method," Journal of Contemporary History 3 (April 1968):ll. See Paul Schilder, Psychoanalysis, Man and Society (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1951), p. 75. Adam Bruno Ulam, Stalin: The Man and His Era (New York: Viking Press, 1973) is a recent example of the power-for-its-own-sake theory. 6. R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (London: Oxford University Press, 1956), pp. 29-30, 282. See E. J. Hundert, "History, Psychology, and the Study of Deviant Behavior," Journal of the History of Ideas 33 (Spring 1972): 453; and Hans Meyerhoff, "On Psychoanalysis as History,," Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalytic Review 49 (Summer

1962):6. 7.

Collingwood,

Idea of History, pp.

266-68.

80 the analogy further,

a jury or detective might want to know

more than merely the details of how the action was carried out.

While it is absolutely indispensable to know the course

of events,

it is also important to know why someone acted,

whether he was sane or insane, with hatred--in short,

or crazed with love,

or

filled

some irrationality must be admitted to

the process. Irrationality is

the part of the mystery where the his-

torian is most reluctant to speculate,

and the reason may be

a fear that any psychological explanation admitted as evidence is necessarily an attempt at total explanation, what is usually called reductionism. history is reductionist,

biography.

or

No doubt much psycho-

not to mention popular debunking

A good example is the work of Lytton Strachey

who tried to make his sketches more perceptive by emphasizing the insignificant and unflattering idiosyncracies of his characters,

but psychohistory does not have to degenerate

into character depreciation.

To state,

for example,

that

Woodrow Wilson had a severe neurosis does not necessarily imply that his Versailles diplomacy was doomed to failure. An explanation may be meaningful without being the total or the only explanation that applies in the social world,

unlike

to a situation;

an action

in the physical sciences,

not necessarily produce the same reaction every time. Accordingly,

the most fruitful goal of psychohistory

should be in

suggesting possibilities;

in the words of

does

81 H.

Stuart

Hughes,

Our goal as historians is not always to assign a motive; . . . we may prefer to suggest no more than

the preparatory elements in the spiritual biography of a historical actor

that years later will narrow

his range of choice.

We may simply try to find the

bent of character,

the thwarted emotion,

the hidden

trauma limiting his possibilities of future achievement.8 A

second reason for the reluctance of historians to

accept psychoanalytic explanation is the belief that psychoanalysis is no real explanation at all,

that it often is

mere tautology or is inadequate scientifically. of Freudianism has suffered from its

The cause

inability to point to

an entirely successful record of curing people of mental disorders,

and skeptics attribute that therapy which does

work to the power of

suggestion rather than psychoanalysis,

since Freud's idea that people tend to resist his theory is hardly convincing in view of the willingness of a great many people to accept psychoanalysis without traumatic difficulties.

To embrace a theory which has substantial doubts

about its empirical validity entails unbearable risks of looking foolish to historians who pride themselves on the reputation of avoiding the grossly trendy, exotic

faddish,

or

interpretations which afflict other disciplines.

8. H. Stuart Hughes, History as Art and Science: Twin Vistas on the Past (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 52; Jacques Barzun, Clio and the Doctors: Psycho-History, Quanto-History and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), p. 53; Theodore Rabb and Robert I. Rotberg, The Family in History: Interdisciplinary Essays (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), p. 118.

82

However,

the lack of scientific proof for psychoanalytic

theory does not preclude its use in history,

since very few

research techniques of historians have scientific validity.9 Neither historians nor psychoanalysts can the scientific question both ways.

legitimately argue

Historians cannot attack

psychoanalysis for wanting to introduce scientific rigor into history and then attack it for not being scientific enough; and psychologists cannot assail historians for ignoring psy-

chology when they are guilty of ignoring history by disregarding the influence of culture on individual behavior. Recently psychologists and psychohistorians have professed more

appreciation of the variables of time and milieu

operating on the individual.10 movement away from reductionism, than practiced.

Joel Kovel,

Though this is a refreshing it is more often preached

to take a particularly flagrant

9. Earl E. Thorpe, The Old South: A Psychohistory (Durham, N.C.: Seeman Printery, 1972), p. 9; J. C. Wisdom, "Testing and Interpretation Within a Session," in Freud: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Richard Wollheim (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1972), p. 340; Ludwig Wittgenstein, "Conversations on Freud," in ibid., p. 2. See also Garry Wills, Nixon Agonistes (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1970), p. 350; Paul A. Robinson, The Freudian Left: Wilhelm Reich, Geza Roheim, Herbert Marcuse (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), p. 3. The thesis presented here, that neither history nor psychoanalysis is an exact science, does not imply that the truth that either is able to uncover by its methods is in any way inferior to so-called "scientific" truth. 10. Schilder, Psychoanalysis, Man and Society, p. Allen Wheelis, The Quest for Identity (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1958), pp. 71-72. See also Thomas S. Szasz, "The Second Sin," Harpers 246 (March 1973):72.

248;

83

case,

in his book White Racism:

A Psychohistory,

specif-

ically denied he was trying to explain racism by its

psychological roots, but his thesis is so narrowly restricted to a few mentally aberrant factors

in racism that the influ-

ence of history is obliterated.1 1

Psychologists trying to

write psychohistory

seem to have this tendency to look for

sequential causes more than historians,

probably because

they are trained in the scientific heritage of psychology where emphasis

on analyzing data leads naturally to deter-

ministic assumptions.

The better psychohistorians

such as

Erik Erikson deny that psychohistory is necessarily deterministic and criticize those of their colleagues who write in that fashion,

but Gertrude Himmelfarb,

critic of psychohistory,

herent in psychohistory. sweeping,

a historian and

maintains that determinism is in-

Though her point may be too

she is right to the extent that psychohistory can-

not be other than deterministic and reductionistic as long as it disregards historical and cultural

11.

York:

Joel Kovel,

Vintage Books, 12.

Fischer,

White Racism:

1970),

And once

A Psychohistory

especially p.

Historians'

forces.12

Fallacies,

(New

286. p.

189;

Bruce

Mazlish, "Group Psychology and Problems of Contemporary History," Journal of Contemporary History 3 (April 1968):174; Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1958), p. 19; Gertrude Himmelfarb, "The 'New History, '" Commentary 59 (January 1975):73. See also Georges Sarton, Le'onard de Vinci et l'experience scientifique aux seizime sicle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1952), p. 11: "Je ne connais pas de livre scientifique plus arbitraire que

84 these forces are admitted,

psychohistorians

face the possi-

bility of having their own psychoanalytic explanations a back seat to traditional interpretations,

take

in effect ne-

gating and subordinating their discipline while it is still in infancy. the main

However,

this practical consideration was not

source of the reductionistic and deterministic bias

in psychohistory;

the

latter in fact was inherited from

Freud himself who at times completely ignored the environment outside the nuclear family. Both the deterministic-reductionistic disregard of culture derive hood.

trend and the

from Freud's emphasis on child-

Since he believed neurotic conflicts were determined

by childhood experiences

(though not in the crude sequential

relationship often attributed to him), that when his followers

first came

it was understandable

to write history they

would find explanations for adult behavior in childhood experiences.

These writers reduced adult actions to their

presumed origins in childhood,

but they did not really ex-

plain actions at all because they were unable

to point to

causes which could fulfill any type of predictability of effects.

Were German children,

for example,

treated any

differently under such disparate regimes as Imperial Germany, the Weimar Republic,

and the Third Reich?

Of course,

to a

ce livre de Freud." Also see Jose M. R. Delgado, Physical Control of the Mind: Toward a Psychocivilized Society (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), p. 41.

85 degree

they were,

but if childhood experiences are as sig-

nificant as the reductionists would have it, of governments

the variability

in this case is completely out of proportion

to whatever variability in childrearing practices existed.1 3 Yet so universal has been

the reductionist hold in psychology

that other scholars are somewhat astonished when a psychologist rejects

it,

as in the following report by Robert

Waelder on how other social him about the origins

scientists at a symposium asked

of Nazi-ism:

I mentioned among other factors . . . the failure of German nineteenth century liberalism, and the subsequent success of Prussian militarism. . . . I also mentioned the impact of rapid industrialization upon a society still almost feudal. . . . I was then interrupted by my host . . . ; this was not what I had been expected to contribute. As a psychoanalyst I should point out how Nazism had developed from the German form of child rearing. I replied that I did not think that there was any such relationship; in fact, political opinion did not seem to me to be determined in early childhood at all. This view was not accepted and I was told that the way the German mother holds her baby must be different from that of mothers in democracies. When we parted, it was clear that my hosts felt that they had wasted their time.14

&

13. Dietrich Orlow, "The Significance of Time and Place in Psychohistory," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 5 (Summer 1974):138; Robert Jay Lifton, "On Psychohistory," in The State of American History, ed. Herbert Bass (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970), p. 278; Karen Horney, The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (New York: W. W. Norton Company, 1937), pp. 20-21; Hughes, History as Art and Science, p. 58; Erikson, Young Man Luther, p. 18; Ernest van Den Haag, "Psychoanalysis and its Discontents," in Psycho-

,analysis, Scientific Method and Philosophy, (New York: 14.

New York University Press, Quoted in Paul Roazen,

Social Thought

ed.

1959),

Freud:

p.

Sidney Hook 108.

Political and

(New York: Alfred A. Knopf,

1968), pp.

15-16.

86 A logical sequence of early childhood reductionism is an emphasis on the pathological in adult behavior. standable

in the

Under-

light of Freud's orientation toward the ill

rather than the well,

this attitude is probably the reason

psychobiography has become associated in the popular mind with debunking:

the conclusion is

almost automatic that a

psychobiographer must view his subject as mentally deranged.

Unskilled psychohistorians have contributed to the popular view by seizing on insignificant and often derogatory incidents and traits and attributing great importance to them, but recently psychohistorians have tried to reverse the debunking image by turning in reaction to a great-man theory, sometimes as extreme as that of Thomas Carlyle. Young Man Luther is an example of such a work;

Erikson's one cannot

read it without concluding that Erikson's admiration for Luther is no less than that of the religious leader's more sympathetic,

traditional biographers.

Erikson even reserves

Luther's greatness as a characteristic incomprehensible either through the tools of psychoanalysis or history: a gift there can be no itemized bill. greatness,

therefore,

The whole ecology of

transcends many of the assumptions

which clinical work has suggested regarding the of a person. "1

"For

inner economy

5

15. Lifton, "On Psychohistory," in Bass, State of American History, pp. 281, 283; Edwin M. Yoder, "Crumby Gapsmanship," National Review, 16 August 1974, p. 936; Bruce Mazlish, "What Is Psychohistory?" Transactions of the Royal

87

Psychobiography, successes,

the area of the discipline's greatest

is undoubtedly a strength to psychohistory.

But

it is also a weakness in that psychohistory will always be merely incidental to history as long as it is tied to biography which is often peripheral to the more universal cultural concerns of admits,

the historian.

Further,

as Erikson

psychoanalysis is unable to explain why the great

are great,

and the question is still open whether any re-

lationship exists between the beliefs of a person and his personality.

One would think that these reservations would

have a humbling effect on psychohistorians. 1 6 Nevertheless,

psychobiographers have been intellectually

arrogant more often than not,

a trait also derived from Freud

who believed he was explaining in his researches what "really" happened.

Even within psychology his theory was

crystallized into dogma, disparaged as mere of real truth.

and other fields of knowledge were

superficial gropings around the outskirts

This is the reason very few psychoanalysts

Historical Society,

5th ser. 21

(1971):81.

The quotation is

from Robert Coles, "Cautious Hope," New Republic, 8 June 1974, p. 23. Also see Erik Erikson, Dimensions of New Identity (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1974), p. 13. 16. Robert J. Lifton, History and Human Survival: Essays on the Young and Old, Survivors and the Dead, Peace and War, and on Contemporary Psychohistory (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 294; Hundert, "History, Psychology, and the Study of Deviant Behavior," p. 457; Hook, Psychoanalysis, pp. 232-33. See also Lewis Spitz, "Psychohistory and History: The Case of Young Man Luther," Soundings 56 (Summer

1973) :190.

88 have bothered to

study the procedure and rules of historical

research before plunging into the realms of Clio.

These

eager writers have often facilely assumed that history was a collection of known facts;

all they needed to do to perfect

it was to apply the magic of psychoanalytic insights to this fund of solid knowledge.1 7 Neither history nor psychoanalysis is "known" to its practitioners

in the

sense psychobiographers have assumed,

for both are of necessity ventures into epistemology.

Al-

though the general validity of historical fact has been extensively analyzed in historiographical literature,

and

most historians are well aware of the necessity of formulating a theory of knowledge,

less consideration has been

given to the difficulties of psychohistorical evidence.

The

main question concerns the philosophical status of a psychoanalytic or psychohistorical statement. statement? scientific ous case

An empirical one?

Is it a metaphysical

Its devotees claim it is both

and empirical and proved by the examples of numer-

studies,

in spite of the doubtful nature of the

therapeutic efficacy of psychoanalysis,

but a very important

objection is unanswered in psychoanalytic propositions.

17.

Wheelis,

"Second Sin," p.

Quest for Identity,

p.

232;

73; Philip Rieff, The Triumph

Szasz,

of the Thera-

peutic: Uses of Faith after Freud (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), p. 104; Robert Waelder, "Psychoanalysis and History," in The Psychoanalytic Interpretation of History, ed. Benjamin Wolman (New York: Basic Books, 1971), p. 4.

89 Epistemologists agree that,

to be meaningful,

must be capable of being proved false. ever,

any proposition

It is difficult, how-

to imagine any psychoanalytic proposition which could

be disproven by the same methods psychoanalysts use to prove a statement.

Psychoanalysts can

and often do,

but they do so by merely admitting personal

reject their own propositions

opinion to the argument.

To reveal this point in sharper

focus,

assumption of the universality of

the psychoanalytic

the Oedipus

struggle is a helpful example.

This character

trait cannot be disproven in a particular individual because there are no standards of how behavior would be different if one did not experience an Oedipal situation. 1

8

Psychoanalysts have occasionally tried to avoid the verification difficulty through the assertion that a discipline working with the dentially precise.

irrational cannot always be evi-

But a more

logical supposition is that

psychoanalysis has of necessity to be ambiguous because Freud assumed all events were overdetermined, multiplicity of causes.

Hence,

that is,

they have a

there is no specific cause

18. Henry Miller, "Psychoanalysis: A Clinical Perspective," in Freud: The Man, His World, and His Influence, ed. Jonathan Miller (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1972), p. 112; Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, trans. Denis Savage (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1970), pp. 345-47; Himmelfarb, "The 'New History,'" p. 76; A. J. Ayer, "Demonstration of the Impos-

sibility of Metaphysics," Mind 43

Hundert,

"History, Psychology,

Behavior," p. 462; Collingwood, Mazlish,

(July 1934):338-39;

and the Study of Deviant

Idea of History, p.

"What Is Psycho-History?" p.

84.

231;

90

in any psychoanalytic explanation but a metaphorical and relational combination of causes.

This point is revealed in

a letter Freud wrote to Emil Ludwig who had argued that Kaiser Wilhelm II's feelings of inferiority stemmed from his withered arm handicap.

Freud replied that Wilhelm's complex

was not intrinsically due

to his handicap but was derived

from his mother's loathing of her crippled son.

Thus we

have two possible sources of Wilhelm's emotional problems, and psychoanalytically neither one proof than the other,

is more

for only in a vague,

susceptible to metaphorical,

and

general sense can Wilhelm's insecurities be attributed to his handicap. of eel-like

No wonder that psychoanalysis has been accused

slipperiness.

of reductionism, and effect, particular.

their

If its adherents

avoid the mistake

statements become amorphous in cause

and open to criticism for saying nothing in 19

In view of the considerable errors and drawbacks of psychohistory discussed on the previous pages--reductionism, scientific inadequacy, determinism,

19.

the slighting of culture and society,

emphasis on pathology,

Mazlish,

arrogance,

epistemological

"Group Psychology and Problems," p.

173;

Hans Meyerhoff, "Freud and the Ambiguity of Culture," in Psychoanalysis and History, ed. Bruce Mazlish (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963), p. 57; Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey, 24 vols. (London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1953-74), 22:66; Henry Miller, "Psychoanalysis: A Clinical Perspective," in Miller, Freud, pp. 117-18.

91

reservations--one may wonder why historians would be

attracted to psychology at all.

The appeal of history to

psychologists is more obvious in that history is a field open to any skills. answer

interested amateur without any

special tools or

The reverse of this situation may be part of to why historians

are becoming interested

the

in psychology.

In a scholarly world where merit is often judged on the complexity of the skills rather than the excellence of the product,

a historian

"asks and wonders in vain.

nothing arcane and elaborate, be industrious

it seems,

that he

can go and

about and thus prove himself a proficient

while assuaging his intellectual curiosity. "20 light,

There is

the very

In this

looseness and lack of precision of histor-

ical laws are irritating and psychoanalysis provides a seductive alternative. Yet, analysis

ironically,

as we have seen,

are really no more scientific

accordingly,

merely banal.

than those of history;

ambiguity have often merely rephrased

in elaborate terminology and ended up with the When historians have been able

effective use of psychoanalysis, id,

laws of psycho-

psychohistorians in their zeal to rescue history

from its methodological old concepts

the

to make most

the terms they used--ego,

inferiority complex--have been the ones which have lost

their psychoanalytic and technical

20.

Barzun,

significance and have

Clio and the Doctors,

pp.

3-4.

92 passed into the common language of all literate people.

The

more successful advocates of psychoanalysis in history have recognized that it is function

a tool and nothing more;

its main

to the historian should be

. . . in helping him to see a pattern in his raw data which might otherwise seem meaningless or amorphous. Once any of these tools has served this essential purpose, it ought to go back into the shed. Discussions of psychoanlytic concepts should no more clutter up a historian's pages than descriptions of how he takes notes or arranges his files.21 Unfortunately,

this attitude is in a minority among psycho-

historians. After viewing the

subject of psychohistory from the

perspective of those who are unimpressed with it or who support it only lukewarmly,

balance requires

that its adherents

be heard on what they see as the definition of their craft and how they perceive the

similarities and differences be-

tween psychohistory and history.

The most immediate observ-

ation here is that the writers of psychohistory have no real agreement on what the word psychohistory means;

Bruce

21. David Herbert Donald, review of The Psychoanalytic Interpretation of History by Benjamin B. Wolman, Journal of Southern History 28 (February 1972):112; Raphael Demos, "Psychoanalysis: Science and Philosophy," in Hook, Psychoanalysis, pp. 330-31; Frederick Wyatt, "Psychoanalytic

Biography," Contemporary Psychology 1 (January 1956):105; Barzun, Clio and the Doctors, pp. 39, 73; Hans W. Gatzske, "Hitler and Psychohistory," American Historical Review 78

(April 1973) :401; Mazlish,

"Group Psychoanalysis and

Problems," p. 172; Frank E. Manuel, "The Use and Abuse of Psychology in History," Daedalus 100 (Winter 1971):207. See also Gale Stokes, "Cognition and the Function of Nationalism," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 4 (Spring 1974):528.

93 Mazlish,

a Massachusetts

Institute of Technology historian,

rejects the term entirely and prefers the name psycho-social history,

but his is definitely a minority view.

has the right to define psychohistory,

If anyone

Erik Erikson certainly

would: Psychohistory,

essentially,

is the study of indi-

vidual and collective life with the combined methods of psychoanalysis and history. In spite of, or because of, the very special and conflicting demands made on the practitioners of these two fields, bridgeheads must be built on each side in order to make a true span possible. But the completed bridge should permit unimpeded two way traffic; and once this is done, his-

tory will simply be history again. 2 2 Leaving out the Erikson

imagery of the scholarly traffic jams,

is really only saying that psychohistory is a com-

bination of psychoanalysis and history. have been no less imprecise.

Other commentators

Psychohistory has been variously

defined as the theory of cultural change, sibility,"

the science of the unconscious,

widen historical knowledge,

or

a "vision of posan attempt to

simply as a new interpretation

of material already known to historians.23

Since psycho-

history is as difficult of categorization as history itself,

22. Mazlish,

Erikson, Dimensions of a New Identity, "What Is Psycho-History?" p. 79.

p.

13;

23. Lifton, History and Human Survival, p. 5; Kovel, White Racism, p. 6; Edward Hitschmann, Great Men: Psychoanalytic Studies (New York: International Universities Press, 1956), p. 8; Orlow, "Significance of Time and Place," p. 133; Michael Gordon, ed., The American Family in SocialHistorical Perspective (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1973), p. 4; Bruce Mazlish, In Search of Nixon: A Psychohistorical

Inquiry

(New York:

Basic Books,

1972), p.

151.

94

probably as good a definition as any is the statement that psychohistory

is the use of psychoanalysis in historical

study both at the

social and personal

Psychohistorians reveal more assumptions of their craft.

level.

agreement on the basic

First of all,

they do not

see

psychohistory as therapeutic or as an attempt to psychoanalyze the figures of the past. Luther on the couch,"

They neither want to

"put

nor to explore only the abnormal mani-

festations of people in the past, their aim were therapeutic,

and they grant that if

they would not have enough evi-

dence to support their research.

On the other hand,

they

claim that because they are dealing with important people, often the records of childhood and life are more complete than they would be for obscure citizens;

using such evidence,

they assert that Freud's insights can be helpful in showing the difference between the actual behavior and the professed

behavior of people. 2 4 Secondly,

their work rests on the assumption that child-

hood and sex are important determinants of adult behavior; they reject the traditional historical attitude

that power,

24. Norman Kiell, ed., Psychological Studies of Famous Americans: The Civil War Era (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1946), p. 17; Joseph M. Woods, "Some Considerations on Psycho-History," Historian 36 (August 1974) :724; Mazlish, In Search of Nixon, pp. 5, 159; Bruce Mazlish, "Clio on the Couch: Prolegomena to Psychohistory," Encounter 31 (September 1968):52; Mazlish, Psychoanalysis and History, p. 3; Robert F. Berkhoffer, A Behavioral Approach to Historical Analysis (New York: Free Press, 1969), pp. 17-18.

95 greed,

or other obvious motives are sufficient explanation

in every case.

At the

same time,

aware of the

stress of

post-Freudian psychologists on adult and rational motivation, they do not feel that psychohistory is entirely based on the history of childhood, study both group and

and they want to use psychohistory to social adult history.

The importance

of sex and childhood psychohistorians believe to be proven by the observed evidence of analysis and the durability of Freud's interpretations over seventy years of vigorous debate,

for they state that even if psychoanalysis cannot be

verified empirically, Newton or Kepler, Finally,

it may be true,

like the theories of

observationally.2 5

the adherents of psychohistory ground their

ideas of mission in the assumption that psychohistory predictive or deterministic, humble role in history, with history.

is not

that it attempts to play only a

and that it is not a radical break

Erikson has modestly pointed out that the

laws of history apply to psychoanalysts as well as to historians.

Psychohistorians insist that significant impulses

25. Waelder, "Psychoanalysis and History," in Wolman, Psychoanalytic Interpretation of History, p. 8; Manuel, "Use

and Abuse," p.

192; Woods,

"Some Considerations," pp.

728-29;

Erich Fromm, The Crisis of Psychoanalysis (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1970), p. 27; Roszak, "Historian as Psychiatrist," p. 343; Richard I. Evans, Dialogue with Erich Fromm (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), p. 76; Ernest Jones, Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, 3 vols. (New York: Basic Books, 1952), 1:351; Roazen, Freud: Political and Social, p. 23; Wollheim, Freud, p. 304. See also R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience (New York: Pantheon Books, 1967), p. 14.

96

behind conduct can be known without subscribing to determinism,

though one can never really know which cause is most

significant among the multiplicity of causes of every effect. Further,

the statement of a psychoanalytic cause is not meant

to denigrate the moral or intellectual basis of the effect. If Luther developed his religion from a sense of toward his father,

this

animosity

fact does not necessarily detract

from the worth of his religion on

a rational level.

No one

has understood this distinction between irrational problems and rational solutions better than Erikson who elaborates further: For the question is not how a particular version of the "Oedipal complex" causes a man to be both great and neurotic in a particular way, but rather how such a person, upon perceiving that he may, indeed, have the originality and the gifts necessary to make some infantile fantasies come true in actuality, manages the complexes which constrict other men.26

Erikson finds little help from Freud with this problem because for the most part Freud dealt only with ordinary men. Confronted with the problem of explaining "greatness," as distinct from the abnormal behavior which may accompany it,

the psychohistorian must turn to the intuition used by

26. Erik H. Erikson, Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence (New York: W. W. Norton & Company,

1969),

p.

113; Erikson, Childhood and Society, p. 403;

Robert J. Lifton, "On Psychohistory," in Bass, State of American History, pp. 276-77; Mazlish, In Search of Nixon, p. 162; Martin B. Dubermann, "The Abolitionists and Psychol-

ogy," Journal of Negro History,

May,

pp.

Love and Will

194-95.

(New York: W.

47 W.

(July 1962):190-91; Rollo Norton & Company,

1969),

97

other historians with the result of a further decline in whatever claim to scientific methodology psychohistory ever had.

Erikson,

for example,

"half-truths and legends"2 7 with known facts; history,

advocates the acceptance of as long as they are in keeping

Rudolph Binion,

another devotee of psycho-

states the psychohistorian must rely on what he

just knows to be right.

This kind of approach,

sionistic free use of evidence, intellectual history, is written,

the impres-

has been traditional in

the field in which most psychohistory

but a skeptic will doubt the claims to inno-

vation of a discipline which is forced to rely on a research method as old as the professional writing of history. 2 8 Psychohistorians see a similarity in history and psychology in the

impressionistic method insofar as it unites

both fields in the use of personal impressions as opposed to rigorous

quantitative methodology.

This virtue escapes some

historians who object to psychohistory on the grounds it is too personal;

for others,

is too impersonal,

the objection is that psychohistory

that it will rob history of its spirit.

The first objection may be granted provided we recognize

27.

Erikson,

Young Man Luther,

pp.

21,

37.

28. Binion is quoted in Himmelfarb, "The 'New History,'" p. 75. See also Richard King, The Party of Eros: Radical Social Thought and the Realm of Freedom (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1972), p. 6; and Lewis Edinger, Kurt Schumacher: A Study in Personality and Political Behavior (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University

Press,

1965),

pp. 3-4.

98

that personal reflections are pivotal to psychoanalysis. What the second objection amounts to is a claim that history comes to more accurate conclusions with an impressionistic, "common sense," personal method than psychoanalysis with a "scientific"

more

method.

But the notion that psychoanalysis

is scientific does not stand scrutiny,

so only the possi-

bility is left that history may be cheapened or despiritualized by other attributes of psychoanalysis--its jargon, sexual emphasis,

its models of behavior,

these features may be irritating to the is very questionable

perhaps.

its

While

traditionalists,

it

that they are sufficiently monolithic

to chain history into a straightjacket which allows no escape for humanistic

impulses.

They are,

in effect,

simply recent

variations on the impressionistic and subjective bias of

history.29 For all history is as a document,

subjective.

for example,

concrete information,

Such a piece of evidence

which should impart to us certain

actually can

"tell us no more than what

the author of the document thought--what he pened,

thought had hap-

what he thought ought to happen or would happen,

perhaps only what he wanted others to think he

thought,

even only what he himself thought he thought.," 3 0

or or

Even the

29. Berkhoffer, A Behavioral Approach, p. 48; George M. Kren and Leon Rappoport, "Clio and Psyche," History of Childhood Quarterly: The Journal of Psychohistory 1 (Summer

1973) :151. 30.

Knopf,

E. H.

1963), p.

Carr, What Is History?

16; William B. Willcox,

(New York: Alfred A.

Portrait of a

99 interpretation of the document will depend on the orientation of the historian.

As much as subjective

deplored,

still the meat of history.

they are

interpretations are Psycho-

historians criticized for using personal bias to debunk historical figures can point to traditional historians who excessively idealize the past, beneficial ways too;

but subjectivism works in

every historian who writes inevitably

makes personal observations which are no doubt true but virtually impossible to prove by any

logical or scientific

quantitative method.3 1 For example,

book

Behavior

Robert Burgess and Don Bushnell

in their

Sociology show how in discussing the Indus-

trial Revolution,

historians make assumptions

conduct with almost casual abandon. positions would be ludicrous,

about human

To defend these sup-

because every work of history

would end up an exercise in philosophy.

This is not to say

that history is completely a matter of biased personal opinion,

for it does have standards and rules and is as

logically accurate as most scholarly areas of study.

The

significance of the subjective nature of history lies in the question of admitting the equally subjective psychology to the tool box of the historian.

emphasis of The

spurious

General: Sir Henry Clinton in the War of Independence York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1 9 6 4 ), p. xvi. 31. See Hook, Considerations," p.

Hero in History, 723.

p.

153; Woods,

(New

"Some

100

claim that intuition is a better guide than Freudian psychology

(itself based on intuition)

leads historians

confuses the issue and

to assumptions which are as indefensible as

those of bad psychohistory.

For example,

W.

F. Albright

argued that Ihkhnaton could not have founded the Aton cult because of the Pharaoh's physical deformity, is surely as made.

"reductionistic" as any a psychohistorian ever

Lewis Spitz,

a Renaissance historian who has been

critical of the excesses of psychohistory, aspects of

a claim which

it preferable to the

many traditionalists.

still finds many

"amateurish" psychology of

32

Much of the conflict between the modernists

and tra-

ditionalists might disappear if history and psychology were seen as to the

similar in their subjective orientation situation in,

say,

in contrast

chemistry or biology where personal

position is of no importance and the emotional tie between subject and researcher is minimal.

However,

psychohistorians

also see other similarities between history and psychology. In both areas,

anything concerning life can be evidence,

it is meaning rather than fact which is of importance.

and All

32. Robert L. Burgess and Don Bushell, Behavior Sociology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), pp. 9-11; Stokes, "Cognition and the Function of Nationalism," p. 529; Erikson, Young Man Luther, p. 35; Fred Weinstein and Gerald M. Platt, "History and Theory: The Question of Psychoanal-

ysis," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2 (Spring 1972): 420; Waelder, "Psychoanalysis and History," in Wolman, Psychoanalytic Interpretation of History, p. 7; Spitz,

"Psychohistory and History," p. 183.

The

101 conclusions

are tentative and the interpretations considered

most satisfactory are those accepted by a majority of the workers in the field. is the

sense of unfolding of events in a pattern rather than

the individual events, plete,

What counts in history and psychology

and no historical study is ever com-

just as no psychoanalysis is ever complete.

mentally,

Funda-

it is the failures of historiography which provide

the building blocks of the writing of history, analysis the failures of the individual

as in psycho-

are the subject of

interpretation.33 Similarly, own sake,

the past

in neither case is valued for its

but is instead considered useful only insofar as

it can be used for understanding the present. repair the past, the other on an

in one case on a wide individual therapeutic

Both

fields

social scale and in scale.

the psychoanalyst encounters in probing the

The resistance

individual's past

is paralleled by the resistances of lack of information, bias,

and ignorance the historian must overcome to write

successful history;

p.

and the questioning,

suspicious attitude

33. Besancon, "Psychoanalysis: Auxiliary Science," 151; Hughes, History as Art and Science, pp. 46-47, 56,

63-64; Meyerhoff,

"On Psychoanalysis as History," p. 9;

Wolman, "Sense and Nonsense in History," in The Psychoanalytic Interpretation of History, p. 83; David Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956), p. 103; Otto Pflanze, "Toward a Psychoanalytic Explanation of Bismarck," American Historical Review 77 (April 1972):420. See also Lloyd D. Easton and Kurt H. Guddat, ed., Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, 1967), p. 22.

102

of historians toward events is similar to the attitude of psychoanalysts, Further,

though it is really much older than Freud.

the argument has been made that the data collected

in analysis in the twentieth century is in itself a considerable fund of history for future use. 3 4 The most

important parallel psychohistorians see in

history and psychology is in the acceptance of the multicausal theory of events. to the

As most historians would subscribe

idea of many causes of

the Civil War,

for example,

so

psychoanalysts might derive a compulsive urge to gamble from deprivation,

overgratification,

some other factor.

a combination of the two,

The traditionalists'

or

objection that his-

torical events are unique and unamenable to the generalizations of psychology

is denounced by psychohistorians as

an unjustified attempt to label them determinists. historical statement,

they maintain,

A psycho-

no more implies a mono-

causal deterministic interpretation than a traditional one. To say,

for example,

that James I of England did something

because he was a suspicious person does not mean he could not have done something else.

If a physicist says water

34. Hughes, History as Art and Science, p. 47; Fritz Schmidl, "Psychoanalysis and History," The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 31 (October 1962):532; Erikson, "On the Nature of

Psychohistorical Evidence," pp. 695-96; Meyerhoff,

"On Psy-

&

choanalysis as History," pp. 4-5; Erik H. Erikson, "Psychoanalysis and Ongoing History: Problems of Identity, Hatred and Nonviolence," American Journal of Psychiatry 122 (September 1965):242; Manuel, "Use and Abuse," p. 197. See also Karen Horney, Self-Analysis (New York: W. W. Norton

Company,

1942),

p. 151.

103

boils at 100 degrees Celsius, statement,

he is making a deterministic

but a historian who says a man has a low boiling

point or a psychoanalyst who says the same man has inadequate superego controls

is not.

The

adherents of psychohistory

therefore deny that they should be lumped with Marxian determinists or cliometricians. with the

'commonplace, '

They claim to be

multicausal method,

Rankean devotion to the unique event." 35

"most compatible with its neo-

They merely want

to enrich history by adding to it the techniques already successful in psychology and political science.3 6 history the modest,

conservative,

significant,

Were psychoand useful

addition to history which these advocates affirm, undoubtedly be admitted immediately

it should

to a place of honor in

the historiographical canon; but it is only by examining the actual practice of psychohistory, rather than the defenses of it,

that any conclusion can be reached on this matter.

35.

Donald B. Meyer,

in Mazlish,

"A Review of Young Man Luther,"

Psychoanalysis and History, p. 180;

Philip

Pomper, "Problems of a Naturalistic Psychohistory," History and Theory 12 (1973) :370-71; Woods, "Some Considerations," p. 729; Hughes, History as Art and Science, pp. 42, 47; Wolman, "Sense and Nonsense in History," in The Psychoanalytic Interpretation of History, p. 80; Frances V. Roab, "History,

Freedom,

and Responsibility," Philosophy of Science 26

1959):117-18; Meyer, "A Review of Young Man Luther," Mazlish, Psychoanalysis and History, p. 180.

36.

Mazlish, Psychoanalysis and History,

pp.

(April

in

13-14;

William Langer in "Communications," American Historical Review 77 (October 1972):1196.

CHAPTER III

ERIK ERIKSON'S PSYCHOHISTORY

Erik Erikson was born parentage.

His youth was

in Frankfurt

in 1902,

of Danish

spent in a search for meaning

and

purpose which bears some resemblance to Martin Luther's quest,

of which Erikson would later write.

he traveled extensively,

but did not finish college and con-

sidered becoming an artist. school for children;

school.

In 1927 he founded a progressive

his interest in behavior was probably

stimulated by the exposure the

As a young man

to the problems

of children at

In the late 1920s he came under the

influence

of the Freudians, was psychoanalyzed by Anna Freud, after attending a psychoanalytic institute,

and

was certified as

a psychoanalyst.1 In

1933 Erikson left Germany for the United States

where he was given a position at the Harvard Medical School.

After the publication of his book Childhood and Society in the

late 1930s,

his reputation as one of the foremost child

psychologists in the United States was firmly established. Erikson's interest in history,

or rather biography,

developed

1. Robert Coles, Erik H. Erikson: The Growth of His Work (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1970), pp. 13-14, 18, 22-23, 180; Erik H. Erikson, "The First Psychologist," Yale Review 46 (Autumn 1956):40.

104

105

later,

and was probably an outgrowth of his curiosity about

how the psychic conflicts of the child affect the accomplishments of the adult and of his among the American Indians.

anthropological researches These researches gave him an

awareness of the variation in culture,

a realization surely

heightened by Erikson's status as an immigrant. his writing a sensitivity to the cultural

He has in

impact on behavior

rare in psychoanalysts. 2 Nevertheless, people,

like Freud,

regardless of culture,

line of development, hood and Society.

Erikson believes that all follow basically the same out-

a pattern which he described in Child-

Since Erikson's historical biographies

are directly based on his assumption about childhood behavior,

it is well to examine this

crucial book in the light

of its compatibility and difference with Freud. he believes childhood is the father of the man,

Like Freud, but he does

not agree that it necessarily determines one's behavior or accomplishments as an adult, normal conduct than Freud.

and he places more emphasis on It is further to Erikson's credit

that he has pointed out the role of adolescence as well childhood in the formation of character. model is dynamic;

Essentially,

as his

all the years of life are to him a process

2. Coles, Erik H. Erikson, pp. 32, 118. See also Erik H. Erikson, Childhood and Society, rev. and enl. ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1963), pp. 114-65; Millicent Bell, "Skilled Evaluator," .New Republic, 14 June 1975, p. 22.

106 of growing in different stages, psychological problems.

each with its own particular

This theory gives him a greater

range of operation than Freud and avoids some of the problems of the paucity of evidence

about childhood behavior which

have marred the work of other psychohistorians. 3 Taking his clue from Freud's hood into oral,

anal,

genital,

four divisions of child-

and latency,

Erikson finds in

infancy stages of basic trust versus basic mistrust,

auton-

omy versus

and

shame and doubt,

industry versus trust

initiative versus guilt,

inferiority.

(Freud's oral stage)

Basic trust versus basic mis-

is the period which determines

whether the infant will have a trusting or suspicious nature; the infant's first act of maturity is to learn to

"let the

mother out of sight without undue anxiety or rage because she has become an inner certainty as well as an outer predictability.'

The ability of the infant to trust is not

dependent on the quantity of oral gratification he receives but on the quality of it he senses coming from his mother. If her affection is given begrudgingly,

the child may always

have a distrustful nature and feel weak and fearful in his relations with the rest of the world.5

3.

Coles,

Erik H.

Erikson,

p.

139.

4. Erikson, Childhood and Society, p. 247; Coles, Erik H. Erikson, pp. 68-76, especially p. 76; Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1962), pp. 255-59.

5.

Erikson,

Childhood and Society,

p.

249.

107

Autonomy versus shame,

Erikson's second stage,

sponds to what Freud called the anal period,

and is the

effort of the child to master his body functions. unable to do so smoothly,

confidently,

feel self-disgust and inadequacy,

If he

and quickly,

is

he may

and the fear of shame will

be with him for the rest of his life. initiative versus guilt

corre-

The third stage,

(Freud's phallic period)

is the

period when the child learns to walk and manipulate objects in its environment.

When the child begins to acquire

education it enters the fourth stage, feriority,

an

industry versus in-

corresponding to what Freud called the period of

latency.6 By far the most important stage to Erikson--and here he parts company with Freud who thought character development

stopped with the end of childhood--is identity versus role confusion which starts at puberty.

More will be said of

Erikson's emphasis on identity later,

but it should be noted

that he regards this period as the most psychohistory as well as for the

significant for

individual.

It is the stage

when one chooses what his goals in life will be from a myriad of possibilities;

one ceases to dream of childhood occu-

pations and fantasies and makes realistic plans to enter roles commensurate with one's talents.

The

stages of life

which follow identity are given little emphasis in Erikson' s

6.

Ibid., pp.

251,

255,

258, 405-7.

108

theory. the

The period of intimacy versus isolation comes in

late teens or early twenties when people ordinarily

choose a marriage partner and join clubs and groups which remain with them for life.

In middle age,

a person often

faces the problem of generativity versus stagnation, necessity to remain productive courage

the

in his occupation and to en-

achievement in his offspring.

Old age often fosters

the period of ego integrity versus despair,

a difficult

period of appraising the

success of one's goals

in life. 7

Erikson calls these

stages in life crises,

and the

identity crisis,

while perhaps not very important in deter-

mining one's personality,

is the most significant influence

on accomplishment in life.

Others have seen

in adolescence

a time of revolt against the older generation, son it is nearly synonymous with the exactly constitutes this crisis?

but to Erik-

identity crisis.

In the

first place,

What in

childhood one could always postpone a decision and rarely face the consequences of such an action, parents protected one from the choice,

or usually the

but in adolescence

one is confronted by the realization that some commitment to the future has to be made.

That in itself would not ordi-

narily be frightening but what gives the identity crisis

its

poignancy and makes it so menacing is that the choice is to a degree irreversible and forecloses the fantastic

7.

Ibid., pp.

261,

263,

266-68.

109

possibilities once presumed open when a child. finds

in adolescence that his

A

person

ambitions and high-flown dreams

are challenged by obstinate realities;

Erikson writes

But the increasing irreversibility of all choices (whether all too open or foreclosed) leads to what we call the identity crisis which here does not mean a fatal turn but rather (as in drama and in medicine) an inescapable turning point for better or for worse. 8 And great men,

because they are apt to have higher expecta-

tions or more awareness of possibilities

than others,

are

likely to find the identity crisis excruciatingly painful. Indeed,

Erikson has found a prolonged identity crisis,

often

lasting until thirty years of age in all great men like Luther and Gandhi.9 The identity crisis is itself antihistorical in that youth wants to reject past history; resist the burdensome

but although the young

control of the past,

they make their

crisis an agent of history while searching for something to believe in that will give them a sense of identity. come like people possessed in their anarchic gropings stability,

They befor

a situation which allows them the single-minded

8. Erik H. Erikson, "The Concept of Identity in Race Relations: Notes and Queries," Daedalus 95 (Winter 1966):160; Abram Kardiner and Lionel Ovesey, The Mark of Oppression: A Psychological Study of the American Negro (New York: W. W.

Norton & Company,

1951), p.

29.

9. Erikson also supposes a negative identity; see his "Psychoanalysis and Ongoing History: Problems of Identity, Hatred and Nonviolence," American Journal of Psychiatry 122

(September 1965) :246.

110 dedication and toil to find historically creative outlets. Until that point,

in their confusion the young ascribe their

difficulties to the old order,

as in Luther's case he blamed

the Pope.1 0 Of course,

Erikson does not simplistically explain

Luther's work by the argument with the Pope over Biblical exegesis,

nor does he derive it entirely from Luther's search

for identity. Luther;

Neither is his point the sexual uncertainty of

in fact,

importance

some Catholic interpretations attribute more

to Luther's

the emphasis is on the

sex life than Erikson does.

Rather

stages of growth of a young man in the

sixteenth century and the individual psychic reactions in the context of his personality to the events which confront him: The existence of power spheres, of spheres of influence, jurisdiction, and possession, and above all, of spheres of exploitation, are matters pertaining to the social process and are not in themselves to be explained as originating in infantile sexuality; they are the expressions of the geographic-historical actuality in which we exist.1 1 Erikson's approach is therefore devoid of and thermodynamic slant of Freud;

the mechanistic

it is basically humanistic

10. Erik H. Erikson, "Youth: Fidelity and Diversity," Daedalus 91 (Winter 1962):6, 15-16. Cf. the similar comments of Rollo May, Love and Will (New York: W. W. Norton & Com-

pany,

1969),

pp. 123,

133-34; and for Erikson's view of the

role of psychoanalysis in transcending the generation gap see his Insight and Responsibility: Lectures on the Ethical Implications of Psychoanalytic Insight (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1964), p. 211.

11.

Erikson,

Young Man Luther,

Childhood and Society, pp.

265-66.

p. 406; Erikson,

111

with growth interpreted as a process of learning and caring about ourselves and others.12 In a further difference with Freud,

Erikson views the

identity crisis as the stimulus to creative genius. Freud saw creativity as a product of sublimation, by the personality

problem of identity exists.

Also,

determined

structure attained in childhood,

has made the job of the historian easier by in young adulthood,

While

Erikson

stressing the

where more evidence

the uniqueness of Erikson's view is enhanced

by its radical departure from the two types of psychohistory which immediately followed.

One of these,

reductionism,

is

exemplified by the biographical debunkers and such atrocities as the explanations of communism by the Russian practice of swaddling babies. philosophy

The other,

than history;

less well known,

was more

it is represented by Erich Fromm

who argued that since capitalism favored hoarding,

it was

connected to Freud's anal stage of growth and was derived from Luther's well-known anal imagery. never had much intellectual support, has been pretty much a dead end, ophizing of Norman 0. Brown

Reductionism has

and the Fromm school

though the cosmis philos-

is a modern example of it.

Erikson is neither reductionist nor willing to use Luther's ideas as symbolic of a personality

12.

Erik H.

Erikson,

trait.

In his view,

Dimensions of a New Identity

York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1974), p. Insight and Responsibility, pp. 115-16.

124; Erikson,

the

(New

112 thought Luther propounded is an

significant not because it shows

"anal-retentive" personality which all Protestants are

assumed to share but because it reflects Luther's particular development within his historical

situation.

Erikson's tech-

nique is similar to the introspective and impressionistic style used by intellectual historians of the past with some success.13 For this reason and perhaps because he wanted to escape the rigid definiteness of reductionism, obscurely and ambiguously.

Though obscurity and prolixity

are frequently mistaken for profundity, granted credit

Erikson can be

for the quality of his thoughts,

are deciphered from his prose. make of this,

Erikson writes

for example,

they

Yet one hardly knows what to

from one of his later books,

Dimensions of a New Identity: are faced with an effusive

once

"But,

alas,

in these Notes we

statement on the

superiority of

the white race which I would call unblushing if it did not 13. H. Stuart Hughes, History as Art and Science: Twin Vistas on the Past (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 59; David Hunt, Parents and Children in History: The Psychology of Family Life in Early Modern France (New York: Basic Books, 1970), p. 13; Donald B. Meyer, "A Review of Young Man Luther," in Psychoanalysis and History, ed. Bruce Mazlish (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963), p. 178; Donald B. Meyer, "Review Essay," History and Theory 1 (1961):295; Alan Roland, "Psychoanalysis and History: A Quest for Integration," Psychoanalytic Review 58 (Winter 1971-72):633; Lucian Pye, "Personal Identity and Political Ideology," in Mazlish, Psychoanalysis and History, pp. 170-71. See also George Lindbeck, "Erikson's Young Man Luther: A Historical and The-

ological Reappraisal," Soundings 61 (Summer 1973):227.

113 make the very point that blushing is beautiful.']-4

The

passage Erikson is quoting does not make the point he so what he means is lost in obscurity.

Fortunately,

writes most clearly in Young Man Luther,

states, Erikson

the book which has

had the greatest impact on the historical profession. The thesis of Luther places Erikson squarely with Thomas Carlyle or Hegel exhibits a more forces, his

in the great-man

school.

sophisticated awareness of

sociological

stress on the great leader is much like Hegel's:

the great man emerges from the needs of the age. plicit assumption is

emotional conflicts.

His

im-

that the great man is one who postpones

childhood and adolescence,

is special,

While he

and prolongs their attendant

From this comes the feeling

a chosen leader,

with

that one

a charisma which is trans-

ferred to followers who recognize the

legitimacy of the

leader's claim.1 5 The leader is therefore inner directed;

it is not

altruistic service to others that creates his mission but his inner conflicts,

in Freudian terminology a successful

14. Erikson, Dimensions of a New Identity, p. 24; P. B. Medawar, "Review of The Phenomenon of Man," in Darwin: A Norton Critical Edition, ed. Philip Appleman (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1970), pp. 483-84; Jacques Barzun, Clio and the Doctors: Psycho-History, Quanto-History, and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), p. 53. 15. Frank E. Manuel, "The Use and Abuse of Psychology in History," Daedalus 100 (Winter 1971):201; Pye, "Personal Identity," in Mazlish, Psychoanalysis and History, p. 165;

Erikson, Childhood and Society, p.

16.

114 sublimation of the forces of the id by the ego. emphasizing

the introspection of the great man,

Though Erikson does

not view the leader as selfishly and egotistically preoccupied only with his own personal problems.

The

success of

identity is attained when the individual reconciles his inner needs to the possibility of

service to society as Luther was

able to do. 1 6 In Young Man Luther Erikson makes no pretense to having uncovered original evidence,

his sources being merely the

standard interpretations of other historians.

Luther's

uniqueness lies in the Freudian interpretation of the accepted outline of Luther's

life.

deal is known of Luther's youth,

However,

since not a great

much of Erikson's essay is

based on skimpy evidence, but that skimpiness has deterred neither Erikson nor other writers. book, ology,

At the beginning of the

Erikson summarizes the theories of a professor of thea priest,

and a psychiatrist who have studied Luther

and finds them all wanting in that they explain Luther not by his uniqueness but by extrinsic factors.

Through the

psychoanalytic method Erikson believes he can succeed where others failed in explaining Luther as Luther.

Through the

ages the enigma of Luther's overwhelming personality has

16. See, for example, Roland H. Bainton, "Luther: A Psychiatric Portrait," Yale Review 48(Spring 1959):408; and David Gutmann, "Erik Erikson's America," Commentary 58 (September 1974) :60.

115

Here was a man who challenged the

remained unexplained.

accepted wisdom of centuries, who turned the Christian world upside down.

What was there in his character that made his

force so persuasive and irresistible?

Was he guided by God?

Was the age merely receptive to his ideas? man,

Or was he a mad-

17 a drunkard as the Catholics claimed?

It is a measure of the complexity of Luther's personality that even his defenders are often unable to answer these or have accepted Luther's mental problems as self-

evident.

A Reformation historian, Lewis Spitz, who has

often been critical of psychohistory has nevertheless written that Luther had a "cyclothemic personality varying between 18 hyper and hypothemic levels in mood."

Erikson believes

Luther came closer to being "borderline psychotic

.

.

. with

19 prolonged adolescence and reawakened infantile conflicts,"

but he does not find this the key to Luther's

creativity,

success or

nor does he label the religious reformer

insane.20

17.

Meyer,

"Review Essay," p.

Young Man Luther," pp.

pp.

212-13;

293; Lindbeck,

Erikson,

"Erikson's

Young Man Luther,

25-35.

The Case Lewis Spitz, "Psychohistory and History: 18. of Young Man Luther," Soundings 61 (Summer 1973):201; Meyer, "A Review of Young Man Luther,"

and History, pp.

178,

19.

Erikson,

20.

Ibid.,

p.

in Mazlish,

180.

Young Man Luther, p.

147.

148.

Psychoanalysis

116

For the most part,

Luther's defenders have

tried to

explain his emotional disorders as stemming entirely from an intellectual and religious crisis.

Though not denying this

influence existed, Erikson does not think it sufficient an explanation and finds in psychoanalytic clinical research clues to Luther's turmoil.

Luther's compulsiveness,

his

scatological language, his imagery of dirt,

melancholy,

filth, and excrement, his fear of punishment, pation with rituals,

his preoccu-

are all paralleled in modern neurotics.

These manifestations are indicators of inner rage, pressed hositility.

of sup-

Even Luther's digestive troubles and

constipation were probably psychosomatic attempts to retain frustration which threatened to explode. express himself, invective, peasants,

When Luther did

his resentment came out in a burst of

directed, the Jews.

at various times,

at the Pope,

the

Even when his anger was restrained,

21 Luther's volubility was well known.

These characteristics have been commented upon before but have been ignored by Luther's supporters on the grounds that everybody in those days talked that way or that Luther was after all a mere human.

His enemies,

on the other hand,

have accepted them as evidence that Luther was a vile charlatan,

unworthy of the title of religious reformer.

Meyer, "A Review of Young Man Luther," in Mazlish, 21. Psychoanalysis and History, p. 175; Erikson, Young Man Luther,

pp. 61,

176,

247-48.

117

Erikson's interpretation is

that these traits were caused by

Luther's childhood experience.

childhood, basic trust versus mistrust,

Luther was probably

given a great deal of affection by his parents, by his success

versus shame,

as an adult,

stage of

During the first

as

attested

but during the stage of autonomy

Luther experienced difficulty and was pushed

into a lifelong pattern of doubt, compulsiveness,

shame,

and

Learning autonomy, he acquired rebellion in the

defiance.

process and with the rebellion a feeling of guilt.2 2 However, Erikson does not regard Luther's parents as failures; on the whole they were as able as parents can be. Children are very perceptive in recognizing true love and and Luther must have had a happy enough childhood,

affection,

since he met Freud's standards of mental health as an adult

in his ability to love and to work.

His general emotional

maturity is further confirmed by his basic ability to function well (at least in the eyes of his contemporaries)

in

his periods of deepest emotional and religious turmoil. Perhaps Luther was not as troubled emotionally as he let on that he was.2 3

Nevertheless,

some inner conflict raged in his soul,

as

indicated by his frequent depressions and fear of the devil,

22.

Meyer,

Luther, pp. 23.

118,

"Review Essay,"

p.

292;

Erikson,

Young Man

121-22.

Erikson,

Young Man Luther,

pp.

148-49,

210,

237.

118

most typically expressed in the probably apocryphal tale that Luther threw his

festations Erikson writes,

primitive obsessions,

Of such mani-

ink pot at the devil.

"It is tempting to treat these as

and to pity the people who did not

know any better and who must have

felt haunted." 2 4

But

these rituals and compulsions helped Luther to master his fears; they served to personalize and identify what Erikson calls the "backside" of life in a way not open to a modern neurotic. 25 defy him,

One could argue with the devil,

even express contempt for him:

confront him,

no twentieth-

century person can do the same with his presumably more fears.

rational

Erikson declines to quantify the relative importance of this irrational component in Luther's greatness to the rational and religious component, but he undoubtedly ascribes the major significance to the irrational without making Luther's ideas mere rationalizations for his personal conflicts.

The source of Luther's conflict was hostility toward

his parents,

especially toward his father,

somewhat reduced level toward his mother.

but also at a Erikson maintains

that one could not write the things Luther did about women

if his relations with his mother had been satisfactory, but p. 60.

24.

Ibid.,

25.

Ibid., pp.

60,

"Psychiatry and History:

148,

249; but cf. Roland H.

Bainton,

An Examination of Erikson's Young

Man Luther," Religion in Life 40 (Winter 1971) :462.

119

Erikson seems to forget that sixteenth-century attitudes about women were considerably different

Roland Bainton,

from modern ones.

an expert on the Reformation,

has challenged

Erikson by affirming that Luther's opinion on women was as liberal as the times would allow.

Erikson's

statement that

Luther was anti-Mary because he was hostile to his mother is even more historically questionable. ity to his mother is arguable,

While Luther's hostil-

considerable evidence exists

that he was actually quite devoted to the Virgin Mary.2 6 However,

Erikson does not attribute great importance

any animosity Luther felt for his mother;

to

the main theme of

the book is Luther's repressed hostility toward his father. Though Erikson is considered a Freudian,

it has not been

noticed how much this interpretation differs from Freud in that it does not involve except in an indirect way

pus complex.

The latter is, of course,

the Oedi-

in Freudian theory

originally the source of any child's hostility to his father, but since Luther was not excessively devoted to his mother in classic Oedipal fashion, rivalry.

Further,

Erikson does not stress Oedipal

hostility does not exist without hate,

so

Luther's position vis-a-vis his father was much more complex than just one of simple hostility.

The picture Erikson

paints is an Adlerian one of a child full of love and

26.

Erikson,

Young Man Luther, p.

73;

chiatry and History," pp. 455-57; Lindbeck, Young Man Luther," Portrait," p. 408.

p.

214;

Bainton,

"Luther:

Bainton,

"Psy-

"Erikson's A Psychiatric

120

hostility,

able to express his love, but inhibited in

expressing his hostility, of vengeance.

'27

openly "waiting it out for a day

Luther's burning desire was justification,

28 that is, vindication a recognition of inner worth.

To

make this portrait of schoolboy Luther plausible, Erikson must connect the hostility to Luther's religious

activity.

Erikson is in agreement with other psychologists who

have suggested that hostility toward the father is common in cases of religious conversion where one transfers allegiance from an unacceptable earthly father to a heavenly one. Father-child hostility is more common than mother-child hostility because the child first comes to know his father during the anal-autonomy stage when the infant is trying to achieve

some degree of independence.

Luther's father, tonomy,

If the father--like

according to Erikson--does not allow au-

the seeds of rebellion are planted.

the mother who cares directly for the infant,

27. Reik,

Erikson, Young Man Luther, p. 83.

Of Love and Lust

(New York: Farrar,

Further, the

unlike

father is

Cf. Theodore

Straus and Company,

1957), p. 57; and Erikson, Childhood and Society, p. 404; Also see May, Love and Will, p. 31 on the apathy of waiting Psychoit out; and Kurt Robert Eissler, Leonardo Da Vinci: analytic Notes on the Enigma (New York: International

Universities Press, 28.

1961),

pp.

214-15.

Erikson, Young Man Luther, p.

"Erikson's Young Man Luther," p.

217.

145; but cf. Lindbeck,

121

more distant:

his love is therefore more dangerous,

his

29 presence inherently more of a threat.

Erikson finds that Luther's father accentuated these dangers in a father-son relationship,

under the influence of alcohol.

especially when he was

The following quotations

reveal the significance Erikson assigns to Hans's personality in the formation of Luther's character. The interpretation is plausible that Martin was driven out of the trust stage, out from "under his

mother's skirts," by a jealously ambitious father who tried to make him precociously independent from women Hans succeeded, and sober and reliable in his work. doubts of violent boy the in storing but not without lifelong a the father's justification and sincerity; .

shame over the persisting gap between his own precocious conscience and his actual inner state. . . Faced with a father who made a questionable use

of brute superiority; a father who had at his disposal the techniques of making others feel morally inferior without being quite able to justify his own moral superiority; a father to whom he could not get close and from whom he could not get away--faced with such a father, how was he going to submit without being emasculated, or rebel without emasculating the

.

father. . . Here, I think is the origin of Martin's doubt that the father when he punishes you, is really guided by love and justice rather than by arbitrariness and The early doubt later was projected on the malice. Father in heaven with such violence that Martin's "God3 0 monastic teachers could not help noticing it.

does not hate you, you hate him," one of them said. Psychoanalytic Edward Hitschmann, Great Men: 29. Studies (New York: International Universities Press, 1956), p. 245; Erikson, Young Man Luther, pp. 123-25. 30.

255-56.

Erikson,

Young Man Luther,

pp.

58,

67,

123,

122

Erikson maintains that Luther's father, throughout history,

like many others

was so devoted to making his

son succeed

in life that he had little regard for the integrity of the boy's personality.

The evidence for this, as well as the

proof that Luther was beaten as a child,

is chiefly Luther's

resentful hostility in adulthood which Erikson regards as of necessity having its roots in earlier years. father was no more brutal than most,

Even if Luther's

Erikson argues that

Luther could have perceived his treatment as cruel.31 Luther did remark that his father once beat him severely, but whereas Erikson sees this as typical, Luther meant when he said once,

or

"einmal," just that:

To prove that Luther's father was

time.

it is possible

a drunkard,

one

Erikson

relies on Luther's statement that his father sang and joked a lot when he drank liquor. Erikson,

Roland Bainton,

in reply to

has pointed out that many of Luther's vignettes of

the strictness of his childhood,

such as the well-known

statement of Luther that his mother drove him to the monmay have been intended not to expose his youthful

astery,

suffering but to serve as parables

in religious

instruction.3 2

The actual historical evidence on the matter is not clear,

but adequate proof is available to indicate that Hans

31.

Ibid., pp. 63,

65,

son's Young Man Luther," p.

32. 460-61.

Bainton,

70; but cf. Lindbeck,

"Erik-

216.

"Psychiatry and History," pp. 453,

458,

123

Luder,

Luther's father,

was easygoing on

not invariably a ruthless authoritarian. the cantankerous

some occasions and Even had he been

and angry man Erikson believes him to have

been, Luther did not have to look to his father to find a The theologians of the time and

model for an austere God.

popular opinion accepted a view of God as severe and inscrutable.

the harsh,

On the other hand,

implacable God of the

theologians was also a loving God.3 3 So,

Erikson maintains,

Luther

was Luther's father.

could not actually hate his father,

any more than Hans Luder

could withhold love from his son; but Luther could feel rebellion,

and guilt because he wished to rebel.

Manifesta-

tions of this hostility appear in Luther's belligerance toward the Devil,

the Pope,

and rebellious peasants,

expres-

sions of anger that a dutiful son did not dare reveal to his honored father.

Of Luther's attitude toward the peasant

rebellion, Erikson wrote,

"Do we hear Hans, beating the

residue of a stubborn peasant out of his son?" 3 4

Luther's

rituals and obsessions as a monk were efforts to ward off guilt and anxiety about his unconscious disobedience.

Even

Luther's superiors in the monastery recognized that his compulsive need to avoid every sin was in itself a form of

33. Bainton,

34.

"Erikson's Young Man Luther," pp.

Lindbeck,

215; Spitz,

213,

"Psychohistory and History," pp. 191-96;

"Luther:

A

Psychiatric Portrait," p.

Erikson, Young Man Luther, pp. 65,

406.

122,

235-36.

124

and Erikson argues that Luther chose to become a

rebellion, monk in the

first place in order to justify disobedience

in

the name of a higher law.3 5 But why should Luther feel guilty when the joining of religious orders in the face of parental opposition was a common enough practice of the time sanctified by the church?

and even respectably

To answer this reservation Erik-

son relies on Luther's own words that he

experienced guilt

when his father accused him of not following the biblical injunction to honor one's father: disobeyed one

"He told me that I had

of the ten commandments.

That word hit me in

the bowels as nothing ever did in all my life." 3 6

Even when

his father relented and expressed approval of his son's vocation,

Luther did not think Hans meant it,

and his father's

assertion that Martin could not stand the celibacy of monastic

life increased Luther's anxiety

monastery that the

and guilt.

It was in the

identity crisis reached its full

proportions.37 Though a disturbing period which often leads to neurotic or delinquent behavior in nearly every youth's life,

the

identity crisis reaches monumental proportions with lifetime consequences

464,

in religious leaders.

35.

Ibid.,

36.

Quoted in Bainton,

pp.

94-95,

156,

Such people seek

219.

"Psychiatry and History," pp.

466. 37.

Erikson,

Young Man Luther,

pp.

95,

146,

158.

125

philosophies to live by with the certainty that they are "meaning it,"

as Erikson puts it.3 8

By this term,

he means

that the religious figure must attain absolute inner con-

viction of his own sincerity in what he believes; until that point is reached,

the religious leader has a feeling of wait-

ing for something to happen and a receptivity to new intellectual doctrine.

To a degree,

of course,

all adolescents

experience this emotion, making adolescence the most efficacious period for proselytizers and giving society the pressure for change which emanates from the eclectic receptivity of youth. 3 9 In Luther's case,

Erikson supposes that the identity

crisis reached its greatest intensity on those occasions that have entered history as the dramatic milestones of Luther's career before he stood at Worms.

Though the psycho-

logical significance of these events is not really crucial to Erikson's argument,

they have been made the basis of

Lewis Spitz's criticism of Erikson which he wrote for the

journal Soundings in 1973.40

Spitz's refutation of Erikson's

interpretation of Luther and the Reformation is devastating, but he is really attacking a straw man,

38. Ibid., pp. 14-15, and History," p. 188. 39.

Meyer,

Luther, pp. 101, 40.

Spitz,

176,

261;

"Review Essay," p.

134,

since Erikson

Spitz,

297;

"Psychohistory

Erikson,

149-50, but cf. ibid.,

Young Man

pp. 44-47.

"Psychohistory and History," pp.

182-209.

126

cleverly avoided basing his position on occurrences which However,

were historically dubious at best.

Spitz's criti-

cism does reveal how a psychoanalytic bias can often blind a researcher to alternative possibilities which are more in accord with the traditional interpretation. The specific event which Erikson attributes importance

to is the so-called

blurted out in church,

the greatest

"fit in the choir" when Luther

"Non sum."

The historical accuracy

of this event has been debated before, but if it did occur, Luther is supposed to have been referring to the biblical story of the man Christ cured of devils; I am not possessed by a devil.

Luther was saying,

Erikson maintains that this

outburst took place after Luther's father had just said that Luther's mission to withdraw to the monastery might be a call from a demon instead of according to Erikson, disease

from God.

Luther was

In the

fit in the choir,

"at the crossroads of mental

and religious creativity,"

for he wished contra-

dictorily to defy his father and to confirm his vow at the same time.4 2 However,

Spitz maintains that Luther's statement was

merely an indication of his medieval fear of demons.

As for

another of Erikson's dramatic examples of the identity crisis, the Tower Experience,

in which Luther was supposed to have

41. Erikson, Young Man Luther, "Erikson's Young Man Luther," p. 215. 42.

Erikson,

Young Man Luther,

pp.

p.

21,

38.

38-39;

Lindbeck,

127

seen the truth of justification by faith while sitting on the privy in the tower,

torical.

Spitz also dismisses it as unhis-

The tower was not the privy but the library,

and

Luther's phrase "auff diser cloaca" meant actually "down in the dumps" and was devoid of any anal reference.

The most

famous event which occurred to the young Luther,

his vow in

the thunderstorm to become a monk, which Erikson thought a guilty impulse to avoid reprisal for parental disobedience, Spitz calls a traditional gesture of piety understandable in a man who Saxony.

saw the force of God in a mere thunderstorm in In short,

Spitz's answer to Erikson is that Luther

was motivated by a religious view of life. 4 3 Erikson agrees that religiosity was the dominant force in Luther's life but he views it as inseparable indistinguishable

from Luther's rebellion.

his father in going to the monastery,

thority of the church later,

and even

Luther rejected

he rejected the au-

and he was reconciled to his

father's discipline only when he developed the substitute authority of his own religion. doubts of his own worthiness, he could accept,

An indecisive young man with searching for father figures

Luther overcame his agony when he recog-

nized that he could achieve redemption through identification with Christ's suffering.

43. 202-3.

Spitz,

By accepting the role of son as

"Psychohistory and History," pp. 197-99,

128

Luther reconciled himself to God

Christ had accepted it, and man,

as Erikson makes clear in the following passage:

The study of Luther's earliest lectures shows that in his self-cure from deep obsessive

struggles he

came, almost innocently, to express principles basic to the mastery of existence by religious and introspective means.

.

.

. At the same time Luther crowns

his attempt to cure the wounds of this wrath by changing God's attributes. Instead of being like an earthly father whose mood swings are incomprehensible to his small son, God is given the attribute of ira misericordiae--a wrath which is really compassion. With this concept, Luther was at last able to forgive God for being a Father,

and grant him justification.4 4

Luther had in effect psychoanalyzed himself and found the source of his trouble: God

(father) but surrender.

like the father,

he should not struggle against In so doing he could become

"usurp" the father's role and acquire the

power and certitude he had earlier missed,

a role which was

enhanced as Luther married and became a father himself. This reversal of roles was possible only through absolute sincerity with oneself about one's identity.

Erikson draws

a parallel between the aims of psychoanalysis and of monas-

ticism, both suspicious of motives and on guard against selfdeception;

for Luther's religion to be a success,

be rigorously honest, common

he had to

"mean it" humbly,

like the

sow which was his favorite animal in parables.

more psychoanalytic terms,

44.

221.

Luther,

In

the necessity was to accept the

power of the id instead of trying to conquer it,

213,

he had to

Young Man Luther,

pp.

74,

113,

with the

157,

168,

129

(that is,

knowledge that if the ego were secure faith,

in Luther's schema),

if one had

the baser temptations could be

restrained.4 5 Socially,

according to Erikson,

Luther's

solution to

his crisis is a paradigm for the age and even for our time, since Luther was one of the creators of the modern world view.

While the Middle Ages was the period of "superego

righteousness,"46 Here,

the Renaissance was the age of the ego.

Luther's frankness in exposing his inner turmoil and

his emphasis on individual in contrast to social salvation are manifestations of Renaissance individualism and respect

for human values, while his belief in equality and selfrealization prepared the way for the modern secular view and for increased democracy.4

7

Considering the momentous social consequences of Luther's personal odyssey and the widespread disillusionment

and recognition of the inadequacy of the old religion,

the

wonder is that before Luther no others were able to translate their suffering into social action as he did.

Luther,

Meyer, "A Review of Young Man Luther," in Mazlish, 45. Psychoanalysis and History, p. 176; Meyer, "Review Essay,"

p. 293; Erikson, Young Man Luther, pp. 212, 217-18, 237-38. 46.

Erikson,

Young Man Luther,

p.

144,

153-54,

197,

193.

47. Rollo May, Psychology and the Human Dilemma (Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1967), pp. 58-59; Erikson, Young Man Luther, pp. 39, 231.

130

according to Erikson, bridged the gap between the individual and society when he did the

"dirty work"

of the Renaissance

by confronting the hostile church with the problem of the 48 identity of the average man.

of identity for himself,

While creating a new sense

Luther devised a new theology which

satisfied the needs of millions.

Most ordinary men,

faced

with Luther's choice of accepting a theology morally repugnant to them or a life of doubt and indecision,

could not

have surmounted the powerful obstacles Luther was able to vanquish. 4 9 But in Erikson's view Luther was no ordinary man: was a great man,

he

a homo religosus who lived life more deeply

and felt more strongly than the average, his suffering with new insight. people yearned for new beliefs,

and emerged from

He appeared at a time when and his greatness

is measured

by his ability to use his personal gifts to respond to the religious and emotional needs of his age.

At this point,

the skeptical reader may be impatient to ask if this interpretation is really different from what religious

scholars

and historians have always said of Luther.50

48.

Lindbeck,

"Erikson's Young Man Luther," pp.

219-21;

Erikson, Young Man Luther, pp. 194; but cf. Norman 0. Brown, The Psychoanalytic Meaning of History Life Against Death: (Middleton, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1959), p. 227. Erikson, Young Man Luther, pp. 49. "Erikson's Young Man Luther," p. 220.

191,

194;

Lindbeck,

Lindbeck, "Erikson's Young Man Luther," pp. 218-19; 50. Erikson, Dimensions of a New Identity, p. 55; Erikson, Childhood and Society, p. 376; Erikson, Young Man Luther, p. 15.

131

Insofar as it

analyzes religious inspiration,

Luther is a very untraditional interpretation,

Young Man

with the

fundamental energy of motivation for religious speculation 51 transferred to new impulses.

Earlier historians had

attributed Luther's religiosity to his sharing of common cultural mores of the time and to rational, political,

personal

(but obvious) considerations.

opposition to the Peasants'

For example,

or

Luther's

War has been ascribed to his

desire to win the support of the nobility, without which his campaign could not succeed; servatism; sumptuous

to his personally

innate con-

to a religious belief that the peasants were prein challenging a world God had created;

or to his

sincere horror over some of the outrages of the peasants.

The list could be lengthened easily, but the point is that all these interpretations are considerably more obviously undisguised than Erikson's interpretation which rests on irrational and largely invisible motivations. at all theologically oriented,

To one who

is

it is a substantial detraction

from Luther's sincerity to hear he created a theology because he could not openly express his anger toward his father. Erikson would view the matter differently because his

thesis is precisely the self-honesty of Luther in his emotional reconstruction of himself,

but one wonders how

A Psychiatric Portrait," pp. Bainton, "Luther: 51. On the Origins of Truth: Gandhi's Erikson, H. Erik 408; 406, & Company, 1969), Norton W. W. York: Militant Nonviolence (New

p.

250.

132

successful that resolution of the identity crisis would have been had Luther recognized his repressed hostility toward his father.

If Luther had been utterly frank with himself,

he might have conquered his hatred rather than sublimating

it into the creation of a religion and a church; he would "normal" person,

then have been a

historical nonentity.

Hence,

it" has any sense at all,

but, unfortunately,

if Erikson's phrase

a

"meaning

it must be interpreted as a suc-

cessful sublimation of an ineffective character trait into a historically useful one.

As long as Luther's animosity was

unconsciously directed toward his father it was socially worthless;

only when it was transformed into creative im-

pulse did it acquire historical connotation. son's interpretation, Luther's turmoil,

So, in Erik-

the rational religious crisis in

even if it existed,

played only a minor

role.

Of course,

if Freud and modern psychology are right, no

modern interpretation can make Luther's struggle an exclusively religious one.

Yet,

granted that Erikson's position

is more sophisticated than the old-fashioned ones which a

derive Luther's ordeal from pure intellectual thought,

serious objection to the psychoanalytic theory remains: religion was a much more vital matter in Luther's day than in our own.

The idea that a man could work himself into

what we call a nervous breakdown over religious ideas as questionable

as we might imagine

in our scientific

is not age,

133

and certainly the purely intellectual portion of Luther's anguish must be greater than Erikson supposes.

A

learned

scholar like Luther who read widely in the works of theologians would have been especially preoccupied with the 52 standard Renaissance religious questions.

Perhaps Luther, who saw the hand of God in all actions, could accept an interpretation that God had moved him to the

true religion through displaced hatred of his father. theless,

Erikson's view raises all kinds of questions

he leaves unanswered.

Why,

for example,

Roland Bainton has

which

did Luther not

solve his problem by obedience to the Pope,

through creation of a new religion?

Never-

rather than

Historian and theologian

suggested that Erikson's interpretation is

similar to that of Pope Alexander VI when he claimed Luther

was rebelling for the sake of rebellion rather than from principle.

Yet the questions about the methodology and con-

clusions of Young Man Luther have not prevented historians

from giving it high praise as the finest example of psychohistory,

often mingled with a reserved skepticism which led

one reviewer to exclaim,

"How can so bad a book be

so

good?"53 52. Lindbeck, "Erikson's Young Man Luther," pp. 217, 224-25; David Hackett Fischer, Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (New York: Harper Torchbooks, A Psychiatric Portrait," 1970), p. 49; Bainton, "Luther: p. 408; Bainton, "Psychiatry and History," p. 469. Lindbeck, "Erikson's Young Man Luther," pp. 211, 53. 217; Bainton, "Luther: A Psychiatric Portrait," pp. 407, Gertrude Himmelfarb, "The 'New See also: 409-10, 453.

134

The place of Luther in the canon of psychohistory is secure, but its value of Luther is dubious. monly supposed,

as a contribution to the understanding Its inadequacies

are not,

as

is com-

assumptions

derived from the psychoanalytic

of Erikson's thought but from the narrow motivational struc-

ture to which Erikson rigorously adheres, between father and

that hostility

son explains Luther's personality.

Inso-

far as power is given more emphais than sex in his thesis, Erikson relies on Adler rather than Freud,

and his

inter-

pretation is no more Freudian than the Catholic theory that Luther left the monastery to increase his sexual activity is

Freudian.

A further limitation is the impressionistic style

of Erikson's writing which not only makes his meaning ambiguous but renders his use

of Freud superfluous,

since he

could easily have reached the same conclusions without Freud. If Young Man Luther is any harbinger of future efforts the field,

the fear of

in

traditionalists that psychohistory

will pour history into a rigid mold of scientific precision is unjustified.

One has only to look at the last page of

Young Man Luther to fully grasp this fact. erences to pre-Columbian

There,

temples and Norse gods,

with ref-

to

History,'" Commentary 59 (January 1975);74-74; Meyer, "Review Essay," p. 291; Spitz, "Psychohistory and History," pp. 189, 204; Coles, Erik H. Erikson, p. 205; Meyer, "A Review of Young Man Luther," in Mazlish, Psychoanalysis and History, p. 176; Gale Stokes, "Cognition and the Function of Nationalism," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 4 (Spring

1974):529;

Bell,

"Skilled Negotiator," p.

22.

135

Renaissance art,

to evocative peregrinations on Erikson's

vacation in Mexico, and science

the author has left the realm of history

to enter that of the retrospective musings of

literary fancy. 5 4 After Young Man Luther, Erikson's other works in psychoGandhi's Truth:

history,

On the Origins of Militant Non-

violence and Dimensions of a New Identity, Less well known among historians, and even more obscurely written,

are anticlimactic.

more explicitly Freudian, they are the epiphenomena

of a masterpiece, yet still significant in their own right. Gandhi is probably less appreciated than it should be because it deals with an Eastern country which is outside the mainIn structure,

stream of historical studies in the West.

ever, it is similar to Luther,

how-

as Erikson wanted to follow

Young Man Luther with Middle-Aged Mahatma when he developed the idea of a similarity between the insight of Gandhi and

that of modern psychology.5 5

54.

Erikson, Young Man Luther, p.

Psychohistorical

267.

articles which owe more to Adler than Freud are common; see, A Psychofor example, Peter Loewenberg, "Theodor Herzl: in The Leadership," Charismatic Political in analytic Study Psychoanalytic Interpretation of History, ed. Benjamin B.

Wolman

(New York:

55.

Basic Books,

1971), p.

184.

Erik H. Erikson, Gandhi's Truth:

On the Origins of

Militant Nonviolence (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1969); Erik H. Erikson, Dimensions of a New Identity (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1974); Erik H. Erikson, "On In Search of the Nature of Psycho-Historical Evidence:

Gandhi," Daedalus 97(Summer 1968):712.

136

To make his interpretation as free of culture bias

as

Erikson immersed himself in Hindu philosophy to

possible,

the extent that his writing assumed a mystical and diffuse flavor.

He also traveled within India and interviewed

people who had known Gandhi, but in spite of these aids in writing, his methodological difficulties were probably For example,

greater than with Young Man Luther.

Gandhi's

autobiography was an obvious source but before it could be used, Erikson had to find out such things as why Gandhi wrote it and for whom,

since Erikson would not accept its accuracy

unquestioningly.

Further,

he attempted to avoid the reduc-

tionist fallacy by resisting the temptation of his training to think, a man's conflicts represent what he

. .

.

"really is,"

and

in transferring clinical insights to historical

persons and events, however, the clinician all too easily makes himself believe that he is engaged in

"therapy" on a larger As in Luther,

(social, historical)

scale.56

Erikson finds Gandhi's identity crisis a

determinant of his career, but the

identity crisis of Gandhi

appears to be not a well-defined time but a diffused part of

his very function in living.

Gandhi is more of a straight

chronological biography than Luther,

but as in the previous

56. Erikson, Gandhi's Truth, pp. 61-62, 65; Sudhir Kakir, "The Logic of Psychohistory," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 1 (Autumn 1970):188; Erikson, "On the In Nature of Psycho-Historical Evidence," pp. 700-701, 714. the latter article Erikson describes some of the method-

ological difficulties he had.

137

the existence of the religious leader as great man

book,

assumed,

is

and Erikson even points out that Gandhi's pre-

eminence was recognized by his colleagues even when he was

still a child.5 7 of course,

Gandhi's preeminence,

was his moral claim to

and Erikson's thesis is that this came from the

leadership,

essentially feminine side of Gandhi's nature. what Americans would call a mamma's boy;

Gandhi was

as a child he took

the greatest pride in helping his mother in her household In contrast,

tasks.

he feared greatly his

Resistance to such an all-powerful

very prominent citizen.

father would be futile and, the

attempt,

father who was a

unlike Luther,

Gandhi never made

though unconsciously his resentment found out-

lets in disguised hostility.

Guilt feelings were manifested

in his obsession and fears for,

afraid of hobgoblins. was restricted;

even as an adult,

Also unlike Luther,

Gandhi's sex life

his deep attachment to his mother was trans-

ferred to a deep attachment to nonsexual values. inine,

soft,

nonagressive

another passion of his life,

"If nursing was

then it all started when in his

'oedipal' arrangement,

he became a mother to his

father--a mother who always had time for him." 5 8

Gandhi's Truth,

57.

Erikson,

58.

Ibid., pp.

The fem-

aspect of his character was further

accentuated by the philosophy of Hinduism:

own unique

he was

110-11,

114,

pp. 237.

109,

265.

138

From a psychoanalytic viewpoint, right in stressing the acter,

Erikson may be quite

feminine components of Gandhi's char-

but in what way Gandhi's

"feminism" differed from the

normal behavior of Indian men is a question Erikson never confronts.

Though passivity and gentleness are much more

highly valued as masculine models in India than the West, Erikson assumes that the Indian standards represent a deviation from a desirable form of masculinity which he equates with the Western tradition.

Further,

the similarities he

finds in the careers of Luther and Gandhi are too astonishing to be fully acceptable in cultures as disparate as They sug-

Reformation Germany and twentieth-century India.

gest that Erikson is promoting a theory that all religious leaders follow the

same pattern of development,

a pattern

which gets more elusive and blurred as the work progresses. When one gets to Erikson's description of the strike of Ahmedabad

as the

"Event"

in the life

thought becomes almost obscure,

of Gandhi,

his

line

of

and one is tempted to feel

that the psychoanalyst has succumbed to the mystic and inscrutable influences of the East. was

Identity,

which in Luther

a young man's attempt within definite boundaries of

time and space to reorder his life to accomplish a life of achievement becomes

in Gandhi a synonym for the cosmic

anguish of the human condition.5

A

9

Joan W. Bondurant and Margaret W. Fisher, "Gandhi: 59. Psychoanalytic View," American Historical Review 76

139

In a more recent work, Dimensions of a New Identity, Erikson carries this expansion of the meaning of identity even further by setting as his goal the uncovering of the identity of an entire country,

Indeed,

the United States.

identity has assumed such a surfeit of meanings in this work

that one critic hastily concluded Erikson was rejecting his own concept.6 0

Nevertheless,

Erikson is merely following a

long tradition in finding in Jefferson the prototype of the One would hesitate,

American man and the American identity.

however,

to label his effort history;

it is instead a polit-

ical essay on democracy with suggestive interpretations American attitudes toward youth, Identity

is a public lecture,

race,

on

and technology.

an adequate book of the type

people write when their reputations are firmly established, but it can in no way compare with Young Man Luther. For it is by Luther that Erikson's position in history will be judged.

As historians debate its merits,

Erikson's

ambitious claim for the utility of psychoanalysis in history

(October 1971):1106, 201;

Erikson,

1108; Manuel,

Gandhi's Truth,

pp.

"Use and Abuse," pp. 44-45.

200-

In Young Man Luther

Erikson also slighted the cultural factor, though he did not Yet one might never know from ignore it in either book. reading Luther that the great religious leader was a German. For a suggestive interpretation of just how important the national differences can be for even culturally similar people see Ralf Dahrendorf, Society and Democracy in Germany

(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson,

1968), pp.

301-2.

Erikson, Dimensions of a New Identity, p. 124; 60. Cf. Edwin M. Yoder, Gutmann, "Erik Erikson's America," p. 60. "Crumby Gapsmanship," National Review, 16 August 1974,

p.

935.

140

may either

achieve realization or suffer a decline into

obscurity, but at the very

least Erikson deserves credit for

broaching the subject with insight, ciousness.

compassion,

As he believed of Luther,

and judi-

it may be said of

Erikson that in "meaning it" when presenting a point of view,

hw skillfully made the leap from ordinary exposition to significant achievement.

The accomplishment of Erikson in all his works has been to legitimize psychohistory as an alternative among the tools

open to historians.

Ironically,

he has achieved this through

writings which are less psychohistorical than those of some of his less highly regarded colleagues.

Certainly he has

moved far from Freud's position that childhood experiences, such as the Oedipal situation,

determine adult

life.

Erik-

son presupposes that adolescence is more important than childhood,

at

least where historical

figures are concerned.

He ignores the Oedipus complex and emphasizes the power relationships within the family as the determinants of character;

he stresses as causes of greatness the desire of

historical figures to escape feelings of inferiority and insignificance more than the Freudian priority of

sex.

Even a

cursory look at Freud's theory of history and the model Erikson follows shows many differences.

Luther,

for example,

was not successful by sublimating his energy from sex into religion.

Indeed,

his energy in both areas was greater

after his leaving the monastery.

141

These trends in Erikson's thought would lead one to

suppose that he is following Adler rather than Freud and perhaps he is,

though unwittingly.

But there is also a

remarkable similarity to the theory of challenge and response proposed by Arnold Toynbee.

Toynbee believes

that all his-

torical creativity comes from the tension released in striving to respond to a difficult situation. also,

To Erikson,

the adolescent confronting an environment he perceives

as hostile parallelsToynbee's creative minority facing a challenge which must,

of historical necessity,

either elicit

Toynbee

a favorable response or a turn backwards.

speaks of

civilizations which failed to make the turn and were therefore "arrested" or

"aborted";

the Eriksonian equivalent

would be a historical figure who failed to translate his Though

personal identity crisis into a socially useful goal. Erikson and Toynbee worked independently,

they arrived at

similar metahistorical conclusions. 6 1 Labels are always deceiving and sometimes unnecessarily superfluous, but a label of Adlerian metahistorian would not be inappropriate Gandhi's Truth,

for Erikson.

In Young Man Luther,

and in his minor works Erikson finds

in the

same source of creativity in all historical greatness:

it is

the primeval human desire to escape the insignificance and

61.

Arnold J. Toynbee,

A Study of History,

(London: Oxford University Press, 2:73-213, 322; 3:3-50.

1934-61),

12 vols.

1:37-65, 336;

142

inferiority of nothingness and to gain what measure of

immortality is possible for mankind through the power, prestige,

and satisfaction of accomplishment.

Though Adler and it is nothing

Toynbee may be modern variants of this idea,

other than what the Greeks were aware of in the Prometheus legend.

The aspiration of mankind to greatness,

which re-

ligious ascetics labeled deplorable and false pride, old as history itself,

is as

and its impulse was acknowledged by

Freud who believed it a sublimation of a still more primeval drive toward sex.

But Erikson has understood

revealing its dynamic status

in history.

it better by

For it was through

the power of greatness that, when his religious conversion was complete,

Luther,

a thunderstorm,

who had earlier trembled in fear before

was able to

scoff at the more illusory power

of the emperors and popes of the world. In reaffirming this greatness

of Luther and Gandhi,

Erikson is defying the current trend in historical writing to emphasize the

social and cultural

major historical

significance,

forces in events of

but he is far from merely re-

turning to a Carlylean interpretation of a great man as one who intuitively is able to grasp the true meaning of a situ-

ation more than others or as one who prophetically sees the active forces in history and where they are moving. Erikson,

Before

the great-man theory always implied that the great

man stood above his contemporaries because he in intuition,

in insight,

in intelligence,

surpassed them

and in cleverness.

143

But neither Erikson's Luther nor his Gandhi resembles this description.

Instead,

Erikson measures the greatness

of his heroes by their inadequacies,

and his psychoanalytic

bias is most obvious in his definition of their success. presupposes that in Luther

and Gandhi,

He

the same neurotic

traits which in the great majority of people hinder the development of the full potential of the individual were the impetus for ultimate personal satisfaction and social accomplishment.

Thus,

insofar as Erikson emphasizes character

disorders as the source of greatness,

his theory is a deni-

gration of the claims to personal superiority often implied for the outstanding. However,

in another sense Erikson's theory

Carlyle's in celebrating greatness,

surpasses

for he implies that

Luther and Gandhi achieved their success without advantages

of intuitive or superior intelligence,

social inevitability,

or even historical awareness; instead,

they had to over-

compensate to surmount the immense handicap of their under-

developed personalities.

In Erikson's view their greatness

was enhanced for having arisen from this source,

and his

empathy for his subjects is probably the reason his psychohistory has been more psychohistorians. might have neurotic,

successful than that of other

Whereas another psychoanalytic

researcher

seen in Luther merely a prototype of a compulsive to Erikson Luther was important because

the

144 religious leader affirmed Freud's idea that an individual who wants to be successful or happy must ultimately be his own psychoanalyst.

He differs, however, with Freud in his

application of this insight to history.

Freud could en-

vision no history beyond the repetition of primeval motifs; Erikson can see no history beyond the immediate struggle of the individual to excel.

The limited scope of both inter-

pretrations set the pattern for the psychohistorians who came after them.

CHAPTER IV

THE PSYCHOHISTORY OF

THE FAMILY

Erikson's historiographical influence has been greatest

in family history and the history of childhood,

an area

which had been neglected until the 1960s when historians attempted to overcome the obstacles of lack of evidence

and

disinterest among colleagues which had previously stood in the way of progress in the field.

The tremendous importance

of the family throughout history as a social institution

rather than a merely biological one justifies the growing acceptance of its study as a field in psychohistory,

espe-

cially in the areas which have been researched most exten-

sively:

seventeenth-century family life,

family,

and twentieth-century adolescence.

the Victorian Yet after a

decade of research the role of family history within the traditional framework of historical writing remains tentative.

Consider,

for example,

how little historians know

about whether Luther's upbringing was typical of the Saxon families of his time;

or,

as Frank E.

Manuel has pointed out,

we know more about the diplomacy of Parma and Venice in the eighteenth century than we do about how families reacted to death then.

Oddly enough,

Freud's influence probably

restricted the study of childhood in history because his

145

146 thought emphasized the cruder events of infancy as deter-

minants of behavior,

and since little historical evidence

usually remains of these, their historical role.

there was little point in analyzing

In a different way Erikson's great-

man theory also discouraged any broad study of the history of childhood since, of history,

if all the action was with the Luthers

as Erikson thought,

then one did not need to

know much about the family life of the less distinguished in history.1 Before American psychohistorians could utilize the insight of Erikson they had to divest themselves of the great-

man bias.

Once done, Erikson's concepts of identity crisis

and stages of growth were flexible enough to be useful in developing a general theory of the history of childhood. Another influence,

second only to that of Erikson,

pioneering work of French historian Philippe Aris, of Childhood,

published in 1958. 2

was the

Centuries

The first historical study

of a field which had formerly been reserved to sociologists, Centuries had a phenomenally wide-ranging

impact in

1. Edward McNall Burns and Philip Lee Ralph, World Civilizations from Ancient to Contemporary, 2 vols. (New

York: W. W. Norton & Company,

1969),

1:17-18; Tamara K.

Hareven, "The History of the Family as an Interdisciplinary Field," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2 (Autumn 1971): 400; Erik H. Erikson, "The First Psychoanalyst," Yale Review 46 (Autumn 1956) :47, 61; Frank E. Manuel, "The Use and Abuse of Psychology in History," Daedalus 100 (Winter 1971):209. 2. Philippe Ariies, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, trans. Robert Baldick (New~York: Random House, 1962).

147 stimulating interest in family and childhood history in America,

though it was more

a history of adult attitudes

toward children than a history of childhood itself. wrote psychological history,

Aries

but he was not a Freudian,

and

consideration of Centuries is warranted here only because the book was the point of departure for later psycho-

historians influenced by Freud and Erikson.3 Aries'

thesis was that the concept of childhood was a

modern invention;

in the Middle Ages it did not exist be-

cause most people

lived not in a nuclear family of husband,

wife,

and children,

as

is the rule today, but in an extended

family including cousins,

grandparents,

Under such circumstances,

family responsibility was more dif-

fused,

adults.

and remote relatives.

and few distinctions were made between children and

In the world of extremes of the Middle Ages where

rich and poor and high and low lived disparately in proximity, children and adults wore the same clothes, the same games--Louis XIII played leapfrog, after he reached his majority.

even enjoyed

for example, well

Until around the age of

seven children were also allowed a great deal of sexual play; afterwards,

at least until puberty,

sexuality was repressed.

Basically, childhood was considered an annoying but inevitable prelude to adult status,

and as soon as a child

3. Hareven, "The History of the Family," p. 399; John Demos, "Developmental Perspectives on the History of Childhood," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2 (Autumn 1971):

315.

148 exhibited sufficient independence to make his own way, was considered

an adult.

he

4

The modern idea which finds in childhood a period with chronological boundaries and an ethos markedly different from other stages of life would have been inconceivable to the people of premodern times. tended to neglect or cruel or heartless,

The people of the Middle Ages

ignore infants,

not because they were

but because infants

"did not count."

Aries elaborates:

In medieval society the idea of childhood did not exist; this is not to suggest that children were neglected, forsaken or despised. The idea of childhood is not to be confused with affection for children: it corresponds

to an awareness of the particular nature

of childhood. 5 Aries'

interpretation helps to illustrate a problem

which arises in any Freudian attempt to trace the history of childhood or of the family.

If,

as Freud assumed,

the basic

structure of childhood has been constant throughout history,

it can hardly have had a history and thus one cannot write much about it.

Yet a psycho-interpretation necessarily pre-

supposes a pattern of childhood and family development

some-

what different from that which exists today in spite of Freud's argument that the universality of the oedipal situation and unconscious motivation precluded any major

71,

4. Aries, Centuries of Childhood, 100-127, 414. 5.

Ibid.,

p. 128.

pp.

26,

33,

50,

57,

149 historical variance

from the

familial pattern which he

observed in nineteenth-century Vienna.

Freud's position

puts psychohistorians in an uncomfortable dilemma.

If they

uncover much evidence of a disparity between the families of the past and those of today,

theory into disrepute. ference,

they risk bringing Freud's

Yet if they do not find such a dif-

they really have no history to write because where

there is no change, there is no history. thesis that no historically

Further,

significant differences

the exist

between the families of the past and those of today is precisely the argument of the traditionalists,

a point which

also is disturbing to the psychohistorians. Aries avoids this dilemma because he is not a Freudian. His view of family structure is

anthropological and socio-

logical; he infers its character from the society of the time,

and he

implies that the number of different types of

families in history is limitless.

Though Aries writes psy-

chological history, his primary purpose is not to advance the cause of psychohistory but the didactic one of explaining how the desirable

family structure of the Middle Ages

degenerated into the inferior family of the present day. His objection to the modern world is that the nuclear has pushed aside

family

the old sociable equalitarianism of the

extended family of the Middle Ages. Ari s'

anger

is somewhat misplaced,

however,

because

he apparently accepted the concept of the extended family

150 from sociologists who had not done much actual research in the Middle Ages.

Recent evidence

indicates that the nuclear

family was the rule in the Middle Ages as it is today. Though there was some tendency for family members to know more relatives then than is true today,

this situation was

probably caused by the lack of mobility in an agricultural society instead of by the existence of an "extended family." Nor is the evidence entirely supportive of the idea of the neglect of children before the eighteenth century.

Under-

standably, modern people think that since the people of the Middle Ages lived closer to death, than we,

they were

poverty, and hardship

therefore less concerned with others,

but

feelings of deep affection for children can be found by anyone who glances at the literature of the Middle Ages. 6 Aries is on somewhat safer ground in pointing out a

difference in the way children were treated in regard to clothing, play, times.

and sex between the Middle Ages and our own

He writes of the remarkable sexual play allowed

Louis XIII even when he was in the crib:

6. Laslett,

Hareven,

"The History of the Family," p. 408; Peter

The World We Have Lost

(London: Methuen and Com-

pany, 1965), p. 29; Urban T. Holmes, "Medieval Children," Journal of Social History 2 (Winter 1968):165-67, 172; however, Arlene Skolnick, "The Family Revisited: Themes in Recent Social Science Research," Journal of Interdiscipli-

nary History 4 (Spring 1975):703-19 supports Aries.

Aries

and the others discussed in this chapter confine themselves to Western Europe. An entirely different situation prevailed in Eastern Europe.

151 . . . the lack of reserve with regard to children surprises us: we raise our eyebrows at the outspoken talk but even more at the bold gestures, the physical contacts, about which it is easy to imagine what a modern psycho-analyst would say. The psycho-analyst

would be wrong. sex itself,

The attitude to sex,

and doubtless

varies according to environment,

and con-

sequently according to period and mentality.7 Arises is apparently stating that a psychoanalyst would consider the actions of Louis perverted by modern standards, whereas Ariles believes that they were typical of the period and therefore normal. Nevertheless,

the question of whether seventeenth-

century sexual customs were more open than our own open since most interpretations,

Aries'

included,

is still are heavily

based on the probably untypical experiences of Louis XIII.

A great deal is known of this king's childhood from a diary kept for over twenty-six years by his physician,

Jean

Heroard.

Historians have been astonished by the remarkable

amount of

sexuality which seemed to pervade the young life

of the king in Heroard's account.

Adults,

for example, were

extremely preoccupied with Louis's sexual apparatus while he was still an infant,

and he was allowed,

when somewhat older,

sexual license which no modern child would be permitted.8

Aries accepts all of this as typical and indicative of the free

sexuality of the premodern period.

7.

Aries, Centuries of Childhood,

p. 103.

8. Elizabeth Wirth Marvick, "The Character of Louis XIII: The Role of His Physician," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 4 (Winter 1974):349-52.

152 Yet Louis's

situation may have been untypical,

and the

excessive adult interest in his ability to perform sexually was probably an affair of high state matters since his future ability to provide

a male heir to the throne was of

preeminent importance.

If Arie s'

view that the king's up-

bringing was normal in the context of the time

is correct,

one wonders why his adult behavior was frequently irrespon-

sible and immature. impotence,

Modern psychology suggests that his

miserliness, obstinacy,

hypochondria,

and de-

pendence on stronger men than himself may have had their

roots in his childhood treatment.

If so,

his rearing could

not have been normal even by seventeenth-century nevertheless, of useful

standards;

Heroard's journal remains an important source

information about child-rearing practices at the

French court,

but the question remains how his account also

reflects the usual practices of more humble French families

of the period.9 Ten years after Aries published his book, a young American historian,

David Hunt,

tackled this problem with

the concepts of Erikson in his Parents and Children in History.

The result is a book which so successfully integrates

psychoanalysis and history that even those opposed to psychohistory are compelled to respect the effort,

and it is no

exaggeration to say that Hunt's work ranks second only to

9.

Ibid., pp.

363-66,

368,

371-72.

153 that of Erikson.

An attempt to discover the customs of

child rearing in seventeenth-century France,

Parents and

Children is so devoid of the usual mistakes of reductionism and determinism that it really deserves more

fame than it

has heretofore received. 1 0 Hunt admits the enormous difficulties of his undertaking and the tentative nature of his conclusions. other psychohistorians,

Unlike

he refuses to rely on forced examples

of the similarities in psychoanalysis and history in order to make his task easier; analysis

instead he emphasizes that psycho-

is by nature reductionist insofar as it stresses

uniformity,

whereas history differs in stressing the unique.

By recognizing these differences, Hunt brings to his psychohistory a laudable modesty, which is also revealed when he admits that his evidence is scanty:

it consists mainly of

contemporary books on etiquette and Heroard's journal,

but

he points out that he either had to use this evidence or none at all.1 1 Parents and Children is divided into three parts: 1 is devoted to an analysis of Erikson and Aries; Part

Part 2

10. David Hunt, Parents and Children in History: The Psychology of Family Life in Early Modern France (New York: Basic Books, 1970). See Etienne van de Walle, "Recent Approaches to Past Childhoods," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2 (Autumn 1971) :364; Carl Pletsch, review of Parents and Children in History by David Hunt, Journal of Modern History 46 (March 1974):124. 11.

Hunt,

Parents and Children, pp.

4,

6-7.

154 deals with parents in the deals with children.

seventeenth century;

and Part 3

In respect to Aries and Erikson,

Hunt

is anti-Aries but pro-Erikson to such a degree that his interpretation is based almost entirely on Erikson's assump-

tions about the stages of childhood.

Though this method

entails the risk of too rigid an adherence to one model, has the advantage of giving coherence wise

might have been

interpretation,

isolated

to facts which other-

from any pattern

and it provides a good test

the applicability of Erikson's theories biography can be judged.

Like Erikson,

relevant

Hunt's research entire

attitude

dren in the

to

case by which

in an area outside Hunt stresses the

compatibility of an individual to his own society, believes each stage of life has

it

and he

a distinctive character. 12

leads him to the conclusion

of adults toward marriage,

birth,

that

the

and chil-

seventeenth century was much more complex and

confusing than Aries and other previous historians have supposed. For example, marriage was regarded as basically a financial and social arrangement, but elements of our own attitude toward romantic love in marriage were a strong undercurrent.

As the strength of the economic emphasis in

marriage was due oriented

to the

low status of women in the male-

society of the Old Regime,

men unconsciously feared

12. Ibid.1 p. 14. Hunt also relies heavily on Heroard; see van den Walle, "Recent Approaches to Past Childhoods,"

pp. 361-62.

155 women as possible seducers, privilege.

Consequently,

she was no threat,

enticers,

and usurpers of their

woman's prestige was highest where

in the ritual of childbirth,

the one area

where women had a natural superiority over the opposite sex in the

seventeenth-century

On the other hand,

view.13

the rearing of a child enjoyed no

high prestige because either

sex was able to do it,

children were often assigned to a wet nurse,

the child from the home,

who,

and thus

by removing

further served the psychological

purpose of reducing the jealousy of the husband at suddenly being displaced by the infant. In fact, the infant was always perceived as a threat to both parents because the

scarcity of food at the time required that food given to children come from what would otherwise go to adults; and the contemporary

literature,

probably with

some justice,

trays babies as avaricious and gluttonous. in Eriksonian

terms,

the

seventeenth-century

por-

For this reason, babies rarely

emerged from infancy with feelings of basic trust about the benevolence or altruism of adults. 1 4

13. Hunt,3Parents and Children, pp. 55-56, 58-67, 69-70, 73-74, 83; for a modern version of the same fear of aggressive women, see David Dvorkin, "Reflections on Manhood," Progressive 38 (December 1974):22-23. cf.

14. Hunt, Parents and Children, van den Walle, "Recent Approaches pp. 100-109, 118-22; to Past Childhoods,"

pp. 362-64.

156 Hunt finds in Erikson's stage of autonomy versus shame the key to the culture of

seventeenth-century France.

This

was the period around the second year of

life when infants

were weaned and administered discipline,

usually of a cor-

poral nature,

for parents of the seventeenth century broke

into "panicky inflexibility" upon hearing of any transgression by their children. second stage of

Freud and Erikson assumed the

life was connected to toilet training,

but

this interpretation can hardly be applied to the Old Regime,

since even adults at the time were rarely as fastidious as modern people.

The actual reason,

according to Hunt,

for

the suppression of the autonomy of the child was that the average adult had little autonomy himself. cation and authoritarian nature of

The stratifi-

society in the seven-

teenth century made autonomy for children

socially disruptive,

and since children who were never allowed autonomy missed opportunities of reaching complete maturity,

they became

adults who were childishly irresponsible and incapable of exercising freedom had they been granted it. sees autonomy as the main determinant of cultural patterns,

it assumes

Since Hunt

seventeenth-century

to him a significance greater

than the role Freud ascribed to sex.15 15.

153-54,

Hunt,

192,

Parents and Children,

195; Pletsch,

review, p.

pp.

125.

135-38,

141,

157 Yet he firmly maintains that essentially Freud's structure of the personality was correct, that the

for he rejects the idea

seventeenth century differed from our own

a more tolerant conception of sex.

To Hunt,

in having

Louis XIII's

upbringing was untypical and the inhibitions of the time differed from today's not in reduced intensity but by fall-

ing into different areas,

since most customs of the time are

fully within the classical Freudian pattern.

For example,

male children were rarely permitted to see their mothers without the father present,

a practice which suggests that

the prevention of Oedipal attachments was a goal of seventeenth century child rearing.1 6 A

psychohistory like Hunt's which purports to explain

the psychological

status of the

must do two things.

individual in his

society

It must show how the nature of the

fam-

ily in the past differed from the family of today and how the individual reacted to these differences.

In Erikson's

Luther the disparity between the family of the twentieth century and that of the Reformation was ignored,

but the

reader was provided with a credible version of how a modern individual might react to the same psychological situation which Luther confronted., In Hunt's writings the pattern is reversed. He shows in some detail the differences in physical customs between the family of seventeenth-century 16.

Hunt,

Parents and Children,

pp.

162,

173-74.

158 France and today, ence in reaction.

but he merely assumes a parallel differThus he cannot quite make up his mind

whether the authoritarian trends in seventeenth-century France were perceived in the same harshly punitive with which we see them today.

light

This equivocation enables

Hunt to grasp both horns of the central dilemma of the psychohistory of the family alluded to earlier.

He

asserts

a

considerable change in the outward customs of family life over the centuries but defends Freud's position that the underlying

structure remains the same.

Hunt's interpretation has been challenged by a young historian,

John Demos,

in his other writings.

in his book A Little Commonwealth

and

Though the two scholars have in com-

mon an admiration for Erikson and disagreement with Aries, Demos relies more on statistical evidence than Hunt and restricts his

research to the different locale of Plymouth

Colony in the

seventeenth century,

where the child-rearing

practices appear to have no relationship to Hunt's suppositions.17 In Plymouth children were usually born every two years

within a family,

so the typical family of the colony was

17. John Demos, A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. xi, 129-30; John Demos, "Underlying Themes in the Witchcraft of New England," American Historical Review 75 (June 1970):1320. Also see James A. Henretta, "The Morphology of New England Society in the Colonial Period," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2 (Autumn 1971) :383; Demos, "Developmental Perspectives," p. 317.

159 composed of people of a wide

spectrum of ages from infants

to young adults, unlike the family of today in which all the children are of approximately the same age. that during Erikson's

Demos

suggests

stage of trust versus mistrust the

infant was given a great deal of trust,

but during the period

of autonomy in the second year of life his puritanical parents perceived the attempts at activity as the derivatives

of original sin and accordingly suppressed them.

Also,

the

infant was weaned during the autonomy period and a new baby

would probably appear at the same time to compete for parental attention;

these deprivations tended to lead to a great

deal of suppressed anger, puritan character. land disputes,

shame,

and doubt in the adult

Demos ascribes the constant bickering,

self-doubts,

and

soul-searching among the

puritans of Plymouth to their fixation at the stage of autonomy,

and also,

incidentally,

to their having to live in

extremely crowded and small houses.1 8 In spite of his

commitment to Erikson's

does not find the stages of trust, biologically determined; culture.

For example,

was recognized,

autonomy,

model,

Demos

or identity

rather he sees them as products of

in Plymouth no period of

adolescence

and one became an adult when prepared to act

18. Demos, A Little Commonwealth, pp. 50, 68-69, 13638; Demos, "Developmental Perspectives," pp. 320-23. For an opposing view see Joseph E. Illick, "Anglo-American Child Rearing," in The History of Childhood, ed. Lloyd de Mauze (New York: Psychohistory Press, 1974),, p. 348.

160 like one.

This custom reduced tensions between generations

and virtually eliminated the identity crisis, time to grow into adulthood gracefully. century idea of

for one had

The twentieth-

stormy adolescence on which Erikson based

much of his interpretation of Luther is,

in Demos's view,

a

recent invention made necessary by the lack of productive

activity for young people in industrial society.

Demos

therefore basically turns from Erikson's view of adolescence as the critical period of life back to Freud's claim for the preeminence of infancy.1 9 However,

the evidence he presents is ambiguous on his

position that Pilgrim infants received a great deal of basic trust,

ended by an abrupt shift in attitude at weaning.

small cabins,

poor diet,

The

and physical discomforts which Demos

uses to prove the disruptiveness of Pilgrim life after the age of two are simultaneously convincing evidence same forces were operative even before weaning.

that the The infant

could hardly perceive a shock if his life before weaning was just as deprived as afterwards,

and no evidence exists

that

the Pilgrims were unusually indulgent only to the newborn.

In view of this difficulty Demos's conclusions,

though of

19. Demos, _A Little Commonwealth, pp. 149-50, 186-87; John Demos, "Adolescence in Historical Perspective," Journal of Marriage

and the Family 31

(November

1969):632, 636-37But Demos does not fully accept Freud's view of infancy either; see Demos, "Developmental Perspectives," p. 324. Skolnick, "The Family Revisited," pp. 710-11 argues that stressful experiences have a maturing effect on the young.

161 considerable merit,

warrant further research before

be considered anything other than

they can

tentative.2 0

The ambiguity of evidence in family history is a difficult problem which would exist even if psychoanalytic interpretations were not involved. after all,

Infants and children,

do not write down their reactions for

lightenment of future historians,

but if poets

the en-

and novelists

through the ages have succeeded only occasionally in penetrating the essence of childhood, the devotees of psychohistory may be forgiven for not having done any better.2 1 Demos and Hunt,

at least,

can be credited with a tradition-

alist's respect for the use of historical materials. is advancing an ideology,

and their interpretations are not

grossly at variance with those of other historians. most ambitious effort to write

psychoanalytic standpoint,

Neither

But the

family history from the

The History of Childhood, uses an

entirely different approach and one which will inevitably draw criticism from other historians.

Conceived by the

editors of a journal called The History of Childhood Quarterly:

The Journal of Psychohistory,

this book is

20. David J. Rothman, "Documents in Search of a Historian: Toward a History of Childhood and Youth in America," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2 (Autumn 1971) :369. 21. Yet a perceptive researcher can always devise intriguing possibilities in history even when the evidence is scant; see,Nforexample, Richard C. Trexler, "Infanticide in Florence: New Sources and First Results," History of Childhood Quarterly:

1973) :104-5.

Journal of Psychohistory 1 (Summer

162 apparently the first in a series to deal with "childhood

liberation. "22 The thesis of the chief editor,

Lloyd de Mauze,

is that

children have been the oppressed class throughout history, having been beaten,

harassed. tation,

sexually assaulted,

Obviously,

abused,

ignored,

and

to prove such a one-sided interpre-

de Mauze had to ignore all the evidence to the

contrary as,

for example, when he dismisses as untrue Michel

de Montaigne's

statement in the 1600s that his father was

kind and considerate.

In revealing the cruelty of the ages

de Mauze presents a collection of the most outlandish and bizarre acts ever inflicted on children--Beethoven whipping his offspring with knitting needles,

a German

schoolmaster's

assertion that in his career he administered 1,115,800 boxes on the ear,

and other such oddities,

often illustrated by

the torture chambers involved--and accepts all of this

as

the normal course of events in the past.23 Mistreatment of children before the twentieth century may have been as brutal as de Mauze claims,

but

it is per-

verse to argue that adults were cruel to children because

they lacked respect or affection for children as children, for adults of the past were cruel to each other too.

Con-

sidering the general level of culture and civilization

York:

22. Lloyd de Mauze, ed., The History of Childhood Psychohistory Press, 1974).

23.

Ibid., pp. 6-9,

40-41.

in

(New

163 premodern times,

adults were, relatively speaking,

probably

as affectionate to their offspring as those of today.

Further,

living in a more hostile world,

children of the

past would not perceive the same quantity of brutality in

parental actions of their own time as people of today do when looking back on the same events.

De Mauze thus fails

to present a balanced view of a serious historical concern.2 De Mauze and his associates,

however,

are basically in

accord with other psychohistorians who emphasize Erikson's second stage of childhood, significant life period.2 5

autonomy,

as the historically

In spite of this emerging agree-

ment among historians of the family on the significance of the stage of autonomy in the political and social sphere, Hunt has pointed out a problem in of individual development

applying Erikson's formula

to an entire culture.

To

say that

the infant's failure to develop autonomy is due to the authoritarian structure of his society is nothing more than to repeat a tautology that authoritarian societies have authoritarian citizens.2 6

In fact,

much of the history of

24. In fact, children and even cruelty in the withdrawal of affectionadults may feel more than in physical abuse; see Henry Ebel, "Commentary," History of Childhood Quarterly: The Journal of Psychohistory 1 (Summer 1973):55. 25.

Baby:

Patrick Dunn's contribution,

Childhood in Imperial Russia,"1

Childhood, pp. 382, 393-97, Erikson's theory. 26.

Hunt,

"That Enemy

in the

in The History of

is especially similar to

Parents and Children,

p.

153.

4

164 childhood seems to be based on such redundancies as the mere substitution of psychoanalytic terms well established in history. Hunt,

Demos,

for concepts

already

For this reason the concern of

and de Mauze with the nature of authority in

the past is misplaced.

While historians know considerably

more about child-rearing practices as a result of the research of psychohistorians,

the

latter have added almost

nothing to an understanding of absolutism or other histor-

ical types of government,

though one gathers that their

ambitions were in that direction.

In addition,

the valuable

aspects of their conclusions could have been reached through traditional methodology without the Freudian or Eriksonian overlay. Part of the reason for the tendency in family or childhood history to prefer sweeping generalizations to more prosaic but accurate reflections is the freedom given to the researcher by the lack of evidence.

tools of their sources,

Since historians

are

they respond to the opportunities

afforded them to veer off in ambiguous or vague directions if no contradictory facts

stand in their way.

For example,

it is more likely a monograph on flax culture in colonial America will be acceptable history than one on the childrearing practices of the Puritans,

not because one subject

is intrinsically better than another, but because more are known about flax culture.

It is undoubtedly

facts

true that

intellectual historians have more freedom to err than,

say,

165 political historians,

due to the naturally amorphous

abstract character of their subject,

and

but the writing of his-

tory also entails responsibilities to maintain the dividing

line between history and philosophy. cause the evidence

is not there,

Perhaps,

simply be-

family and childhood

history may never assume the position of prestige their herents claim.

The

ad-

silence of the ages on the history of

childhood is enigmatic and disturbing, but if evidence is lacking on the subject, retire,

wisdom may require the historian to

at least until new historical material is

discovered.27 Of course, exists,

much evidence on family history already

but a great deal of it is either contradictory or

unproven conventional wisdom merely assumed

to be true.

An

example is the statement often made that people of the past married for economic motives rather than for romantic love, but what solid proof supports such an assumption? dence usually presented is literary--diaries, novels.

The

The evi-

journals,

situation is analogous to an attempt to

dis-

cover American habits of sex and marriage by reading Dr. Benjamin Spock or popular sensationalistic novels. clusion suggested by the precisely opposite

The con-

literary survivals may in fact be

to what was actually

true,

as revealed by

27. John F. Walzer, "A Period of Ambivalence: Eighteenth Century American Childhood," in de Mauze, History of Childhood, p. 365; Laslett, The World We Have Lost, p. 104.

166 recent statistical studies of the sixteenth century which show that most people of the period married in their twenties and not,

as previously supposed,

historians,

in their teens.

no less than other historians,

Psycho-

often uncritically

accept these popular,

unproven assumptions about the history

of the family and use

them in their researches. 2 8

Still another unfortunate tendency of the psychohistory of the family is an emphasis on reverse explanation. this view of history no motivation

In

is what it seems to be,

and nothing is ever obvious or apparent to common sense. good example is John F. Walzer's place

statement,

for the historian to assume,

want to win wars. "29

"It is common-

for example,

normally want to succeed and to be free,

A

that men

and that nations

Walzer's implication is that his inter-

pretation will be considerably advanced above these mundane and shallow explanations, would have us

accept:

does not want to win?

but one wonders what theory he

is it really one If so,

that a nation at war

he and others like him are

moving far past Freud's position which was, some things are exactly what they

of nothing,

after all,

seem to be,

and have no deeper meaning.

are

that

symbolic

Although many

28. See, for example, Theodore Reik, Of Love and Lust (New York: Farrar, Straus and Company, 1957), p. 371; Laslett, The World We Have Lost, p. 82. 29.

Walzer,

"A Period of Ambivalence,"

The History of Childhood, p.

350.

in de Mauze,

167 psychohistorians recognize explanation,

the perils in the reverse

many others do not and it,

as well

as the ten-

dency toward generalization and tautological argument discussed in the

last few pages,

recurs in varying degrees

in nearly all works in family history.30

Somewhat checked

by the more conventional historical method of Hunt and Demos in dealing with the seventeenth century,

these predilections

are given free play by the psychohistorians who have inter-

preted the history of the family during the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries.

These writers are preoccupied with how the disparate family structures of the eighteenth century and the Victorian period are interrelated. torian license

fervor,

The obvious

innovations from Vic-

to Victorian restraints--the growing moral

the inhibited respectability,

the prudish hypocrisy--

are not the fundamental changes themselves but the effects of more

intrinsic modifications which are still unclear.

The usual response

is to accept at least the

idea that the

Victorian family was more rigid in morals and discipline than that of the Enlightenment,

but Fred Weinstein and

Gerald M. Platt in their book The Wish to Be Free

assert

that the relative position of the father suffered as the

30.

A good sampling of recent work in family history

can be found in the Autumn 1971 and the Spring 1975 issues of the Journal of Interdisciplinary History and in Theodore K. Rabb and Robert I. Rotberg, eds., The Family in History: Interdisciplinary Essays (New York: Harper & Row,~1971).

168 children gained new freedom when

the work patterns of

incipient industrialization required them to labor away from home.

Thus, because sons were at last able to compete with

their fathers,

a general loosening of family discipline was

a characteristic

of the nineteenth century and was also one

of the factors promoting democracy.3 1

On the

other hand,

it

is possible that industrialization initiated a tendency toward familial cohesiveness as a reaction against the disruptive and chaotic trends in modernization. tation would explain the

This interpre-

intense Victorian bias toward

family solidarity as adequately as that of Weinstein and Platt.3 2 Another possibility

is

the existence of two family

types in the nineteenth century, G.

Rattray Taylor

in The Angel Makers.

ventures into family history, on such literary sources rearing,

which is the argument of Like most other

Taylor's work is heavily based

as diaries and manuals of child

and it therefore exhibits the typical

limitations

31. Edward Shorter, "Illegitimacy, Sexual Revolution, and Social Change in Modern Europe," Journal of Interdisciplinary

History 2 (Autumn 1971):248; Fred Weinstein and Platt, The Wish to Be Free: Society, Psyche, and Value Change (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1969), Gerald M.

pp.

146-47, 286. For"acriticism of Weinstein and Platt, see Gerald N. Izenberg, "The Wish to Be Free," Journal off Interdisciplinary History 2

(Summer 1971):143-44.

32. This interpretation was suggested by a reading of Charles Strickland, "A Transcendentalist Father: The Childrearing Practices of Bronson Alcott," History of Childhood Quarterly: The Journal of Psychohistory 1 (Summer 1973):4-51.

169 of its genre.

Where it differs

the history of the family is

from most other

on

in attributing almost absolute

control over the character of society alent about the role of the

works

to the attitudes prev-

sexes and their relationships to

each other. 3 3 Taylor finds a great deal of aggression between the sexes in the eighteenth century but little open conflict in the nineteenth because the Victorians repressed intersexual

animosity.

The eighteenth century he calls a matrist or

mother dominated society and the nineteenth, father dominated one,

each society being created by the

child-rearing practices of the time.

from William James' ality types, of,

on one

Apparently borrowed

ideas of tough-and tender-minded person-

these two divisions represent polar opposites

side,

on the other,

a patrist or

authority,

softness,

competition,

romanticism,

and toughness,

and

and egalitarianism.

When the movement from matrist to patrist societies peaked in the 1830s,

the patrist had by that time

succeeded in

creating the social rules we associate with the Victorian period today,

33.

such as the placing of women on pedestals

Gordon Rattray Taylor,

The Angel

Makers: A Study in Psychological Origins of Historical Change, 1750-1850

(New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1974), pp. xiv, 36. Another example of the same methodology is Howard R. Wolf, "British Fathers and Sons, 1773-1913," The Psychoanalytic Review 52

(Summer 1965) :197-214.

170 as pale,

weak,

and virtually sexless angels,

a point to

which the title of the book refers.3 4 A

serious limitation

to Taylor's

rests on nothing more than the

thesis is that it

supposition of an eternal

conflict in human nature between patrist and matrist,

for he

provides no analysis of how either family type develops or why cultures reverse their preferences for one or the other type.

Further,

his model,

British history,

based entirely on research in

is essentially a variant of the great-man

theory in that he ascribes the development of the Victorian ethos to a group of matrists who apparently worked independently of

social and intellectual

defined his terms, tory fit his mold.

factors.

Once having

Taylor has to labor heavily to make hisAs with all

dichotomous view of history,

attempts to formulate

he labels thinkers

a

into their

appropriate pigeonholes and with relentless dedication divides all history into dual categories with occasionally banal results like his statement about the nineteenth century that "men were tending to make father identification, women mother identification.3 5 Yet Taylor

is not dogmatic;

though he recognizes that

his theory does not fit everything,

in the end he is forced

to admit so many exceptions that not much is left of his

34. 35.

Taylor, Angel Makers, pp. xiii, xv, Ibid., pp.

5,

16.

14,

69, 325.

171 original thesis.

He cannot,

for example,

Victorian period securely in time. the Victorians, crites,

even fix the

And his animus against

whom he regards as pathological moral hypo-

is gratuitous,

considering that they deserve the

significant credit of establishing the moral principle that people should at least pay lip service to their ideals. Hypocrisy is as much a testimony to the power of a moral impulse as it is to a lack of one. 3 6 Edward Shorter,

a historian trying to combine psycho-

analysis and computers,

disputes Taylor's

contention that

Victorian morality was a sharp break with the past; instead, he thinks the nineteenth century merely appeared more rigid because of the Victorian attempt to buttress the standards

of the past which were challenged by industrialization. Hence,

to Shorter,

the problem is not how the Victorian

period developed from the

Enlightenment but how the

twentieth-century attitudes of more open sexuality and re-

duced family discipline originated in the last century. Taylor,

Shorter divides

Like

attitudes toward sex into two groups:

manipulative,

which is the tendency to use people as objects

or selfishly;

and expressive,

people

36.

which is oriented toward

"developing their personalities. ,37

The expressive

Ibid., pp. 17, 21, 99, 101-2, 110, 187; Gertrude

Himmelfarb, Victorian Minds 1968), pp. 272-78.

(New York:

Alfred A.

Knopf,

37. Shorter, "Illegitimacy, Sexual Revolution and Social Change," pp. 241-43, 252, 256.

172 form,

an outgrowth of industrialization and urbanization

was manifested

chiefly in a strengthening of the ego at the

expense

superego toward the end of the nineteenth

of the

century. 3 8

Whether Shorter's categories are actual descrip-

tions of differing attitudes or merely labels for inevitable components in all behavior,

little is added to his position

by his attempt to prove it quantitatively by increases or decreases in illegitimacy, prostitution, and perversion, for, using Shorter's own terms,

an increase in illegitimacy could

be construed as either an increase in manipulative or expressive sex.

His categories are functionally equivalent to

Taylor's in that they express opposing trends which presumably either operated to increase individual autonomy or to reduce it. Indeed,

all the psychohistorians examined so

far have

approached the problem of childhood autonomy from the same perspective

insofar as their emphasis

is on an either-or

theory that autonomy in childhood leads to one type of adult and the lack of it to another.

One could,

however,

approach

the matter differently by inquiring into the effects of parental discipline on children and adolescents before they

38.

Ibid., pp. 247, 249.

Cf. the differing

views of Victorian attitudes toward sex in Peter T. Cominos, "Late Victorian Sexual Respectability and the Social System," International Review of Social History 8 (1963)r:18-48,216-50; Fawn M. Brodile, The Devil Drives:

A Life of Sir Richard

Burton (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Rollo May, Love and Will (New York: W. W. 1969), p. 40.

1967), p. 291; and Norton & Company,

173 reach full maturity.

This was the course taken by Erikson

in his study of Luther,

and it has been elaborated upon

statistically in the analysis of twentieth-century adolescence by Robert Lifton and Lewis Feuer.

Lifton,

doctor who calls himself a psychohistorian, works on brainwashing

has written

in China and the impact of the atomic

bomb on Japanese youth. by Erikson,

a medical

The Japanese

studies,

influenced

but based mainly on actual interviews,

cerned with the imagery of

are con-

liberation and freedom and the

tendency toward extremism among Japanese young people.

From

Lifton's research in Japan he developed ideas he believes applicable to all modern adolescents.3 9 Like other researchers, fused period,

Lifton finds adolescence

characterized by sharp emotional

in the post-World War

swings,

but

II period these mental states have

been assumed by adults also,

resulting

the emergence of a new type of man,

in what Lifton calls

"protean man,"

from the wrecked fragments of the old order. exhibits confusion of identities, experimentation,

a con-

created

Protean man

lack of commitment,

inclination toward the absurd,

lack of

39. Robert J. Lifton, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of "Brainwashing" in China (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1961), p. 400;~Robert J. Lifton, "Youth and History: Individual Change in Postwar Japan," Daedalus 91 (Winter 1962):173, 182; Robert J. Lifton, "Individual Patterns in Historical Change: Imagery of Japanese Youth," Journal of Social Issues 20 (October 1964): 111. See also John H. Weakland, "Family Imagery in a Passage by Mao Tse-Tung; an Essay in Psycho-Cultural Method,"

World Politics 10

(April 1958):387-407.

174 family ties,

and a yearning for a breakthrough to something

new and better.

Though his definition is as protean as the

new man Lifton celebrates, who manifest the trait: Marcello Mastroianni.

he does point out certain people

Saul Bellow, To Lifton,

Jack Kerouac,

and

the emergence of Protean

man explains nearly everything of the last thirty years including the Ku Klux Klan, ment of

1965,

the 1960s.

the Berkeley Filthy Speech Move-

and especially the American youth movement of

This interpretation,

which ignores

graphic increase in the number of young people disruptiveness of the Viet-Nam War,

as social criticism or comment,

and the

to say nothing of

numerous other political and social events, able

the demo-

is not objection-

but hardly satisfies

the accepted requirements of historical evidence

simply

because the concept of Protean man is so vague as to be

applicable to almost anybody.4 0 Feuer,

on the other hand,

is somewhat more precise in

his historical terminology but just as opinionated. 40.

Lifton,

The

Thought Reform and Totalism, p.

469; Robert J. Lifton, History and Human Survival: Essays on the Young and Old, Survivors and the Dead, Peace and War, and on Contemporary Psychohistory (New York: Random House, 1970),

pp. 319, 326, 328-29, 336; Robert J. Lifton, "Protean Man," Partisan Review 35 (Winter 1968):13, 16-20, 22, 27. See the criticism

of Lifton by Jacques Barzun, Clio and the Doctors: Psycho-History, Quanto-History, and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), pp. 79-80, which is even more applicable to Lifton's Revolutionary Immortality: Mao Tse-Tung and the Chinese Cultural Revolution (New York: Random House, 1968), a book which is not history but a kind of subjective essay; see especially pp. 4, 7.

175 bias of his Conflict of Generations against the American youth movement of the 1960s is obvious.

Regarding the pro-

test activities of the young as destructive, "a sign of

sickness,

a malady in society,"

he labels them

and he finds

merely repetitive of previous historical unrest by the venile.4 1

They are all,

he states,

a conflict of generations;

them ju-

simply an expression of

their genesis is in the Oedipus

complex and its rebellion against the father.

The anger of

defiant sons is revealed in the "heroic rebellion" myth of students,

the sympathy for the downtrodden,

indignant tone of student manifestos: one

of righteous indignation.

"Its tone is always

It depicts

cal persons being crushed by a cruel,

the pompously

the pure and ethi-

sadistic authority. "4 2

Feuer does not move far from a purely reductionist approach,

an approach to which,

unlike others, he is proud to adhere,

but his reductionism cannot explain why student protests reached a new intensity in the 1 9 60s if the psychological mechanism has been constant throughout history. 4 3 41. Lewis S. Feuer, The Conflict of Generations: The Character and Sign~ificance of Student Movements (New York: Basic Books, 1969), pp. 10-11 e .VnWowr,"h Collapse of Activism:

Republic, 42.

What Became of

9 November 1974, p. Feuer,

the 1960'," New

22.

Conflict of Generations, pp. 3,

516,

521.

43.

Ibid., pp. 530-31; cf. Robert Liebert, Radical and Militant Youth (New York: Praeger

Publishers, 1971),p. 187. In an intriguing variation of the same approach Norman Cohn explains anti-Semitism as a generational struggle in his Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and

the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (New York: Harper & Row, 1966).

176 Feuer's study divulges a fundamental defect of psychohistories of

student movements:

they tend to be critical

since a psychological interpretation presupposes motivation beneath the facade of self-sacrifice ciple erected by

students.

a baser and prin-

Yet Robert Liebert in his book

Radical and Militant Youth has provided an alternative view, which,

while also opinionated,

is more sophisticated in that

it places the American student of the 1960s within the specific context of his time and culture.

After interviewing

students who participated in the Columbia University youth movement,

Liebert concludes that historical

settings were the main cause of the unrest, he is writing psychohistory,

and political but inasmuch as

he searches for psychoanalytic

impulses which brought these political and social causes to

fruition.

Using Erikson's theory of childhood,

the theory that the upper-middle-class America was conducive middle class was

he proposes

family structure in

to adolescent unrest.

indulgent to its offspring,

Since the upper it created in

them such an ego ideal that they became disenchanted and disoriented when forced to confront the outside world,

as

many of them had to do on first leaving their parents and entering college.

Further,

the parents of the radical stu-

dents probably were erratic in giving affection,

sporad-

ically smothering their children with it and then suddenly withdrawing it;

consequently,

warmth in childhood,

because of this inconsistent

radical youth fluctuate wildly from

177 love to music to new politics

in search of security and feel

deprived in spite of their privileged position in society.4 4 Liebert is probably closer to the truth than Feuer with his tautological argument that student revolts are rebellions of the young against the old,

or Lifton with his sweeping

generalizations about Protean man, researchers

but they and all the other

in the psychohistory of the family have been

unable to devise any explanation for the interaction between childhood and nificance.

later events in adult

life of historical sig-

This type of analysis has also been attempted by

contemporary sociologists and political out much success.

The

argument,

scientists but with-

for example,

which was

popular with the last generation of behaviorists that racists,

anti-Semites,

and political reactionaries held

their beliefs because of authoritarian patterns learned from

inflexible and harshly punitive parents is probably untenable.45

If contemporary researchers studying contempo-

rary people have been unable to connect childhood treatment and adult behavior,

the task is obviously even more diffi-

cult for those who aspire to the same goal in past ages

44. Liebert,

van Woodward, "Collapse of Activism," p. 23; Radical and Militant Youth, pp. 166, 180-81, 215; the theory of Rollo May on the modern notion

cf. "turned on" in Love and Will,

to be

p.

186.

45. John P. Kirscht and Ronald C. Dillehay, Dimensions of Authoritarianism: A Review of Research and Theory (Lexington, Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press, 1967),

p. 131.

178 where the evidence is even less reliable.

Further,

the

areas in which the psychohistorians of the family have concentrated--seventeenth-century

family,

the Victorian family,

the youth movement of the 1960s--are so diverse that the possibility of valid generalizations applicable to all three areas is almost precluded. Demos, Hunt,

Taylor,

Liebert,

and the others have con-

tributed to a more adequate perspective of the importance of family and sex in history.

They claim to have shown that

child-rearing practices have significant implications the nature of entire societies, has been continually

for

that the concept of family

shifting over the

last few centuries,

and that certain features of family life have been more con-

stant than previously thought.

That many of these findings

were already partially accepted does not demean the significance of the researchers' hand,

accomplishment.

On the other

the adherents of the psychohistory of the family have

been unable to achieve any kind of breakthrough in formulating a pattern of family history over the last few centuries like,

for example,

exists in economic history.

the accepted pattern which The defenders of psychohistory

point out its newness as a discipline and object that economic historians do not agree on matters of importance, either, be

all of which is true;

some framework

but

in any field there has to

accepted by all scholars if only to give

them a common ground around which to build interpretations

179

they can disagree on. however,

In the psychohistory of the family,

all the historians have traveled in different

directions except for the fruitless attempt to find a common meeting ground in Erikson's concept of autonomy. quently,

Conse-

the amorphous quality of their diverse interpre-

tations leaves the psychohistory of the family in as tentative a position in history as it was ten years ago.

CHAPTER V

THE PSYCHOHISTORY OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION The

central concern of the psychohistorians discussed

in this chapter has been the origin and meaning of contemporary Western civilization,

for their efforts have been

directed toward uncovering the psychological keys which distinguish the Western world from any alternative historical pattern.

Their research has led them to conclusions that

the difference between the West and other civilizations may be found in the patterns of behavior which surround the

attitude of the individual toward the authority of his society.

Though the

similarities to Erikson's view of the role

of autonomy are obvious, ness to him,

few have acknowledged any indebted-

and for the most part they have sought clues to

modern uniqueness

in a wider time range than Erikson was

concerned with. One psychohistorian,

for example,

traces the character-

istic Western idea of individual worth and merit all the way back to the Greek union of the good, or superego, with the beautiful, or ego. On the other hand, another psychoanalyst ascribes more importance

to the early Christians,

teaching that the body was sinful, of mechanical substitutes for the

180

who by

encouraged the development labor performed by the

181 human body.

He contrasts this to the Greek narcissistic

ideal,

which rejected machines as

tions,

and therefore prevented Hellenic development of the

technological bent

"usurpers" of bodily func-

so typical of Western culture.

Though

this theory probably gives the average Greek credit for more metaphysical motivation than is warranted, the most powerful argument against it is that narcissism is as important component of Western civilization as of Hellenic,

a

and many

psychohistorians have even found in it the most significant clue to the uniqueness of Western civilization.1 Narcissism was,

for example,

medieval concept of romantic

an ingredient in the

love because

self-love is often

a substitute for the unrequited wish for a forbidden object. The other object in the medieval idea was, exalted image of a perfect woman,

of course,

and it has been

that this image was derived from Oedipal desires mother.

Even

an

suggested toward the

if this view of the incestuous Oedipal origins

of the troubadours'

conception of love is true,

does not explain why such an attitude arose,

however,

it

since the

1. Adrian Stokes, Greek Culture A Psychoanalytic Survey of an Aspect of Greek and the Ego: Civiligation and of Art (London: Tavistock Publications, 1958), pp.l, 4.; H. Sachs, "Delay of the Machine Age," Arion 4 (Autumn 1965): 506-7, 509; Denis de Rougemont, Love Declared: Essas on yths of Love, theth Myh3) L . tran trans. . Richard Howard (New .Esay York: Pantheon Books, 1963), p. 4. See also Bruno Snell, The Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), p. vii;a kZe ei Barbu, Problems of Historical Psychology

(New York: Grove Press, 1960), p. 144.

182 presumption is obvious that the Oedipus complex was no more intense in the Middle Ages than in other periods. 2 In the Renaissance the prominence of narcissism is more apparent and has even been commented on by traditional and nonpsychoanalytic historians.

Basically,

Jacob Burckhardt's

thesis that the Renaissance was the discovery of the world and of man is a variation of the narcissistic theme. Though

"individualism" is the term more commonly applied to the Renaissance,

regardless of the terminology,

principle is the same:

physically and mentally, possibilities in living.

the guiding

a greater awareness of

self,

both

and a profound awe of the myriad Yet narcissism as a term to cate-

gorize the Renaissance may not be inappropriate,

inasmuch as one of the less benign accusations against the intellectuals of the period was their ineffectual and destructive egotism. One psychohistorian, for example, has attributed Henry VIII's

difficulties in finding a young woman who could please him to his exalted self-image, though logic seems to dictate that a king who was not egotistical would be more than the reverse.

abnormal

Renzo Sereno's piece of psychohistorical

detective work on Machiavelli is considerably more clever but just as dubious. The reader is told that Machiavelli 2. Herbert Moller, "The Meaning of Courtly Love,' Journal of American Folklore 60 (January 1960):41l, 44, cf. Melvin Askew, "Courtly 48; Love: Neurosis as Institution," Psychoanalytic

Review 52 (Spring 1965):23.

183 suffered anguish because his inflated ego compelled him to conclude that his positions and honors in life were never commensurate with his an exercise

abilities.

The Prince was therefore

in wish fulfillment by which the Renaissance

author could indulge in fantasies about what he would do if he ever acquired the power he thought he deserved. Sereno further accuses Machiavelli of writing a letter and playfully forging Caesar Borgia's name to it in order to symbolically partake of Borgia's power.3 If such traits of enhanced egotism help define the Renaissance

through their promotion of freedom or even

license for the individual,

their psychological impact must

have survived in some fashion in present attitudes.

Rollo

May has found in the Renaissance belief that reason could control the individual's emotions the key to the widespread presence of anxiety in the twentieth century. ists revolted against the

As the human-

symbolic imagery of the Middle

Ages,

they liberated the individual to the extent that his will power was free of all external restraints on its capacity to perform. Yet, after the Renaissance, whenever will power was defeated by psychological realities such as

inhibitions,

the individual tended to blame himself since he

3. Miles F. Shore, "Henry VIII and the Crisis of Generativity," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2 (Spring 1972):374-75, 380, 389; Renzo Sereno, "A Falsification by Machiavelli," in Psychoanalysis and History, ed. Bruce Mazlish (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. 1963), pp.

112,

114.

184 had failed to keep emotions amenable to the power of reason. For a while,

at least until the nineteenth century,

the

resulting anxiety was concealed by the Renaissance prejudice against the irrational,

but the inhibited forces were

eventually too powerful to be contained.4 In spite of any validity May's thesis may have for the Renaissance, its applicability to the Reformation is questionable, for the stringent code of Protestantism was hardly more liberating than that of the medieval church. In fact, if Luther and Machiavelli are viewed as revolutionaries who

destroyed the medieval world,

then the well-defined Protes-

tantism of the late sixteenth century appears as an attempt to reassert control in the face of changing uncertainties; once the disorder and chaos declined after 1660,

so did such strongly organized Protestant groups as that of the Puritans. This interpretation, first suggested by Michael Walzer, sees Protestantism as an authoritarian reaction to the implications of unrestrained freedom in early Lutheranism and the 4.

Rollo May,

Press Company,

The Meaning of Anxiety

1950), pp.

18-19,

157,

(New York:

Ronald

163; cf.

the following: Barbu, Problems of His torical Psychology, pp. 39-41; Charles L. Sanford, The Quest Moral Imagination

Press,

1961), p.

for Paradise: (Urbana, Ill.:

36; P. P. Weiner,

American Nervousness,"

Europe urpe

and the American ndmofrIalinois

"G. M. Beard and Freud on

Journal of the History of Ideas 17

(April 1956):274; Allen Wheelis, The Quest for Identity (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1958), pp. 163-64. Philip Rieff in his The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), p. 8 also speculates on the lack of

guidance in modern life.

185 Renaissance.

However,

the Walzer thesis appears less cred-

ible when examined through specific people and events rather

than through generalizations. Emery Battis

This point is confirmed by

in his study of Anne Hutchinson which he wrote

under the inspiration of William Langer's appeal for psychohistory. After consulting with psychologists and doing extensive research,

Battis concluded that Anne suffered from

a lack of meaning and direction and was strongly narcissistic. The

appeal of antinomianism to her was its enhancement of

her feelings of egotism by providing her with a sensation of power and worth.

Hence,

Anne's Protestantism was no attempt

to escape from Renaissance egotism or freedom,

and the

Walzer thesis has been further challenged in a psychohistorical women. expand

study of the

appeal of Calvinism to French noble

This research suggests that an unconscious wish to self-assertion and protest their treatment as inferior

was behind the conversion of many French noble women to Calvinism. The self-aggrandizing element in Protestantism is thus a strain which has deep roots in the religious impulse and its existence has also been pointed out in the millenarian cults of the Reformation. The precise ways these self-enhancement tendencies of

the Renaissance and

Reformation were combined with the search for authority which Walzer proposes come more into focus when the

186 scientific

revolution of the seventeenth century is given a

similar consideration. 5

Undoubtedly,

the finest psychohistorical work dealing

with the century of science is Frank E. of Isaac Newton,

Manuel's A Portrait

and its impressiveness is not marred by

Manuel's acknowledgement that he is unable peculiar genius of Newton, 1666,

or why it appeared in one year,

when Newton discovered gravity,

theory of light.

to explain the

calculus,

and the

Recognizing that many others with the same

psychological state as Newton have not been distinguished, Manuel admits of Newton's genius,

"I can offer no explan-

ation for what appears to be a grand sport of nature." 6 Yet,

as a follower of Erikson, Manuel does believe

psychoanalysis can

throw light on Newton's character,

portrait reveals a Newton who was infinitely complex,

and his unlike

5. Michael Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics~(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University

Press,

1965), pp. 313-14,

316;

Emery Battis, Saints and Sectarians: Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomian Controversy in Massachusetts Bay Colony (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press,

1962), pp. ix, 52, 56; Nancy L. Roelker, "The Appeal of Calvinism to French Noblewomen in the Sixteenth Century," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2 (Spring 1972) :410; Norman Cohn, The Pursuitdof the Millenium: Revolutionary Messianism in MediTealand Reformation Europe and its Bearing on Modern To-talitarian Movements (New York: Harper & Row, 1961), pp.

312-13.

6. Frank Edward Manuel, A Portrait of Isaac Newton (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1968), p. 4; see also his "Newton as Autocrat of Science," Daedalus 97 (Summer his thesis.

1968):969-1001, which is a summary of

187 the retiring,

modest,

unassuming,

and simple man of science

Newton was thought to be by his contemporaries. was a man full of guilt,

self-doubts,

to math and science to find the lacked.

Instead,

he

and anxiety who turned

certitude his emotional life

Manuel argues that Newton's posthumous birth and

his sporadic separation from his mother in childhood inculcated in him lifelong habits of withdrawal from society. Turbulent in his emotions, Newton suffered such a nervous

breakdown in 1693 that some of his friends thought him insane,

and his capacity to quarrel betrayed feelings of

hostility which became obvious when he was made Master of the Mint,

a position

from which he could relentlessly per-

secute counterfeiters without inhibitions about expressing his anger.

Suggesting that Newton's creativity was

linked

to his inhibitions, Manuel points out that as Newton became a powerful politician

and man of the world,

his creativity

suffered.7 Though Manuel's portrayal of the discoverer of gravity puts Newton's character in a modern perspective, pretations are open to question.

his inter-

It is easy to accept

Manuel's interpretation that Newton's immense isolation from the

social world until 1693,

7.

Manuel,

28, 30-31,

58-59,

his never knowing his

Portrait of Isaac Newton,

65,

219,

225,

234.

W.

pp.

x,

father,

2-3,

25-26,

Ronald Fairbairn,

Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality (London: Tavistock Publications, 1952), p. 6 suggests that schizoid features are common among intellectuals; Thomas H. Jukes, "The Rebellion of Prometheus," NationalReview, 30 August 1974, p. 74 argues similarly on Einstein.

188 his mother's prolonged absence in his childhood, married state,

his preoccupation with things rather than

people--it is easy to accept the idea that more receptive

his un-

these made Newton

to the theory that every object in the uni-

verse attracts every other object with This theory is credible

a gravitational force.

simply because Newton's isolation

was his alone and its emotional impact could easily have been overwhelming.8 But the same a broad,

cannot be said of his Puritanism which was

far-reaching cultural institution.

In this per-

spective, Manuel's belief is debatable that Newton's emotional difficulties

are particularly revealed in his

religious expressions of self-doubt and abasement.

Can one

reliably say that they are indicators of genuine psychological and pathological states or are they merely formal expressions of expected behavioral patterns within the Puritan credo which Newton espoused?

In discussing this be-

havior, Manuel may not be blatantly reductionist,

but his interpretations are sometimes sufficiently ambiguous to justify the label. tool for

For example,

Newton viewed science as a

serving God rather than as an altruistic device to

improve the

lot of man.

To Manuel,

this belief indicates

Newton was searching for his lost parents: One is almost tempted to recognize in his genius a union of two experiences, his relations with his 8.

Manuel,

Portrait of Isaac Newton,

p.

84.

189 father whom he never saw and with his mother whom he possessed with such emotion, whom he saw with his own eyes and always longed to see again as he had in the

early years of infancy--a fantasy he pursued in vain throughout life, looking for the image through peep-

holes and in "chymical glasses." 9 Yet,

the role that Newton's quest for his father and

mother played in his devotion to the

service of God cannot

be separated from the cultural piety which he others.

shared with

Perhaps some ambiguity is necessary in any psycho-

historical work in order to avoid simple-minded reductionism, but Manuel,

illuminating as his book is,

never makes clear

how he can confidently discover significant emotional traits in facets of Newton's character which are in no way different

from the traits of his contemporaries. applies,

even though the point

And this reservation

is granted that the religious

self-doubts and guilt expressed by Newton would be decidedly abnormal

in the twentieth century.

Since Manuel does not separate the psychological impulse in Newton's religion from the social one,

he avoids

the dispute over whether liberating,

components

or restricting,

narcissistic

authoritarian ones were more significant in

formulating the ethos of the Renaissance, Modern Science.

9.

and

In spite of this limitation of neglecting

the larger question of Newton lived,

Reformation,

the nature of the society

in which

Manuel's work stands up well in comparison

Ibid.,

pp.

130,

190.

190 to the other psychohistorians writing in the same

area,

whose comprehensive generalizations err in the opposite direction. An example is Lewis Feuer's The Scientific Intellectual

and the Psychological and Sociological Origins of Modern Science,

in which his conclusions,

Newton within a social setting,

unlike Manuel's,

do place

though he does not ascribe

any great importance to the great scientist as a representative of his age.

Feuer believes that seventeenth-century

science developed from a

"hedonist-libertarian ethic,"

as

contrasted to the medieval Catholic and Puritan ethic. an

interpretation worthy of the Enlightenment,

psychoanalysis

and statistics to prove

antisuperstitious

and liberating;

that science was

priest-ridden,

and sexually

He further sees mature Lutheranism and Calvinism

as equally repressive to uninhibited neo-Platonism of the Renaissance growth of

self-expression.

The

contributed slightly to the

"libertarian-hedonism," but it reached its fruition

only in the Scientific Revolution,

optimism,

Feuer fuses

like the philosophes he

finds the Middle Ages unpleasant, repressed.

In

which gave people joy,

and control of the physical world.

duced a "liberation of energies,"

Science pro-

reduced guilt,

and allowed

freer expression of the energies of the libido.1 0 10. Lewis Feuer, The Scientific Intellectual and the Psychological and Sociological Origins of Modern Science (New York:

19,

94,

99,

Basic Books, 1963), pp. 104-5, 118-19.

vii, viii,

2,

9-10,

17,

191 Feuer relies heavily on statistics to prove that members of the Royal Society, ative of scientists,

which he regards as represent-

were libertarian hedonists rather than

Calvinists or of some other persuasion,

but his methodology

suffers from the same defect which plagues all previous efforts to categorize Puritans:

he defines the term in his

own way and not as the people of the time did. 1 1 that a "real" Puritan

is a conservative Puritan,

He assumes a lapse

which is all the more deplorable because it is distressingly common.

It is as if he granted Cotton Mather and John Win-

throp the title of Puritan but not their opponents Thomas Brattle and Anne Hutchinson.

If one defines

as Puritans

only those followers of Calvin who opposed modern science and favored repressive

social laws,

of course,

and antiliberty.

antiscience

then all Puritans were, One could just as

easily prove in modern terminology that all real Democrats in the United States were On the other hand, altogether denied,

liberals.

Feuer's classification cannot be

because much evidence does exist that a

group of scholars favoring scientific freedom and creativity emerged in the

seventeenth century;

the force of their

social cohesion is the source of the eighteenth-century conflict between the philosophes and their religious

antagonists.

Yet the contribution of Protestantism and Calvinism to the

11.

Ibid.,

pp. 420-23.

192 development of the modern world view cannot be ignored either. Feuer does not deny the relationship, direct one.

only that it was a

He thinks Protestantism was liberating because

it had to be revolutionary to successfully challenge the old

church, but he denies anything specific in its ideology which foreshadowed freedom.12

Perhaps

so,

but it is a telling

point that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Protestantism,

almost from its very beginning,

greater role for the

individual than the medieval church.

Feuer's argument, the

of course,

libertarian narcissistic

after 1600,

emphasizes the triumph of

strains in Western civilization

though he does recognize the power of the counter-

vailing reactionary and medieval forces. however,

anticipated a

that even after 1600 the

One may argue,

struggle continued,

with

the reactionary and anti-individualistic forces remaining control to the present day.

in

This latter theory has often

been advanced by the Marxist psychohistorians who have been concerned with the nature of Western civilization. Herbert Marcuse ical

and Norman 0.

Freudian

dimension Marx.

leftism who,

in history,

Both acquired

12.

Brown are

Ibid., p.

representatives

of philosoph-

in their search for a radical

combine the insights of Freud with their

227.

controversial fame at about the

193 same time in the

late 1960s when their ideas

suddenly became

fashionable among student radicals. 1 3 Yet their ideas are for example,

Freud,

no means

identical.

Marcuse,

is much more heavily indebted to Marx than

and therefore finds history more political than psy-

chological. dise

v

lost;

To him,

as to Marx,

history is a story of para-

this conception also existed in Freud,

Freud the loss of paradise,

that is,

but to

the original sin of the

slaying of the primal father by which the present pattern of human existence was established, nature, Marcuse,

was fundamental to human

and consequently a progressive step. on the other hand,

To Marx and

the loss of paradise was extrin-

sic to the human condition and hence regressive.

Their

argument was to proceed this way so that they can keep open a possibility of revolutionary reversion to the primitive and desirable

state of development.1 4

13. Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955) ; Norman 0. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytic

Meaning of History (Middleton, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1959); Richard King, The Party of Eros: Radical Social Thought and the Realm of Freedom (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1972), p. 176; Andrew Nicolas, Herbert Marcuse: ou la guete d'un univers trans-

prometheen

(Paris:

Editions Seghers,

1970), p.

5.

See also

Paul Breines, ed., Critical Interruptions: New Left Perspectives on Herbert Marcuse (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), p. 102; Robert W. Marks, The Meaning of Marcuse (New York: Ballantine Books, 1970), p. 16. 14. Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and its Youthful

Opposition

(New York: Doubleday & Company,

117; Marcuse,

Eros and Civilization,

pp.

1968), pp.

11,

233.

87,

194 Where Marcuse uses psychoanalytic terms,

his emphasis

is completely different from Freud's original meaning.

In

his acceptance of the primal horde theory which he calls a

"revolt and rebellion against established authority," Marcuse sees the repression of the enormity of the crime as a strong current

in history,

but in contrast to Freud he makes

the crime an act of social rebellion instead of one of family jealousy,

or,

in his own words,

the archetype of domination, enslavement,

rebellion,

"The primal father,

as

initiates the chain reaction of

and reinforced domination which

marks the history of civilization." 1 5

Therefore, Marcuse

differs with Freud in viewing repression not as a necessary limitation of the reality principle but as a self-serving invention of the ruling class who desire

to avoid work.

Though he admits that some repression may be desirable and necessary,

most of it he calls "surplus"

repression,

a term

obviously borrowed from Marx's surplus value theory of labor. As a result of the ruling class's control of the social structure,

a control which circumscribes the boundaries

the superego, rule

a gradual

of

increase in repression has been the

throughout history. 1 6

15.

Marcuse,

16.

Ibid., pp. 4,

Eros and Civilization,

69. Counter Culture,

p.

112.

33,

49,

81,

104;

pp.

16,

60,

62-63,

Roszak, Making of a

195 But the individual who is not a member of the ruling class is rarely aware of this; his very lack of freedom he perceives as freedom:

he is even happy in his slavery.

Only a few revolutionaries who have more perception than others can destroy the bondage of the old order. past,

In the

the revolution which would have returned men to their

primitive state of bliss was always betrayed at the moment it might have succeeded by the residual guilt of the primal crime.

Marcuse does not make clear why the

lower classes

should feel guilt over rebellion against an authority which, he maintains,

always lacks legitimacy regardless of whether

the authority was the original primal father or the modern state.

If the individual is sufficiently free of

pressive social restraints to start a rebellion, logically be free enough to feel no guilt. what happens after the revolution, but following the tendency of Marx, fulness and

self-expression of the

the rehe should

In regard to

Marcuse is also vague, he emphasizes the playliberated world of the

future.17

17. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, pp. 46, 90-91. On the lack of freedom in capitalism see also Edward Greenberg, Serving the Few: Corporate Capitalism and the Bias of Governmental Policy (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1974), pp. 24-25, and Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five (New York: Delta, 1969), pp. 111-12. See also King, Party of Eros, p. 126; Breines, Critical Interruptions, p. 112; Hans Meyerhoff, "On Psychoanalysis and History," in Mazlish, Psychoanalysis and History, p. 65. Cf. the criticisms of Erich Fromm, The Crisis of Psychoanalysis (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1970), p. 16; and Sidney Lipshires, "A Civilization Without Discontent: Marcuse vs. Freud," Psychoanalytic Review 60 (Autumn 1973):463.

196 Brown's Life Against Death:

The Psychoanalytic Meaning

of History is much more comprehensive than Marcuse's theory, even though the pretentiousness of the title surate with the content of the book. repressive neurosis,

To Brown history is a

an attempt to escape anxiety by ful-

filling the Eros instinct; to Eros,

is not commen-

and

society, by erecting barriers

has perverted the natural and benevolent inclin-

ations of the sexual drives.

With this interpretation,

Brown differs radically from Freud.

behavior of children--uninhibited, zones of the body,

For Brown the

sexual

diffused throughout all

and primarily affectionate in character--

is the natural form of sexuality; a twisted version of ideal

sex.

adult genital sexuality is Brown uses the phrase

"polymorphously perverse" to describe the more desirable sexuality of children,

a term which he borrowed from Freud,

who used it with a different meaning to apply to the and amorphous

sexual predilections of the young.1

immature

8

Brown finds in the human characteristic of prolonged infancy not only what distinguishes men from animals but the key to what went wrong with history,

especially with our

18. Brown, Life Against Death, p. 183; Herbert Marcuse, Negations: Essays in Critical Theory (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), pp. 231-32; Roszak, Making of a Counter Culture, p. 107; Paul A. Robinson, The Freudian Left: Wilhelm Reich, Geza Roheim, Herbert Marcuse (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), p. 229; Sigmund Freud, "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality," in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey, 24 vols. (London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-

analysis,

1953-74),

7:191.

197 modern Western civilization.

Brown's message echoes

that of

Christ in that he implores people to become as little children.

Children,

narcissistic,

he argues,

are naturally hedonistic and

but the genital sexuality of adulthood frus-

trates and tyrannizes people,

contributing to the large

number of neurotics in modern society.

He further maintains

that children are also naturally playful,

ization suppresses play,

but that civil-

an interpretation which is evocative

of Marx's alienation of labor

theory and Johann Huizinga's

argument in Homo Ludens. 1 9 Though Brown recognizes that we cannot return to the

world of childhood because the reality principle precludes the behavior of children as an adult possibility,

he does

believe that through sublimations within culture,

psycho-

analysis can help overcome the alienation from instincts. However,

this task will not be easy because Western civil-

ization is even more repressive in the past,

than most other civilizations

and Brown attributes most of this evil perva-

siveness of inhibitions to Luther.

A

large part of Life

Against Death is devoted to an analysis of Luther's role

in

the creation of the modern world.2 0

19.

Brown, Life Against Death, pp.

25-26,

28-29,

32,

36, 44; Johan Huizinga, Homo ludens; a Study of the Playelement in Culture (London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1949).

20.

Brown, Life Against Death,

pp. 38,

135,

139,

158;

Erich Fromm,, Escape from Freedom (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1941), p. 270 also stresses the repressiveness of Western civilization.

198 Brown maintains

that Luther developed a new attitude

toward the Devil in that he assigned to the Devil the suzerainty over the earth and thereby divorced the individual

from responsibility for his sins. their part,

are a gift of God,

sible for his good works,

Since the virtues,

for

the individual is not respon-

either,

and even the person who

does acquire the grace of God is basically still dominated by the Devil.

Luther therefore came close to Manichaeism,

a point which Brown expresses in Freudian terms by emphasizing the strength of the death instinct at the expense of the life

instinct

in Luther's

thought.

2 1

Since the death instinct is often associated with the anal images of hoarding and retention, bourgeois society,

both values of a

Brown places Luther in the perspective of

the modern world as the first capitalist. writes,

To Luther,

Brown

"The structure of the entire kingdom of Satan is

essentially capitalistic:

we are the Devil's property." 2 2

But Brown's thesis is not intended as merely a variant of Max Weber's idea that Luther promoted the dignity of worldly trades.

Rather,

he sees in the anal-sadistic nature of

Luther's conception of the world the compatibility with the capitalistic virtues of hoarding, grasping, and saving.23 21.

Brown,

22.

Ibid., pp.

206-9,

23.

Ibid., pp.

218,

Life Against Death,

pp.

221.

220,

223,

225.

210-13,

215-16.

199 Other scholars have found capitalism a rationalistic and logical organization,

a significant advance over the

medieval irrationalities of feudalism, but Brown regards capitalism as the most primitive and superstitious type of economic organization and its patrons as no better than the

savages who imagine value in bones, than dollar bills. to Brown,

shells,

and teeth rather

The problem with capitalism,

according

is that it has been purchased by society at the

expense of an increase in the power of the death instinct,

exemplified by the worship of money and an excess of guilt in the modern world.

As a solution,

Brown advocates the

sharing of guilt through such rites as the gift ritual of primitive

societies and an increase in playful activities

which might restore some of the Eros of childhood to adult life.24 Brown and Marcuse's interpretations of Luther and capitalism are similar to that of Erich Fromm who,

in the 1940s,

writing

assigned Luther the blame for the alienation

of modern life which led people to embrace totalitarianism. 25 All three writers have in common an animosity toward middle

24. 307, 322;

Ibid., pp. 234, 236, 240, 244-45, 263, Roszak, Making of the Counter Culture, 268-69, p. 259.

297,

25. From, Escape from Freedom, pp. 20-21, 41, 74, 81, 96, 104; Meyerhoff, "On Psychoanalysis and History," in Mazlish, Psychoanalysis and History, p. 61; cf. Benjamin I. Schwartz, "A Brief Defense of Political and Intellectual History with Particular Reference to Non-Western Cultures," Daedalus 100 (Winter 1971):109-10.

200 class,

Protestant,

and bourgeois values,

expressed in the charge of hypocrisy.

which is most often

They refuse to grant

that the moral indignation of Calvinists or Lutherans was

real;

they see in bourgeois values of hard work and frugality

covers for greed or pathological anality;

they charge the

middle class with envious resentment of those who sanely and easily enjoy life.

Yet these

same accusations could just as

easily be made against the working class by conservatives

who wished to psychohistorically verify that the lower orders merited their humble estates. fore,

One suspects,

there-

that the tendency among psychohistorians to blame

Luther and Calvin for most of the angst and of modern civilization

is a function of their political views

rather than their research.

hoarding,

Further,

sanctimonious prudery,

respectability,

and the

sordid ignobility

it is well to note that

money grubbing, hypocritical

sadistic destruction of the happiness

of others are not exactly unknown practices in Catholic, Greek Orthodox,

or even voodoo societies.

Brown and Marcuse are best viewed as philosophical advocates

rather than as historians.

beyond the shallowness

In their attempt to go

and superficiality of the present,

they have created an ideology which is reminiscent of the cosmic digression of the German Hegelians and romantics. haps

they are to our atomic age what the

Per-

transcendentalists

201 were to the Industrial Revolution, but a couple of reservations are warranted

First,

in reaching a final assessment.2 6

the ideas they borrow from Freud are those which

are most questionable, Secondly,

such as the primal horde theory.

the central point of their thesis,

that a reduc-

tion in sublimation and a more indulgent sexuality will necessarily contribute to an improved quality in civilization, is not really a Freudian idea at all but merely one

often

associated with his name in the twentieth century.

It is

difficult to imagine Freud writing as Brown does that

"non-

repressive development of the libido is possible through the erotization of the entire personality." 2 7

Freud always main-

tained that repression and frustration were essential to the human condition; no amount of soul-satisfying work, Marx and Marcuse, Brown,

or playful infantile

sexuality,

as in

as in

would satisfy mankind's primitive and contradictory

instinctual impulses.

Freud wrote:

love became worthless and life empty.

26.

Roszak,

The Party of Eros,

Making of a Counter Culture,

pp.

p.

.

.

In times in which there were no difficulties standing in the way of sexual satisfaction, such as perhaps during the decline of the ancient civilizations,

91;

King,

174-75.

27. Quoted in Lipshires, "A Civilization Without Discontent," pp. 278-79; Frederick C. Crews, "Love in the Western World," Partisan Review 34 (August 1967):278-79; Roszak, Making of a Counter Culture, p. 85.

202 The ascetic current in Christianity created physical values for love which pagan antiquity was never able to confer on it. 2 8 Yet Freud's view that sexual repression enhances creativity may be just as wrong as that of Brown and Marcuse; even a casual glance at history reveals almost no difference

in creative quality between those civilizations which repressed sexuality and those which gave it free reign.29 for

As

the theme of most psychohistorians that libertarian or

even narcissistic elements are at the core of the meaning of Western civilization,

these researchers may have uncovered

one of many distinguishing characteristics of the West; possibility at least calls for more research. matter is,

however,

the

The entire

still an open question and will certainly

occasion endless debate,

for neither Brown,

Marcuse,

Feuer,

nor the other psychohistorians of Western civilization have yet been able to identify the character of Western civilization or to discover the roots of its origin within the confines of Freud's theory.

At most,

they have advanced

philosophies which curiously fuse the perceptive and the nebulous when they are analyzing the sexual impulse in Western civilization.

Max Weber wrote in 1915 that the erotic

28. Freud, "On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love," in Standard Edition, 11:187-88. 29.

But cf.

Rougement,

Love Declared,

pp.

33-34.

203 would probably be the last

refuge of the mystics.

own time, by the uncertain alchemy of time, their first

30.

refuge.

King,

30

The Party of Eros, p.

193.

In our

it has become

CHAPTER VI

THE SEARCH FOR PATHOLOGY

The conclusion is almost inescapable that the analysis

of the relationship between pathology and historical action inevitably involves a reproachful or even disparaging attitude toward the historical

subject.

Nevertheless,

this

direction of research is one which psychohistorians must

follow,

for the explanation of pathology in history is the

most obvious and immediate application of psychoanalysis and the one where

successful results are presumably most likely.

The historians who have worked in this area are often concerned with the interaction of creativity and pathology politics,

in

but a few have examined the more difficult problem

of creativeness in intellectual, philosophical,

and

scientific life. The perplexity of nonpolitical creativity arises from its being diffused within the total personality of the individual;

the traits in politics which are conducive to success

are much more obvious than, ability.

for example,

Looked at in another way,

those in literary

almost any personality

characteristic in a gifted individual could be labeled a stimulus to creativity by a psychohistorian For this reason,

psychohistorical

204

so inclined.

accounts of literary or

205 scientific ability tend to be either mere personality which fail to relate the personality to the particular

studies suc-

cess of the individual or they are reductionistic and often polemical. Darwin's character is a good case in point.

Since he

certainly suffered from an emotional and painful conflict, psychohistorians have tried to find a neurotic component in his

success as a scientist.

Phyllis Greenacre

thinks that

Darwin was afflicted with unconscious hostility to his father,

an overpowering and awesome giant of a man;

hesitation,

slowness,

Darwin's

and scientific precision were derived

from his fear of showing aggression to such a powerful figure.

Howard Gruber,

same material, mal.

The

on the other hand,

looking at the

finds evidence that Darwin was perfectly nor-

theses of both Greenacre and Gruber are based on

the assumption that traits present in Darwin but absent

the majority of people would be pathological,

in

and at most

they grant him the retention of infantile characteristics which in his circumstances promoted his creativity. may validly question by what standards traits

are labeled "infantile" or "pathological."

But one

so creative

The possibility

is at least open that the benevolence of these traits justifies a more complimentary appelation,

and perhaps they are

206 even the desirable human attributes rather than the ones to

be deplored.1 Most psychohistorians

tend toward emphasizing the dam-

aging nature of unusual personality

features.

with a sympathetic person like Darwin,

When dealing

their inclination is

to marvel at his ability to perform in spite of his emotional quirks,

but in considering a less attractive individual,

free reign is often given to the pointing out of personality deficiencies.

Lewis Feuer's hostile analysis of Marx's

creativity is a good example of this attitude. Feuer,

Marx's entire theory was an attempt to compensate

defects in his character,

ing unloved and unwanted,

Hating his mother,

feel-

Marx became preoccupied with con-

flict and feared potential rejection. the rejected hero,

for

most of which were caused by his

mother's omnipresent domineering.

theus,

According to

The myth of Prome-

became his prototype,

and he

longed for a new birth of society in order to "legitimatize" himself.

Doubting his own manhood, he lived a hippie-like,

passive existence while admiring

the rugged and tough

1. Phyllis Greenacre, The Quest for the Father: A Study of the Darwin-Butler Controversy as a Contribution to the Understanding of the Creative Individual (New York: International Universities Press, 1963), pp. 55, 57-58, 9194; Howard E. Gruber, Darwin on Man: A Psychological Study of Scientific Creativity (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1974), p. 44; Jacques Barzun, Clio and the Doctors, Psycho-History, Quanto-History, and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), p. 47. See also Robert Coles, "Shrinking History,"

New York Review of Books,

8 March 1973, pp.

Kurt Robert Eissler, Leonardo Da Vinci: on the Enigma (New York: International

1961), p.

188.

18-19;

Psychoanalytic Notes Universities Press,

207

self-assertiveness of the workers.

Not content to brand

Marx's ideas as a reflection of his personal pique,

Feuer

blames him for the alienation of the modern intellectual and holds him responsible Fidel Castro,

for unsavory rascals like Mao Tse-Tung,

and Gwame Nakrumah. 2

Only slightly less reductionist is the thesis of J. E. Seigel,

a Renaissance historian,

Marx's character in the great

who tries to find clues to

socialist's writings which are

filled with ideas like self-sacrifice, devotion to ideals.

Unlike Feuer,

fear of failure,

and

Seigel believes Marx's

father was as important in determining his personality as his mother.

The

father pushed his son to achieve

and incul-

cated in him self-sacrificing tendencies, while his mother,

by ceaselessly inquiring about his health, made him a hypochondriac.

Marx's creativity was his achievement of

ful rebellion from the

success-

smothering effect of his parents by

becoming dedicated and successful in ways his parents would not have approved of.3

Whether either Darwin or Marx would have achieved the same level of creativity without the traits which modern psychoanalysts call neurotic is an arguable point.

We do

2. Lewis Feuer, "Karl Marx and the Promethean Complex," Encounter 31 (December 1968):15-16, 23-27, 31; see also Herbert Moller, review of Karl Marx: Eine Psychographie by Arnold Kunzli, History and Theory 8 (Autumn 1969):394. 3. J. E. Seigel, "Marx's Early Development: Vocation, Rebellion, and Realism," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 3 (Winter

1973) :476-77,

480, 487,

490-93.

208

not have to conclude that "the Darwins of today may be known to posterity only in the casebooks of psychiatrists, 4 "

to

see that some merit may reside in the often-proposed compatibility of genius and neurosis.

Back in 1956 Edward

Hitschman published a series of essays on certain nineteenthcentury figures--Brahms,

Schopenhauer,

Samuel Johnson,

among

others--geared to the thesis that most geniuses were at least

slightly abnormal.

The problem with philosophers,

Hitschman

said, was that they pondered life instead of living it. 5 The defect in Hitschman's was limited numerically

argument is that his survey

and probably not even representative.

Not every writer is as compulsive as Samuel Johnson.

For

every Schopenhauer one can counter with a James Mill whose identity crisis was so well resolved that a recent psychohistorian has called him a true self-made man.

Certainly,

some abnormalities and neuroticisms are found in creative

people but very probably a statistical study would show them no more frequent than among the uncreative. wary,

however,

of the

One must be

facile assumption that the choice is

between a psychoanalytic

focus on pathological

traits and

a traditionalist defense of normality in a historical 4.

Helen Merrell Lynd,

Nation,

15 February 1975, p.

"A Physician Looks at Creativity,"

187.

5. Edward Hitschman, Great Men: Psychoanalytic Studies (New York: International Universities Press, 1956), pp. 19-20, 36. A more modern example of a similar way of interpreting is J. D. Livermore, "The Personal Agonies of Edward Blake," Canadian Historical Review 56 (March 1975) :45-58.

209 individual,

for what appears as normal to one is not neces-

sarily normal to another. clearly defined,

When the categories are not

a great deal of confusion arises as to what

a psychoanalytic interpretation is intended to demonstrate. The recent debate

among historians between defenders and

critics of Fawn Brodie's Thomas Jefferson:

An Intimate

Biography is an example of such misunderstanding,

for she

appears to think her critics view Jefferson as a plaster saint,

and her critics erroneously conclude that

she wants

to portray Jefferson as a "secret swinger." 6 Her view of Jefferson's

sexuality has aroused more

acrimonious criticism than is customary even for psycho-

historical books.

The opposition derives not just from her

making Jefferson's passions

stronger but

ventional interpretation of them. of the difference

6.

from her uncon-

A very clear indication

in approach of the traditionalist and the

David Herbert Donald,

"By Sex Obsessed,"

Commentary 59 (July 1974):98; Bruce Mazlish, "James Mill and the Utilitarians," Daedalus 97 (Summer 1968):1046; for the dispute between Brodie and her opponents, see Fawn M. Brodie, "Jefferson Biographers and the Psychology of Canonization," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2 (Summer 1971):161, 166; also

see the book which started the controversy, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate Biography (New York: W. W. Norton & Company,

1974),

pp.

18,

24,

28-29;

the most scathing

criticism is by T. Harry Williams, "On the Couch at Monticello," Reviews in American History 2 (December 1974):527-28. The unfounded assumption that pathology is necessarily at the root of creativity is found in the following analyses of Abraham Lincoln: Norman Kiell, Psychological Studies of Famous Americans: The Civil War Era (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1965), p. 73; Alexander L. and Juliette George, "Psycho-McCarthyism'" Psychology Today 7 (June 1973):96.

210 psychohistorian can be found by examining the different conclusions of Dumas Malone and Brodie infatuation with Rebecca Burwell. to Rebecca in Latin,

about Jefferson's Jefferson wrote letters

was very nervous in her presence,

did not compete with rivals for her favors.

and

Malone dismisses

the matter as a short-lived and nonserious puppy love: "Jefferson carried on this rather absurd affair mostly in his imagination." 7

But Brodie thinks Jefferson was immensely

affected: Jefferson was by nature so thin skinned that the merest hint of Rebecca's indifference to his love would have brought mortificnation and withdrawal. If he was

unaggressive in his courtship,

it may have been

because he felt his love to be unrequited,

it might be if made visible. 8

Malone's statement is matter of fact, Brodie's is more elaborate, she ascribes

to the episode.

or feared

almost derisive;

reflecting the greater importance The reader will note that both

advance a psychological motivation,

Malone's being that Jef-

ferson was merely indulging in an atypical daydream,

and

Brodie's being the assertion that Jefferson was seriously in love but afraid to express his feelings. Actually, neither theory is more

susceptible to proof than the other.

Brodie tries,

however,

to reinforce her conclusion by

pointing out that Jefferson appeared hostile to all women 7. Brodie, Thomas Jefferson, Obsessed," p. 96.

8.

p.

66;

Brodie, Thomas Jefferson, p. 66.

Donald,

"By Sex

211

for several years after Rebecca married. alences Brodie

One of the ambiv-

sees in Jefferson is that he

feared women and

regarded them as dangerous to his public work.

His life was

a constant struggle before his wife's death to reconcile the competing demands of his family and country.

After his wife

died he remained active in politics for the next twenty-six

years because, his

according to Brodie,

ambivalence

was removed.

one of the sources of

9

Most biographers have assumed that Jefferson was never really interested in another woman after his wife's death. The insinuations propagated among his contemporaries that he had children by one of his slaves,

Sally Hemmings,

denied by his biographers almost to a man,

have been

though the evi-

dence has been ambiguous enough to keep the issue alive to the present.

The chief objection to the possibility of the

liaison has always been that it was of Jefferson's moral character,

inconceivable in a man

a rather strained bit of

logic since Jefferson's moral scruples,

may have been,

estimable

as they

did not keep him from living all his life off

the labor of human beings he kept as chattel.

The argument

that he found miscegenation a greater moral abhorrence slavery is perverse,

but more importantly,

missed Brodie's point.

9.

Ibid.,

pp.

68,

She

172.

than

the critics have

is not trying to expose

212

fornication or adultery in Jefferson but to show the

features

of his capability for love. 1 0 It is difficult to understand why historians should react with such vigor to those who support the likelihood of Jefferson's affair with Sally. Brodie's book,

David Donald,

in reviewing

wrote that her interpretation of Jefferson's

epitaph might be:

"Thomas Jefferson,

his best Friend's wife,

attempted Seducer of

and Sire of Numerous Illegitimate

Children by his Slave Sally."

But one may wonder what is

so inherently disreputable about Jefferson's having loved a black woman. white,

Little doubt exists that if Sally had been

the historiographical literature would have an en-

tirely different orientation.

The insinuation has never been

seriously made that Jefferson raped or unduly took advantage of her,

so the objection of critics cannot be that the ac-

ceptance of the affair as true ploited the master-slave stantial evidence

implies that Jefferson ex-

relationship.

Further,

the circum-

is fairly strong, as Brodie notes,

though

she is not revealing new material but repeating information historians have already known. For example,

Jefferson was always at home nine months

before Sally's children were born,

and he gave her the right

10. Ibid., pp. 30, 228-45; Dumas Malone, Jefferson the President: First Term, 1801-1805 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1970), p. 214. 11.

Donald,

"By Sex Obsessed," p.

96.

213

to run the house while he was away.

In his will the only

slaves he freed were Sally and her relatives,

and some con-

temporaries reported that certain of his younger slaves resembled Jefferson. lute proof but are

These facts,

of course,

are not abso-

substantial enough to warrant a look at

two implications which must be confronted if even the pos-

sibility of the affair is accepted.

One is the matter of

the extent of the hypocrisy of Jefferson in continuing to

hold slaves while wholeheartedly loving a black woman.

This

implied accusation has probably deterred many historians,

who might otherwise be favorable to the theory, ing Brodie's view.

Upon consideration,

no reservation at all

from accept-

however,

since it presupposes

it is

really

that Jefferson

could morally defend his keeping of slaves only on the grounds of their inferiority; however wrongly,

in fact he often upheld slavery,

with the practical defense that it was con-

ducive to race relations or that it was impossible to

abolish, given human prejudice.

Hence,

the charge of hypoc-

risy cannot really be applied to the episode.1 2 The other implication that, it was of no real importance

considerably more serious.

even if the affair occurred,

in Jefferson's public life is

The charge of T. Harry Williams

that Brodie makes Jefferson's

affair with Sally the inspi-

rational guide of his social and political

12. Donald,

Brodie, Thomas Jefferson, pp. "By Sex Obsessed,"

pp.

97-98.

life deserves

294,

349,

466; cf.

214

attention,

though Williams does go to an astonishing extreme

by suggesting that the sex life of Jefferson had no influence at all on his career.

The

truth,

here as elsewhere,

probably lies in between, but if Brodie's work leads to a more acceptable psychohistory of Jefferson, her book will have been a significant contribution to an area of American history where a fresh outlook has long been needed.1 3 The skepticism of the

traditionalists on Brodie's

analysis of the pathology in Jefferson is rooted in the assumption that there is no pathology to analyze,

but one

suspects that their reservations would be as forthright if the subject were obviously mentally unbalanced. historian Rudolf Binion,

a

Psycho-

specialist in German history,

has undertaken such an analysis of a near psychotic individual,

and the mixed results of his attempt reveal that the

abnormality of the subject does not make successful psychohistory easier.

the task of writing

Binion's biography of Lou

Andreas Salome is a milestone in psychohistory, brilliantly researched and meticulous in detail, derous writing stances were

but limited by a pon-

style and an unusual footnote form.

Circum-

favorable for a successful psychobiography,

for

not only was Lou a psychoanalyst herself and an associate of Freud,

but she left diaries

of her most secret thoughts,

including material on her infancy.

13.

Williams,

No critic of

"On the Couch," p.

528.

215

psychohistory could legitimately maintain that Binion did not have enough information on Lou's early life to attempt

his goal.1 4 Binion finds that Lou was confused about her sexual role.

She identified with her father,

a child forever.

but wanted to remain

She wanted to adopt a father role by

living

in the world of men, but desired to submit like a child. Regarding child bearing as masculine, loved only herself.

she narcissistically

She was a woman who used her wiles to

trick and deceive men,

including Nietzche

personality was so precarious she

and Freud,

remained sane only because

the world surrendered to her unusual demands. with accepting this

but her

thesis is that Binion's

The problem

reference system

makes it difficult to tell whether the designs and motivations he attributes to Lou

are verified by her diaries or

are mere inferences of his. research,

pp.

ix,

15.

immensity of his

the doubtful validity of his conclusions is

regrettable.

14. Disciple

In view of the

15

Rudolph Binion, Frau Lou: Nietzche's Wayward (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968), x.

Ibid.,

pp.

7-8,

21,

24,

29,

32,

54.

See also

Frederick Brown, "Figures in a Wagnerian Landscape," Harpers 246 (February 1973):100; Bernard Meyer, "Some Reflections," in Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Science, ed. Robert R. Holt and Emmanuel Peterfreund (New York: Macmillan Company, 1972), p. 374. Binion in "From Meyerling to Sarajevo," Journal of Modern History 47 (June 1975):314-15 argues that Francis Ferdinand invited assassination because he was infatuated with the suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf; as in Frau Lou Binion is here relying more on his own reading of the unconscious than on direct historical evidence.

216

Binion's lack of sympathy for his subject goes beyond

a mere recognition of the obviously pathological in Lou in that it reveals a measure of truth in the charge of tradi-

tionalists that psychohistorians wish to denigrate their subjects.

One can see

the same trend in countless other

psychohistories which are purportedly analyses of the historically important mentally ill.

Binion,

dealing with a subject whose abnormality nized,

of course,

was

is generally recog-

thus obscuring the nature of his denigration of Lou,

but blatant polemical attacks

are distressingly common to

psychohistorians armed with an emotional bias

acquired knowledge of Freudian terminology. Friendship and Fratricide,

for example,

on Whittaker Chambers's character

and a hastily

Meyer Zeligs's

is a violent assault

and veracity,

made all the

worse by Zelig's avowal that he is writing as a disinterested bystander.

Completely ignoring the rather substantial evi-

dence which Chambers used to convict Alger Hiss of Zeligs maintains that Chambers was logical liar,

and a suicide.

a homosexual,

spying,

a patho-

Chambers emerges from the book

not as a human being but as a bundle of psychic and malevolent energies; saint,

and though Hiss is

treated as a plaster

Zeligs's portrait of him is no less inhuman.

Zeligs's

basic mistake is in using psychoanalysis to prove the actual cause of events in history. his facts,

his technique

Even were he more careful of

is faulty,

because psychoanalysis

usually can only furnish a possible motivation for an event,

217

and a possible motive is always one of many possible motives, since all events are overdetermined by many causes.16

Hence,

the reductionists in the psychohistory of pathology are pursuing a futile hope in crediting their efforts toward uncovering pathology with the degree of proof Binion and Zeligs claim. Many of the reductionists would probably accept this reservation

applied to individual or isolated events,

but

would maintain that when they

show an overwhelming and total

pattern of abnormal behavior,

the quantity of their evidence

reaches a new quality of proof.

However,

this suggestion

is

also questionable.

Even when dealing with a person obviously

abnormal or insane,

it is impossible

to determine what events

were determined by his insanity and which were part of the "normal" self that all people have. Arnold Rogow's James Forrestal,

a psychohistory of the Secretary of Defense who

committed suicide in the 1 9 40s, Of Forrestal's as

insanity,

substantiates this point.

there was no doubt;

"involutional melancholia" by doctors.

toms was a rather extreme 16.

Meyer A.

Zeligs,

it was diagnosed

One of his symp-

fear of Communists,

but one may

Friendship and

Fratricide: An Analysis of_ Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss (New York Viking

Press, 1967), pp. 216, 260, 431-32; Ernest van den Haag, "Psychoanalysis and Fantasy," National Review, 21 March 1967, pp. 296, 298; Morton White, Foundations of Historical Knowledge (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), p. 209; Meyer Shapiro, "Dangerous Acquaintances," New York Review of Books, 23 February 1967, pp. 5-6, 8; Bernard Meyer, "Some Reflections," in Holt, Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Science,

p. 378.

218 wonder just how deviant this pattern was from the normal in the political climate of the Cold War in the 1940s.

Though

Rogow performs a valuable service in shattering the myth that prominent people do not become insane,

his

attempts to explain

Forrestal's unbalance by his deprived childhood are really of no more weight than such an analysis of a sane person would be.

While Forrestal's

life indeed was unhappy,

surprising that the despondent commit suicide,

it is not and one must

conclude that psychoanalysis cannot be of much help in furn-

ishing historical causation in pathological cases.1 7 Sometimes psychohistorians try to avoid the problem of causation in pathology by asserting the obvious in psychoanalytical terms.

Thus Lewis Edinger,

after thirty pages of

psychoanalytic description of the post-World War II German Social Democratic leader Kurt Schumacher,

summed him up as

a "highly dogmatic personality with an extremely closed belief system," in the

which is no more than what the average German

street already knew.

Edinger further concludes that

Schumacher entered politics to satisfy his This line of interpretation is 17.

Arnold Rogow,

"inner needs." 1 8

less objectionable than the

James Forrestal:

A Study

of Personality, Politics, and Policy (New York: Macmillan Company, 1963), pp. xiii, 4-5, 9, 61, 70-71, 327. 18. Lewis J. Edinger, Kurt Schumacher: A Study in Personality and Political Behavior (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1965), pp. 17, 294; see also Bruce Mazlish, "Group Psychology and Problems of Contemporary History,' Journal of Contemporary History 3 (April 1968):166.

219 reductionist effort to expose pathology event, A

as a cause of every

but it is hardly any more illuminating. somewhat more sophisticated example of translating

an obvious historical

interpretation into psychoanalytic

terms is the book by William B. Willcox, in the War of Independence.

Sir Henry Clinton

Willcox is a historian who be-

came intrigued with the psychological possibilities of a study of Clinton when he noticed that Clinton's behavior was not explainable in rational terms. he consulted with Frederick Wyatt, character analysis of Clinton,

a theory,

Desiring to know more, a psychologist,

and

their

which they advance merely as

is given in the last chapter of the book.

little is known of Clinton's early life, judge him by his adult personality.

Since

the authors had to

He was,

they find,

racked by indecision; though he often wanted to take the offensive,

he was afraid to assert himself and performed best

when he was second in command.

His inability to exercise

command without self-doubts they ascribe in part to the absence of his father when he was young.

Certainly,

the

authors have pointed to a facet of Clinton's personality that needs explaining, on skimpy evidence, Implicit

but their explanation,

is problematic,

in their argument

based as it is

as they themselves admit.

is the assumption that motivation

in the eighteenth century must have been the same as today. In fact,

though Clinton was definitely an unaggressive

general by modern standards,

warfare in the 1700s was

220

pursued much less offensively than today.

To what extent

Clinton's psychological impulse toward hesitation was more important than his societal pressure toward a cautious warfare is not answered by the authors. 1 Willcox and Wyatt provide

9

an intriguing character

study

but add nothing to the common knowledge among traditional historians that Clinton was indecisive.

Their tendency and

that of most psychohistorians is to find more pathology in historical failure

than in success;

normal is applied several

insane,

for example,

label of ab-

times to a historical

disparaging attitudes emerge, self-fulfilling prophecy.

after the

figure,

in those so inclined,

The thesis that George

the

as a

III was

was so widely accepted for years that

no action of the poor king was ever

interpreted

as normal:

"When he was deliberate and cautious,

he was

and when he attempted to lose weight,

this demonstrated

his neurosis had its roots in

'obsessional';

'self-denial.'" 2 0

that

Another

19. William B. Willcox, Portrait of a General: Sir Henry Clinton in the War of Independence (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964), pp. xi, xii, xiv, xv, 497-98, 510, 523. A similar disregard of eighteenth-century attitudes is found in John J. Waters, "James Otis, Jr.: An Ambivalent Revolu-

tionary," History of Childhood Quarterly: The Journal of Psychohistory 1 (Summer 1973):143. See also North Callahan,

review of Portrait of a General by William B. Willcox, American Historical Review 70 (October 1964):121-22.

20. E. J. Hundert, "History, Psychology, and the Study of Deviant Behavior," Journal of the History of Ideas 33 (Spring 1972):463-65; Gordon Rattray Taylor, The Angel Makers: A Study in the Psychological Origins of Historical Change, 175J-1850 (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1974), p. 132. See Ida Macalpine and Richard Hunter, George III & the Mad Business (New York: Pantheon Books, 1969).

221

example is the contrasting interpretations of the successful Lenin as merely ruthless and the equally violent Robespierre as hopelessly

irrational.

had Robespierre

One is

succeeded he

tempted to believe that

too would have been considered

justified in responding to real threats to his government.2 1 Probably the most frequent use of this principle

is the

treatment psychohistorians have given Woodrow Wilson.

His

failure to achieve a lasting peace in Europe or to get Senate ratification of the Versailles treaty have not been regarded as merely unfortunate,

multicaused events in history but as

indicators of Wilson's character defects.

Yet those person-

ality traits in Wilson which so intrigue the psychohistorians have been ignored in those

instances in which they do not

suit the purposes of psychoanalytic history. willingness Clemenceau

Thus Wilson's

to compromise with David Lloyd George and George in the negotiations which led to the treaty is

rarely used to prove his normality in the same way his obstinacy with the Senate over ratification

is used to prove

his pathology. The psychobiography of Wilson which Freud and William Bullitt wrote in the suffers

1930s

(unpublished, however,

until 1966)

from precisely such a one-sided tendency to see only

the inadequacies in Wilson's character.

Though Freud held

the American president responsible for the dismemberment of 21. Gerald N. of Interdisciplinary

Izenberg, "The Wish to Be Free," Journal History 2 (Summer 1971):146.

222 his beloved Austria,

there

is still some dispute

much he contributed to this

about how

attack on Wilson's character.

Many psychoanalysts have maintained that Bullitt did most of the writing or have greeted the work with anguish, it were a forgery,

wishing

or calling it a "mischievous joke. "22

Yet the interpretations in it are probably adequate reflections of Freud's views, American,

though the style of writing is very

somewhat short and clipped like the Hemingway

style popular in the nineteen-thirties; ably Bullitt's.

this style was prob-

Freud's sickness at the time of authorship

suggests that Bullitt did most of the writing with Freud contributing the psychoanalytic ideas and some written comments. 2 3 What concerns the critics is the polemical and vituperative

tone of the book,

and it has been condemned from both

the historical and psychoanalytic viewpoints. attack on the man studied, ture.

Oddly,

mality in his

It is an

an attack of a most personal na-

Freud and Bullitt do not find Wilson's abnorsexual behavior but in his relationship with

22. Robert Coles, "A Bullitt to Wilson," New Republic, 28 January 1967, p. 28; Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson: Twenty-eighth President of the United States, A Psychological Study (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1967); Erik H. Erikson and Richard Hofstadter, "The Strange Case of Freud, Bullitt and Wilson," New York Review of Books, 9 February 1967, p. 3; Barbara W. Tuchman, "Can History Use Freud?" Atlantic Monthly 219 (February 1967) :40. 23. Robert J. Lifton, "On Psychohistory," in The State of American History, ed. Herbert Bass (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970), p. 280; Erikson and Hofstadter, "Strange Case," p. 4.

223

his

father.

Throughout the book,

there is no understanding

revealed of the milieu in which Wilson lived, imperialism,

or Victorianism;

the president's

Progressivism, failure rather

than his successes are pointed out. 2 4 Though Arthur Link,

of Wilson,

the most distinguished biographer

has stressed the normality of Wilson's childhood,

Freud and Bullitt find in it a pattern of excessive filial admiration,

a devotion which made Wilson a narcissistic prig.

The future president's feeling of superiority in being the child of his father was accompanied by a feeling of inferiority in being unable to measure up to his father intellectually and physically.

He did not learn to read till he was

eleven and all his life suffered from ill health and what Freud and Bullitt call ugliness.

Even though two women

found Wilson attractive enough to marry, portray Wilson as a weak, "beaked nose,

loose,

sickly,

pale specimen with his

his protuberant ears,

meaty upper lips.

Freud and Bullitt

his jagged jaw,

or his

"2 5

24. Tuchman, "Can History Use Freud?" pp. 39, 42; Erikson and Hofstadter, "Strange Case," pp. 4, 6; Cushing Strout, review of Thomas Woodrow Wilson by Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, Journal of American History 54 (June

1967) :184.

25. Freud and Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson, pp. 5-7, 9-10, 28-29, 53; Arthur S. Link, Wilson: The Road to the White House (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1947), p. 2; Tuchman, "Can History Use Freud?" p. 42.

224

Aside from his remarkable homeliness,

Freud and Bullitt

see Wilson as neurotic and emotionally unstable.

While ad-

mitting Wilson's relations with women were normal in every way,

they discover unexpressed hostility toward his father

in his inability to cooperate with men of equivalent intellectual stature

such as Dean Andrew West of Princeton or

Senator Henry Cabot Lodge.

Wilson preferred to be surrounded

by inferiors or women or to associate with flatterers who inordinately admired him. one of the many

He was,

state Freud and Bullitt,

"neurotics, monomaniacs,

and psychotics" who

have come to hold positions of power in history. 2 6 The reader cannot gain much insight from this study. It is motivated by Freud's hostility toward both Wilson and

America, which he called a "gigantic mistake." 2 7 Freud and Bullitt's work was published,

Well before

Alexander and

Juliette George wrote a psychohistorical study of Wilson which is

so much better than Freud and Bullitt's attempt

that it makes their inadequacies all the more obvious. Georges'

The

Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House has been generally

praised for its scholarship and research. be attributed to the authors'

This

acclaim can

recognition of the importance

26. Freud and Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson, pp. 57, 59-60, 131, 230. See also Paul Roazen, Freud: Political and Social Thought (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), pp. 300-322.

p.

27. Roazen, Freud: 97; Freud and Bullitt,

Political and Social Thought, Thomas Woodrow Wilson, p. xi.

225

of nonpsychoanalytic

factors in Wilson's behavior,

such as

the intellectual influence on him of English political thought.

Yet they do not needlessly enlarge their book by

trying to write a complete biography of Wilson; tention is to delineate those aspects of his

their in-

character which

psychoanalysis can fruitfully pursue.28 The Georges agree with Freud and Bullitt that Wilson's behavior at Versailles was strange,

since his adamant re-

fusal to compromise was not only contrary to American tradition but counter to Wilson's own ideals of mediation. Georges

see in Wilson's

arose in his childhood.

The

attitude a key to a pattern which Wilson was a mamma's boy who felt

inferior to his famous father,

and his father,

by his teas-

ing attitude and in his zeal to force perfection on his son, made his son feel unwanted. hostility,

Wilson responded with repressed

which the Georges see manifested in the exces-

sively high opinion he held of his father and in his inability in later life to submit to authority;

it was this

trait which caused Wilson the most difficulty

in life.

became unbending when exercising authority and was able

He to

28. Page Smith, The Historian and History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964), p. 126; Fred I. Greenstein, Personality and Politics: Problems of Evidence, Inference, and Conceptualization (Chicago: Markham Publishing Company, 1969), pp. 69, 77; Tuchman, "Can History Use Freud?" p. 44; Alexander L. and Juliette L. George, Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House: A Personality Study (New York: John Day Company, 1956); Bernard Brodie in Psychoanalysis and History, ed. Bruce Mazlish (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,

1963), pp.

116,

123.

226

compromise only when seeking power. he did not feel triumph. some reason or other,

Even when he did succeed,

"I am so constituted that,

I never have

for

a sense of triumph,"

he

wrote. 29

Inviting conflicts in order to prove his own worth, Wilson's lack of self-esteem required unusual displays of affection from his wife and friends.

He was most comfortable

with flatterers or sincere admirers such as Colonel House. To the Georges,

Wilson's inability to face authority ration-

ally explains his pattern of

success followed by failure at

Princeton and in the White House.

Naturally,

tions on his potential were unknown to Wilson. motivations

as idealistic,

even altruistic,

these limitaHe

saw his

but the Georges

find symbolism in his motif of a goal in his life of liberation--from plutocrats,

from colonial subjugation,

invading Germans--and ask

from

if this attitude was on an uncon-

scious level an expression of his desire to end his father's authority.

3 0

29. George, Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, pp. 5-8, 11; Greenstein, Personality and Politics, pp. 76, 78-79, 86; Erikson and Hofstadter, "Strange Case," p. 8; Smith, Historian and History, p. 125; Mazlish, Psychoanalysis and

History,

p. 119.

For the remarkably similar personality

of Eleanor Roosevelt see Kenneth S. Davis, FDR: The Beckoning of Destiny, 1882-1928: A History (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1971), p. 177. 30.

31,

George, Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House,

114-15,

117,

124,

321.

pp.

21,

227

In general outlines,

this interpretation is not entirely

different from that of Freud and Bullitt, animated by more

sympathy for their

are

subject and greater

awareness of the historical and cultural Nevertheless,

but the Georges

factors involved.

their conclusions are merely tentative;

they

provide a possible valid sketch of Wilson's emotional problem,

but another

interpretation might be even more suitable.

Edwin Weinstein,

a professor of neurology who studied Wilson

from the standpoint of physiological history, concluded that organic changes such as brain clots, high blood pressure, and cerebral vascular disease explain much of Wilson's supposedly erratic behavior in his years as president. Weinstein is right,

much of

the Georges'

work

Though Weinstein and the Georges are unable lish their theories,

their

If

is vitiated.

to firmly estab-

level of interpretation is con-

siderably above the crude reductionism of Freud and

Bullitt.3 1 Since Freud and Bullitt are dealing with a subject

about whom a great deal of historical information is known, they do not face the unavailability of evidence which plagues many other psychohistorians who are trying to discover the pathology of historical figures. ever,

how-

lack of evidence is a boon to a historian who is

31. Illness,"

324,

In a way,

341,

337-38.

Edwin A. Weinstein, "Woodrow Wilson's Neurological Journal of American History 57 (September 1970):

344,

351; Barzun, Clio and the Doctors, pp. 69,

228

trying to write psychohistory.

Unchallenged by evidence to

the contrary, he can describe his subject's personality and then argue that because of that personality the individual's

childhood must have followed a certain pattern.

The two

recent books by Anne Jardim on Henry Ford and Sudhir Kakir

on Frederick Winslow Taylor are such psychoanalytic interpretations in which almost all the evidence is inferential. Disregarding the lack of knowledge of Henry Ford's childhood, Jardim develops an encompassing thesis interpreting innovations leading to the

"Ford's

success of the Model T in part as

one man's unique version of the search for the father," but

her conclusion that Ford's creativity had roots in his personality rather than in a purely intellectual desire to

rationally organize the economy is hardly innovative. 3 2 Kakir's book also deals with an inventor associated with

economic rationality, but lack of evidence was even more of a problem since almost nothing is known of Taylor's childhood.

Hence,

common

in psychohistory.

Kakir resorts to a method all too deplorably

of Taylor's behavior and,

He takes certain characteristics as the latter appears from the

evidence an obsessional neurotic for example),

(he always slept sitting up,

Kakir concludes that Taylor's childhood must

32. Anne Jardim, The First Henry Ford: A Study in Personality and Business Leadership (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1970), p. viii; see also James T. Patterson, "The Uses of Techno-Psychohistory, " Journal of Interdisciplinary

History 2 (Spring 1972) :474-75.

229 have followed a certain pattern.

Nor does Kakir effectively

show how these neurotic components,

aided or hindered Taylor's work,

even if they existed,

other than by perfunctorily

ascribing his failures to an unconscious need to fail. 3 3 Nancy Gager Clinch, sents

in her The Kennedy Neurosis, pre-

somewhat more evidence but also constructs a pattern

of childhood history from what the author sees as the adult personality. Though the book is a polemical and strident attack on the Kennedy family,

Clinch professes to be apply-

ing the benevolent and optimistic insights of such neoFreudians as Karen Horney and Henry Stack Sullivan. Mazlish has lent his considerable prestige

Bruce

to this project

in a preface which reveals the reluctance of psychohistorians to criticize another member in a small and besieged frater-

nity.

Though The Kennedy Neurosis is as egregiously

reductionist as Freud and Bullitt's work,

Mazlish calls it

"a major work," and the most he can say by way of disapproval is that Clinch uses the word neurosis in a "vague" way, in fact she uses it pejoratively

when

to label anyone she does

not approve of. 3 4 Simply stated,

Clinch's

thesis is that all Americans,

but especially the Kennedy family,

are suffering from a

33. Sudhir Kakir, Frederick Taylor: sonalityland Innovation (Cambridge, Mass.:

pp. 19,

34.

153,

193-94.

Nancy Gager3Clinch,

Grosset & Dunlap,

1973),

A Study in PerMIT Press, 1970),

The Kennedy Neurosis

pp. xi, xii, xiii,

5,

7-8.

(New York:

230

neurotic trait called the

"Kennedy neurosis" which is

drive for power and dominance. is neurotic:

In Clinch's world,

the elder Kennedys,

a

everybody

the Kennedys junior,

and

the unthinking public who foolishly admire them and treat them as royalty.

Her ire is especially aroused because the

public cannot see

the defects

family is, racist,

she says,

sexist,

compulsive.

in the Kennedys she can.

unscrupulous,

manipulative,

unduly competitive,

greedy,

immoral,

insecure,

and

The idea the Kennedys are either suffering a

curse or have been unfortunate victims of bad labels a myth,

for their misfortunes

own creation.

They are

to worship patriarchy,

luck Clinch

are largely of their

subject to a neurosis which was

stilled in them in childhood,

to Clinch,

The

in-

when their parents taught them

competition,

and sexism.

According

Joseph Kennedy's main goal in life was equality

with the Brahim Bostonians; pseudoreligious,

and Rose Kennedy was prudish,

and a social climber.

the virtues of power and success.

Both parents preached

The children,

filled with

hostility for having been valued only insofar as they were successful in competition,

were driven to self-destructive

and self-frustrating actions. prove he was macho; Clinch avers, being, off

whereas

the bridge

Thus,

Robert had to constantly

Jack was an accident-prone

could not even eat food like Edward Kennedy unconsciously at Chappaquidick.

neurotic who,

a proper

human

wanted to drive

As for this

last Kennedy,

Clinch predicts that if Edward is ever elected president

231 more accidents will occur, disappear.

Her arrogance

because neuroses do not suddenly in predicting the future

ceeded only by her relentless and

family,

is ex-

indictment of a whole country

and though her writing style is excellent,

this

fact only makes the inadequacy of her thesis all the more

obvious.35 Bruce Mazlish's In Search of Nixon

similarly reduces

the presidential subject to a bundle of pathological psychological drives,

but it differs in not betraying any real

enmity toward the historical patient.

In fact,

Mazlish is

so preoccupied with forcing psychoanalytic concepts to fit within the context of Nixon's biography person seems to get lost somewhere.

that Nixon as a

One has only to compare

Mazlish's work to the far superior book by Garry Wills on Nixon,

which is nonpsychoanalytical,

writing

simplistic reductionism,

tions to the contrary.3

to

see that Mazlish is

in spite of his protesta-

6

Whatever valid inferences Mazlish does achieve could just as well have been accomplished impressionistically as through the ornate psychological other writers,

108,

35. 110,

Like

he begins by commenting on the scarcity of

Ibid., pp. 5, 8-9, 11-13, 18-19, 119, 289, 361, 367, 369, 371-73,

"Psycho-McCarthyism," p. 36.

apparatus he uses.

Bruce Mazlish,

historical Inquiry

48-49, 57, 59, 378; George,

94. In Search of Nixon:

(New York:

Basic Books,

A Psycho-

1972),

pp. 157-58; Garry Wills, Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self Made Man (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1970)-.

232 biographical materials

on Nixon,

who probably strove to keep

his real self hidden by projecting a mask of what he wished to be.

Mazlish

finds Nixon basically a loner who draws

port only from the inner circle of his family.

sup-

Though the

former President thinks highly of himself, he believes he is constantly being attacked by Communists and crooks.

Because

his mother was dominant within his childhood family, he follows his father in a reluctance to express hostility, reacts with a verbal emphasis on toughness.

but

His own atti-

tudes of ambivalence and hostility he projects onto the Communists.3 7 While there is undoubtedly

some truth in Mazlish's

picture of Nixon's personality,

he can hardly claim any

innovation for the accomplishment of merely labeling character traits with psychoanalytic terms. uses almost the

same procedure but applies it not just to

Nixon but to all presidents:

he divides them into either

active-positive or active-negative. prediction,

James David Barber

before Watergate,

Even though Barber's

of a Nixon tragedy will prob-

ably give him the momentarily enhanced reputation reserved for prophets, ization.

37. 92,

94,

his typology suffers from excessive general-

What real similarities

Mazlish, 97,

115;

are there,

In Search of Nixon, pp.

cf.

Rene J. Muller,

Fictional Richard Nixon," Nation,

for instance,

15-16,

27,

56,

"Mask in a Mirror:

6 July 1974,

p. 6.

in

68, The

Also see Bruce Mazlish, "Toward a Psychohistorical Inquiry: The 'Real' Richard Nixon," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 1 (Autumn 1970) :49-107.

233 Barber's examples of Wilson,

Hoover,

Johnson,

and Nixon as

active-negative Presidents other than that all four had more than their

share of failure?

Barber's categories,

as the interpretations of Mazlish and Clinch, thesis that psychoanalytic degenerateinto name-calling

as well

reinforce the

studies of pathology tend to and assigning blame.

This ten-

dency to emphasize culpability is even more pronounced where highly charged and contemporary emotions example,

are present as,

in the psychohistory of race relations.

for

A classic

case is the labeling of the entire group of abolitionists as deranged because a few untypical cases of mental instability can be

isolated.

3 8

The psychohistory of race relations

is an especially

pertinent example because even conventional historiography in the same area has suffered from a tendency to emphasize

culpability.

If psychology is used mostly in this way to

separate the normal from the abnormal,

the basic argument

will ultimately degenerate into an assignation of praise or

blame, with the propsychology scholars usually doing the 38. James David Barber, "The Question of Presidential Character," Saturday Review of Society 55 (September 1972):

62-67 is a good summary of his book The Presidential Character; Predicting

Performance in the White House (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972); Martin B. Duberman, "The Abolitionists and Psychology," Journal of Negro History 47 (July 1962):185, 188. See also Alexander L. George, "Assessing Presidential Character," World Politics 26 (January 1974):244, 255, 260; Coles, "Shrinking History," p. 27; cf. Kiell, Psychological Studies, pp. 29-30.

234 blaming and the antipsychology historians retaliating with praise.

Such procedure is unproductive and futile.3 9

Even where the psychohistorian is cautious in advancing an unconscious motivation,

the charge that he is really

introducing blame is hard to deny,

since almost any explan-

ation other than the obvious one will appear denigrative.

For example, David Donald, psychohistorian,

who is not usually considered a

proposes anxiety over declining social

status as one of the factors pushing the abolitionists toward their radical position.

Using a correlation method,

he

finds

a common family background of deteriorating status in a se-

lect list of abolitionists,

but critics have rightly pointed

out that even if his correlation were perfect, prove cause and effect. a cause,

it could not

A correlation at most can disprove

but it cannot be used as evidence of one.

To sus-

tain his case Donald would have to show some interaction in the thinking, even if only on the unconscious level, between his abolitionists and their social status. Further, status anxiety is presumably widespread in a mobile society; to prove it existed among the abolitionists requires an operative feature which affected them uniquely.40

39.

Lewis Perry,

"Psychology and

the Abolitionists: Reflections on Martin Duberman and the Neoabolitionists of the 1 9 60's," Reviews in American History 2 (September 1974): 317. 40. David Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956), pp. 26-28, 34; Robert Doherty, "Status Anxiety and American Reform," American Quarterly

235 Yet these criticisms are secondary to the major one often made of the Donald thesis:

that his attributing to

the abolitionists a motivation different from their stated

aims was "blaming" them, insincere,

in effect calling them pathological,

and not intrinsically concerned with slavery.

Very probably Donald only wanted to suggest one among many acting on the abolitionists,

impulse

but the problem of

the extent of blame or praise inherent in a psychological explanation is a real one. arises in a different guise,

Sometimes this same difficulty as,

for example,

when a ques-

tion is advanced about whether Lincoln's neurotic traits were a spur to his creativity or an insignificant facet of his personality.

Framed in this manner,

the question pre-

supposes an implication that fault is to be in the personality.

4 1

The solution,

if historians want to make use of psy-

chology effectively, uting censure

found somewhere

is to change the emphasis from distrib-

to using the insights of psychoanalysis

in

interpreting what historians can discover from historical evidence alone.

19

For the most part,

(Summer 1967):336-37.

however,

pathological

See also Robert Berkhoffer,

A Behavioral Approach to Historical Analysis (New York: Free Press, 1969), pp. 65-66; Robert Allen Skotheim, "A Note on Historical Method: David Donald's 'Toward a Reconsideration of Abolitionists, '" Journal of Southern History 25 (August 1959) :356-65.

41.

Berkhoffer, A Behavioral Approach, p. 61

236 psychohistory

is either a veiled disparagement of the

cerity of motives, psychoanalytic or it uses,

sin-

or it is a mechanical application of

terms to an inappropriate historical context,

like David Donald's work,

psychoanalysis

so

little that it can hardly be labeled psychohistory at all. In reaction the

to the

specific accusations of the faultfinders,

successful use of psychoanalysis does not have to be

either

fancifully literary or formidably quantified;

an ex-

ample of an alternative worthy of emulation is Betty Glad's

judicious skill in handling her analysis of Charles Evans Hughes,

Charles Evans Hughes and the Illusions of Innocence,

which successfully relates pathology to creativity. the book's success may be due

Part of

to its being written primarily

as a biography and only secondarily as a psychohistory; to Glad the inclusion of psychoanalysis is indispensable to writing a good modern biography.

Her combination of an

intellectual history of ideas with a psychoanalytic approach avoids the reductionist fallacy by dividing Hughes's life into three parts:

personality"; (3)

(2)

(1)

"forces shaping Hughes's thought and

"career, social philosophy, personality";

"international political setting." 4 2

historians,

Unlike many psycho-

Glad interprets ideas and policies on a rational

level apart from their unconscious motivation,

and she is

42. Betty Glad, Charles Evans Hughes and the Illusions of Innocence (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1966),

p. 6.

237 willing to accept the obvious

intellectual influence of an

inspiring teacher as a force in molding Hughes's character. Recognizing

a level of rational political argument,

she dis-

courses on Hughes's governmental policy without mentioning psychoanalysis. his social

And she places Hughes's development within

setting,

showing how the temper of the times

affected his ideas. 4 3 On the other hand, relevant,

as in showing how Hughes's parents

character. quences,"

she uses psychoanalysis where it is

In a chapter called she tries

"Puritanism and its Conse-

to achieve insight into such facets of

Hughes's personality as his perfectionism, sensitiveness,

influenced his

and his depression.

more on Karen Horney than on Freud,

his rigidity,

Her conclusion,

his

based

is that Hughes had a

perfectionist character with an idealized self-image.

He

gained support for that image through his puritanical perfection rather than through his association with other

people: He found proof of his excellence in his own success. . . . His rejection of all criticism, his determined political innocence, his avoidance of emotional intimacy with others--all these kept him from any serious questioning of the image he claimed for himself. 4

43. 44. 112-14.

Ibid., pp. Ibid.,

5,

pp. 19,

30,

92-93.

96-120,

especially pp.

103-6,

238 If all psychohistorians were

as judicious as Glad,

the

state

of the discipline would be considerably advanced. Otto Pflanze's study of Bismarck is another attempt to show how defects of character contribute to achievement. Rejecting the theory that the German leader can be explained

by the social backgrounds of his mother and father,

Pflanze

attributes Bismarck's desire for strength to the aloofness of his mother and his father's weakness. personality of Freudianism is

The classic oral

seen in Bismarck's gluttony

and his psychosomatic disorders of the

stomach.

Pflanze

attributes Bismarck's

success to his skillful utilization of

his

to his own

character

for example,

defects

the aggression he could not express he allowed

Germany to commit. ulative,"

and to Germany's advantage;

Though Pflanze calls his theory

"spec-

it is in fact a good conventional character study,

and his use of psychoanalysis never detracts

from his goal

of finding the relationship between abnormality and

political

accomplishment.

4 5

Like the works of Pflanze and Glad,

Harold U.

Parker's

study of Napoleon is similarly first a traditional character analysis

and secondly a psychohistory.

situation in Napoleon's

Parker describes the

childhood which is relevant for

psychohistory and then advances two hypothetical

45. Otto Pflanze, "Toward a Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Bismarck," American Historical Review 77 (April

1972):420, 423-24, 426-28, 431,

438, 442.

239 psychoanalytic

interpretations.

One is based on the possi-

bility of an Oedipal attraction;

the other stresses the

desire of Napoleon to surpass his older brother for the esteem of his parents,

a competitiveness which was enhanced

by his experience in military school.

Further,

the abun-

dance of affection he had received as an infant gave him the

confidence to compete for high goals, completely the love of Josephine,

and his failure to win

whom he adored,

may have

pushed him to compensate by excelling in military command. Parker favors the competitive theory rather than the Oedipal one because it is more compatible with traditional historical analysis and more

susceptible to proof.

Though Parker

is aware that infantile neuroses probably do not lead directly to adult ones, tendencies adulthood

which are and that

he recognizes

often carried

the analysis

that they determine

over unchanged of these repetitive

is one of the central elements of psychohistory. with a political figure like Napoleon, currence of his desire to compete,

into patterns In dealing

the constant re-

as exemplified in his

provoking of his enemies into conflict, understanding of how he was successful

is crucial to any in maintaining his

dominant position in Europe for over a decade.4 6 46. Harold U. Parker, "The Formation of Napoleon's Personality: An Exploratory Essay," French Historical

Studies 7 (Spring 1971):9-ll,

18-19,

24-25; Fred Weinstein

and Gerald M. Platt, "The Coming Crisis in Psychohistory," Journal of Modern History 47 (June 1975):217; Peter

240 Nearly all the psychohistorical works in politics emphasize the pathology power,

in the subject's attitude toward

with the exception of those on Adolf Hitler about

which more will be said later.

Erikson's

strong influence

can be seen here since his political theory presupposes an innate competitiveness.

Glad,

Pflanze,

and Parker have

shown how psychological quirks in isolated great men can promote that desire to compete E.

and achieve success, but

Victor Wolfenstein has gone a step further in connecting

pathology with political success. Lenin,

Trotsky,

He examines

the lives of

and Gandhi to ascertain the common bio-

graphical elements in great revolutionaries on the assumption

that this type of proof is stronger than the pathological examples drawn from one individual. somewhat marred by reductionism, are persuasive,

early age, misfortune.

is

Wolfenstein's conclusions

at least for the first two revolutionaries.

In Lenin and Trotsky, For example,

Though his analysis

both were

the

similarities are striking.

separated from their fathers at an

and had fairly happy childhoods in spite of the Yet Wolfenstein does not relate thissituational

factor to its Russian context,

for he

seems to accept

Freud's belief that children are much the same everywhere. Loewenberg, "Psychohistorical Perspectives on Modern German History," Journal of Modern History 47 (June 1975):232. See also Franklin S. Klaf, "Napoleon and the Grand Army of 1812: A Study of Group Psychology," Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalytic Review 47 (Autumn 1960):71.

241 As for Gandhi, his childhood was completely different from that of Lenin and Trotsky since his but overbearingly present. tance in society,

father was not absent

His father's lechery and impor-

combined with the indifference of Gandhi's

mother toward her son,

made Gandhi

hensive regarding sex.

submissive and appre-

According to Wolfenstein,

Gandhi's

idea of passive resistance was a way of placating the father and all father substitutes whom Gandhi perceived as threatening.

Like other weak and submissive people,

Gandhi tried

to compensate by claiming a moral superiority over the assertive,

and it was his good fortune,

and the distinguish-

ing factor which made him different from the ordinary neurotic,

to have society

recognize that claim.

Wolfenstein

ignores the cultural milieu of Gandhi as he does that of Lenin and Trotsky, ism is unclear. disturbing;

and how his thesis differs

Further, his cavalier regard for facts is

he quotes a statement of Lenin's sister that

Lenin was a boisterous youth, prove Lenin was

and then uses her testimony to

shy. 4 7

More importantly, Why,

from reduction-

for example,

his organization is open to question.

does he

select Gandhi as his

third

47. E. Victor Wolfenstein, The Revolutionary Personality: Lenin, Trotsky, Gandhi (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton

University Press,

1967), pp.

World Politics 16

(October 1963):99 for a differing

39,

54, 65,

75-77,

80,

213-14; Bruce Mazlish, "Clio on the Couch: Prolegomena to History," Encounter 31 (September 1968):47-49; see Suzanne Hoeber Rudolf, "The New Courage: An Essay on Gandhi's Psychology," interpretation.

242 character? more

Another Russian

such as Stalin would have been a

logical choice for the purposes of his argument.

it is also difficult to see exactly what his avowed follower of Erikson,

But

thesis is.

An

he finds in an extended adoles-

cence the most important factor in making a revolutionary and the

source of conflict in an "unusually ambivalent re-

lationship with the

father.' 4 8

strongly developed superego, authority of the father. psychoanalytic eralities,

terms,

such as

The revolutionary has a

and he

identifies with the

When Wolfenstein leaves out the

however,

his thesis becomes vague gen-

"all three of these men seem to have

undergone unusually tense

strivings during this phase.'

With this type of conclusion, Wolfenstein

49

is unable to sur-

pass the analysts who concentrated on individual pathology rather than groups. Though both the interpretation based on pathology and on similarities

been exceptionally fruitful,

individual

in a group have so far not

Robert Tucker in his biography

of Stalin has tried a third method which promises more success.

Disavowing the ambitious goals of Wolfenstein,

Tucker

concentrates on merely describing in common language the personality characteristics of Stalin; the result is a work 48. Mazlish,

WolfensteinCThe Revolutionary Personality "Clio on the Couch,"p. 50.

p.

306;

49. Wolfenstein, The Revolutionary Personality, pp. 94, 230; Coles, "Shrinking History," p. 27.

243 which integrates psychology and history so skillfully that one critic argued that Tucker's conclusions could be verified by traditional methods alone,

without the psychoanalytic

insight that Tucker used but which he never forced on the reader.

First of a series of three volumes,

a break with the traditional viewpoint,

Stalin is also

which is perhaps

best exemplified by Adam Ulam's recent book on Stalin in which he

argues that Stalin was corrupted by absolute

power.50 To Tucker the corruption was much more complex and had its roots in Stalin's childhood and youth.

Stalin's problem

in early life was that he was greatly admired and worshipped by his mother, but he hated his father who was a drunkard. Very early in life pressed hero

Stalin began to view himself as an op-

like those he had read of in books.

inflated self-image was continually in jeopardy very process of living.

Vain and insecure,

press realization of his own

he

from the tried to sup-

faults by blaming others for

his inability to measure up to his self-image. uted his failure

His

He attrib-

to achieve his goals to his enemies;

their

very attacks on him were proof that he was the great man he 50. Robert Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary: A Study in History and Personality (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1973); Francis B. Randall, "Stalin the Tyrant," Progressive 38 (March 1974) :59; Sidney Hook, "Stalin-Mystery and Legacy," New Republic, 20 July 1974, p. 22; cf. Robert Slusser, review of Stalin as Revolutionary by Robert C. Tucker, American Historical Review 79 (June 1974):821; see also Adam B. Ulam, Stalin: The Man and His Era (New York: Viking Press, 1973).

244 imagined himself to be. between good and evil,

To him,

the world was divided

friend and enemy;

and the worst sin

was weakness or surrender before one's goals were

accomplished.51 In making these assumptions about Stalin's personality, Tucker

is doing something different from what most psycho-

historians

do,

for his assertions are well proven by state-

ments of Stalin and his contemporaries.

Although this

picture of Stalin is not greatly at variance with the one which has always been presumed,

it is

to Tucker's credit to

confirm through psychoanalysis a psychological portrait first proposed on other grounds. Tucker differs, however, tation in finding Stalin's

with the orthodox interpre-

goal not in achieving absolute

power but in becoming the new Lenin.

The latter's death in

1924 reawakened old conflicts in Stalin; he had failed.

he began to believe

Though he was a mighty ruler,

no one gave

him the respect or admiration they had given Lenin. Tucker points out, in the

"Instead of scaling down his self-estimate

face of clear evidence of disparity between the man

he aspired to be and the man he actually was, opposite path of rejecting the evidence." 5 2 that had Stalin been

51.

425,

As

Tucker,

Stalin as Revolutionary,

Ibid., pp.

Tucker argues

the supreme political realist

434, 438-39, 451, 52.

he took the

457-58.

133,

285, 429-30,

489.

pp.

73,

the

76,

79,

245 traditionalists suppose him to have been, satisfied with the

he would have been

situation during the 1920s and 1930s

since he already had complete power in Russia.

Instead,

he

continued to search for opponents even after he had eliminated nearly all of them.5 3 Tucker's thesis is of course no more susceptible proof than the

to

traditional view of Stalin as corrupted by

power but it is defensible as equally as plausible. Tucker's reconstruction,

In

Stalin's personality emerges as

essentially normal but corrupted by circumstances of time and place;

for this reason his interpretation is a consider-

able advance over the reductionistic works which explain

nothing by blaming all evils and failures of a historical character on pathological

traits.

If Tucker is

right,

it is

a sobering thought that the great dictators of history are not bizarre psychological freaks but closer to the norm than most people

care to admit.

Peter James Loewenberg,

a professor of history at the

University of California in Los Angeles, training in psychoanalysis,

who has also had

has tried to show a similar pat-

tern of normal neuroticism in Heinrich Himmler. the traditional theory that the S.S.

Challenging

leader's personality

changed for the worse when he became an adult,

Loewenberg

uses Himmler's diary to prove that Himmler as a youth meticulously recorded trivial events with the dispassion

53.

Ibid., p. 491.

246 that he later used in consigning people to the gas chamber. Such attention to detail is well known among psychoanalysts as a manifestation of the authoritarian or ality,

schizoid person-

a type which emphasizes routine and avoids emotion.

These neurotics often have obsessive or compulsive traits and tend to exaggerate male-female differences. points out that Himmler regarded women as pure, tially dangerous;

Loewenberg yet poten-

and regarded strength as the measure of

manhood.54 So much evidence

seems to point toward Loewenberg's

interpretation that it cannot be rejected out of hand.

Yet

one of the faults of this type of history is that of postulating a model and then looking to the characteristics of the figure which prove it.

For example,

Loewenberg says of

Himmler:

"To him a man must be

and calm,

like his father the schoolmaster."55

strong and powerful,

told if Himmler expressed this view or if it interpretation.

stoic,

We are not

is Loewenberg's

Probably Loewenberg is making inferences

from Himmler's diary which contains enough references to the harshness of the conclusion of

father of the Nazi leader to warrant a

sadistic or masochistic traits in the son.

54. Peter Loewenberg, "The Unsuccessful Adolescence of Heinrich Himmler," American Historical Review 76 (June 1971):

613-16,

55.

618,

628-29.

Ibid.,

p. 624.

247 Loewenberg also proposes an underlying homosexual component which Himmler sublimated in his worship of Hitler. 5 6 Loewenberg seems to think hidden homosexuality quite important

factor in German history for it is also a theme

his psychohistorical German children,

an in

inquiry into the roots of Nazism in

where he uses quantification and demograph-

ical statistics to

show the influence of World War I and its

deprivations on German youth.

According to Loewenberg,

ing the first world war young people

dur-

idealized their absent

fathers and developed strong attachment to their mothers. Feeling cheated of their childhood, Hitter the

they later found in

"glorified father" who had gone

to war

in 1914.

The attraction toward the absent father was partially homosexual but this tendency was suppressed and projected into the

idea the Jews were the real homosexual aggressors.

As

for the question why these developments did not take place in other countries which suffered as much as Germany during the war,

Loewenberg argues that the German children were more

deprived than others in both a physical sense and by the psychological impact of

56.

Ibid., pp.

seeing their fathers return defeated.5 7

625,

631.

For a similar interpretation

of a very differnt type of individual, see Phyllis Keller, "George Sylvester Viereck: The Psychology of a GermanAmerican Militant," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2 (Summer 1971):66.

57. Peter Loewenberg, "Psychohistorical Origins of the Nazi Youth Cohort," American Historical Review (December

1971):1463,

1485,

1491-92,

1502.

248 Assuming explanation

that Loewenberg

is not advocating a monistic

for such complexities as anti-Semitism and

Nazism, his theory merits consideration for showing the effects of deprivation on children in wartime,

but the inter-

pretation he proposes on the ramifications of that deprivation

is tenuous even for the field of psychohistory.

One doubts many historians will accept the

idea that German

children became Nazis because they had a homosexual attraction for absent fathers in World War

I,

and this

seems to be

the implication of Loewenberg's thesis. Loewenberg in this article has returned to the pathology approach which he avoided in his article

on Himmler.

The

inference from this pattern is that most psychohistorians are reluctant to move far from presenting an analysis in pathological terms when dealing with politics. of the works listed in this chapter, they are

studies of

or comparative

regardless of whether

success and failure,

studies,

eminence of pathological

The direction

polemical attacks,

is testimony to the inevitable preexplanation.

Glad's analysis of Hughes,

With few exceptions--

the Georges'

of Wilson,

Tucker's

of Stalin--nothing more is really achieved in these works than to stick labels on events, withstanding

traits,

and people.

Not-

the genuine contribution to historical knowl-

edge of many psychohistorians who have emphasized the abnormal,

the paucity of results from the pathological

proach is further revealed in the one

ap-

area where research

249

has been the most extensive, personality of Adolf Hitler. psychohistory existed,

in the psychohistory of the If ever a worthy subject for a

that man would be Adolf Hitler,

and

surely one would expect to find truly sophisticated psychohistories of the Fuehrer,

if such works existed.

Yet

the

historiography of Hitler's mental condition is a sad reproach on both the traditional historians who ignored the vital aspect of abnormality for too long and the psychohistorians who rushed in with hastily concocted generalizations based on incredible assumptions. Though the man in the street probably always thought Hitler was mentally unbalanced,

most professional historians

for a long time were reluctant to comment on the German dictator's unusual behavior. sidered the best biographer,

Alan Bullock,

generally con-

could in the end advance no

explanation for Hitler except that he was a mad genius. more popular and

less scholarly histories,

In

the Fuehrer is

described in lurid and titillatingly pathological terms, reminiscent of the and

layment have

imaginable,

legends of

the anti-Christ.

Historians

showered on him all the terms of opprobrium

without really coming to grips with his

motivations.58

58. Hans W. Gatzske, "Hitler and Psychohistory," American Historical Review 78 (April 1973) :394; Dietrich Orlow, "The Significance of Time and Place in Psychohistory," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 5 (Summer 1974):131-32; Robert Waite in the afterword to Walter C. Langer, The Mind

250 Plainly,

some explanation of the inner roots of be-

havior is called for when dealing with such an extraordinary person,

for the character

history.

of Hitler is without rivals in

Few others have combined his pathological destruc-

tiveness with the ability to win the support of millions, and merely labeling him an inhuman monster does not tell us anything.

Nor does the recent effort of Warner Maser to

rehabilitate Hitler by attributing his

anti-Semitism to tra-

dition really contribute to historical understanding.

The

popular tendency to find the roots of Nazism in obscure nineteenth-century

intellectuals,

which is William Shirer' s

method in his Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, question of why these

avoids the

thinkers had such an impact on Hitler.

The possible psychological ramifications of many of Hitler's actions,

except those which were obviously bizarre,

ditionally been ignored.

Alan Bullock,

for example,

have tranotes

that Hitler's vegetarianism goes back to the suicide of Hitler's

niece,

but he does not connect the two in any way.

It has been argued that such connections are not the function of the historian,

that his

job is merely to report the facts,

but such connections are made even by nonpsychoanalytic historians when the interpretation being advanced calls for

.

of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report (New York: New American Library, 1973), p. 225. Brenton H. Smith, "Small Evidence, Large Conclusions," National Review, 4 January 1974, p. 45: "He was moronic, irrational, illiterate. . In his spare time he chewed rugs."

251 them.

Bullock in his chapter on Hitler's character makes

such a psychological combination when he gives the Fuehrer a great deal of unity of purpose and design.

The

impression

left with the reader is that Hitler never had a doubt or indecision but always knew just what he was doing.5 9 The method of the psychohistorians who have Hitler is entirely different from Bullock's,

studied

for they empha-

size the conflicting drives and instability of Hitler. There are

four of these

interpretations considered here,

all

chosen as representative examples of a particular type;

they

are by Erik Erikson, Walter Langer,

and

F.

Bradley Smith.

arrive are

Robert G. L. Waite,

The differing conclusions at which they

indicative of the problems in finding acceptable

analytical standards Erikson,

in psychohistory.

understandably for a psychoanalyst,

what can be called the analyst-patient method.

follows

In his chap-

ter in Childhood and Society called

"The Legend of Hitler's

Childhood," he takes Hitler' s words

from Mein Kampf as he

would take the confessions of a patient and then uses these to construct a theory.

59.

Erikson attributes great importance

Albert Schwartz,

15 December 1973, p.

"Hitler Revival," New Republic,

28; William L.

Shirer, The Rise and Fall

of the Third Reich (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960); Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (New York: Harper & Row,

1964), pp.

372-410, especially p. 394; Gertrude Himmelfarb,

"The'New History,'" Commentary 59 (January 1975):73-74. Robert Payne in The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler (New York: Praeger, 1973) argues that Hitler was not a vegetarian, a point which shows that psychohistorians, like traditional researchers, have to establish the accuracy of facts before they can combine them with psychoanalysis.

252 to the following quotation: In this little town on the river Inn,

and Austrian by nationality,

Bavarian by blood

gilded by the light of

German martyrdom, there lived, at the end of the eighties of the last century, my parents: the father a faithful civil servant, the mother devoting herself

to the cares of the household and looking after her children with eternally the same loving care.60 According to Erikson, Oedipal fairy tale. logical

this is Hitler's His devotion

to his mother was patho-

in that he regarded her as a fairy princess.

Austria he associated with his

his "young" mother. long rebellion and his

attempt to create an

"old" father,

Within this conception.

Germany with

Hitler's life-

seething hostility were directed toward

father.6 1 Erikson also attempts to explain why Hitler

struck such

a responsive chord with the Germans by finding in him the prototype of the adolescent rebel which was a popular image in the structure of German society.

The German youth move-

ment with its visions of nature and romanticism was entranced with the idea of a "pure mother."

Erikson maintains that

the freedom Germans celebrated in youthful rebellion was never intrinsic but rather a resentment against the authoritarian power of the German father; hence there was a savage

W. W.

60. Erik H. Erikson, Childhood and Society Norton & Company, 1963), p. 327.

61.

Ibid., pp.

327,

329.

(New York:

253 vindictiveness

associated with it and a feeling that

should be sacrificed for

an ethereal

life

ideal.62

Since the quest for the ideal is a corollary of the identity crisis,

Erikson sees the roots of anti-Semitism and

Nazism in the German people's

lack of a stable identity.

The diverse influences operating on Germany in the past have made Germans uncertain about the cohesion or their own

of their society

"Germanness," as exemplified in the potent

German myth of the

solitary genius who transcends the polit-

ical and social worlds.

While anti-Semitism was partially a

projection into others of hidden aggressive fantasies, also had to do with the image of Jews as

it

strangers who re-

fused to assimilate and on the other hand the Jew as foreign opportunist with no values who takes over what beliefs are convenient. 63 Erikson's interpretation places Hitler within the German

historical context except for its emphasis on the Fuehrer's Oedipus complex. Adolf Hitler,

In contrast, Walter Langer's The Mind of

written during World War

II as a project of

the Office of Strategic Services to aid the government in discovering reasons for Hitler's actions,

treats Hitler as

an isolated and pathological

Ernst Kris,

individual.

historian who had psychoanalytic training,

62.

Ibid., pp.

335-37,

63.

Ibid., pp.

347-50, 353,

344. 355-56.

an art

and three other

254

psychoanalysts collaborated with Langer during the war, though most of the writing seems to have been Langer's.

Considerable dispute exists about whether the book published in 1973 from the previously classified material is the original work written in the 1940s, but there is little doubt the book reflects Langer's views on Hitler either in the 1940s

or in 1973.64 unlike Erikson,

Langer and his associates,

did not use

interviews,

Hitler's own words so much as they used diaries,

Their assumption from

and observations by others of Hitler.

the beginning was that Hitler was pathological; was merely to find the proof. is secondhand,

Since much of the information

many inaccuracies

abound,

For example,

reflect wartime haste.

their job

which probably also

they claim Hitler grew

a Christlike beard at one time and that Hitler's mother was not in love with her husband, supporting evidence.

dubious reports,

Further,

accept

they uncritically

such as Hitler's assertion that his child-

hood was one of poverty. of the

neither statement of which has

Rarely do they show any awareness

social setting in which Hitler operated.6 5

64. Langer, Mind of Adolf Hitler, pp. "Hitler and Psychohistory," p. 395. 65.

Langer, Mind of Adolf Hitler, pp.

Robert Waite in afterword to ibid.,

p.

237;

19-21; Gatzske,

51,

117,

Gatzske,

165; "Hitler

and Psychohistory," p. 397; Orlow, "Significance of Time and Place in Psychohistory," pp. 132, 135.

255

On the other hand, of their work and the

they recognize the tentative nature

skimpiness and unreliability of much

In the fourth chapter,

of their evidence.

after giving back-

the collaborators begin

ground material on Hitler's life,

their psychoanalysis by agreeing that Hitler was a "neurotic psychopath,"

though not insane.

He was,

terized by dislike for his father, anal tendencies,

passivity,

they say,

charac-

antirationalist thinking,

and masochistic inclinations.

These conclusions are extrapolated from the descriptions others have given them of Hitler and from similar characteristics among their own patients.

Langer rejects Hitler's

statement that his childhood was normal, clinical practice,

because in his

he has never found a patient with traits

similar to Hitler's who had a normal childhood.6 6 Following the same clinical analogy,

the collaborators

reason that Hitler must have witnessed a primal scene, They are on

though no historical evidence exists for it.

somewhat firmer ground in hypothesizing a strong attachment of the Fuehrer to his mother,

for other commentators have

also been impressed with this possibility. associates,

however,

Langer and his

extend the analysis further by attrib-

uting to Hitler's admiration for his mother his preoccupation with such oral manifestations

as eating and verbosity.

Langer concludes that Hitler's father was a drunken bully

66. 147-49,

Langer, Mind of Adolf Hitler, 181.

pp.

26,

131,

145,

256

who was so mean he beat the family dog.

Having no adequate

father image, Hitler became a combination of an idealistic romantic and a tough idealist. effiminate mamma's boy,

he exaggerated his masculinity.6 7

Langer also asserts, rumors from questionable patients,

Afraid of being a soft and

using as his evidence certain sources and analogies with his own

that Hitler was a practicing masochist who enjoyed

being physically abused by women.

Historically,

of Hitler's sexual habits is still arguable,

the matter

but the evi-

dence for Langer's view is very small. 6 8 Even more speculative inner thoughts.

is Langer's view of Hitler's

Contrary to the popular image of the

Fuehrer as a resolute

and determined individual,

trays him as racked with fears and doubts.

Much of this

psychic energy was used to quell these anxieties, resulting indecision was responsible inability to concentrate. everyone,

for his

Langer por-

and the

laziness and

Fear caused Hitler to mistrust

especially the Jews.

His passion for constructing

buildings was derived from his inner need to reduce his anxiety by making the physical world stable. 6 9 67.

Gatzske,

"Hitler and Psychohistory," p.

Langer, Mind of Adolf Hitler, 68.

pp.

132,

398;

135,

151,

156-57,

Langer, Mind of Adolf Hitler, pp.

138,

175-76; Orlow,

171.

"Significance of Time and Place in Psychohistory," pp. 136-37; Gatzske, "Hitler and Psychohistory," pp. 399-400; Coles,

"Shrinking History," p. 69. 186-87.

26.

Langer, Mind of Adolf Hitler,

pp.

131,

136-37,

257

Though in many respects this picture conforms to what

is known of Hitler, Langer is overlooking the actor component in him.

The Fuehrer's bizarre outbursts were often intended

for a certain effect,

and though this fact does not show he

was any less pathological,

much of his success

can be attrib-

uted to his ability to convince his enemies he was more demented than he really was.

As Langer himself points out,

had Hitler been merely a psycopath,

he would never have been

able to so mesmerize the German people that they trusted

him.70 Yet the abnormal element was present in Hitler after

all,

and its integration within the normal political content

of Germany was what made Hitlerism such a force for evil that it was.

Langer does not explain why Hitler rather than

some other pathological

specimen with the same problem was

able to acquire the position he attained, question

is unanswerable,

but perhaps this

for no historian can really tell

why one individual succeeds where another

fails.

most one can suggest effects and

but the temptation

factors,

At the

is strong to believe an element of chance inevitably enters into each situation.

Erikson's comment,

that if Hitler had

had an opportunity to construct buildings and paint pictures as he wished,

70. Langer,

he might not have turned to destruction,

Erikson, Childhood and Society, Mind of Adolf Hitler,

p.

135.

pp. 329-330;

is

258

intriguing.7

And the world might be a vastly better place

if there had been a chance meeting of the young Hitler and Freud who both lived in Vienna in 1909. cured this confused, The

Could Freud have

alienated young man?

One wonders.

idea that Hitler was in need of psychoanalytic help

is basic to the interpretation of Robert Waite, sional historian by training. wrote to Langer's study,

In the laudatory afterword he

he argues that historians have

skirted the issue of Hitler's mental imbalance, garded it as somewhat question.

a profes-

or have re-

sensationalistic to even broach the

Though he recognizes that historians have some

reason to avoid matters they are not trained to handle, Waite does not believe anyone can ever understand Hitler until some use is made of psychoanalysis.7 2 Waite argues that Hitler suffered from guilt feelings and self-destructive tendencies. circumstantial:

His evidence

for this is

Hitler's references to conscience,

his pro-

crastination,

his feelings of persecution, his facade of

prudishness.

Like Langer,

perversion,

71.

but he differs

Joseph M. Woods,

History," Historian 36

Waite accepts

a sado-masochistic

in thinking Hitler had a guilty

"Some Considerations on

Psycho-

(August 1974):724; Erik H. Erikson,

Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1962), p. 108; Vincent Brome, Freud and his Early Circle (New York: William Morrow & Com-

pany,

1968), p. x.

72. Robert Waite in afterword to Langer, Mind of Adolf Hitler, pp. 224, 227; Robert Waite, "Adolf Hitler's Guilt Feelings: A Problem in History and Psychology," Journal of

Interdisciplinary History 1 (Winter 1971):235.

259

compulsion toward failure, dence for this.

though he cannot find much evi-

There is no proof Hitler ever felt guilty

or that he put himself in situations where he was certain to

fail.

A good case could be made that he was driven by a

desire for success. 7 3 Certainly, Jews;

instead,

he did not want to lose to his enemies, he wanted to conquer

them.

the

Anti-Semitism was

the most durable and constant emotion Hitler had, seems to have been afraid he was part Jewish.

and he

Incest and

blood poisoning were vices he was paranoid about and he attributed them to Jews.

Waite argues that Hitler's hatred

of the Jews was a projection of his own guilt to others, though he recognizes other factors background of Germany, pressed,

such as the intellectual

authoritarian contempt for the op-

and even opportunism in the genesis of Hitler's

anti-Semitism.74 This guilt, hatred for his to his lax, of

according to Waite,

father who was harsh and punitive in contrast

indulgent mother.

Hitler's

a drunken and lecherous person,

73.

derived from Hitler's

Waite,

image of the Jew was

his unconscious image

"Hitler's Guilt Feelings," pp.

229,

as

235-36,

239-40; Robert Waite, "Adolf Hitler's Anti-Semitism," in The Psychoanalytic Interpretation of History, ed. Benjamin B. Wolman (New York: Basic Books, 1971), pp. 201-2, 207; Woods, "Some Considerations on Psycho-History," p. 732. 74. Waite, "Adolf Hitler's Anti-Semitism," in Wolman, Psychoanalytic Interpretation of History, pp. 193, 196, 198, 203, 211, 214; Waite, "Hitler's Guilt Feelings," pp. 231,

233.

260

a child of his powerful father.

The Fuehrer's all-consuming

animosity toward the elder Hitler infantilized him,

prevented

him from ever becoming a mature person.

All his

much candy,

and read trashy

loved movies

like King Kong,

life he

ate

novels, while retaining a child's simplistic adoration for his mother.

This devotion impressed the family doctor who

attended Hitler's mother in her final illness

in 1908.

Waite maintains that Hitler unconsciously blamed that doctor, who happened to be Jewish,

for his mother's death,

and that

his anti-Semitism began as a result of this trauma.

However,

Waite probably makes

He may

have discovered

too much of this one incident.

an important element in the etiology that

led Hitler to his twisted racism,

but Waite's casualness

and

propensity toward baseless speculation vitiate much of the insight

he

often reveals.

7 5

Probably the best book on Hitler's psychology is one that is not openly psychohistorical at all,

Smith's Hitler:

His Childhood and Youth.

Bradley F.

Smith obviously

has read Erikson and other psychoanalysts but he use of jargon.

No conventional historian could object to

his conclusions which are carefully able evidence, ably

avoids all

tailored to the avail-

and his level of interpretation is consider-

above most traditional attempts to unravel Hitler's

75. Waite, "Adolf Hitler's Anti-Semitism," in Wolman, Psychoanalytic Interpretation of History, pp. 199-201, 205, 208.

261

character.

He points out that Hitler's youth was not really

greatly different from that of other middle-class in Austria. mother, unusual.

families

Even the Fuehrer's inordinate devotion to his

which Smith also comments upon,

was not all

that

Smith portrays young Hitler as a childish romantic

who wanted to escape from a harsh and real world.

He was no

juvenile evil genius or incipient monster but a very insecure adolescent, social activities. himself security,

the type which often drifts into antiAnti-Semitism was a means of giving confidence,

and hope:

.

Racial anti-Semitism had many attractions for a bitter and ambitious young man. Above all, the doctrine supplied a simple, effective and ego-satisfying explanation of self and society. One could transfer all weakness and inadequacy to the Jewish stereotype. .

the path to the self confidence and security which had eluded him so long clearly lay in the direction of racial If,

anti-Semitism. "76

as Smith intimates,

of the Nazi interlude

one man's narcissism is

in history,

the genesis

the suggestion that all

political distinction derives from egotism must be considered.

For it is the political leader's

total self-

preoccupation which gives him the flexibility and malleability to cause his followers to identify with him.

76.

Bradley F. Smith, Adolf Hitler:

hood and Youth (Stanford, Calif.: 1967), pp. 8-9, 24, 51, 64, 149.

His Family,

Child-

Stanford University Press,

77. Woods, "Some Considerations on Psycho-History," pp. 729-31; it should be noted that these works discussed here are not the only works on Hitler. Other interesting interpretations are T. L. Brink, "The Case of Hitler: An

262

situation in

Smith's book is indicative of a disturbing the psychohistory of pathology: like his,

the more successful works,

are those which were not begun as specifically

psychohistorical interpretations. historian

Almost invariably when a

sets out deliberately to combine psychoanalysis

and history,

the results

reason for this

are disappointing.

One possible

is the tendency of conscious psychohistorians

to aggressively support their field with a belligerence which detracts from the search for objectivity and balance. Like all new converts, dogmatism.

Yet there

they have their measure of unerasable is another possibility:

the problems

of the quest for an explanation of pathology in history may not be defects of the researchers but of the very goal itself.

The psychohistory of pathology

is less

successful

than that of Western civilization or the family;

in no way

can

who

it compare to the work of Erikson on Luther,

suc-

ceeded because he did not explore Luther's pathology but his essential normality. have

Considering that even psychologists

trouble defining what is normal and what is

abnormal,

historians might do well to abandon the pathological method. Its original attraction to them was that it promised an easy way of utilizing psychoanalysis,

but

an

examination of the

Adlerian Perspective on Psychohistory," Journal of Individual Psychology 31 (May 1975):23-32; and Rudolf Binion, "Hitler's Concept of Lebensraum: The Psychological Basis," History of Childhood Quarterly: The Journal of Psychohistory 1 (Fall 1973):187-215. Both Binion and Robert Waite are working on full-length psychohistories of Hitler.

263 research over the last two decades shows this assumption to have been specious, psychohistory

for it is in fact the hardest of all

to write well.

The psychohistory of pathology therefore lies at the end of a continuum with Erikson's work at the other end. Contrary to the usual situation in new areas of scholarly endeavor,

the best work in psychohistory was written first.

Though some outstanding research has appeared since Young Man Luther in 1958--Demos and Hunt in family history, on Jefferson,

Glad and Tucker in politics--very

little

Brodie of

the rest fulfills the expectations many had for the field at its inception.

The next chapter will be devoted to sug-

gestions for changing the present state of psychohistory for the better.

CONCLUSION

After two decades of serious

scholarly writing and even

with the increasing acceptance of the field by traditionalists,

the results of psychohistory have been meager.

spite of clarion calls for union, remain separate disciplines, sional borrowings. in psychohistory,

of it,

in contact only through occa-

studies today.

is unacceptable

Erikson's great-

successful in his application

as a valid model by most American

As history moves more toward sociological and

cultural analysis in the future, emphasis on the

psychohistory with its

individual's inner experience will be

relevant than ever to research into the past. say,

then,

are written

their theme is often incongruent to the

for example, while

historians.

psychology and history

Even when outstanding works

main trends of historical man theory,

In

less

Is this to

that the attempt to construct a useful psycho-

history must

fail?

To make any final judgment,

one must

look at the mistakes committed in the writing of psychohistory and consider some options which might make it more successful in the future. 1

1. Joseph M. Woods, "Some Considerations on PsychoHistory," Historian 36 (August 1974):722; Robert Waelder, "Psychoanalysis and History," in The Psychoanalytic Interpretation of History, ed. Benjamin B. Wolman (New York: Basic Books, 1971), p. 3; David Hackett Fischer, Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (New York: 264

265

First,

psychohistory has been a failure whenever it has

emphasized causes and has been most successful, works of Erikson,

where

mood-creating pattern. nearly cause

always

forget that

and therefore

as in the

it has used an impressionistic

and

Psychohistorians who stress cause no psychic event has

a single

succumb to a tendency to reduce all ac-

tivity to insignificant but sinister emotions.

Further,

they frequently leap from the emotional factor,

which is

itself debatable,

to a historical actuality,

which they then

assume is proved.

Thus the assumption

pressed hostility,

a characteristic of perverts,

that Hitler had rebecomes the

assertion that Hitler was in fact a sexual deviate.

Psycho-

history does best when it is modeled after the older historians like Edmund Wilson who used insight and intuition to find common threads in disconnected events.

As long as

psychohistory arrogates to itself scientific validity greater than the rational method of traditionalists,

it can not claim

immunity from retaliation by its opponents, who will continue to accuse its practitioners of trying to

"psychoanalyze" the

past. 2 Harper & Row, 1970), p. 188; Robert Jay Lifton, History and Human Survival: Essays on the Young and Old, Survivors and the Dead, Peace and War, and on Contemporary Psychohistory (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 729; E. J. Hundert, "History, Psychology, and the Study of Deviant Behavior," Journal of the History of Ideas 33 (Spring 1972):457; Frank E. Manuel, "The Use and Abuse of Psychology in History," Daedalus 100

(Winter 1971):187. 2. Edward Sapir, Culture, Language and Personality (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1960),

266 Some truth probably exists in the complaint of psychohistorians that other historians are excessively prejudiced against them.

Psychohistorians

say the traditionalists do

not want to confront psychoanalysis because it would mean examining the construct of their own personality; historians

that many

are afraid to look at themselves with the same

scrutiny with which they examine other people;

and that they

love to quote psychohistory out of content just to make it look ridiculous. argument,

and

But this

is really just an ad hominem

it does not answer the many

justified criti-

cisms the traditionalists have made of psychohistory,

which

shows defects from the standpoints of methodology and evidence.3

Methodologically, psychohistory exhibits an exposing tendency.

Though it shares with history a stated desire

find whatever truth exists,

to

there is more than a little of

the conspiratorial school of thinking among most psychohistorians.

They inflate

the trivial aspects of character

p. 160; Waelder, "Psychoanalysis and History," in Wolman, Psychoanalytic Interpretation of History, pp. 10-11; Paul Roazen, Freud: Political and Social Thought (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), p. 60; James D. Barber, "Adult Identity and Presidential Style," Daedalus 97 (Summer 1968):950-51; Woods, "Some Considerations," pp. 733-34; Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., "Can Psychiatry Save the Republic?" Saturday ReviewWorld, 7 September 1974, p. 14. 3.

Erik H. Erikson, Childhood and Society (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1963), p. 404; Lifton, History and Human Survival, p. 295; Bruce Mazlish, In Search of Nixon: A Psychohistorical Inquiry (New York: Basic Books, 1972)

pp.

152-53.

267

into facts of cosmic significance with an history

in which every motive

"aha"

theory of

is suspect and things are

always the opposite of what they rationally seem to be.

The

purpose of this tactic appears to be the exposure of conventional historians

as shallow,

around the edges of truth. historians

superficial fellows,

To be sure,

such as Erikson disavow this

skirting

the better psychotendency,

but its

harmful effects on psychohistory cannot be overestimated.4 Evidentially,

the matter is even more complex.

In

reading any book in psychohistory one is struck by the looseness of the rules of evidence. asserts that Hitler

Walter Langer,

for example,

"must have" witnessed a primal scene,

but he does not give any historical evidence.

Jacques Barzun

in his criticism of psychohistory refers to the use of "weasel words" 4. History,

to insinuate what cannot be proved.5

Jacques Barzun, Quanto-History,

Chicago Press,

1974), pp.

Langer,

Clio and the Doctors: Psychoand HiTory (Chicago: University of

10, 48-49,

53; Waelder,

"Psycho-

analysis and History," in Wolman, Psychoanalytic Interpretation of History, p. 11; Robert F. Berkhoffer, A Behavioral Approach to Historical Analysis (New York: Free Press, 1969), p. 55; Abram Kardiner, "Social and Cultural Implications of Psychoanalysis," in Psychoanalysis, Scientific Method and Philosophy, ed. Sidney Hook (New York: New York University Press, 1959), p. 101; Robert Coles, "Shrinking History," New York Times Book Review, 22 February 1973, p. 21; Thomas Szasz, "The Hazards of Zeal," National Review, 21 March 1967, p. 307; Gertrude Himmelfarb, "The 'New History, '" Commentary 59 (January 1975):76; Lifton, History and Human Survival, pp. 6, 10; Erik H. Erikson, Dimension of a New Identity (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1974), p. 12; Peter Heinegg, "John Stuart Mill Was Weaned too Soon," Nation, 10 May 1975, pp. 569-70. 5. Walter C. Langer, The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report (New York: New American Library, 1973), p. 157; Barzun, Clio and the Doctors, p. 45.

268

however, the

is

a psychoanalyst;

maybe he is not familiar with

rules of historical evidence.

Yet one

finds the same

trend in professional historians who write psychohistory.

Consider these words of William Saffady: All of this indicates that religious ceremonies associated with medieval Catholicism enjoyed an appeal that went beyond the conscious for many sixteenth century Englishmen. They seem to have served as defensive measures in the ego's struggle with repressed instincts resulting from fixations of the libido at the anal and oral phase of psychosexual development.6 Saffady's canons of proof may not actually be any sloppier than those of traditional historians, using terms

like

experimental

"ego,"

concepts.

"fixation,"

and

In a clinical

but he

"libido,"

situation,

could test his hypothesis on the interactions of cepts within the

living patient.

tion Saffady cannot do.

is

which are an analyst these con-

But this type of applica-

His interpretation is one

of

several that would fit the psychoanalytic situation he describes just as well.

His standard of proof therefore has

no boundary but his own opinion. The

supremacy of experiment in formal psychoanalysis

is

often forgotten by psychohistorians who fail to recognize that history differs in being a fixed science whereas psychology is

a dynamic one.

The facts of historical

as distinct from the mere study of it,

actuality,

are presumably what

6. William Saffady, "Fears of Sexual License During the English Reformation," History of Childhood Quarterly: The Journal of Psychohistory 1 (Summer 1973):95.

269

matters

in history;

the dynamic

in psychology the significant aspect is

interrelation of doctor and patient.

In arguing

the similarity of history and psychoanalysis Hans Meyerhoff has pointed out that the disputes in neither are to evidentiary proof,

susceptible

but the point is that the attempt to

ascertain proof is a much more important element in history than

in psychoanalysis.

7

To be capable of proof an idea must be capable of disproof.

As was pointed out earlier,

psychoanalysis

is

epistemologically,

a system in which proof of a statement is

always forthcoming since no sequence of evidence could conceivably disprove a psychoanalytic assertion.

Even the

denial of a fact can be proof of the fact denied because, according to Freud,

people often deny what is most true.

Karl Popper has pointed out that the ease of confirmability of psychoanalytic have

it,

statements is not,

the best proof of

its accuracy,

that it is not really provable. observation

as its adherents would but merely a proof

The evidence of a clinical

is not as strong as might appear,

either,

for

Freud's insights may only seem confirmed by the psychoanalyst's couch.

As Sidney Hook has cautioned,

praying

7. Hans Meyerhoff, "On Psychoanalysis as History," Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalytic Review 49 (Summer 1962):11.

270

to the gods might be efficacious,

also,

but no one can prove

a cause-and-effect relationship.8 Still,

many psychohistorians who are unable to get as

much data as a clinician can are sure

that their theories

are proven and that those who disagree are biased unreasonably.

From the clinical

standpoint,

there

is much to be

said for the fluidity of proof in psychoanalysis because it allows some flexibility and experimentation But to adopt the same principle of

tory is to introduce anarchism.

"anything goes"

in his-

The study of history would

degenerate into mere opinion making; absurd would have any

in treatment.

no idea no matter how

less acceptability than another,

and

this development would not be a step forward into scientific logic but one backward into sophistic mysticism.9 Finally, results

one

is left wondering whether the paucity of

in psychohistory has justified

and writing invested.

the hours of research

Jacques Barzun argues that all of

this research could have been done

in the traditional way

with results which would have been just as fruitful. batable,

also,

De-

is the proposition that much of the work in

8. Ernest Nagel, "Methodological Issues in Psychoanalytic Theory," in Hook, Psychoanalysis, Scientific Method

and Philosophy, pp.

40-41; Sidney Hook in ibid.,

pp.

214-15,

219-20; Hundert, "History, Psychology, and the Study of Deviant Behavior," p. 461; Frederick Wyatt, "Psychoanalytic Biography," Contemporary Psychology 1 (January 1956):105; Barzun, Clio and the Doctors, p. 29. 9.

Barzun,

Clio and the Doctors,

pp.

46,

70.

271 psychohistory

is history,

been defined.

Then,

at least as the word has usually

too,

although many areas have not been

studied psychohistorically at all,

some of the most ardent

practitioners have staked out such an ambitious goal for it that one cannot realistically envision lofty

pinnacle.

its reaching such a

1 0

For a field which originated less than twenty years ago, the problem may be the goals are too high.

The very preten-

tiousness of naming books The Psychoanalytic Interpretation and The Psychoanalytic Meaning of History is obvious.

psychohistory is to be taken seriously, have to

show more

sensibility to the

If

psychohistorians will

traditions of history

and they should place emphasis on psychoanalysis not as a supplanter of history but as a supplementary and ancillary science like archeology.

Psychohistorians

should also stress

the compatibility of Freud with what historians are already doing in a systematic way. will remain, are not,

If this method is used,

as it is today,

accessible

history

and as many other disciplines

to everyone.1 1

10. Ibid., p. 34; Barzun, "History: The Muse and Her Doctors," American Historical Review 77 (February 1972) :39, 41, 44; H. Stuart Hughes, History as Art and Science: Twin Vistas on the Past (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 61. Note the ambitious goal of Bruce Mazlish, "Group Psychology and the Problems of Contemporary History," Journal of Con-

temporary History 3 (April 1968):177. 11.

Mazlish,

In Search of Nixon,

"Group Psychology," p. analysis, Man

177.

and Society

p.

156;

Mazlish,

Cf. Paul Schilder, Psycho-

(New York: W.

W.

Norton & Company,

272 Continuing accessibility implies that psychoanalytic terms will be kept at a minimum.

Historians need modern

theories of motivation,

should not be purchased at

but these

the expense of being tied to the Procrustean bed of orthodox Freudianism.

As David Donald has

suggested,

can be of great benefit to the historian,

psychoanalysis

but the researcher

has no more reason to clutter up his explanation with opaque

psychoanalytic terminology than to discuss in his text his methodology in handling his note cards.

For history to re-

tain its accessibility to the literate nonhistorian, terms used should be those

the

common to all educated people.

Psychoanalytic terms need not invariably be banned if they have passed over into everyday language as many of them have. 12 A

reduction in elaborate

terminology should be combined

with a greater regard for rigorousness in proof. the psychohistorian has

searched for evidence

Too often

in historical

areas which are most easily correlated with psychology as sex and pathology. about Napoleon's

such

But all the evidence in the world

sex life would not tell us much because it

1951), p. 340 to Earl E. Thorpe, Eros and Freedom in Southern Life and Thought (Durham, N.C.: Seeman Printery, 1967), p. xi. 12. Barzun, Clio and the Doctors, pp. 12-13, 73-74; Barzun, "History, The Muse and Her Doctors," p. 49; David Herbert Donald, review of The Psychoanalytic Interpretation of History by Benjamin B. Wolman, Journal of Southern His-

tory 28

(February 1972):112.

273

was not greatly different from that of other normal people. One must look elsewhere partism in France.

to analyze the

significance of Bona-

Just because psychological evidence

exists about the past does not mean that evidence is necessarily important,

a fact which psychoanalytic devotees often

forget. 13 Psychohistorians

should also refrain from tackling

jects which are unusually complex, project the easiest tasks

sub-

and as with any new

should come

first.

However,

the

facile temptation to merely reinterpret conventional history

in a psychoanalytic way must be rejected before psychological history is firmly accepted.

Several possibilities exist

for research projects which are within the capabilities of many modern scholars. prosography,

H.

Stuart Hughes has suggested

or comparative biography,

psychohistorians might test hypotheses;

as an area where the range of indivi-

duals studied would furnish some equivalent of the controlled situation

in clinical experience.

biography is an intriguing area.

Alternatively,

psycho-

Or psychological themes,

such as the pressure toward conformity and the changing

13. Barzun, Clio and the Doctors, p. 63; Alain Besancon, "Psychoanalysis: Auxiliary Science or Historical Method," Journal of Contemporary History 3 (April 1968):152. Roger L. Williams, The Mortal Napoleon III (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971), is an interesting example of an untypical work in which the author untypically concluded that the subject of his study, Napoleon III's physical and mental health, had almost no effect on the emperor's political behavior.

274 attitude toward it,

could be traced in much the same fashion

that intellectual historians trace the evolution of ideas.1

4

Although psychoanalysts and historians may increase

their knowledge of each other's fields in the future, psychohistory will remain one of the most difficult of historical subjects.

To argue,

however,

that a historian must also have

a degree in psychoanalysis or should attend a psychoanalytic institute

is unrealistic.

Psychoanalysis can be useful to

the historian if judiciously applied but a true fusion of the two disciplines, tend,

which is what some of the advocates

in-

is neither attainable nor desirable because the two

are entirely different scholarly areas in scope and application.

A union would be as illusory as a combination of

physics and chemistry.1 5 Finally,

psychohistory must be written with an awareness

limiatins.16 of its limitations.

Used judiciously to add fullness to

14. Hughes, History as Art and Science, pp. 60-62; Lifton, History and Human Survival, p. 297; Robert Jay Lifton, "On Psychohistory," in The State of American History,

ed. Herbert Bass

(Chicago: Quadrangle Books,

1970),

pp. 285-86; Allen Wheelis, The Quest for Identity (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1958), p. 92; Bruce Mazlish, "What Is Psycho-History?" Transactions of the Royal Historical

Society, 5th ser. Approach, p. 63.

21

(1971):83; Berkhoffer, A Behavioral

15. Cf. Hans W. Gatzske, "Hitler and Psychohistory," American Historical Review 78 (April 1973) :401; Barzun, Clio and the Doctors, p. 95. 16. Psychohistory in fact has had less importance in historiography over the last twenty years than the humble Xerox machine which has made the task of the historian infinitely easier. Cf. H. J. Hanham, "Clio's Weapons," Daedalus 100 (Spring 1971):519-20.

275 an otherwise traditional interpretation, enhance the range of historical writing. length,

overly ambitious,

histories,"

its

Used in full

and often polemical

"psycho-

application can only detract from the very

goal of its adherents, Occasionally,

psychoanalysis will

that is to promote its acceptability.1 7

of course,

such a full-length study

Erikson's Young Man Luther is the prime example.

succeeds; But the

history of psychohistory, which began auspiciously in 1958 with Erikson and Langer,

has not fulfilled the lofty aspira-

tions with which it was born.

Indeed,

the conclusion is

inescapable that progress and development are lacking in a field where the first work to be written was also the best one.

If there

is a reason

for this situation other than the

lack of skill of the practitioners of psychohistory, which seems improbable, result

it is that psychohistory went astray as a

of the attempt to establish

to economic or political history.

a separate

field,

similar

This attempt was based on

the misconception that psychohistory was a new way of seeing history,

a new history in itself,

rather than one of many

tools which the historian might use. psychoanalysis

Hence,

as long as

in history remains psychohistory,

it cannot

be successful as history. 1 8

17.

Barzun,

"History, The Muse," p.

18. Cf. Mazlish, In Search of Nixon, history is . . . a new vision."

39. p.

152:

"Psycho-

276

Yet it

should not be rejected out of hand.

Since

history is the most universal of all scholarly disciplines, it

traditionally

seeks aid and confirmation

osophic impulses.

in diverse phil-

Psychoanalysis is one of these theories

which can augment the effort of the historian to make use of the past and possibly even to plan the future.

And this is

precisely the clearest meeting ground of psychoanalysis and history:

they share a similar purpose,

both eclectic and utilitarian.

insofar as they are

Psychoanalysis thus chal-

lenges history to see the historical record in a new light, and it

opens the possibility of knowledge previously hidden.

Like other historical tools,

if in the end it does not ful-

fill

will become one of the

these possibilities,

it

forgotten oddities of history itself. 1 9 19. Cf. Woods, "Some Considerations," p. History and Human Survival, p. 6.

729; Lifton,

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