Psychohistory

The psycho-history examines historical events of the distant and immediate past by psychology and psychoanalysis. Your position in the scheme of social sciences is controversial.

While the conventional historiography is strongly descriptively oriented, the psycho-history is concerned primarily with the motivational aspects of historical ( and contemporary ) processes. Important therefore is the reconstruction of conscious and unconscious motives of historical subjects.

Psychohistory has nothing to do with the fictional Psychohistorik described in some novels of Isaac Asimov.

Origins of psychohistory

Even Sigmund Freud psycho- historical thought and written work appropriate. Thus, for example, contain " Discontents of culture", "Moses " and " The Future of an Illusion" psycho- historical aspects. He worked with William C. Bullitt to a psycho- biographical study on the American President Woodrow Wilson.

The first academic preparation of psychohistory, according to Freud is found in Erik Erikson 's book " Young Man Luther", in which the author looks for a science, with which one can examine the consequences of life of individuals on the story. It had taken numerous biographical oriented studies of Freud and other psychoanalysts (eg Marie Bonaparte ). During the 1960s, Erikson formed along with Robert Lifton and Bruce Mazlish the Wellfleet Group, one sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences project to define psychohistory as a research field. Lifton presented later significant works on the causes and effects of war crimes.

Lloyd deMause is a pioneer of psychohistory and has in this area still big impact. Other notable psychohistorian are Alice Miller and Julian Jaynes, although they are rarely referred to as such.

In the German Society for psychohistory Uta Ottmüller has repeatedly pointed to the important aspect of gender relations for the design of childhood. In their approach to psycho- historical peace research and the transgenerational trauma plays a significant role.

The books by Klaus Theweleit are indeed usually not counted in the psycho-history, but also examine the relationship between psychoanalysis and history.

A somewhat different approach to psychohistory has launched under the name Historic conduct research into life August Nitschke.

Areas of psychohistory

Psychohistory is conceived differently by different authors. Lloyd deMause identifies three key areas of research that are connected:

• History of childhood

Description and explanation of historical change of central childhood conditions and their impact on the concrete historical psyches of children.

• Psycho Biography

Study of motivations of historical ( and contemporary ) individuals, especially of political actors, but also by artists or other source moderately detectable persons.

• Group psychohistory

Examination of the motivations of groups (or societies ), in particular, the emotional situation the subject of reconstruction.

In all three areas involves both the conscious experience of historical persons and to unconscious fantasies of historical subjects and to determine the latent structure of meaning of historic structures ( religious, political and artistic ).