This
is ancient, but some of you may find the theme of this
bibliography interesting in it s own right.
The
bibliography is accented towards the psychohistory of the middle
ages, and methodological essays. Readers should be aware that most
psychohistory has been concerned with modern history.
deMause,
Lloyd. A Bibliography of Psychohistory. New York: Garland
Press, 1975
A
somewhat aging bibliography. deMause lists citations under
theoretical and chronological headings. He lists the Renaissance and
Middle Ages together and leaving aside works on daVinci has only 14
pre-1500 citations. There is an informative but didactic
introduction.
Anderson,
J.W. "The Methodology of Psychological Biography." Journal
of Interdisciplinary History 11 (1981): 455-75.
Anderson
raises and answers criticisms of psychological biography; its
reductionism, its disparagement of subjects, its application of
modern psychology to the past, its inadequacies in psychological
theory, and the problem of analyzing an absent subject. He recognizes
that many psychological concepts have been developed in the context
of psychopathology and so can lead biographers to overstress the
psychological problems of their subjects. He sees real value in
trying to understand the psychology of past individuals but, although
in the psychoanalytic tradition, gives full credit to other ways,
economic and social, of understanding the past.
Askew,
Melvin W. "Courtly Love: Neurosis as an Institution." The
Psychoanalytic Review 52 (1965): 19-29.
Askew
sees courtly love's origins in arranged marriage and Mariolatry. He
thinks it was a neurotic attempt to portray erotic, or id, urges as
leading to virtue and in this way to deceive the superego: the
"courtly lover's" actions - swooning and so on, are
literally sick. Courtly love also reflects an ambivalence towards the
emergence of powerful women in the twelfth century. Whatever the
value of his psychology, this author gets his history wrong.
Barzun,
Jacques. "History: the Muse and her Doctors." American
Historical Review 77 (1972). 36-64.
A
leading critic condemns psychohistory on grounds of deficiency in
method and scholarship. He suggests Freudianism, in contrast to other
theories, is used by psychohistorians mainly because its concepts
have already been popularized. Barzun's view of history as
essentially an art leads him to reject all attempts to turn it into a
social science with a methodology.
Benton,
John. "The Personality of Guibert of Nogent." The
Psychoanalytic Review 57 (1970-71): 563-586.
This
is a revision of the introduction to Benton's Self and Society in
Medieval France: The Memoirs of Abbot Guibert of Nogent. New
York: Harper and Row, 1970 [Now reprinted in MARTS]. Benton thinks
that Guibert is one of the few medieval personalities about whose
childhood enough is known for the application of psychoanalysis,
which uses childhood experiences to explain adult character. Benton
explains Guibert's attempt at autobiography, critical approach to
relics, and patriotism - all outlooks which have seemed "modern"
to some - as consequences of Guibert's childhood. The result is a
rather heavy handed use of Freudian concepts.
Cocks,
Geoffrey and Travis L. Cosby, eds. Psycho/History: Readings in the
Method of Psychology, Psychoanalysis & History. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1987.
A
recent collection of articles on the theory of psychohistory. Some
contributors offer alternatives to older psycho-biographies.
Coupe,
M.D. "The Personality of Guibert de Nogent Reconsidered." Journal of Medieval History 9 (1983): 317-29.
Coupe
assails the use of psychoanalysis by Benton and Kantor by
highlighting their selective use of evidence. His attack is within
the Freudian paradigm; for Coupe without personal contact there can
be no psychoanalysis, although here he ignores Freud's own work on da
Vinci. Coupe's alternative explanation is of Guibert as a monk and a
reader of the classics, but this remains unsatisfying.
DeMause,
Lloyd. Foundations of Psychohistory. New York?: Psychohistory
Press, 1982.
A
collection of essays which conveniently assembles the work and ideas
of the leading contemporary advocate of psychohistory. DeMause's
essay on "The Evolution of Childhood" proposes that
development in the treatment of children is central to history and he
calls this the "psychogenic" theory of history. The essay
demonstrates the ability of psychohistorians to raise new topics and
what, to many historians, seems like the unsatisfactory way the new
topics are handled. Other chapters spell out deMause's emphatic claim
that psychohistory is a new science, and that its "truth value"
rests on its explanatory power.
Erikson,
Erik. Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History.
New York: W.W. Norton, 1958.
This
was the seminal work in psychohistory by the analyst who invented the
concepts of "identity" and "identity crisis". It
is more a meditation on the psychology of Luther than a biography. It
embodies Erikson's distinctive psychoanalytic approach that
emphasizes epigenetic factors - the importance of events occurring
later in life than childhood - and psychosocial aspects on the
development of the personality. This is an advance on Freud's
exclusive reliance on childhood experience to explain development.
Although Erikson relies on older histories for his facts and
occasionally appeals to legendary events to explain Luther, his work
remains substantial.
Forsyth,
Ilene. "Children in Early Medieval Art: Ninth through Twelfth
Century." Journal of Pyschohistory 4 (1976): 31-70.
Izenberg,
Gerald, "Psychohistory and Intellectual History." History
and Theory 14 (1975): 139-155.
Izenberg addresses the
probity of evaluating an individual's ideas in psychological terms.
He thinks this is allowable only when an individual behaves or argues
irrationally within the norms and standards of his/her historical
milieu.
Johnson,
Roger A., ed. Psychohistory and Religion: The Case of Young Man
Luther. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977.
A
useful collection of essays that examines the theory of psychohistory
and Erikson's application of it in the case of Luther. Johnson
defends Erikson, whilst the great Luther historian Roland H. Bainton
and Lewis W. Spitz attack Erikson's approach.
Halverson,
John. "Amour and Eros in the Middle Ages." The
Psychoanalytic Review 57 (1970): 245-62.
Halverson
examines attempts to explain courtly love in Freudian terms. He
suggests that courtly love is a modern construct with no medieval
social reality and that previous commentators have blended fictional
with factual sources and overlooked whatever contradicts their
theories. His own view of twelfth century erotic writing is expressed
in terms of a superego vs. id conflict.
Kantor,
Jonathan: "A Psychohistorical Source: The Memoirs of Abbot
Guibert of Nogent." Journal of Medieval History 2
(1976): 281-304.
An
attempt, building on the work of Benton, to describe an explicit
Freudian understanding of Guibert. Kantor thinks Guibert's childhood
relationship with his mother left him with a matriarchal superego and
unable to cope with the masculine life of young French nobles.
Guibert retreated to a monastery where he worked out his Oedipal
problems, a castration complex and a fear of sexuality, in his
writings. Kantor omits to consider that Guibert was an oblate.
Karlen,
Arno. Napoleon's Glands and other Ventures in Biohistory.
Boston: Little, Brown, 1984.
Popularizing
effort to look at the biological foundation of the actions of
individuals in the past. This is not quite the same as psychohistory,
but is part of the same historical approach.
Koenigsberg,
R.A. "Culture and Unconscious Fantasy: Observations on Courtly
Love." The Psychoanalytic Review 54 (1967): 36-50.
This
author tries to fit courtly love into the model suggested by one of
Freud's cases studies. He sees it as a collective fantasy that
changed the nature of social reality: courtly love is meant to
re-create the oedipal situation on an adult level. Koenigsberg does
not adequately distinguish between literature and social reality.
Kohut,
Thomas A., "Psychohistory as History." American
Historical Review 91:2 (1986): 336-54.
Kohut,
a trained historian and psychoanalyst, condemns the deMause school of
psychohistory for reducing problems to a single interpretive
formulation by applying textbook theory. He agrees with Barzun (see
above) that empathy is basic to history, but argues that this is also
true of the clinical practice of psychoanalysis. A good clinical
psychoanalyst should try to make sense to a patient in terms of
his/her own life. For Kohut then, psychoanalytic training can
increase historical sensitivity.
Lawton,
Henry. The Psychohistorian's Handbook. New York: 1988.
Leclerq,
Jean: "Modern Psychology and the Interpretation of Medieval
Texts." Speculum 48 (1973): 476-90.
Leclerq
looks at three medieval documents - by Othloh of Saint-Emmeran,
Abelard and a hagiographer - to establish the value of a
psychological dimension and a methodology. He uses a few Freudian
concepts but relies on "common sense" psychology and so
does not require the evidence of childhood vital to Freudians. Since
this is rarely available in the middle ages, Leclerq's methodology is
perhaps more appropriate for a medievalist than that of other writers
cited who concentrate on the modern period.
Leclerq,
Jean: Monks and Love in 12th Century France: Psycho-historical
Essays (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979)
Leclerq
proposes that there was a change in the way monks saw "love"
once the Cistercians replaced the Benedictine oblate system with the
recruitment of grown men. He points to the more carnal interpretation
of the Song of Songs as an indication of this. Leclerq is careful in
his use of sources and offers his ideas undogmatically.
Matzoh,
Bruce. "What is Psychohistory." Transactions of the
Royal Historical Society 21 (5th series) (1971): 79-99.
O'Meany,
John. "A Mystic as `Psychoanalyst.'" Diakonia 5
(1971): 99-113.
The
Byzantine saint, Symeon the New Theologian, wrote On Three Methods of
Attention and Prayer and distinguished between localizing thought in
the head and in the heart. O'Meany compares this to aspects of Jung's
thought and sees analogies in Symeon to the concepts of depression,
defense mechanism, and detachment. In fact, Symeon's thought is
within the traditions of spiritual advice, but it is possible that a
careful analysis of this type of material might yield information on
medieval mentalities.
Pomper
P.L. The Structure of the Mind in History: Five Major Figures in
Psychohistory. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.
Pomper
examines the work of five major figures in psychohistory, Freud,
Erikson, Marcuse, Norman O. Brown and Robert Jay Lifton.
Radding,
C.M. "Evolution of Medieval Mentalities: a Cognitive-Structural
Approach." American Historical Review 83 (1978): 577-97.
Using
the cognitive theory of child psychologist Jean Piaget, Radding
explains the shift in attitude in the twelfth century as a
psychological reconstruction of morality. By this he means that
people stopped just obeying authority, but reformulated the rationale
for rules in their own mind. He uses legal and religious evidence and
is aware of the problem of characterizing an entire society in terms
of modern childhood development.
Sarbin,
T.S. "Review article on Peter Gay. Freud for Historians. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1985." History and Theory 3 (1987): 352-64.
Sarbin
attacks the claim of psychoanalysis to be scientific. He points out
that psychoanalysis has not been verified by any experimental means
and that its formulations resist standard scientific testing. Sarbin
is not opposed to the use of psychology by historians and proposes
Erving Goffman's ideas of dramaturgy or role-playing as more useful
than Freudianism.
Shepherd,
Michael: "The Psycho-Historians: A Psychiatrist’s
Scepticism." Encounter 52 (March 1979): 35-42.
A
critical appraisal of psychohistory in which the author takes Hugh
Trevor-Roper's view that "psychoanalysis is not an investigative
tool but a therapeutic myth". The article is a useful summary of
criticism of psychohistory.
Strozier:
Ch.B & Daniel Offer, eds. The Leaders: Psychohistorical
Essays. New York: Plenum, 1985.
A
collection of essays looking at modern leaders.
Wallace,
Edwin R. Historiography and Causation in Psychoanalysis: An Essay
on the Psychoanalytic and Historical Epistemology.
Hillside, N.J.: 1985.
Wittels,
Fritz: "Psychoanalysis and History - The Nibelungs and the
Bible." Psychoanalytic Quarterly 15 (1946): 88-103.
An
early and rare attempt to do a collective psychohistory for in the
middle ages. Wittels sees the myth of the Nibelungs and Luther's
German Bible respectively as the id and the superego of the German
nation. Although he notes a thirteenth century change in the myth, a
change he relates to a diminution in women's status, Wittels main
concern is the German national character in the 1940's.
