The Activities of the Psychohistory Forum
by Paul H. Elovitz, Clio’s Psyche and Ramapo College
In our 22nd year, we in the Forum welcome colleagues to join in our building of psychohistory. Our professional conferences and research groups are listed below along with contributions to publishing, teaching, and networking. For students and newcomers to our publication, we published the third The Best of Clio's Psyche; 1994-2004 which has grown to 190 pages with over 85 entries. For this fall we are preparing a longer, more comprehensive 2005 Best of Issue. We have confronted issues raised by 9/11, terrorism, and war (in Iraq and elsewhere). The basic principle of our work-in-progress meetings, research groups, and special issues or themes is to enlarge and deepen the psychohistorical paradigm. Our work is based primarily on psychoanalysis, but our authors and presenters come from many theoretical frameworks and disciplines.
In the last dozen years our Saturday Work in Progress Seminars have included:
- Sue Erikson Bloland, “Fame: The Power and Cost of a Fantasy: Family Materials”
- David Beisel, “Incomplete Mourning and the Origins of WWII: Chamberlain as Exemplar”
- Barry Shapiro, “Conspiracy Thinking in the French Revolution”
- Philip Pomper, “Trotsky’s Self-Destructive Ambivalence”
- Anna Geifman, “Lenin’s Personality Profile”
- Robert Quackenbush, “Understanding Children and Adolescents Through Their Symbolic Communications”
- Jacques Szaluta, “Freud’s Medical and Literary Ego Ideals”
- The “Next Assignment” of Psychohistory—Lambert, Lawton, Piven, Quackenbush, Szaluta, Elovitz
- Some Thoughts on Violence and War—Mary Coleman
- Psychoanalytic Scholarship on the American Presidents—Paul H. Elovitz
- Mourning 9/11 and Psychobiographical Understanding of Osama bin Laden and the Terrorists—Javors, Goertzel, and Elovitz
- The Great Promise and Anxiety of Modernity—Eli Sagan
- The Terrorism of September 11th and Its Psychological Impact—Gonen, Javors, Elovitz
- Freud’s Struggle with Misogyny: An Exploration of Homosexuality and Guilt in the Dream of Irma’s Injection—David Lotto
- The Psychological Origins of Law and the First Written Laws—Gonen & Coleman
- Psychoanalysis, Psychology, and the Law—Michael Isaacs & H. John Rogers
- Countertransference: The Royal Road into the Psychology of the Cold War—Mike Britton
- Hitler’s Utopian Barbarism: The Roots of Nazi Psychology—Jay Gonen
- Right Wing Violence: The Turner Diaries, Hunter, and Why Some Men and Boys Are Drawn to Violence and Evil—Maria Miliora
- Generations of the Holocaust—Flora Hogman
- Men’s Deeply Repressed Envy of Women’s Ability to Create Life—Rita Ransohoff
- Steven Spielberg’s Creativity and Connection to the American Unconscious—Jacques Szaluta and Richard Harrison
- The Analyst on the Couch: A Biography of Heinz Kohut—Charles Strozier
- The Biographer’s Use and Misuse of Empathy—Linda Simon, et al.
- Hitler's Apocalypticism—David Redles
- The Fathers of Psychohistorians—Colp, Elovitz, Lee Shneidman, Strozier
- The Mothers of Psychohistorians—Pfeffer, C. Shneidman, and Turken
- The Founders of Psychohistory—Paul Elovitz
- The Impact of Impeaching Clinton—Barry, Elovitz, Glad, Goertzel, Immelman
- Genius and Parental Loss—Marvin Eisenstadt
- Group Process and Propaganda: Nazi Propaganda Film—John Hartman
- The Rescuer Self in the Holocaust—Eva Fogelman
- Generations of the Holocaust and Kestenberg Memorial—Flora Hogman et al.
- Hitler's Masochism and Evil—George Victor
- The Present State and Prospects of Psychoanalysis and Psychohistory—panel
- Marie Bonaparte's Psychobiography and Sexual Theories—Nelle Thompson
Our presenters come from universities and colleges including Adelphi, Boston, Brandeis, Connecticut (Uconn), Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, CUNY, Drexel, Harvard, Indiana, Kent State, Massachusetts, Michigan, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, South Carolina, Skidmore, Texas, and Ramapo as well as the A.A. Brill Library, the New York School of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, Fair Oaks Hospital, and private practice. They are historians, psychiatrists, psychologists, psychoanalysts, social workers, and from a variety of other disciplines. These meetings are unique because the 10-25 interdisciplinary attendees read the paper ahead of time and spend several hours in intensive discussion before going to lunch together.
The Forum continues to be the only organization which consistently has small in-depth psychohistory meetings in New York City with work-in-progress papers mailed to members by our scholars. We also have ongoing research projects sometimes resulting in publication and a network of like-minded scholars/therapists/interested lay people. We welcome new members and first-time visitors to our sessions.
Let me describe some recent presentations. “Death Will Be Your God: The Lessons of Russian Terrorism for the 21st Century” was held on April 2, 2005. Our presenter, Anna Geifman, is a Harvard trained historian from Boston University who just completed a book on the subject of her talk. Kenneth Fuchsman of the University of Connecticut presented “Freud’s Discovery of the Oedipus Complex” on March 12, 2005. Our October 23, 2004 Presidential Election panel included my talk, “Bush and Kerry as Their Fathers’ Sons and Contradictory Interpretations of George W. Bush,” ”Herbert Barry of the University of Pittsburgh on John Kerry, Ted Goertzel of Rutgers on Ralph Nader’s puritanical perfectionism,+ and Jennefer Mazza on psychological explorations of the 2004 election.
Forthcoming work-in-progress seminars include “A Psychohistory Based on Adaptability, Childhood, Coping Mechanisms, Creativity, Empathy, Innovation, Overcoming Trauma, and Personality;” “The Psychology of Sports,” “Suicide and Its Impact in History and Our World,” and “Vengeance.” Forum work-in-progress meetings are usually held in the second half of September, early November, mid-winter (typically the last Saturday of January), early March, and once or twice in April. If you are interested in presenting or in arranging for someone else to join our list of distinguished presenters, e-mail or write us.
Clio's Psyche: Understanding the Why of Culture, History, and Society has thrived during it’s over twelve years of existence. It has produced Special Issues on many subjects including the “The Voice/Personal Experience of Women at Work and in Modern Life,” “America as an Imperial Power? Psychological Insights,” “War with Iraq,” “Classics of Psychohistory,” “The Emotional Life of Nations Symposium, “The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict and Middle Eastern Violence,” “Psychology of Religious Experience,” “Children, Childhood, and Childrearing Dilemmas,” ”The Psychology of Terrorism and Mourning 9-11,” “Psvchogeography,” “The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories,” “Election 2000,” “Impeachment,” “Psychobiography,” “Crime, Punishment and Incarceration, “Psychology and the Law,” “Dual Training in Psychoanalysis and an Academic Discipline,” “Humor in the Holocaust,” “Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict,” “Publishing in Psychohistory,” “Immigrant Psychology,” ”The Psychology of Cyberspace Communication,” “The Goldhagen Controversy,” “Milgram and Obedience to Authority,” “Apocalypse and Space Fantasies,” “Psychohistorical Dreamwork,” “Freud or Asimov?,” “Academe and Psychoanalysis/Psychohistory” and other issues. Special Theme/Symposium Issues include “Terri Sciavo Case,” “Home,” Group Psychohistory,” and “Election 1996.” (For certain categories of members and two-year subscribers, where we have back issues, we can provide a free copy of two of these issues available in place of the Best of Clio’s Psyche.)
A unique feature of our organization and publication is concern for documenting the history of psychohistory and depth psychology. We have already had Featured Scholar Interviews with almost over 45 outstanding contributors to psychosocial knowledge including David Bakan (York), Herbert Barry (Pittsburgh), David Beisel (SUNY-RCC), Nancy Chodorow (UC-Berkeley), Mary Coleman (Georgetown-Medicine), Ralph Colp (Columbia), John Demos (Yale), Rudolph Binion (Brandeis), Lloyd deMause (Journal of Psychohistory), Alan Elms (UC-Davis), Lawrence Friedman (Harvard), Melvin Kalfus, Peter Loewenberg (UCLA), Peter Gay (Yale), Carol Gilligan (NYU), Jay Gonen (Veterans Administration), Lynn Hunt (UCLA), Sudhir Kakar, Norman Itzkowitz (Princeton), Robert Jay Lifton (Harvard), Elizabeth Wirth Marvick (UCLA), Bruce Mazlish (MIT), Stanley Renshon (CUNY-Grad School), William McKinley Runyan (UC-Berkeley-Davis), Eli Sagan (Brandeis), Dean Simonton (UC-Davis), Howard Stein (Oklahoma), Charles Strozier (CUNY-John Jay), and Vamik Volkan (Virginia). We welcome interviews with others to be published in our pages. Contact us if you have someone you would like to interview following our format.
There are hundreds of articles in Clio's Psyche not included under the special issues and themes. For example, about teaching, electoral prediction, baseball, denial, ancient dreams, Leon Trotsky, Charles Darwin, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Hitler’s self-hatred and anti-Semitism, Pol Pot, Princess Diana, the Unabomber, politics and political leaders, the teaching of psychohistory, and other in-depth psychological materials on a wide variety of subjects. Childhood, defense mechanisms, dreams and delusions, emotions, group illusions, the Holocaust, mass culture, psychobiography and issues of war, peace and violence will remain central to our interests. There are early reviews of the best new books in psychohistory. Unsolicited submissions are welcome and are anonymously refereed with the rest of our submissions.
As mentioned in the first paragraph, many articles have been collected into the Best of Clio's Psyche, 1994-2004: Understanding the Why of Current Events, Culture, History, and Society (190pages). It is available for a modest price with all proceeds, beyond our expenses, devoted to the cost of the quarterly. Newcomers may buy it for $35 ($18 to bookstores for students) and it is free (if copies remain) to two-year subscribers at the time of renewal as well as to supporting, sustaining, patron, and benefactor members. The Student Issue of Clio’s Psyche have been replaced by the Best of Clio's Psyche which is also used with great success in the classroom.
Clio’s Psyche is looking for articles for various special Issues including: the long-term impact of terrorism and the war on terrorism, the history of psychohistory and political psychology, countertransference issues in doing psychohistorical work, truth and reconciliation commissions and the Hague trial of Milosevic, the psychology of America as the world’s policeman, manias and depressions in economics and society, election 2004, television as object relations, and news as entertainment. Submissions on all subjects are welcome and are normally sent by email. They should include the biography of the presenter(s).
Our publication also aims to serve as a clearinghouse for psychosocial information including meetings and the creation of new publications. Consequently, we welcome reports on activities of scholarly groups such as the John Jay Center on Terrorism, the Center for the Study of Mind and Human Interaction, GUPH, IFPE, ISPP, APA, IPA, and the AHA. We also publish obituaries of distinguished contributors to the growth of psychohistorical knowledge. Sadly, our list of departed contributors is growing rather long. On a more positive note, the last recipient of the Sidney Halpern Award for the best psychohistorical idea was Bob Lentz, our retired associate editor. It was in the category of editing and for his excellent work on a special issue of Clio’s Psyche on conspiracy theories. We like the idea of honoring deceased colleagues by granting financial awards to the living for distinguished work.
Let us now turn to our loosely structured research groups. The "Teaching Psychohistory Research Group" has sponsored a number of articles (see our December 2002 issue), professional meetings, and workshops at conferences. It is sponsoring the December 2005 Special Issue on the Subject. The “Childhood, Personality, and Psychology of Presidential Candidates and Presidents" researchers were quite active in 2003-2005, presenting at international conferences as well as at our regular meetings. The "Makers of Psychohistory” continues to be busy. The "War, Peace and Conflict Resolution Research Group" no longer sponsors luncheons at the IPA, but continues to sponsor Forum meetings and articles. The “Biography/Autobiography Group,” formerly the "Communism: The Dream that Failed Group," continued as the most active with frequent meetings and an outstanding level of discussion. (Membership in this group is by group invitation only.) The seven years of work of our "Psychodynamics of Immigration" research work reached culmination in the publication of Immigrant Experiences: Personal Narrative and Psychological Analysis (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press). Rudolph Binion, Leff Families Professor of Modern History at Brandeis University, indicated it is "a great job," “indispensable reading” and “incomparably the broadest, richest, and deepest exploration of the subject to date." We welcome your involvement in and comments on our activities.
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