THE PSYCHOGENIC
THEORY OF HISTORY
"Theories are nets: only he who casts will catch."
- - Novalis
132
1. That psychohistory is the science of patterns of historical motivations
and is based upon an anti-holistic philosophy of methodological individualism
lA. Psychohistory is a science, not a narrative art like history.
lA. 1. All psychohistorical research must be comparative, striving
toward lawful propositions.
lA. 2. Psychohistory advances like any other science, by the discovery
of new paradigms and attempts to disprove them.
lA. 3. Like psychoanalysis, psychohistory uses self-observation
of the emotional responses of the
133
researcher as its prime tool for discovery; nothing is ever discovered
"out there" until it is first felt "in here."
lB. Psychohistory is individualistic, not holistic like sociology
and anthropology.
lB. 1. The holistic fallacy that the group exists as an entity
over and beyond its individual constituents presumes what it should
investigate-the fantasy that the group is really the mother's
body and has goals and motives of its own.
1B.2. Sociology, whether Parsonian or Marxist, is based on the
holistic statement of Durkheim that "social facts must be
treated as things, that is, realities external to the individual"
and is, as Parsons admits, "inherently teleological."
1B.3. Anthropology is based on a similar holistic concept of "culture,"
so that when Steward states that "Personality is shaped by
culture, but it has never been shown that culture is affected
by personality" the tautological form of the assertion is
dependent upon not noticing that the term "culture"
has no meaning beyond the term "personality."
1B. 4. All statements of the form "X is socially (or culturally)
determined" are tautological and assume a holistic entity
beyond the individual.
1B.5. Terms such as "society," "culture,"
"state," "social structure," and "power
are all holistic; their individualistic replacements are "group,"
"personality," "government," "group-fantasy,"
and "force."
1B.6. The central method of sociology and anthropology is to establish
correlations between two facets of adult personality and then
claim causal connection; the central method of psychohistory is
to establish causes of motivational patterns in prior personal
events and their restructuring within the adult group.
134
1C. Methodological individualism is the principle that group processes
may be entirely explained by (a) psychological laws governing the
motivation and behavior of individuals and (b) descriptions of their
current physical historical situation, which itself is only the
outcome of prior motivations acting on physical reality.
IC. 1. The diagram below is sufficient to explain all historical
processes, "group-fantasy" being the term for shared
fantasies of individuals when in groups.
1C. 2. Durkheim's sociological rule that "Every time that
a social phenomenon is directly explained by a psychological phenomenon,
we may he sure that the explanation is false" is replaced
by the psychohistorical rule that "All group phenomena have
psychological explanations; individuals in groups act differently
than individuals alone only because they split their psychic conflicts
differently, not because some 'social' force is acting on them."
1C. 3. With the disappearance of the deathless entity society"
all group values are revealed as tentative and subject to change
each generation; what now seems problematic is not change but
constancy.
1C. 4. It is not only the irrational in history that is susceptible
to psychohistorical explanation; all of history, its strengths
as well as weaknesses, integration as well as disintegration,
has childhood determinants and group dynamics.
135
2. That the ultimate source of all historical change is psychogenesis,
the lawful change in childrearing modes occurring through generational
pressure.
2A. Psychogenesis depends upon the ability of parents and surrogates
to regress to the psychic age of their children and work through
the anxieties of that age better the second time than in their own
childhood.
2A. 1. The regression-progression process stems from the innate
biological desire of both parts of a previous dual-unity to relate
to each other, and thus is the only historical theory to posit
love as its central mechanism for change.
2A. 2. The regression-progression process is identical to that
which produces change in psychotherapy; thus history can be viewed
as the psychotherapy of generations.
2B. The evolution of childhood proceeds at different rates of progress
on both individual and population levels.
2B.1. Individual level variations in rates of psychogenic evolution
occur because of (a) biological differences (both genetic and
uterine events), (b) birth order differences (the later the birth,
generally the less intense the parenting), and (c) chance (early
loss of parent, injury, other personal life variations).
2B.2. Population level variations in psychogenic evolution occur
because of (a) selection and isolation (emigration of a narrow
range of parenting modes), (b) immigration (the infusion of new
parenting modes into a larger population), (c) non-reproduction
(psychotic unfit, or other lower psychogenic modes not as often
raising children), (d) culture contact (reinforcing emergent parenting
types, providing surrogate parents), (e) material conditions (only
as they affect child rearing), and (I) group-fantasy factors (wars
and revolutions as they affect children, share of work by mothers,
father's share in child rearing, etc.).
136
2C. The evolution of childhood is a series of closer involvements
between adults and children, each advance tending to heal splitting,
reduce projection and reversal, and increase empathy.
2C. 1. The six psychogenic modes and their dates of evolution
in the most advanced countries are:
Mode |
Parental Wish |
Historical Manifestations |
Infanticidal
|
Mother: "I wish you were dead, to relive my
fear of being killed by my mother." |
Child-sacrifice and infanticide, child as a breast-penis, intolerance
of child's anger, hardening, ghosts and magic, child sale, child
sodomy |
Abandoning |
Mother: "I must leave you, to escape the needs I project
into you." |
Longer swaddling, fosterage, outside wetnursing, monastery,
nunnery and apprenticeship |
Ambivalent |
Mother: "You are bad from the erotic and aggressive projections
put in you." |
Enemas, early beating, shorter swaddling, mourning possible,
child as erotic object precursor to empathy. |
Intrusive |
Mother: "You can have love when I have full control over
you." |
Early toilet training, repression of child's sexuality, end
of swaddling and wetnursing, empathy now possible rise of pediatrics |
Socializing |
Mother and Father: "We will love you when you are reaching
our goals." |
Use of guilt, "mental discipline", humiliation, rise
of compulsory schooling, delegation of parental unconscious wishes |
Helping |
Mother and Father: "We love you and will help you reach
your goals." |
Children's rights, de-schooling and free schooling, child therapy,
birth without violence. |
2C. 2. The "ambivalent mode" is a watershed in the
evolutionary series, because up until then progress is achieved
by internalization and repression of previously projected parts
of the personality (magic), whereas after ambivalence is able
to be
137
tolerated (the Kleinian "depressive position"), progress
is achieved through the reduction of repression and the increase
in ego autonomy.
2C. 3. Progress at each mode depends on overcoming anxieties specific
to that mode; for instance, a shortage of wetnurses will have
a greater effect when abandonment is the crucial modal issue than
at another time, and so on.
2D. The end result of man's biological evolution produced a helpless
baby whose instinct is to form an intensely personal relationship,
challenging the parent to regress and relate rather than repress
and be alone.
2D. 1. Freud's idea that civilization proceeds by "progressively
greater renunciation of instinct" was precisely backward;
civilization proceeds only through progressively greater acceptance
of the drives of children, allowing them to mature without defensive
distortion.
2D. 2. Hegel's idea that history is "man's nature achieving
itself" is closer to the truth, but only because each generation
tries to help. their children achieve their own desires, so that
new values are generated evolutionarily rather than teleologically.
3. That the evolution of new psychogenic modes produces new psychoclasses
which threaten the group - fantasies of earlier psychoclasses and
are expressed in historical periods of rebellion, triumph and reaction.
3A. Group-fantasies are formed in order that individuals may play
roles to defend themselves against childhood anxieties.
3A. 1. Intra-psychic defenses are not effective in groups, so
group-fantasies are substituted as shared defenses which prevent
regression to childhood traumas.
3A. 2. The larger the group, the more the threatened regression,
so the earlier the source of
138
group-fantasy and the more primitive the splitting.
3A. 3. Man does not, in a group, become an animal - - he becomes
a frightened baby.
3B. What is usually called "social structure" is actually
the splitting of large groups into smaller delegate-groups which
play specific roles within group-fantasies.
3B.1. Delegate-groups act out ambivalent feelings common to all
members of the larger group but which the rest of the group wish
to deny and project into them.
3B.2. What are usually called "social institutions"
are historical delegate-groups: the Church as a group-fantasy
of dependency, the Army as a group-fantasy of birth, the Government
as a group-fantasy of nurturance, Capitalism as a group-fantasy
of control, Revolution as a group-fantasy of counterdependency,
the Class System as a group-fantasy of obeisance, the School as
a group-fantasy of humiliation.
3B.3. Delegate-groups are made up of individuals who share defensive
styles, and form themselves into hierarchies in order to contain
fantasied group violence.
3C. Leaders are personalities able to become containers for the
bizarre projective identifications of group-fantasies.
3C. 1. Projective identification, the central means of communication
in group life, is the fantasied forceable thrusting of repudiated
parts of one's psyche into another.
3C. 2. Leaders are not just parents - they play the defensive
roles required by whichever stage of group-fantasy is operative,
becoming stern fathers when group violence is being denied, nurturant
mothers when abandonment is defended against, rebellious sons
when authority is decaying, and paranoid siblings when group violence
is being projected.
139
3C. 3. Leaders are always containers for the group's feelings
of humiliation - the depersonalization or stripping away of intra-psychic
defenses which occurs in a group producing the threat of being
made a helpless baby again-so leaders always conduct foreign policy
while filled up with feelings of near-humiliation.
3D. Historical group-fantasies result from the interaction of different
psychoclasses.
3D. 1. Psychoclasses are groups of individuals with the same
childhood mode within a given population.
3D. 2. Psychoclasses require different group defenses, and these
are often intolerable to other psychoclasses.
3D. 3. The wider the range of psychoclasses in a given population,
the more the conflict between their defensive styles.
3D. 4. The higher the psychogenic mode of the psychoclass, the
less it is necessary for it to act out its conflicts.
3D. 5. Psychoclass is only partially related to economic class,
depending on historical period.
3D. 6. Political and religious movements correlate more closely
to psychoclass than to economic class.
3E Each generation brings a new psychoclass to the historical stage,
disturbing the group-fantasies of the older psychoclasses and producing
periods of rebellion, triumph and reaction.
3E. 1. Only that portion of the new generation which shares the
new child-rearing experience makes up the new psychoclass.
3E. 2. A period of rebellion occurs when the new psychoclass is
young, first mainly in the artistic spheres.
140
3E. 3. A period of triumph occurs when the new psychoclass becomes
dominant in the group's goals, even though they are still a numerical
minority.
SE. 4. A period of reaction occurs when the older psychoclasses
clamp down on the goals and life-styles of the newest psychoclass.
3F. Psychogenic change is the ultimate source for all technological
change; technological change is not, as often assumed, automatic,
nor does it drag the psyche in its wake.
3F. 1. The reason childrearing styles correlate with technological
levels somewhat is that the former produce the latter, not the
reverse.
3F. 2. Low level parenting is always disfunctional to all technological
levels early toilet training did not help early capitalists accumulate
money, it made them neurotically unable to invest it productively,
as it does today.
3F. 3. No economic system "requires" any specific psychogenic
types-capitalism and socialism have both functioned with both
sadistic and mature personalities-and no economic system "requires"
any specific childrearing.
3F. 4. The invention and spread of new technologies occurs when
new psychoclasses reduce the projective identification of parts
of their psyches into things-so that deep plowing can replace
scratch plowing when "mother Earth" is decathected,
gears can be invented and used when they are separated emotionally
from teeth, and the whole of modern science can be invented when
the Aristotelian notion of "real essences" is discarded.
3F. 5. Economic systems change when new psychoclasses can reduce
the use of the group for projective identification -so that early
market economies can develop when earlier reciprocal gift-giving
is less needed as a defense against primitive death-wishes,
141
late medieval expansion of commerce could come about when feudal
bonds were not needed as defenses against abandonment, and capitalistic
ownership of goods could appear with the decathexis of property
from its "historical" (group-fantasy) ties.
3F. 6. Even supposedly "purely physical" historical
phenomena turn out to be determined psychogenically Even plagues
are dependent on the Christian love of dirt to sustain the rats
whose fleas were its carriers.
3F. 7. Psychogenesis, not "social need," defines the
order of invention-otherwise, scientific astronomy would not have
preceded the invention of the flush toilet.
3G. Primitive tribes are not magical thinkers because they are
technologically primitive-they long ago experienced psychogenic
arrest and thereafter did not develop technologically, but only
elaborated their group-fantasies.
3G. 1. Primitive tribes lies somewhere in the first two psychogenic
modes of childrearing, as evidenced by the lack of depressive
(guilt) illnesses which are the achievement of the ambivalent
mode.
3G. 2. Primitives did not adapt their personalities to their harsh
environments-they migrated to harsh environments because they
matched their inner life.
4. That psychogenic modes determine the level of personality which
can be attained, and establish the typical conflicts and defenses
of each historical period which sustain the art, religion, politics
and economics of each age.
4A. Psychogenic modes correspond to specific sets of personality types,
using typical defensive patterns and growing in ego strength with
each mode:
Infanticidal
Mode |
Schizoid
Personality |
Primary-process thinking, symbiotic omnipotence,
gender/zonal confusion, splitting and projective identification,
sado-masochistic disorders |
Abandoning
Mode |
Autistic
Personality |
Unrelated, narcissistic, exploitive, parasitic,
distrustful, oral rage, self weak or grandiose, psychopathic,
unable to tolerate delay, lacking in remorse, idealized mother,
timeless |
Ambivalent
Mode |
Depressive
Personality |
Guilty and depressed, insatiable in needs for love,
status, sex, enormous superego demands, reality of time |
Intrusive
Mode |
Compulsive
Personality |
Pseudorational, cold, detached, self critical inwardly,
phobic, obsessive-compulsive and conversion symptoms |
Socializing
Mode |
Anxiety
Personality |
Less rigid character armor, free-floating anxiety
and dissatisfaction with life due to delegate-living, loss of
individuality in group, incomplete feelings |
Helping
Mode |
|
None yet adult |
4B. These personality types can range from "normal" to
"abnormal" within each mode, depending on the degree of
integration within the personality and the degree of support given
by others in the historical period:
RANGE OF PERSONALITY TYPES BY PSYCHOGENIC
MODE
|
Infanticidal |
Abandoning |
Ambivalent |
Intrusive |
Socializing |
N
o
r
m
a
l |
Schizoid
Personality |
Autistic
personality |
Depressive
personality |
Compulsive
personality |
Anxiety
personality |
N
e
u
r
o
t
I
c |
Impulse disorders and sado-masochistic defenses |
Anaclitic (neglect) depressive disorders and psychopathic defenses |
Introjective (guilt) depressive disorders and manic defenses |
Obsessive-compulsive disorders and conversion defense |
Hysterical disorders and psycho-sexual defenses |
P
s
y
c
h
o
t
i
c |
Catatonic and hebephrenic |
Paranoid schizophrenia |
Manic-depressive psychosis |
|
|
4B.1. The leaders of every historical period - those who launch
wars, repression and revolution in a considered and careful manner
- are only those most integrated into the group-fantasies of the
age.
143
4B.2. Those considered "neurotic" in each age may often
be a higher psychogenic mode than those considered "normal",
only they must stand the anxiety of not sharing the group-fantasies
of the age.
4C. The master group-fantasies of each historical period correspond
to three defensive levels:
4C. 1. The Calamitous Fantasy-corresponding to the basic trauma
of each childhood mode.
4C. 2. The Defensive Fantasy-denying this basic traumatic fantasy.
4C. 3. The Desired Fantasy-a further denial, providing the ideal
group-fantasies of the age.
5. That groups, whether face-to-face or historical, induce a "fetal
trance state" in their members, reawakening specific physical
memories from uterine and perinatal life.
144
5A. Man is a political animal, as Aristotle said, because for most
civilized people only life in a group can re-establish contact with
repressed fetal emotions.
5B. Only individuals in fetal trance states are able to form group-fantasies,
which follow specific rules of fetal life such as:
5B. 1. Life gets continually more cramped, and growth always
requires more physical space through actual expansion of territory
(even though any fool can see that the resulting opposition to
expansion destroys the group's growth.)
5B. 2. Other groups are either nurturant or blood-sucking, poisoning
placentas (even though it is obvious that all groups are made
up of individuals who have all shades of attitudes towards one.)
5B. 3. The proper attitude toward a nurturing placenta is awe
toward its "power flow" (even though it may in fact
be harming you.)
5B. 4. The proper attitude toward a blood-sucking, poisoning placenta
is to suck its blood and to poison it in return (even though this
may in fact involve your own death through retaliation.)
5B. 5. The primary purpose of any group is to preserve its womb-surround,
regardless of the cost to individuals within the group (even though
a war kills most Americans, it is worth it to preserve "what
America stands for.")
5B. 6. The "skin" of one's womb-group wholly determines
one's relationship to events (even though there is an epidemic
in a nearby country, your morning paper features what your leader
had for breakfast.)
5B. 7. Individuals are connected by umbilical cords to leaders,
alternately being fed by and feeding them (even though the leader
may be wholly inactive, or detrimental, to the group, power and
obeisance "flows" on.)
145
5B. 8. Groups are connected by umbilical cords to other groups,
placentas, and must fight for dear life for the "vitality"
which flows between them (even though it may be beneficial for
two groups to both reduce their armed strength, they cannot do
so because it would affect the "balance of power," and
so must "stem the turning of the tide" to "prevent
the loss of vitality to its system.")
5B. 9. Disturbances to one's womb-surround are always the fault
of a poisoning placenta, whom one can harm by "putting pressure"
on it (even though you in fact increase your neighbors' hostility.)
5B. 10. When the group-fantasy of an intact womb-surround fails
("the fabric of society stretches thin, then tears"),
the group inexorably slides into a war-as-birth group-fantasy
(even though the actual reasons for war at that moment may be
minimal.)
5B. 11. During the war-as-birth group-fantasy groups pump feelings
into their placenta-leaders of being too crowded, asphyxiated,
starved and strangulated (even though their economic condition
may be in fact excellent.)
5B. 12. Groups go to war in order to overcome the helplessness
and terror of being trapped in a birth canal, through means of
a' sadomasochistic orgy in order to "hack one's way out"
of the mother's body (even though in fact the most logical solution
to most war threats is to do nothing, nevertheless violent action
is always most compelling.)
5B. 13. Once others plunge into a war-as-birth experience, neighbors
feel sucked into a similar fetal trance state (even though Americans
realize European wars are irrational, once they start they get
picked up by "a force they cannot resist" and jump into
their own birth primal.)
146
5B. 14. After successful wars, groups feel "reborn"
and have a period of vigorous, optimistic cooperation which is
viewed as "The Best Years of Our Lives" (even though
they are actually economically depleted.)
5C. The extent to which a group sinks into a full fetal trance
state is determined by the ability of its current group-fantasy
to create the illusion of an intact womb-surround which can contain
the traumas of childhood.
by: Lloyd deMause
The Institute for Psychohistory
140 Riverside Drive, NY NY 10024
|