SUMMER 2023
The Intersubjective Entangled Multiverse, Seth Allcorn
ABSTRACT: This article explores the complexity of the psychosocial world around us – past, present, and future. The notion of an intersubjective entangled multiverse is to be used to do this work. The world as we know it as individuals is filled with conscious and less than fully conscious psychodynamics that make fully knowing oneself unlikely, and this is made even more difficult within the interpersonal world –including in psychotherapy. At the more global levels of understanding groups, organizations, and societies, the intersubjective entangled multiverse precludes disentangling the past from the present and future in order to locate logical causal relationships among independent and dependent variables. This is not to say that striving to answer the question, “Why?” is not a worthy challenge. It is. But what must be expected and accepted, is that disentangling the psychosocial world with its entanglements and multiverse – will be problematic.
Éric Zemmour, Trump’s French Twin?, Brigitte Demeure
ABSTRACT: Éric Zemmour, a self-proclaimed journalist and historian, presents himself as the new spokesman for the extreme right in France. First, I present his ideological references, common to the far right, which date back to the appearance of a closed and anti-Semitic nationalism at the end of the nineteenth century, in particular the writers Charles Maurras and Maurice Barrès. Second, I show how he tries to falsify the history of Vichy, the French government during WWII, in order to bring together the right and the extreme right, and thus come to power. In his great narrative of the French identity, France appears as a person, an eternal mother, whose past greatness must be restored.
Harvard Grant Study of Adult development: 1938-2022, Ken Fuchsman
ABSTRACT: The Harvard Grant Study began in the late 1930s and continues to this day, but now under the name of the Harvard Study of Adult Development. It began as an initiative of the five-and-dime mogul W.T. Grant. He wanted a study that would follow men over their entire life span. The project selected over 200 males from the Harvard undergraduate classes of 1939-1944. It followed them throughout their lives. Except in a few cases, their identities have been kept confidential. The two that are known are President John F. Kennedy and Washington Post editor Ben Bradley. Bradley self-identified and Kennedy’s file is kept separate and the file but not the contents was discovered. This paper is a history and examination of the Grant Study from its beginnings until early in the 21st century. It was started to find what was healthy in individuals and has kept that focus down to the present day. One thing that is considered here is: are the methods the study employed sufficient for them to achieve their goals?
The Regressive Id-Psychology of Wilhelm Reich (and Its Romantic Roots), William C. Manson, Ph.D
ABSTRACT: The enigmatic figure of Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957), pioneering psychoanalyst turned “orgone biophysicist,” has eluded full understanding by previous psychological biographers such as Myron Sharaf. Such writers neglected the broader context of the history of Romantic science beginning in the late 18th century. Not only did Reich revive such discredited ideas in his post-psychoanalytic theories, but he was temperamentally drawn to a regressive fantasy of returning to childlike immediacy and ingenuousness. This longing was based largely in his paranoid view that adult human character is in itself a structure-of-defenses against direct contact with instinctual drives and sincere, genuine human contact.
Correcting Inaccuracies in Review of Freud’s Theory of Male Homosexuality: A Response to David Schwartz, By Victor Meladze
ABSTRACT: The assessments of classic psychoanalytic theories of male homosexuality and the multiplicity of macro sociohistorical currents, as well as shared prejudices that influenced their development, are contentious and ongoing scholarly endeavors. “In Psychoanalysis’ Troubled Encounter with Gay Men: How It Lost Its way, and How It May Yet Find It” that appeared in the Fall 2022 issue of The Journal of Psychohistory, David Schwartz makes an important contribution towards illuminating the dark history of the psychoanalytic movement when homosexuals were devalued, stigmatized, and classified as having mental disorders. He argues that pathologizing homosexuals by leading psychoanalysts can be traced to their personal biases, as well as to the traditions of xenophobia and homophobia in European and American cultures. This essay adds some additional material concerning Freud’s theory of male homosexuality.
Reply to Meladze: Language Matters, David Schwartz
When I began to write about psychoanalysis’ encounter with gay men my intention was to emphasize theory and practice. I was interested in exploring the discursive and political mechanisms within psychoanalysis that fostered the very unpsychoanalytic disparagement of gay men, with an eye toward making recommendations that might diminish the likelihood of a similar mistake in another, yet to be imagined context. Therefore, I was less interested in Freud’s original speculations about homosexuality than I was in how his theoretical formulations were used and misused by subsequent psychoanalysts, who then created a theory and practice that was profoundly hostile to gay men, as well as to other non-normative sexualities. The result was that I offered a paper that neglected a detailed consideration of Freud’s own discourse on male homosexuality, including some peculiarly pernicious aspects of that discourse. I let Freud off the hook.
BOOK REVIEW ESSAY
Searching for Peace Within Kanya’s Warriors and between their Tribes, Review Essay, Michael Britton
One Who Dreams Is Called a Prophet, Sultan Somjee, Amazon (2020)
Psychohistory, which postulates that both the unconscious and conscious shape history and are shaped by it, is the terrain on which this tale plays out. As in psychoanalysis, it is through the weaving together of conscious and unconscious minds that peace becomes possible; the world can change as it needs when peace is missing, and dreams can become decisive. A fourth generation Irish American myself, I learned a feel for the importance of dreams in difficult times from my father who had learned it from his father before him. I found in this book an affirmation of a tradition of dreaming not found elsewhere in my world today.
PSYCHOHISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES: POETRY
An Incan Face, June Gould
Our Evolution is in Our Hands, Allan S. Mohl
Who Will Write a Requiem for the Earth?, Howard F. Stein