Summer 2021
“… to Set a New Way of Writing History, Always Directed to the Emotions”: Excerpts from Lloyd deMause’s Letters to Aurel Ende, (Part 2), Juhani Ihanus
ABSTRACT: This article is a continuation to the earlier one, published in The Journal of Psychohistory (Vol. 48, No. 4, 2021), titled “I Really Feel I Understand What’s Going on in History.” Like the previous article, this is also based on the letters sent by Lloyd deMause to his German colleague and translator, sociologist Aurel Ende. Another boulder of such letters spanning the years 1982–1985 has been used here as additional material to the earlier correspondence of the years 1977–1982. The article contains deMause’s conceptions of writing and translating psychohistory and reveals some practical concerns in the publishing of psychohistorical books and journals, as well as profiles his basic research interests that had strong ties to evolutionary biology and psychology rather than sociology or history.
Populism and Political Personality: What Can We Learn from The Dark Triad Personality of Hermann Goering?, Clive Boddy
Abstract: Utilizing a case study of Hermann Goering’s character and behavior, this paper examines the darkest personality within the dark triad of personalities – that of the psychopath – and discusses what can be expected from their leadership. The psychopathic leader’s appeal to a large minority of voters is discussed alongside a discussion of whether they can be reliably identified, and if so, whether in the interests of global security and sustainability, psychopaths could be screened out of running for high political office.
Key words: Political Personality, Psychopaths, Corporate Psychopaths, Psychopathy, Dark Triad, Toxic Leadership.
Unpacking the Supreme Court: The Age of Trump, Law, and Psychohistory, Seth Allcorn and Howard F. Stein
Abstract: the recent appointments of three conservative supreme court justices with the last forced through just prior to the 2020 presidential election raises important questions about how conservative the court’s decisions will be over the next decades. these decisions will be informed by if not based on originalism which is an ideology that justifies what is an inherently conservative interpretation of the constitution. Understanding originalism requires a close inspection and unpacking of the use of this approach to justifying conservative decisions. this unpacking is approached from three different but complementary perspectives— legal anthropology, chosen glories, and two psychodynamically informed interpretations. Originalism must be considered to be compromised by unconscious psychosocial elements that make it a “convenient fiction” that it is a rational and objective approach to making decisions.
LIBERAL AS YOUNG AND CONSERVATIVE AS MIDDLE-AGER: FACING MORTALITY FROM VARIOUS EXISTENTIAL POSITIONS, Richard E. Webb and Philip J. Rosenbaum
ABSTRACT: Typical considerations of mortality are discussed from the perspective of four “existential” positions that have been explicated over many years by the Object Relations school of psychoanalysis. These positions describe various relationships to self and other that in the course of development we progress through and move between. The middle two positions, termed paranoid-schizoid and depressives are especially useful for making sense of reasons why it is commonly accepted that one begins life liberal and becomes increasingly conservative with age.
Key words: mortality, death, existential, Objects Relations, autistic-contiguous, paranoid-schizoid, depressive position, transcendent, conservative, liberal
Book Review Essay
The Psychotic Dr. Schreber: Recasting Freud’s Case History, Victor Meladze
My Own Private Germany: Daniel Paul Schreber’s Secret History of Modernity, Eric L. Santner, Princeton University Press, 1996
In the corpus of Sigmund Freud’s seminal works, the 1911 essay Psychoanalytic Notes Upon an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides) is among his most monumental achievements. The case history of Dr. Daniel Paul Schreber, a German judge who battled a series of psychotic breakdowns in which his transformation into a woman and libidinal union with God was at the core of an apocalyptic rebirth fantasy, also is Freud’s enduringly controversial work. Both Freud’s Psychoanalytic Notes and its subject matter, that is, Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (1903), continue to provoke scholarly scrutiny and assessment. As noted by a number of prominent social scientists, Freud and Schreber are inextricably conjoined beyond the annals of psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Their works offer inexhaustible insights into the manifold domains within contemporary society.
Psychohistorical Perspectives on Current Events and Issues: Poetry
“‘Who’s on First./?’ Revisited”*, Howard F. Stein
What if . . .Bud Abbott and Lou Costello’s Vaudeville comedy routine, “Who’s on first./?”, Was taken as serious stuff that drives you crazy – Nothing comical about it…..
*”Who’s on First./?” was first performed in a comedy routine in the touring Vaudeville review, Hollywood Bandwagon, in 1937. Its subject is an attempt to identify the names of the players in their positions on a baseball field. Continuously revised, improvised, copyrighted in 1944, translated into many languages, the comedy routine’s message and enactment are understood widely, if not universally, as closely resembling one’s own experience.