Applied Free Association for Research in Psychohistory, Seth Allcorn & Howard F. Stein

Abstract: Free association, a core of psychoanalytic technique, is an underappreciated omnipresence in our daily lives. We do it in the midst of doing “something else” that is deliberate, and conscious. Psychohistorians free associate as they study group history, psychobiography, and leader-follower relations. It is likewise a presence, and we suggest coping mechanism, when bearing witness to contemporary events that may be heartening, but are all too often destructive to others, to groups, to organizations, and to nations. Free association shares conceptual elements with reflection, mindfulness, daydreams, and deja vu. It requires minimizing control over one’s thoughts and self-editing and instead requires allowing mindful awareness to drift —while observing oneself from a third position (Ogden, 1989). In this article, we explore free association as a contribution to psychohistorical inquiry and interpretation. We provide illustrations of how, as psychohistorians, embracing free association can enhance both understanding one’s own experience and sense making of the past and present.

Tulsa 1921: Two Worlds Colliding, Tess M. Nix

Abstract: Neither economics nor culture dominated 1920s Tulsa but, instead, influenced and masked each other. In 1921 Tulsa, the dominant messaging was cultural, the underlying drivers were economic, and, threaded throughout, deep psychological drivers pushed people toward unconscious actions and often unfortunate conclusions. Black and white Tulsans each felt moral certitude and sought moral restoration. But neither Tulsa had any conception of the other.

On the Way to Taking Responsibility for the Historical Process that We Ourselves Are, Ludwig Janus

Abstract: The history of humanity has been astonishingly recorded and described in the context of historical science over the last 200 years. It is a creative transformation from the simple but fundamental inventions of the tribal cultures of the Stone Age to the complex technical world in which we live today —after the development of science and technology in the 19th century. This dynamic development of the structure of a civilization and cultural world interacts with a dynamic development of individual mentalities, the shaping of relationships and the social world. For a good 100 years, the dynamics of individual development and the resonance of earliest experiences in later experiences and behavior have been researched in the context of various psychotherapies. This developmental knowledge can now be constructively applied in the context of psychohistory to understanding the inner dynamics of mentality transformations in the course of human history, as presented in this text. The after-effects of pre-linguistic experiences at both the individual and collective level play a role that has not yet been sufficiently recognized in terms of its significance. The problem is that these experiences are only insufficiently represented at the language level. This is essentially due to immaturity at birth, which is why we are dependent on empathetic support from parental caregivers, who, to a certain extent, have to be a substitute for the prefrontal cortex, which is not yet functioning. The individual’s development evolves in the gradual reflexive integration of pre-linguistic experiences in the course of development —within the frame of an empathetic relationship with the parents, or as Sigmund Freud put it, “Where It was, I shall become.” This developmental principle also essentially determines collective social and cultural development.

Book Excerpt

The World and the Self in Early Twentieth-Century Literature, Jay Y. Gonen

CHAPTER  4.  FRANZ KAFKA:  FACING THE SYSTEM.

Franz Kafka’s name has become associated with the notion of the modern world gone berserk. His portrayals of mindless as well as heartless organizations, which systematically and thoroughly grind down unfortunate individuals, have become symbols of the monstrosity of the modern age. The term Kafkaesque now serves as a common, even classic, way for condemning bureaucracies specifically but also modern society in general. It became part and parcel of the conception of the malaise of the modern world in which, in one fashion or another, an individual finds himself facing a crazy order of things that we shall term here “the system.” Included in the notion of the Kafkaesque is the basic assumption that the individual is essentially helpless in trying to oppose the system. Because the system is so powerful yet mindless or perhaps mad, it will simply not budge. It will keep on grinding until the doomed individual is completely pulverized. This is the unlucky lot of modern man, who is thrust into a contemporary world in which the development of oppressive, albeit dysfunctional, systems have become routine. What can individuals do? How can any person face the system with even a modicum of success?  Perhaps there is nothing that he can do short of flailing in all directions! As can be learned from two novels by Kafka, the question is deceptively simple while the answers are complicated. Therefore, we shall seek the answers in two novels The Castle and The Trial.

Book Reviews

The Enduring Effects of Prenatal Experiences – Echoes from the Womb, Ludwig Janus, Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2024, Translated by Terence Dowling, Reviewed by Christian Lackner

Ludwig Janus is a prominent proponent within the international psychohistory community. He has been researching, publishing and teaching about what is occurring during human pre- and perinatal life for decades. Notably considered as one of the leading psychohistorians, he continuously has been pushing to position psychohistorical knowledge and revelations in the field of social sciences and open it up for a broader discussion….

This most recently published book is surely one of his major works. The third edition of the original German version came out in 2024, and shortly afterwards the English translation followed. Whoever reads Janus’s works must prepare to be confronted with a complex transdisciplinary text, explaining the importance of experiences during the very early period of human life — not only for the mental state of individuals — but for the conditions of societies and their psychogenic evolution as well.

Otto Rank was one of the first to presume that prenatal experiences are of more importance than thought of so far, e.g., by Sigmund Freud. The advanced research methods and analytical tools of our days reveal new data, proving that the “4^th World” has much more impact on our “real life” than we might think. With his studies on the history of childhood and the later application of a theory of psychogenic evolution, Lloyd deMause has shown how early childhood traumata are being restaged e.g., in political actions that are responsible for social conflicts within and between nations. Both, Janus and deMause convincingly give attribution to the early childhood drama as a causal factor for the creation of myths and violence.

Forging New Paths: Reflections on History, Culture and Psyche.

Essays by David Beisel; Irene Javors. Amazon Publishing, 2024, Reviewed by Peter W. Petschauer

This review needs to begin with David Beisel’s quote:

Today is eighth of December 2022, a day after the 81st anniversary of Pearl Harbor. Except for brief appearances by [a] historian … and [a] retired admiral in the news yesterday, no one in the US media … mentioned the anniversary. The same happened last year, unprecedented in my lifetime. Even the New York Times seems to sense something amiss when the front page of its 4 December 2022 Sunday Opinion Section wondered, apocalyptically, if WWIII ‘Begins with Forgetting.’ Does the disappearance of the generation that lived through the last global war, the headline asked, mean lost memory ‘will stumble us into the catastrophe?’ Are we doomed once again to fail to learn the lessons of history?” (72)

Earlier in the slender volume, Biesel postulates that the atrocities of the French farmers in Algeria must be linked to the horrific abuses committed on French women in the resistance by the German occupation forces during WWII. Kwame Anthony Appiah vividly records that inhumanity. As the FLN specialized in its own forms of brutality, the French settlers responded viciously. Beisel comes to the conclusion that, “Both sides – Algerian rebels, and French settlers – committed atrocities, replaying the self-defeating emotional legacy of the Second World War. As Appiah writes, the usual techniques of killing and torture amounted to what ‘a psychoanalyst would call a repetition compulsion — the reenactment of early trauma.’” (39)

….

Irene Javors’ essays accompany this broader, uncomfortable future reality; the phrase she highlights is from Antonio Gramsci: ‘“The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be borne; now it is time for monsters.”’ (119). The quote accompanies what she said on the previous page, namely that,

Covid ripped off the veil of the illusion that everything was great in our society. Whatever we thought was working has been shown not to be working. In this Covid world, we are forced to see how the system is failing. We are living from one crisis to another: climate change, political, corruption, threats to our democracy, terrorism, racism, antisemitism, censorship, misogyny, violence against LGBTQ individuals, mass shootings, unemployment, failing, public transportation systems, homelessness, failing hospitals, mental health crises, vast economic inequalities, and the list goes on and on. (118)