Starting with the Spring 2024 Issue of the Journal of Psycyhohistory, we began publishing Jay Gonen’s manuscript of his fifth and final book, written before he died in 2022 at the age of 88, titled The World and the Self in Early 20th Century Literature. We will be publishing all seven chapters of the book serially — in consecutive issues of the journal. In this issue, we will be publishing Chapter 5 (Part 2).
Articles
The Psychology of the Sycophant, Susan Kavaler-Adler
ABSTRACT: This paper addresses the profound psychological connection between the destruction of democracy in the U.S. today and the primal developmental arrest trauma underlying the behavior of the obsequious sycophant followers, who allow an autocratic leader to manifest the enormity of his destructive political power. To describe the sycophant phenomenon as an extreme of “Closet Narcissism,” the urge to merge in the Closet Narcissist is described and referenced in relation to the “Grandiose Narcissist,” with the understanding that the Grandiose Narcissist can demonstrate the most malignant form of Narcissism and psychopathic behavior. Psychoanalytic theorists are cited to illustrate the primal infant/toddler (preoedipal) trauma regarding the failure of separation out of early mother-infant fusion. Films of famous filmmakers, as well as fairytales and Jungian collective unconscious archetypical myths, are also cited to give a full picture of the entrapment that a whole country, and by political extension, the entire world, can suffer when sycophants proliferate and are employed to carry out the delusional dreams and agendas of a Malignant Narcissist.
What Loads the Guns of Unseen, Desperate Children: Parental, School, Cultural, and Societal Influences of Adolescent Mass School Shootings, Nina E. Cerfolia
ABSTRACT: In the developed world, gun violence is a uniquely American epidemic. The collusion among parents, educators, administrators, law enforcement, and mental health workers served to minimize or deny warning signs of these adolescent school shooters. These children are vulnerable to violence, and their parents, through neglect and abuse, often use them as proxies to unconsciously express their abandonment and rage.
Weaponized Disinformation Through Dread: Russia, Nuclear Fear, and the Geopolitical Undermining of Climate Policy, Ryanne Fairchild
ABSTRACT: The Western democracies’ delay in addressing climate change is not simply a failure of political will or economic considerations but is a manufactured outcome of psychological manipulation and foreign interference. Drawing on a psychohistorical framework, state-sponsored disinformation operations—most egregiously the Russian ones—have systematically exploited cognitive biases such as: dread risk as an affect heuristic, group identity dynamics, and other psychological concepts informed by psychoanalysis, serving to sabotage decarbonization efforts. The technically proven, scalable, geographically flexible, and low-carbon nuclear power solution has become the symbol of an ideological and cultural conflict marked by the use of emotional framing and hybrid psychological warfare. The German Atomausstieg (Nuclear power phase-out) serves as a central case study of the de-nuclearization movement, revealing how historical trauma-based institutional mistrust, manipulated public sentiment, and foreign-backed ideological co-option led to increased fossil fuel dependency and geopolitical vulnerability. Any path forward on climate action must recognize and resist the weaponization of these collective psychological vulnerabilities, reclaiming evidence-based policy from a landscape increasingly shaped by the psychological warfare of disinformation from foreign actors.
Keywords: Anti-nuclear, Psychological Warfare, Psychological Operations, Cognitive Bias, Moral Panic, Russian Disinformation, Dread Risk, Climate Change, Climate Disinformation
The Psychopathology of Jonathan Sewall, Michael E. Fass
ABSTRACT: This article is a detailed psycho-historical study of the life of Jonathan Sewall, the last Attorney-General of Massachusetts Bay Colony, a best friend of John Adams, and an exiled American loyalist. Although Sewall’s entire life is discussed, the major emphasis of this article is Sewall’s years of exile in England and the mental breakdown he suffered. While others have discussed this breakdown (vividly described in a personal letter), this article attempts to discuss his mental illness in contemporary psychological terms with specific diagnosis. This article concludes with a potential caution for historians who work with Loyalist manuscripts and diaries.
Book Excerpt
Virginia Woolf: Constructing the Identity of a Poet (Chapter 5, Part 2), Jay Y. Gonen
Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: A Biography, is a curious work of fiction because, even though it is a bona fide novel, it was written under the guise of a different literary form—a biography, including portrait paint- ings and an index. This format evoked some confusion among readers and critics concerning the degree to which the work was meant to be a biography of Woolf’s lesbian lover, Vita Sackville-West, or an autobiography of Virginia Woolf herself, or a work of fiction, which like most novels, draws from the author’s imagination as well as real-life experiences. The last option seems the most plausible to me since, in the novel, Woolf never tired of putting the spotlight on the shortcomings of biographies. Throughout the work, she alluded to the inadequacy of the historical and biographical approach to flesh out the truly important events in the inner life of the protagonist.
Psychohistorical Perspectives: Poetry
Run, Rabbit, Run, A Narrative Poem, Howard F. Stein
Hospitals, nursing homes, Assisted living, long-term care, One machine, Interchangeable parts.
Get more out of less, Efficiency, the highest good (No one dare say, “profit”), Nurses and their assistants,
All overworked, underpaid— Cliches by now—
Here we call it “Rode hard
And put up wet.”
Run, rabbit, run.
Uniforms, uniformity,
No time to take time,
Though a few linger to talk,
Chancing reprimands,
Lookin’ good in masks of ordinariness— As they walk on, A tense tightrope.
But run, rabbit, run
….
Tension in the Old Folks Home, A Narrative Poem After Franz Kafka, Howard F. Stein
So odd a thing, hardly Noticeable at first.
I arrived in the dining room Of the old folks’ home, Walked toward the table Where I sat until yesterday With the same group of people Until they moved on or died, And new residents arrived. From across the room,
I noticed an empty space Where my chair usually stood.
Only slightly irked,
I hobbled to an empty nearby table, Dragged a chair to my own. Everything else there was in place: Paper mat, ceramic plate,
Cup and saucer, glass for iced tea
Or lemonade, stainless steel utensils Bundled in a paper napkin.
The same thing happened
On several of the following days—
…
leftovers, Donald Mender
jim slid his key into the cylinder and encountered the usual rough, dry resistance
he shrugged and muttered
I know after years of ownership how to handle this pushback
he deftly jiggled, poked and slapped the fatiguing latch every which way until the deadbolt finally gave in
….