Professional Documents
Culture Documents
By PatrickHalston
History480
Dr. Baskerville
Feb.21 | 20OO
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Patrick: Why shouldI believeanythingyou haveto tell me?- you arenot, afterall, the real
editorialboardof thejournal,merelymy bestrepresentation
of it.
Journal: Everreadhistory?
Patrick: Of course.Oh, I get it - writersof history,unlessits recenthistory,alsopresentto the
of a time they themselveswerenever
readera simulacrum:their bestrepresentation
on sourcesI hadearlieron in this history
witnessto. This remindsme of a discussion
{
four eighty course,but that discussiondid not trivi alize the fact that historianswere
l' not witnessto history,but, instead,leanttowardsmakingit explicit in the structureof
the historians'work by breakingup the narrativewith chartsandtablesandso on.
Journal: Done.
Journal: Yes, they are all suspect. We assumethat the problem psychobiographersare mainly
oogreat"men. They are
interestedin solving is how to absorbthe phallic potency of
like shamans,but rather than communing with Gods while traversing the world of
spirit, they commune with "great" men - demi-gods - in the mystical realm they like
to call the past.
Patrick: This is supposedto be a paper about sources- the kinds your journal typically uses
to get at the problemsyou want to solve. Thesearistocraticpsychobiographies.. .
before nineteen ninety, lets say in nineteeneighty five, what kifs of sourceswould be
U
w
referredto constructa psychobiography?
Journal: personaljournalsarethe mostcommonlyusedprimary
Letters,autobiographies,
just thosewrittenby the subjectof the study,but also
sources.Not necessarily
thosewritten abouthim (her)by others.
Patrick: In Andrew Brink's essayon BertrandRussellhe mentionsthat Russellin his own
autobiographycandidlyreportswhat D.H. Lawrencehadto sayabouthim.
Journal: Carefulwith the "candidly" part - how exactlydoesBrink know that Russellwas
beingcandid. It is an inappropriateinsertionwhich lessonsthe likelihoodthat the
readerwill wonderhimself(herself)whetherRussellis providingus with an accurate
simulacrumof whatLawrenceactuallysaidto him. You haveto be carefulwith
Thesearesourcescreatedwith alaryereadingpublic in mind, and
autobiographies.
might, althoughthey may not, vary from what is put down in privatedocuments.
Patrick: This couldbe doublecheckedby the author.
Journal: Certainly. But despitethe fact that Brink describeslettersandRussell'sjournal with
differentmetaphors- lettersas"confessions", journal asa " balancesheet"- he
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with his mother as with his father as Erickson suggested. What problem would the
current editorial board have with this psychobiography?
Journal: Okay. We get a twenty page article telling us essentiallythat only a
psychobiographercan get at Luther's real motivations. A mere historian would have
and seemto do things for the reasonshistorians have said they do things. Another
essayin eighty five doesthe samething. Faris Kirland's essayon the French military
their crapping, eating and screaming",beings who "don't know anything, they aren't
even capableof doing anything, they don't perform anything . . . [and are] inferior
to adults." Interestingly, Brink tell us that Luther loved children.
Patrick: Why is this interesting?
Journal: In general, we assumethat it is very difficult for most scholarsto admit that the bulk
of parents in the past were abusiveto their children.
Patrick: You ^"u{*"convinced that you haveproventhis allegedabuseoccurred.
Journal: No, we mean what we said. For example, when the historian Roger Thompson tries
to argue that parenting in Middlesex County, Massachusefisduring the later part of
the seventeenthcentury was preffy good from his researchinto three court cases- the
only casesduring a frfu year period - we assumethat what Thompson is really trying
to do is prove writers like Lloyd deMause,Edward phorter and Lawrence Stone
wrong. Thereby he needn't have to considerthe uncomfortablepossibility that his
own childhood may not have been as rosy as he might like to imagine it was. The
three most powerful words in the English language:don't dish mom.
Patrick: That's four words, or at least three and a half. Anyway your whole argument seems
quite speculative;it wouldn't hold up in court.
Journal: Yes, but we are all agreedthat the primary purpose of all our psychic defense
mechanismsis to prevent us from re-experiencingour early traumas.Denial is a
one such defensemechanism. Speakingof courts. . .
Patrick: Thompson should have looked at something other than court records to prove his
case?
Journal: Yes. Typically court recordstell us liftle about the abuseof children. It isn't only
that you're never sure whether the court casesrepresentonly extreme examples of
proof of a happy home. And in generalhe should have been more inventive. Many
psychohistorianshave found parish recordsto be rich sourcesof information. You can
get some idea of the frequency of infanticide by looking to parish birth records
and comparing male and female birth ratios . Karen Taylor, also in eighty five, finds
evidenceof the sexualabuseof children by looking at casesof VD in medicaljournals.
Patrick: She trusted what these doctors had to say?
Journal: Oh no! If you listened to the doctors sexual abusenever happened. They were
as conservative as the courts who convicted very few people for the abuseof children
at the time. But modern science,with its enhancedunderstandingof viruses, and
modern scientists,who are more willing to acceptnot only that parents do use
children for sexual purposes,but also that it does harm the child, look at the data
a century ago as clear evidencethat sexualcontact did occur between children and
parents.
Patrick: But what if there was other evidencesuggestingthat this was the case. Like, for
example, Freud, during the time of Taylor's period of study, saying that "sexual
assaultson small children happentoo often for them to have any aetiological
importance.. .."
Journal: Collaborating evidenceis key, but you do have to make sure that it really is
collaborative. Freud may not have had Britain and the U.S. in mind when he made that
statement,although it is quite possible that he in fact did, or that it is still relevant in
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suggesta changein child rearing practicesaround the sixteenth century. He notes that
the images of Mary found in parishesand manuscriptsare less "godly" - her halo is
absent,for example - than in previous centuries. Given further evidence,like the same
tendency not to reify Mary as can be found, according to Schwartz, in Luther's
Journal: We'd like to end by mentioning that we are willing to make predictions. The journal is
not simply about the past, in fact, deMausemeant for the term "psychohistory" to
read 'opsychosocial."Psychosocial,however,is a tautology in our circle, so the
like to conclude from their studiesof the past that man at all times is basically the
same:generally flawed, although sometimesnoble. If true, this alone tells us a great
deal about the future. Also, they are willing to credit "great'omen of the past, like de
Tocqueville with accuratepredictions, and there is a sensethat the more writings from
o'gteat"people you have read, the better you are able to oosee"ahead- and not simply