Some Considerations On Psycho‐History
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 16068028 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Joseph M Woods (The author is Associate Professor of History in Atkinson College at York University, Ontario, Canada., corresponding author) |
| Year | 1974 |
| Volume | 36 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 722-735 |
| Publication date | 1974-08-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Historian (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-2370 • E-ISSN: 1540-6563 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1540-6563.1974.tb00445.x |
| OpenAlex | W2051258589 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 7 |
Notes1. February 22, and March 8, 1973.2. We refer here to psychoanalysts who have received their training at Institutes accredited by the American Psychoanalytic Association. For further detail see A Glossary of Psychoanalytic Terms and Concepts, ed. by Burness E. Moore and Bernard D. Fine (2nd ed.; New York, 1968), 9–11.3. Myer Mendelson, Psychoanalytic Concepts of Depression (Springfield, Ill., 1960), 137. Mendelson points out that there is “but limited consensus among psychoanalytic writers on depression. Disagreement is acute on numerous issues.”4. Coles, New York Review of Books, Feb. 22, 1973, 18, 19, 21. 5. The New Yorker, Jan. 14, 1974.6. Coles, New York Review of Books, Mar. 8, 1973, 27. 7. Lionel Trilling, Introduction to The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud by Ernest Jones. Edited and abridged byLionel Trilling and Steven Marcus (New York, 1963), vii.8. See Makers of Modern Social Science: Sigmund freud, ed. Paul Roazen (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1973), editor's introduction.9. See Helen H. Tartakoff, “The Normal Personality in Our Culture and the Nobel Prize Complex,” in R. M. Loewenstein et al., Psychoanalytis: A General Psychology (New Yolk, 1966), 222–252; and Annie Reich, “Pathologic Forms of Self‐Esteem Regulation,” Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 25 (1960), 215–232.10. The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report (New York, 1972).11. V. S. Pritchett, Balzac (New York, 1978).12. Panel. “The Methodology of Psychoanalytic Biography,” reported by John E. Gedo, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 20 (1972), 638–649. Cited hereafter as Gedo. Also Bernard C. Meyer, “Some Reflections on the Contributions of Psychoanalysis to Biography,” in Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Science, I, ed. R. R. Holt and E. Peterfreund (New York, 1972), 373–391. Cited hereafter as Meyer. 13. By psychoanalytic theory here, I mean that body of theory which, to speak only of the United States, is taught at psychoanalytic training institutes accredited by the American Psychoanalytic Association and to the literature which appears in such journals as International Journal of Psychoanalysis, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Psychoanalytic Quarterly, American Imago, and such annuals as The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child.14. Rubin Blanck and Gerturde Blanck, Marriage and Personal Development (New York, 1968), 12.15. This brief summary of the importance of the mother‐child relationship for the development of personality is derived from Rubin Blanck and Gertrude Blanck, Marriage and Personal Development, especially Chapters 2, 5, 6, and 7 and from Otto F. Kernberg, “Early Ego Integration and Object Relations,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 193 (August 25, 1972), 233–247. Some of the major contributors to ego‐psychology and object relations theory are John Bowlby, Erik Erikson, W. R. D. Fairbairn, Anna Freud, Heinz Hartmann, Edith Jacobson, Otto Kernberg, Melanie Klein, Margaret Mahler, René Spitz, D. W. Winnicott. A list of Significant writings will be found in the bibliography of the Blancks' book and in the footnotes of the Kernberg article. 16. Otto F. Kernberg, “Borderline Personality Organization,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 15 (1967), 641–685; “Factors in the Psychoanalytic Treatment of Narcissistic Personalities,”Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 18 (1970), 51–85; and “A Psychoanalytic Classification of Character Pathology,”Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 18 (1970), 800–822. 17. Blanck and Blanck, Marriage, 78.18. See Gedo, “The Methodology of Psychoanalytic Biography,” 641–643. It would seem that analytic biography may be more successful with literary figures than with generals and politicians for the works of the former allow access to their fantasies.19. Rudolf Rinion's Frau Lou: Nietzsche's Wayward Disciple (Princeton, 1968) has been criticized by Bernard F. Meyer, for instance, as an example of “wild analysis” because Binion with neither evidence nor argument “unhesitatingly announces the cause of his subject's unhappy childhood: ‘a craving for her father excited by excretion and attended by darkling visions of re‐entering his bowel‐womb to repossess his penis.’ [p. 6] Now aside from wondering what this sentence might mean [Dr. Meyer continues] the reader may justly ask by what route the author arrived there, for there is nothing in the text up to this point — 31 lines of the book so far — that has paved the way for any conclusion whatever, let alone this somewhat extravagant one. Psychoanalysis is not an arcanum for an exercise in revealed truth; neither is it in the nature of its methodology nor in that of any scientific discipline, for that matter, to initiate a study or an experiment with an unproved conclusion.” Meyer, “Some Reflections...,” 374. Later in his essay, Meyer notes that Binion, in his preoccupation with Fran Lou's “charged up obsession with famous men, overlooks or minimizes the role of maternal influences both in his subject and in those who moved about her.” Ibid., 378–379.20. Gedo, “The Methodology of Psychoanalytic Biography,” 641.21. Miles F. Shore, “Henry VIII and the Crisis of Generativity,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 2 (Spring, 1972), 359–390. 22. Ralph Greenson, “On Gambling,” American Imago, 4 (April 1947), 70. Myer Mendelson has pointed out that there is disagreement among analysts about “the period in childhood which is most critical for the predisposition to depression.” Mendelson, Psychoanalytic Concepts of Depression, 158. 23. Not all narcissistic personalities have the same degree of pathology. This category of mental illness falls between neurosis and psychosis, but some are closer to neurosis and some to psychosis (borderline personality disorders). Hitler, for instance, has been diagnosed as a “narcissistic personality with overt borderline characteristics.” See Norbert Bromberg, “Hitler's Character and Its Development,” American Imago, 28 (1971), 289–303. It should be noted that the narcissistic personality represents pathological narcissism. Normal narcissism is evident in “healthy self‐esteem.”. 24. Edith Jacobson, The Self and the Object World (New York, 1964), 203–204.25. Helen H. Tartakoff, “The Normal Personality in Our Culture and the Nobel Prize Complex,” in Loewenstein, Psychoanalysis, 233, 242. 26. Ralph Greenson, “On Gambling,” 68.27. Annie Reich, “Pathologic Forms of Self‐Esteem Regulation,” 226.28. Paulina F. Kernberg, “The Course of the Analysis of a Narcissistic Personality with Hysterical and Compulsive Features,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 19 (1971), 453. 29. Paulina F. Kernberg, “The Course of the Analysis of a Narcissistic Personality with Hysterical and Compulsive Features,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 19 (1971), 453. 30. Norbert Bromberg, “Hitler's Character and Its Development,” 298.31. Alexander and Juliet George suggest that high accomplishment in politcial life may be positively correlated not only with neurosis but with even more pathological states. Psychology Today (June 1973), 98.32. Childhood and Society (New York, 1963, paperback edition), 341.33. See Coles, New York Review of Books, March 8, 1973, 25–26 Hans Gatzske, “Hitler and Psychohistory,” in American Historical Review, 78 (April 1973), 394–401. See also Erik H. Erikson, Childhood and Society, 329–330. Erikson is not criticizing Langer's book directly, and his essay gives no indication that he has seen the original report; he is criticizing, however, the view that Hitler's behavior can be adequately explained by the “Oedipus complex. 34. Norbert Bromberg, “Hitler's Character and Its Development.”35. R. G. L. Waite, “Adolf Hitler's Guilt Feelings: A Problem in History and Psychology,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, I (Winter, 1971), 229–249. This article gives many instances of Hitler's self‐defeating behavior which historians might ordinarily pass over, but not all of them are equally plausible. 36. Otto F. Kernberg, “Prognostic Considerations Regarding Borderline Personality Organization,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 19 (1971), 610. 37. Childhood and Society, 329.38. Otto F. Kernberg, “Early Ego Integration and Object Relations,” 242, and “Prognostic Considerations Regarding Borderline Personality Organization,” 608–611.39. Charles Rycroft, Neurosis and Anxiety (London, 1971, Pelican paperback), 54.40. L. Eidelberg, “Humiliation and Masochism,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 7 (1959), 274–284. 41. Otto F. Kernberg, “Prognostic Considerations Regarding Borderline Personality Organization,” 610.42. The phrase is Alfred Kazin's.43. Edmund Wilson, Patriotic Gore (New York, 1969, paperback edition), 107.44. Edmund Wilson, Patriotic Gore (New York, 1969, paperback edition), 108.45. Edmund Wilson, Patriotic Gore (New York, 1969, paperback edition), 129.46. Wilson, To the Finland Station (New York, 1972), 178–179.47. For a discussion of different interpretations by two analysts of an important episode in Goethe's life and the impossibility of deciding which interpretation is valid, see Gedo, “Methodology of Psychoanalytic Biography,” 640.48. H. Robert Blank, review of Erikson's Gandhi's Truth, Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 41 (1972), 123–127
Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology · History
| Citations per year | 0.25 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2022 - 2022 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |