deMause claims that to study ultimate causes of historical shifts and events one must study childhood. Thus, to investigate the foundations of psychohistory, it is necessary to begin a study of how children were treated from earlier times until the present. He believes that the earlier we probe into the history of childhood, we find a lower level of child care. At its lowest levels we find casual sexual abuse and commonplace abandonment and murder. deMause writes that even in the Bible one does not find any empathy expressed toward children's needs. Child restraints (swaddling) were thought necessary for the child and freed the adults from being bothered by the child's demands. Beatings were quite common and were accepted and approved by many. Naturally, these children in turn battered their children. Of all deMause's writings, his psychogenic theory of war as birth is undoubtedly the most widely known application of his historical methodology.
WAR AS BIRTH deMause feels that a country's foremost officials, rather than being leaders, are actually depositories of their citizens' projected feelings. Thus, to study the origins of war, it is not necessary to examine the interpersonal relations between leaders of the two countries with conflicts. As defenses against feelings of helplessness and rage become less effective, group projection results in the citizenry delegating their leaders as providers of aid. These group-fantasy projections finally get out of control and war becomes imperative. deMause studied the writings and speeches of the leaders involved before the outbreak of World War II and found ideas of birth images appearing quite frequently. Also encountered, as the individual attempts to reenact his birth trauma, are dream images of birth, including, claustrophobia, choking, drowning, suffocating and hanging relating to being stuck in the birth canal. deMause realized that it was not objective reality that was forcing leaders to feel birth images and the necessity to escape the birth confinement by going to war. The events preceding the outbreak of war are even analogous to the progression of pregnancy until eventually there is a "rupture" of diplomatic relations and the war (birth) is begun, accompanied with feelings of exhilaration and excitement as birth tension is dissipated. The author says that on some level we all know and yet do not know that going to war is attempting to relive our individual birth traumas. He believes that it is only by continuous defense stripping, introspection and analysis, can the psychohistorian reach the deeper, essential levels of our knowledge and behavior.
THE AMERICAN CHARACTER Is there a distinct American personality? The author feels there is, as he examines factors that were in play which made America what it is. deMause says that historians generally believe that events are caused by preceding events. Instead, psychohistorians ". . . study the psychogenic interaction between mother and child as the ultimate source of psychotypes, that is, new historical personalities." deMause says the American Revolution ". . .was first of all a group-fantasy, an assertion of counter-dependency from mother-England. . ." The cause of the revolution was not a question of 'no taxation without representation' since the taxes in question amounted to a pittance. Instead, deMause claims that it is necessary to search for the cause of the revolution in colonial group-fantasy. "Birth imagery infused the everyday language of politics during 1775-76," some even relating to the birth practices which were common at the time. He concludes that our revolution against mother England was not dissimilar to other historical movements. Our country came into being like others, by national acting-outs of war-as-birth. The author believes that history is " . . . the final receptacle for the repressed, the final resting-place for infantile traumata, the group-fantasy which at last re-enacts and makes real that which we would most disown -- our own childhood."
PSYCHOLOGICAL EVOLUTION As with biological evolutionary progress, over time a new species of homo-psychologicus is brought into being. deMause believes that the history of satisfying children's needs have gone through six phases or modes since recorded history. The earliest phase which was anti-child is described as Infanticidal. The most recent is the Helping phase. These psychogenic stages show the evolution of emotional closeness of the child to its parents and may be illustrated or synopsized as follows (copied with permission):
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Six Psychogenic Modes of the Evolution of Childhood
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deMause believes that as parent-child relationships evolve, they are ultimately translated into historical movements. The embodiment of the historical movement is the result of the search for love. This evolution does not occur at the same rate throughout the world. Some areas are further along on the progression to the upper scales of child-closeness than others.
FANTASY ANALYSIS
An essential tool of psychohistorians is the examination of public documents and speeches to reduce their words to a small fraction of their original size, to include perhaps an essential one per cent of words imbued with feeling and action. Negative words are removed and subjects and objects and group responses, including laughter, unusual breaks, etc. The fantasy analysis of this remaining verbiage reveals that the remaining words have " . . . to do with body memories, stemming from the primary trauma of all our lives: Birth." Psychohistorians have been accused of seeing hidden motivations behind each action, and other meanings in each word. This is a charge that they gleefully accept. The field of psychohistory is criticized by some as being trash and hogwash. More charitable detractors describe it as merely pretentious and outlandish.
THE FETAL ORIGINS OF HISTORY In a study of the ultimate origins of history, deMause probes even earlier into sources which help to explain his repressed trauma thesis that the history and culture of each age lay in the early beginnings of the individual. He believes that those origins can have their beginnings in the psychological environment of the womb. He considers this womb-drama so traumatic that it is continually repeated symbolically in historical cycles of death and rebirth. After presenting obstetrical evidence of this thesis, he begins the analysis of the psychological significance of the placenta to the fetus during gestation. The author believes that this is so because of its proximity to the fetus and because it's importance in the physiology of the fetus. It thus becomes the earliest object or fixation of the mental life of the fetus. Interruptions in the relationship between the fetus and its placenta produce the fetus' earliest feelings of anxiety. This relationship has two main stages: One in which the placenta is seen by the fetus as nurturing and the other where the placenta is perceived as poisonous. Events in childhood may influence the effects of the relationship between the fetus and his placenta. Thus a fetal trauma may be exacerbated or improved by a loving or toxic relationship with the parent. Historical review of many symbolic concepts of both the poisonous and nurturant placentas with the umbilical cord, both in ancient and modern times are given.
HISTORICAL GROUP FANTASIES Finally, the author examines the major group-fantasies of each historical period. His objective is to show how the forms of the fetal drama are changed as parent-child relationships evolve. He believes that as the degree of parent-child emotional closeness changes, these changes are reflected in historical movements. These historical group fantasies originate in the individual's psychic conflicts, but are projected to the group and are "connected to the individual's search for love." The group projection has the effect of alleviating the individual's feelings of rage. The breakdown of the group-fantasy results in a paranoid break-down with resultant turbulent historical action.
deMause examines several historical group-fantasies including a fantasy analysis of the Nixon tapes, presidential cycles, Carter's presidency, and major American historical group-fantasy cycles. He feels that with pre-natal knowledge and understanding of both ancient and modern group fantasies, history becomes understandable. The aim of all the study and analysis in psychohistory is so that we may be able to know consciously what it is we share unconsciously and thus one day could reduce the decisional holds that these continuing cycles of group fantasies have on us.
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