THE METHOD
OF PSYCHOHISTORY
An ongoing
project
by Philip Conover Lazo
THE CONCEPT
OF PSYCHOHISTORY
The concept of psychohistory refers to a series
of reflections on the nature of History that have been taking place since
antiquity inspired first by philosophy and ethics and in more recent times by
psychology and anthropology. The Republic
of Plato, The Politics of Aristotle, The philosophy of Confucius, The Utopia of Thomas More and Machiavelli’s
The Prince are examples of these
ideas.
From the XX century onwards the development of
psychology and psychoanalysis awoke a number of interdisciplinary reflections
that when combined with certain philosophical and ethical considerations
arising from a reflection on the special brutality and general degradation in
the decline of politics that lead into genocide and war during the XX century, have
inspired certain thinkers in the necessity of expanding historical analysis
with an interdisciplinary approach. And here the development of psychoanalysis
has been crucial as well as a knowledge of anthropology and prehistory.
It is in order to save ourselves from ourselves
that such an interdisciplinary approach has been necessary. Self-knowledge was
the original purpose of philosophy as well as the very origin of ethics. From Pleistocene
times the use of entheogenic plants led to the refinement of language. Expanded
awareness necessitated clear elocution. The discovery of formal relationships
between the elements of nature led to new discoveries, to practical applications
of these discoveries which in turn led to new language, to the elaboration of
new words to describe new functions.
Such is psychohistory,
it is a new tool.
THE METHOD
OF PSYCHOHISTORY
The purpose of the method of psychohistory is
to organize certain insights derived from the association of historical events,
or even current political events, with their phenomenological relation in time-space
and known psychological realities. And as we mention phenomenology we should
define what phenomenological logic is.
'Phenomenological origin' as Edmund Husserl defined it in his
Pure Phenomenology and Investigations in
Logic refers to Noema (noumena as
in Kant), nous or noos, mind in Greek, which is a thing in
itself, extant in time-space, independent of the human mind, different from
perception or a psychological event, or from phenomena as an object described
by man.
Then, to approximate Psychohistorical Noumena,
we would have to use an interdisciplinary approach. As an example we shall take a Noumena from contemporary
politics: gun control.
What would a gun be? In terms of psychohistorical
duration in time-space (from Brentano’s Psychology of Intentionality and
Bergson’s concept of historical duration) a gun is an extension of the arm, a
continuation of the historical function of the sword and the poignard. But like them a gun is in psychological
terms an unconscious extension of the male penis and with it men define
territoriality and power. Here we should note that territoriality is an
anthropological concept and that power is a political idea. So that in psychohistorical
terms a gun becomes a phallocratic tool that expresses territoriality and
power.
As in the sphere of individuals so in the
domain of nations: guns are used to assert supremacy and power. Internationally,
guns, in terms of world culture (following Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Message) and the very existence of arms, signify
war. And here is a case in point: Guns are a Noumena, a thing in themselves,
independent of men, they ARE war. Or rather they are the expression of “I will
punish you if you do not do as I want” (“A child is being punished” in On Psychopathology from Sigmund Freud;
Wilhelm Stekel: Sadism and Masochism).
Also in the psychopathology of violent crime involving guns and murder there is
a strong element of repressed homosexuality as in gang warfare (e.g. la Mara
Salvatrucha, the brownshirts of Eric Rohm vs. Himmler’s Gestapo or the tragic
murder in Kansas described by Truman Capote in his novel In Cold Blood, a clear case of repressed homosexuality between the
two murderers).
So that gun control to the ultraconservatives
in the United States signifies castration. This is why you see such hysterical
reactions to the possibility that a law banning guns might literally do away
with their penises (see, e.g., Piers Morgan’s interview with an anti-gun
control fanatic in a recent CNN television program).[1]
The whole question of gun control is a psychohistorical problem that has
tremendous implications for the future welfare of humanity.
This reaction to gun control in the United
States is part of the ‘fort apache’ complex, another psychohistorical
phenomenon that has to do with collective paranoia and supremacist phallocracy
in which large sectors of the American public see themselves threatened by the
outside world, particularly by the United Nations and ‘hostile’ countries that allegedly
possess atomic bombs. Also part of this syndrome is the fear of certain
conservative elements of the population of a threat by the ‘native’ populations
of the world. This syndrome contains a certain element of historical guilt and
sexual domination in which the threat of the possession of their women or even
of themselves by the ‘native populations' they have harmed in the past is an unconscious
psychological possibility; so that it is particularly offensive and threatening
that a ‘black man’, President Obama, wants to take away their guns.
[1] Interview available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtyKofFih8Y
(last visit, February 23, 2013).
