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Current problems in psychohistory
APPLIED PSYCHOANALYSIS-HISTORY
Current Problems Charles Lb
in Psychohistory K. Hofling
C
HARACTER IS DESTINY,” said Heraclitus. “It is natural to the human character” said Tacitus, “to hate him whom you have injured.” Both of these famous observations are, in their original contexts, psychohistorical statements. Plutarch related certain aspects of Themistocles’s ambitious strivings to his awareness of his mother’s not having been of pure Athenian blood, and he related the intense rivalry existing between Aristides and Themistocles to their having been brought up together as boys. Herodotus was greatly interested in what nowadays would be considered social psychology. In his Confessions, St. Augustine plumbed his own psychology to remarkable depths. Hegel said, “The first glance at history convinces us that the actions of men proceed from their needs, their passions, their characters and talents. . . .” The idea that history-particularly the history of individuals, but also, to an extent, the history of groups, of peoples, and nations-cannot be thoroughly comprehended without some insight into such psychological matters as motives, conflicts, and character is clearly an old one. It has been subscribed to by most writers of creative literature and by a substantial number of historians, both ancient and modern. That aspect of psychohistory now called “profiling” appears to have been still more widely practiced and of a still more venerable antiquity. It is, for example, well-known that Elizabeth I of England made great efforts to be informed of the psychological vulnerabilities of her adversaries, both actual and potential, and the author of I Samuel tells us that Saul sought diligently to find a psychological weakness in his potential rival, young David. With all of this background, it is nevertheless true that psychohistory, psychobiography, and psychological profiling have become more conspicuous and psychohistorians and psychobiographers more active and more confident, in recent times than ever before. This development is consonant with the genera1 increase in psychological-mindedness of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but it is more particularly the result of one specific aspect of that increase, namely, the advent of psychoanalysis, a psychology which has demonstrated the ability to shed light at times upon preconscious and unconscious elements in mental life. A far more elaborate motivational psychology has been worked out in the twentieth century than has ever existed before. Given the right circumstances, a psychoanalytically trained student of human behavior can come to a quite re-
From the Department of Psychiatry, College ofMedicine. St. Louis University. St. Louis. Mu. K. Hofling, M.D.: Professor of Psychiatry. College ofMedicine. St. Louis University. St. Louis, MO. and Visiting Professor of Psychiatry, College Medicine.University of Cincinnari. Cincinnari, Ohio. Reprint requests should be addressed to Charles K. Hofling, M.D., 1221 S. Grand Blvd.. St. Louis, MO. 63104. o 1976 b_vGrune &Stratton, Inc. Charles
of
Comprehensive Psychiatry, Vol. 17. No. 1 (January/February). 1976
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of the motivational forces, significant inner adaptive measures his subject. is actually to do (at in advance the subject’s conscious knowledge them. knowledge, the or psychoanalyst make predictions while far achieving complete nevertheless tend prove correct a frequency is clearly that attributable mere chance. is, of taken for in therapeutic that the or psychoanalytically psychotherapist is in oba profound yet an view of subject by quirks and of his including not his personal but-perhaps a matter-his value Given the usual integrity, difficulty is moderated by continuing presence the patient. an inis given the patient the basic (to him) some of thoughts, sensations, or overt the patient’s to the terpretation usually (in time) evidence as both its of corand its of importance. is not, course, that denial necessarily that the is incorrect for that that a verbal acceptance that it correct); the of the terpretation is by its a significant, predictable, effect the patient’s status and his behavior. it is releasing effect which the gains in and eventually the ability behave more The production such an tends to the correctness the interpretation, the magnitude the effect with its of significance. that he well-trained in or at in dynamic chiatry, one see that psychohistorian is bound to at least serious difficulties those encountered the traditional torian. The of the is the fact that, essentially all the psychohistorian not examined subjects in sense that psychoanalyst or psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapist examined his He has observed and with his in the of the relationship. That to say, major source data will lacking. The difficulty-one of even greater that the must do the immense of being to test interpretations, as correctness and significance, by noting his subjects’ reactions to them, immediate and delayed. This lack has the result that the psychohistorian, unless he takes carefully designed precautions, is far more likely than the psychoanalyst, not necessarily to have various biases, but to be swayed by them in his interpretations. It is certainly to be noted that the psychohistorian, assuming now (an assumption that is often invalid) that he has been well trained in historiography, has also a number of advantages over the psychoanalyst or psychotherapist with respect to his being able to obtain a thorough view of those persons (and groups) forming a significant portion of his subject matter. It may suffice to our present purposes to mention only two of these advantages. One has to do with the psychohistorian’s sources of data. He is by no means confined, if he is writing a biography, and the times) Using
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to material emanating from his subject (diaries, letters, legal documents, published writings, etc.), or, if he is writing a general history, to material emanating from those persons in whom he is especially interested (or from those groups or institutions which play major roles in his total story). Being interested in a broad, complex, and integrated picture, he is aware of-and specifically prepared to find and use-what the psychiatrist would call “outside sources.” Since he is especially interested in “psychic reality,” the psychiatrist, and notably the psychoanalyst, may not avail himself of material pertaining to his patient which can only be obtained from others. (This limitation may not, of course, be a serious one with respect to purely psychotherapeutic purposes, but it may be quite serious with respect to purposes which require a comprehensive view of the individual in his world.) A second clear advantage of the psychohistorian is that he has typically written of the past. (It is, indeed, questionable whether anything which deserves to be called history, naturally including psychohistory, can be written about the present.) This circumstance clearly favors-although it does not guarantee-a scholarly detachment. Moreover, it means that all the returns are in. That is to say, the nature and significance of many human interactions can be best judged by their effects, and to the historian, including the psychohistorian, a great many of these effects are known. For the psychoanalyst or psychotherapist, many of the effects of his patient’s interaction with other persons and groups lie, to some extent, in the future, for it is a matter of weighing probabilities-he does not know the full outcome. Dejining Psychohistory
Before going further in the discussion, it may be of value to offer certain working definitions (not tightly drawn), in the light of which various problems in the areas of ethics and scholarship can be considered.* Psychohistory is that branch of history which places special emphasis on the psychology of the individuals and groups under consideration, as this psychology develops and interacts with the environment, with particular attention typically being given to problems of motivation, psychic conflict, and adaptation, in both their conscious and unconscious aspects. Psychobiography is a subdivision of psychohistory (either standing alone or forming one element of a more comprehensive psychohistorical work) which treats the life of an individual according to psychohistorical principles. The more the subject of a psychobiography is perceived as a part of a psychosocial matrix including other significant figures and other forces operative in his milieu, the more such a work comes to resemble a work of general psychohistory. (Erikson’s Young Man Luther, for example, is by no means just a study of the man, but a study of the man in his world.) Psychiatric profiling is perhaps better described than defined. Usually undertaken from practical rather than from scholarly considerations, it bears a
*These
definitions
are taken
from the forthcoming
tion’s Task Force on Psychohistory.
report of the American
Psychiatric
Associa-
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relationship to psychohistory which is rather analogous to that borne by the clinical and dynamic diagnoses of a patient to a thorough formulation including a (psycho) genetic diagnosis. The psychiatric profile typically concerns itself essentially with a cross-sectional, rather than a three-dimensional, portrayal; i.e., with an analysis of the kind of person the subject is and with the probable nature of his behavior under various contingencies, rather than with an analysis of how he came to be what he is. The more a psychiatric profile takes into consideration the developmental features, the more it comes to resemble psychobiography, and, indeed, there is a considerable overlapping in the usage of the two designations. Ethical Considerations
Some idea of the scope of the ethical problems involved in the writing of psychohistory can be conveyed merely by listing a number of the relevant variables. (1) Is the study for publication, for private use, or for governmental use? Is it written for profit? (2) Is the subject an individual or a group (family, organization or institution, community, nation)? (3) If the subject is an individual, is he still alive? If it is a group, is the group still in existence and actively functioning? (4) Is the study to be based (in part) upon interviews with the subject or subjects? (5) Is the individual or group extranational? If it is extranational, is it an allied, a neutral, or a hostile power? (6) Is the study to be made with the informed consent of the individual or group? (7) Is the author of the study a psychiatrist and/or psychoanalyst, a historian, or a journalist? It is noteworthy that all of the great precedents in modern psychohistory were written about subjects no longer alive at the time of publication.* Some of the more prominent of these works include Freud’s Leonardo Da Vin~i,‘~ Psychoanalytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia,ll and (with Bullitt) Thomas Woodrow Wilson: a Psychological Study,g as well as his effort at what could be called “psycho-prehistory,” Moses and Montheism. l2 They also include Bonaparte’s Edgar Allan Poe,’ Eissler’s Goethe: A Psychoanalytic Study5 and Leonardo Da Vinci: Psychoanalytic Notes on the Enigma,4 Erikson’s Childhood and Society,s Young Man Luther,7 and Ghandi’s Greenacre’s Swift and CarroN.‘3 Hitschmann’s Great Men: Truth,6 Psychoanalytic Studies, l4 and Reich’s The Mass Psychology of Fascism. lg With the exception of Ghandi’s Truth, all of these studies were written before 1960.
With a very few exceptions, ethical considerations (aside from those generally applicable to historical and psychiatric scholarship) seem not to be very weighty with respect to studies of subjects no longer living or active. Such considerations do, on the other hand, assume considerable weight, when, as has increasingly been the case in recent years, the psychohistorical effort is directed to the study of a living individual or a currently active group. They assume still further weight when the individual or group is a fellow-citizen or a functioning component of the *Freud
did not know, as a matter
time of publication
of fact, that Judge Daniel Schreber
of his Psychoanalytic
Paranoia, but he noted that, in the preface to the autobiography, “qualified authorities.
. hold
was no longer living at the
Notes on an Autobiographical
Account
of a Case of
Schreber had expressed the wish that
some enquiry into my personal experiences.”
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same nation as the writer. And, of course, they are gravest of all when the psychohistorian is a physician. Consider then, the most difficult case, that in which the psychohistorian is a psychiatrist and his subject is a prominent living person and a conational. The central issue derives from the two related facts that (1) by reason of his special equipment and knowledge (the special perceptive and deductive skills acquired in his psychiatric and/or psychoanalytic training, and the special knowledge of the principles of depth-psychology that is a part of such training), the author-investigator is likely to be in a position to “see” certain things about the subject’s mind and behavior that are not “visible” to the subject himself or to those observers lacking the special training and knowledge, and (2) by reason of his special status as a physician, a psychiatrist, and a scientist, the author-investigator is, to a considerable extent, accepted by a large segment of our society as having special powers, and his report is therefore likely to be taken very seriously, often as having even greater authority than he claims for it. In a case in which the psychiatrist had reasonably ample data (let us say, several interviews with the subject, interviews with persons on familiar terms with the subject at various periods of his life, access to some of the subject’s personal correspondence, and, of course, knowledge of all of the subject’s productions and behavior which were in the public domain) his psychohistorical analysis of the subject would be analogous to the preparation of clinically deductive reports of x-ray films of the patient’s body. (Of course, the more limited were the psychological data, the weaker the analogy would be, but even if the data were considerably more limited than in the hypothetical example given, it would hold to a degree.) Now, if he had been given the informed consent of his subject to make and publish his anal_vsis, the psychiatrist-psychohistorian would seldom encounter ethical problems which could not be solved through good taste and commonsense. (An example of such conditions is afforded by Zeligs’ analysis of Alger Hiss in Friendship and Fratricide.““) If, unlike Hiss, a subject were currently in a significant and sensitive government position (as, to take an obvious example, an Ambassador to the United Nations), common-sense ethics would clearly have to take into account the possibility that the discovery and public mention of a psychological vulnerability, unrecognized by the subject and perhaps not within his ability to modify voluntarily, would place him, and therefore the nation, at a disadvantage in negotiations with the representatives of foreign powers. In such an instance, the common-sense ethical response of the psychohistorian should certainly be to delete this portion of the analysis. It would, however, seldom be the case that a major public figure, whether or not currently in an official position, would give consent to the publication of a searching psychohistorical inquiry (as Chambers did not, with respect to Friendship and Fratricide). If the subject were currently in an official position, the likelihood of his giving consent would be even smaller. It is not merely that he might fear bias in the psychohistorian (a subject to be taken up later), but that he would experience a perfectly natural reluctance to having his intimate, personal conflicts and psychological defenses identified and speculated upon in the public view. (It might even be that, the more accurate the identification and the more valid the speculations, the greater, in many instances, would be the reluctance. AS
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H. L. Mencken once said, in a somewhat different context, “Injustice is easily borne; it is justice that stings.“) What, then, of the propriety of a psychiatrist’s publishing a psychohistorical study which includes a psychodynamic (and perhaps psychogenetic) formulation of his living subject or subjects under conditions which exclude (A) psychiatric interviews and (B) informed consent? Under such circumstances, it at once seems obvious that the writer should confine himself, in data gathering, to the use of material in the public domain plus that obtainable from interviews with persons knowing the subject, freely and informedly given. He should refrain from attempting to obtain data, such as correspondence, journals, and diaries, which are legally the property of the subject. But should he proceed at all under such circumstances? One notes that some behavioral scientists have expressed the opinion that it is not only ethically permissable but ethically desirable for psychohistorians to do this very thing. Reduced to simplest terms, the chief line of argument runs like this: things are going so badly that our Western society needs all the help it can get. Since scientific means are available by which the workings of the minds of our public figures, and more particularly, their weaknesses, immaturities, and limitations, can be discerned, analyzed, and exposed to full public view, this course should be, of course, taken. If public opinion is thereby swayed, with political action resulting, so much the better. The public good will outweigh any private harm that may be done. There is, one feels, something to the argument. Yet it holds disturbing implications. This is essentially the philosophy of some journalism and of a number of pretentious and widely sold books, as for example, The Kennedy Neurosis3 and President Nkon’s Psychiatric Projile.2 Minus the trimmings, this is the philosophy of much soap-box oratory, and it sounds like philosophy publicly advocated in 1973 by John Erlichman, who said, in effect, that he considered it the duty of a public-spirited citizen to ferret out and publicize the character flaws of his political foes. It is true that the line of argument speaks (as a rule, all to confidently) of “scientific means”. Yet, in brief, it sets up against the likelihood of private harm which is considerable and, as noted earlier, relatively independent of the validity of the psychohistorical analysis. a faith, wholly naive if genuine, in (A) the ability of the psychohistorian (working under severe limitations as compared with the psychiatrist or analyst in the clinical setting) to rise above his personal values and political biases in achieving objectivity, and (B) the proposition that public knowledge of all truths about an individual is clearly in the public interest. The truth is that books such as Friendship and Fratricide, President Nixon’s Psychiatric Profile, and The Kennedy Neurosis demonstrate the fallacy of the former belief, and it is not difficult to think of situations which would invalidate the latter. These reservations apply with special cogency to the psychiatristpsychoanalyst when he attempts psychohistory because of his time-tested commitment to the welfare of the individual and by reason of the fact that, when he speaks in his professional capacity (as he has usually claimed to do in writing psychohistory), he is likely to be taken by the public as a highly authoritative voice. It is obvious, of course, that the situation is not identical with the clinical one.
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The psychiatrist-psychoanalyst, in publishing psychohistorical works which include analyses of living persons, is not under the contractual obligation which obtains in his practice. The situation more closely resembles that of research. Here too, however, one immediately comes up against the question of consent. It has traditionally been the position of psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, and psychologists (and it is affirmed in the formal Codes of Ethics of these groups) that research experimentation on human subjects, no matter how harmless it may appear, should not be undertaken without informed consent. In the case of the writing and publication of psychohistory (including psychobiography and psychiatric profiling), there is, of course, no experimentation, but there is research; there is the question of invasion of privacy, and there is the distinct possibility of doing harm to the subject, directly or indirectly. This irremovable possibility of doing harm would seem, in effect, to preclude the psychiatrist-since he is using his professional skills-from writing and publishing psychohistorical studies of living subjects without their consent. In accordance with these considerations, I am inclined to propose a position such as the following with respect to the publication of psychohistorical studies It shall be unethical for apsychiatrist to publish apsychohistorical study of a living person (including psychobiography and psychiatric profiling) without first obtaining his written, informed, and freely given consent for (A Jpersonal interviews and (B) publication. In this context, ‘informed consent’ means consent after full disclosure to the subject by the psychiatrist of the way in which the material is to be used andpublished.
There is the closely related question of ethical guidelines in the case of psychohistorical studies involving analyses of figures recently deceased, in which the definite possibility of injury exists for the next-of-kin. The situation appears less clear-cut than when the subject is living, and accordingly, I somewhat tentatively propose the following statement It shall be unethical to publish a psychohistorical study involving analysis of a recently deceasedperson without the written, informed, freely-given consent of the next-of-kin, who might otherwise sufSer undue embarrassment and an undesired invasion of their privacy in respect to their relationship to the deceasedperson.
The case of psychohistorical studies (notably psychiatric profiling) which are not intended for publication, but for the use of some agency, governmental or otherwise, appears to be somewhat different. One obvious precedent here is afforded by Walter Langer’s (eventually published) study, The Mind of Adolf Hitler,‘” written during World War II for the Office of Strategic Services. It is impossible to find any ethical considerations which would have militated against such a study. Nor could one find such considerations with respect to a study entitled The Mind of Joseph Stalin, supposing there to have been such a study, and this notwithstanding the circumstance that the U.S.S.R. was a nominal ally of the United States. It seems, in fact, doubtful if there are strong ethical considerations militating against the production not for publication of psychohistorical studies of living figures, whether of individuals alone or of group phenomena involving key individuals (nazism, communism, socialism, monarchism, etc.), when the subjects are extranational and of concern to governmental agencies in the legitimate exercise of their functions. Without both of the above
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qualifications, the case seems different. Psychiatric profiling of a fellow-citizen, whether for governmental or private agencies, appears too much like the case of publishing an unauthorized psychobiography of a living person to be comfortably accepted. A major difficulty with respect to ethical guidelines for unpublished studies lies in their covert nature. The weight of public or of official professional opinion cannot really be brought to bear upon the authors in such situations. Then too, this type of activity blends by imperceptible degrees into such activities as the compiling of an informal and basically harmless dossier of an individual’s life style; studies of this sort are, of course, widely practiced by respected businesses, educational institutions, and charitable organizations, etc., with respect to key individuals with whom they are required to deal. I am, nevertheless, inclined to propose some such position as the following. It shall be unethical for a psychiatrist, acting in his professional capacity, to produce a psychiatric projile of a fellow-citizen whose identity is known to him without the consent of his subject.
The qualifying clause, “whose identity is known to him,” allows for what seems to me to be a legitimate use of the psychiatrist’s special training and knowledge, namely, the production of a psychiatric profile of an unknown criminal on the basis of data in the possession of law-enforcement authorities. Scholarly Issues
It would scarcely be possible to offer here a comprehensive discussion of the scholarly issues in the writing of psychohistory, but it is relatively easy to indicate a number of the more troublesome areas. For one thing, there is the matter of the psychohistorian’s training. In view of the arduous nature of the disciplines, it is not surprising that there have been very few writers of psychohistory who have been well trained in both historiography and psychoanalysis or dynamic psychiatry. Since the historian has remained less specialized than the psychoanalyst or psychiatrist, it seems natural that it has been (at least in the past) far more common for a psychiatrist-psychoanalyst to attempt the writing of psychohistory than for a historian to do so. Since the psychiatrist-psychoanalyst has usually been untrained (or self-trained) in historiography, he has been prone to many errors. The most common has probably been naivete with respect to source material, with frequent reliance upon secondary sources instead of primary ones, a circumstance naturally resulting in an inadequate perception of the sociocultural matrix in which the subjects functioned. (A classical example* involves Freud’s errors in his study of Leonardo of accepting it as a given fact that his subject had an infantile memory of a vulture, when it was, in fact, of a kite, and of his attaching personal significance to certain features of Leonardo’s paintings which are far more likely derived from a mere acquiescence in certain conventional modes of representation.) This error-inadequate attention to primary sources, and particularly to primary sources other than material supposedly emanating from the subject or subjects-is one to which the psychiatrist-psychoanalyst is especially prone, partly as a result of *First pointed out by Meyer Schapiro
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insufficient training in historiography, but also because, in his own discipline, he has learned to emphasize “psychic reality” with some consequent neglect of “external” or “objective” reality. More recent psychohistorical works by psychiatrists and psychoanalysts have tended to pay far more attention to the socioculture matrix of events, but the problem still remains. In writing psychohistory, the professional historian has usually worked under analogous limitations in education and training. His knowledge of dynamic psychiatry has usually been informal. He is likely to be well-read in psychoanalytic theory, he may have taken some relevant courses at an analytic institute or a and he may himself have experienced analytically-oriented university, psychotherapy on psychoanalysis. Only very seldom, however, has he performed psychotherapy, and inevitably he has not borne the full clinical responsibility of the treatment of patients. These limitations of experience are likely to have several consequences for his scholarship, of which the following is the most important. In brief, the armchair analyst, whether he is a historian, a literary critic, or an art critic, has difficulty in handling the problem of motivational overdetermination. Since he lacks the experience of repeatedly testing the weight of, not so much conflicting, but coexisting psychodynamic speculations in the clinical setting, he has had much less opportunity of developing an ability at discrimination between sequences likely to have the more significant influence and those likely to have the less in a given set of circumstances. This circumstance sometimes favors “wild analysis,” i.e., a choice of certain speculations which may be the more colorful or intellectually the more intriguing (and which need not be incorrect) but which are eclipsed in behavioral significance by other sequences of a more prosaic nature. What would appear to be the ideal solution for the kinds of limitations we have been discussing, namely, that the psychohistorian have extensive, formal training in both psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic psychiatry and historiography, will be feasible on only a modest scale. In the face of such limitations, the obvious remedy is to make use of extensive collaboration between the psychiatrist or psychoanalyst and the historiographer. While consultation of one with the other has become common, it usually stops short of collaboration. A subtler, and in the long run perhaps graver, problem in scholarship for the psychiatrist-psychoanalyst in writing psychohistory is that of countertransference or other bias. The point is that, in view of the immense amount of effort involved in the production of a major psychohistorical work, it naturally follows that one is unlikely to undertake it if he is not sustained by motives other than mere investigative curiosity. For example, it seems clear that Freud’s choice of Leonardo as a subject was largely determined by personal motives, of which the most obvious was his wish to demonstrate further the great importance of infantile sexual life. Another example is Freud’s and Bullitt’s Wilson, in which the authors’ resentment of Wilson and need to denigrate him has been remarked by nearly all critics. (To Freud’s great credit, in this enterprise, his bias is very frankly stated in the introduction.) As a closely related point, it may be mentioned that it seems very likely that the existence of a widespread politicalideological bias among American psychiatrists was correctly identified and capi-
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tahzed upon by the editors of FACT Magazine in the notorious Goldwater episode of 1964. In general, it can be said that the larger the subject, and the closer the subject is to the contemporary scene, the more likely is there to be an ideological bias in the author. Thus, in the present early and somewhat naive state of psychohistorical inquiry, the ideal subject-from the standpoint of unbiased scholarly inquiry-would probably be small in scope. Such questions as, “Why did Alexander Hamilton fire in the air (if that is what he did) in the Burr-Hamilton duel?’ or “Why did ‘Stonewall’ Jackson get himself killed (if that is what he did) at Chancellorsville?” are likelier to be approached in an unbiased way than a question such as, “Why did Churchill get himself and Great Britain in such a mess at the Dardenelles?” And the latter question would, no doubt, elicit less bias than an examination of Roosevelt’s foreign policy, military and political, during World War II. Similarly, an ideal subject from the standpoint of unbiased scholarship would not be of the present. An ideological bias is, for example, usually still detectable in writers of the Civil War period; more so in writers of the Second World War period, and still more so in writers on figures and events of the present and very recent past. Since one cannot ask of psychohistorical writers that they confine their efforts to small or remote matters, it is appropriate to consider corrective measures to correct the inevitable ideological bias. It is a curious fact that one such measure, seemingly obvious, is seldom resorted to. It is analogous to that increasingly utilized in the case of limitations arising from the writer’s professional identity. Just as it is of high value for the psychiatrist to consult or collaborate with the historiographer, and vice versa, so here it would be of high value for the psychohistorian, of whatever primary discipline, to consult with other psychohistorians holding differing ideologies. Sometimes the problem is handled by reviewers (Cf. van den Haag’s article “Psychoanalysis and Fantasy,“2’ written in review of Zeligs’ Friendship and Fratricide,22 or Lehmann-Haupt’s article “Presumptious Psychiatry” I7 in review of Lifton’s Home From the War),” but such correctives are likely to be polemical. The thesis and antithesis, taken together, are often of less value than would be a reasoned synthesis written by an author after consultations with colleagues having different ideological positions. The problem of evaluating the validity of psychohistorical studies involves the basic question of whether or not psychohistory is, at least in part, a scientific undertaking. The most defensible position would probably be that, whereas history in general is rather more an art than a science, psychohistory, drawing heavily upon psychoanalysis, psychiatry, sociology, and other behavioral sciences, does have some claim to being, at least in part, a scientific endeavor. If this position is accepted, the question then arises as to what criteria are available by which the degree of scientific validity of a given work of psychohistory may be judged. It has usually been accepted that value with respect to prediction, the foremost criterion by which scientific hypotheses are measured, is not applicable to psychohistory. A close scrutiny of the existing material shows, however, that this is not always the case. An example is afforded by Ella Sharpe’s essay, “From King Lear to The Tempest.“20 Although a serious student of
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Shakespeare’s writings, Sharpe was, at the time of writing essay, unacquainted with details of Shakespeare’s life.
the first draft
of the
“Further deductions followed. I came to the conclusion that in this play there are evidences of Lear’s mother’s two pregnancies (i.e., the poet’s mother). One occurred when his sphincter control was not stabilized, and he became incontinent, this being dramatized in the Goneril-Lear quarrel concerning his knights. The second pregnancy occurred when the child was accustomed to walk about independently. I deduced that child Lear Shakespeare had a long reign of sovereignty in an adoring household which carried out his bidding. . I had not till this moment interested myself in the lives of the poet’s parents. Data were available from E. K. Chambers and Joseph Quincy Adams: a son, Gilbert, was born two-and-ahalf years after William; a daughter, Joan, when William was five. The deduction that child Lear lapsed from continence to incontinence at the time of his mother’s first subsequent pregnancy and wandered from home at her second is consonant with the ages of two-and-a-half and live years. The cause of more than the usual devotion of a devoted mother came to light in Joseph Quincy Adams’ book. Sh e h a d 1OSt t wo babies in earliest infancy before William was born. In the first year of his life the plague swept Stratford-on-Avon. Every seventh inhabitant died. William survived.”
In writing of a contemporary figure, the possibility of the appearance or discovery of fresh data, either confirmatory or destructive of a psychodynamic speculation, is, of course, far greater. Thus one may note that, in his In Search of IVix~n,*~ Mazlish correctly predicted (and offered a plausible explanation of) Nixon’s very frequent use of certain types of censorable expressions in private speech several years before the “expletive deleted” phenomenon. These examples suggest a valuable bit of psychohistorical methodology; that an author deliberately refrain from studying one or more bits of data which he knows to be available until after he has committed to paper and shared with colleagues portions of his formulations which could be confirmed or negated by the evidence in question. This principle would be applicable to psychohistorical works of either the present or the past. There appear to be several other criteria, any one of them less convincing than the ability to make correct predictions, which, taken collectively, carry at least a moderate amount of weight with respect to estimating the scientific validity of a psychohistorical formulation. These criteria can be very briefly summarized as follows: (1) The economy of formulation. That is to say, will a given psychological or psychohistorical assumption, not inherently unlikely but not susceptible of proof by direct evidence, make comprehensible a series of events otherwise requiring a number of separate assumptions or going unexplained? (2) The consistency of a psychodynamic explanation with the reasoning in accepted models or analogies (e.g., it would be relatively sound, if one were certain of the facts, to infer a subject’s use of the mechanism of projection on the basis of his sustained, objectively-baseless, suspicion). (3) The internal consistency of the psychohistorical argument. It is, after all, upon criteria analogous to these that hypotheses in the physical sciences are announced, and often accepted to a degree, before the point at which more substantial evidence of correctnessP“proofs” .-can be adduced. This was, for example, the case with Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, which while economical, internally consistent, and consistent with methods of physical rea-
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soning, received real confirmation only after its publication with the observations of (A) a red shift of the spectral lines in the light of white dwarf stars, and (B) a bending of the light from distant stars passing close to the sun’s gravitational field. Similarly, Dirac’s postulation of the existence of antimatter, on deductive grounds, was given rather wide credence before its actual discovery. It is, of course, a far cry from physics to dynamic psychiatry, let alone psychohistory. There is, therefore, another criterion of scholarship in the latter field to be mentioned which appears to be the most important of all. It is not a criterion of the validity of psychohistorical work, but rather a frank admission of the inevitable limitations of validity. It has to do with the scientific respectability of psychohistorical presentations, and it is at this point that issues of ethics and issues of scholarship come most clearly together. Complete honesty in presentations can do much to compensate for limitations in the evidence upon which the presentation is based. This criterion might be phrased as follows: The invariable indication of mere probabilities as such, and the realization (and indication) that, in building a structure of probabilities, one can put together only a very short sequence of reasoning before reaching an improbable conclusion (which nevertheless might be the likeliest conclusion).
Finally-and this point, too, has to do with the scholarly respectability of psychohistory rather than with details of scholarship, per se-there is one aspect of the handling of the author’s biases which should be reemphasized. Ideally, the psychohistorian would be sufficiently aware of his biases, particularly those in the areas of values and ideology, to make corrections for them by consultations with colleagues of strongly differing biases. Since, however, this degree of awareness may remain exceptional, one can hope that the next best measure, a frank statement by the psychohistorical author of his identity in this area and his stance with respect to political, religious, social, and other values, will be regularly offered. REFERENCES I. Bonaparte M: The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe. London, Imago, 1949 2. Chesen E: President Nixon’s Psychiatric Profile. New York, Wyden, 1973 3. Clinch NC: The Kennedy Neurosis. New York, Grosset and Dunlap, 1973 4. DaVinci L: Psychoanalytic Notes on the Enigma. New York, International Universities Press, 1961 5. Eissler K: Goethe: A Psychoanalytic Study, 2 ~01s. Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1963 6. Erikson E: Ghandi’s Truth. New York, Norton, 1969 7. Erickson E: Young Man Luther. New York, Norton, 1958 8. Erikson E: Childhood and Society. New York, Norton, 1950 9. Freud S. Bullitt WC: Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1967
IO. Freud S: Leonardo Da Vinci and a memory of his childhood, in Standard Edition, vol. I I, London, Hogarth, 1957 I I, Freud S: Psychoanalytic notes on an autobiographical account of a case of paranoia, in Standard Edition, vol. 12, London, Hogarth, 1958 12. Freud S: Moses and Monotheism, in Standard Edition, vol. 23, London, Hogarth, 1964 13. Greenacre P: Swift and Carroll: A Psychoanalytic Study of Two Lives. New York, International Universities Press, 1963 14. Hitschmann E: Great Men: Psychoanalytic Studies. New York, International Universities Press, 1955 15. Langer W: The Mind of Adolf Hitler. New York, Basic Books, 1972 16. Lehmann-Haupt C: Presumptious psychohistory. The New York Times, August 6, 1973
PROBLEMS
17. Lifton
RJ:
Home
From
York, Simon and Schuster, 18. Mazlish York
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B: In
the War.
New
1973
Search
19. Reich
W: The
Mass
of
Nixon.
20. Sharpe
EF: From
Psychology
Orgone,
in Collected
London, Hogarth, New
Basic Books, 1972
cism (ed 3). New York,
pest,
of Fa-
1946
King Lear to The Tem-
Papers
on
Psychoanalysis.
1950
21. van den Haag E: Psychoanalysis tasy. National 22. Zeligs New York.
Review, March MA:
Viking,
Friendship 1967
and fan-
21. 1967 and
Fratricide.
Current Problems Charles Lb
in Psychohistory K. Hofling
C
HARACTER IS DESTINY,” said Heraclitus. “It is natural to the human character” said Tacitus, “to hate him whom you have injured.” Both of these famous observations are, in their original contexts, psychohistorical statements. Plutarch related certain aspects of Themistocles’s ambitious strivings to his awareness of his mother’s not having been of pure Athenian blood, and he related the intense rivalry existing between Aristides and Themistocles to their having been brought up together as boys. Herodotus was greatly interested in what nowadays would be considered social psychology. In his Confessions, St. Augustine plumbed his own psychology to remarkable depths. Hegel said, “The first glance at history convinces us that the actions of men proceed from their needs, their passions, their characters and talents. . . .” The idea that history-particularly the history of individuals, but also, to an extent, the history of groups, of peoples, and nations-cannot be thoroughly comprehended without some insight into such psychological matters as motives, conflicts, and character is clearly an old one. It has been subscribed to by most writers of creative literature and by a substantial number of historians, both ancient and modern. That aspect of psychohistory now called “profiling” appears to have been still more widely practiced and of a still more venerable antiquity. It is, for example, well-known that Elizabeth I of England made great efforts to be informed of the psychological vulnerabilities of her adversaries, both actual and potential, and the author of I Samuel tells us that Saul sought diligently to find a psychological weakness in his potential rival, young David. With all of this background, it is nevertheless true that psychohistory, psychobiography, and psychological profiling have become more conspicuous and psychohistorians and psychobiographers more active and more confident, in recent times than ever before. This development is consonant with the genera1 increase in psychological-mindedness of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but it is more particularly the result of one specific aspect of that increase, namely, the advent of psychoanalysis, a psychology which has demonstrated the ability to shed light at times upon preconscious and unconscious elements in mental life. A far more elaborate motivational psychology has been worked out in the twentieth century than has ever existed before. Given the right circumstances, a psychoanalytically trained student of human behavior can come to a quite re-
From the Department of Psychiatry, College ofMedicine. St. Louis University. St. Louis. Mu. K. Hofling, M.D.: Professor of Psychiatry. College ofMedicine. St. Louis University. St. Louis, MO. and Visiting Professor of Psychiatry, College Medicine.University of Cincinnari. Cincinnari, Ohio. Reprint requests should be addressed to Charles K. Hofling, M.D., 1221 S. Grand Blvd.. St. Louis, MO. 63104. o 1976 b_vGrune &Stratton, Inc. Charles
of
Comprehensive Psychiatry, Vol. 17. No. 1 (January/February). 1976
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of the motivational forces, significant inner adaptive measures his subject. is actually to do (at in advance the subject’s conscious knowledge them. knowledge, the or psychoanalyst make predictions while far achieving complete nevertheless tend prove correct a frequency is clearly that attributable mere chance. is, of taken for in therapeutic that the or psychoanalytically psychotherapist is in oba profound yet an view of subject by quirks and of his including not his personal but-perhaps a matter-his value Given the usual integrity, difficulty is moderated by continuing presence the patient. an inis given the patient the basic (to him) some of thoughts, sensations, or overt the patient’s to the terpretation usually (in time) evidence as both its of corand its of importance. is not, course, that denial necessarily that the is incorrect for that that a verbal acceptance that it correct); the of the terpretation is by its a significant, predictable, effect the patient’s status and his behavior. it is releasing effect which the gains in and eventually the ability behave more The production such an tends to the correctness the interpretation, the magnitude the effect with its of significance. that he well-trained in or at in dynamic chiatry, one see that psychohistorian is bound to at least serious difficulties those encountered the traditional torian. The of the is the fact that, essentially all the psychohistorian not examined subjects in sense that psychoanalyst or psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapist examined his He has observed and with his in the of the relationship. That to say, major source data will lacking. The difficulty-one of even greater that the must do the immense of being to test interpretations, as correctness and significance, by noting his subjects’ reactions to them, immediate and delayed. This lack has the result that the psychohistorian, unless he takes carefully designed precautions, is far more likely than the psychoanalyst, not necessarily to have various biases, but to be swayed by them in his interpretations. It is certainly to be noted that the psychohistorian, assuming now (an assumption that is often invalid) that he has been well trained in historiography, has also a number of advantages over the psychoanalyst or psychotherapist with respect to his being able to obtain a thorough view of those persons (and groups) forming a significant portion of his subject matter. It may suffice to our present purposes to mention only two of these advantages. One has to do with the psychohistorian’s sources of data. He is by no means confined, if he is writing a biography, and the times) Using
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to material emanating from his subject (diaries, letters, legal documents, published writings, etc.), or, if he is writing a general history, to material emanating from those persons in whom he is especially interested (or from those groups or institutions which play major roles in his total story). Being interested in a broad, complex, and integrated picture, he is aware of-and specifically prepared to find and use-what the psychiatrist would call “outside sources.” Since he is especially interested in “psychic reality,” the psychiatrist, and notably the psychoanalyst, may not avail himself of material pertaining to his patient which can only be obtained from others. (This limitation may not, of course, be a serious one with respect to purely psychotherapeutic purposes, but it may be quite serious with respect to purposes which require a comprehensive view of the individual in his world.) A second clear advantage of the psychohistorian is that he has typically written of the past. (It is, indeed, questionable whether anything which deserves to be called history, naturally including psychohistory, can be written about the present.) This circumstance clearly favors-although it does not guarantee-a scholarly detachment. Moreover, it means that all the returns are in. That is to say, the nature and significance of many human interactions can be best judged by their effects, and to the historian, including the psychohistorian, a great many of these effects are known. For the psychoanalyst or psychotherapist, many of the effects of his patient’s interaction with other persons and groups lie, to some extent, in the future, for it is a matter of weighing probabilities-he does not know the full outcome. Dejining Psychohistory
Before going further in the discussion, it may be of value to offer certain working definitions (not tightly drawn), in the light of which various problems in the areas of ethics and scholarship can be considered.* Psychohistory is that branch of history which places special emphasis on the psychology of the individuals and groups under consideration, as this psychology develops and interacts with the environment, with particular attention typically being given to problems of motivation, psychic conflict, and adaptation, in both their conscious and unconscious aspects. Psychobiography is a subdivision of psychohistory (either standing alone or forming one element of a more comprehensive psychohistorical work) which treats the life of an individual according to psychohistorical principles. The more the subject of a psychobiography is perceived as a part of a psychosocial matrix including other significant figures and other forces operative in his milieu, the more such a work comes to resemble a work of general psychohistory. (Erikson’s Young Man Luther, for example, is by no means just a study of the man, but a study of the man in his world.) Psychiatric profiling is perhaps better described than defined. Usually undertaken from practical rather than from scholarly considerations, it bears a
*These
definitions
are taken
from the forthcoming
tion’s Task Force on Psychohistory.
report of the American
Psychiatric
Associa-
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relationship to psychohistory which is rather analogous to that borne by the clinical and dynamic diagnoses of a patient to a thorough formulation including a (psycho) genetic diagnosis. The psychiatric profile typically concerns itself essentially with a cross-sectional, rather than a three-dimensional, portrayal; i.e., with an analysis of the kind of person the subject is and with the probable nature of his behavior under various contingencies, rather than with an analysis of how he came to be what he is. The more a psychiatric profile takes into consideration the developmental features, the more it comes to resemble psychobiography, and, indeed, there is a considerable overlapping in the usage of the two designations. Ethical Considerations
Some idea of the scope of the ethical problems involved in the writing of psychohistory can be conveyed merely by listing a number of the relevant variables. (1) Is the study for publication, for private use, or for governmental use? Is it written for profit? (2) Is the subject an individual or a group (family, organization or institution, community, nation)? (3) If the subject is an individual, is he still alive? If it is a group, is the group still in existence and actively functioning? (4) Is the study to be based (in part) upon interviews with the subject or subjects? (5) Is the individual or group extranational? If it is extranational, is it an allied, a neutral, or a hostile power? (6) Is the study to be made with the informed consent of the individual or group? (7) Is the author of the study a psychiatrist and/or psychoanalyst, a historian, or a journalist? It is noteworthy that all of the great precedents in modern psychohistory were written about subjects no longer alive at the time of publication.* Some of the more prominent of these works include Freud’s Leonardo Da Vin~i,‘~ Psychoanalytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia,ll and (with Bullitt) Thomas Woodrow Wilson: a Psychological Study,g as well as his effort at what could be called “psycho-prehistory,” Moses and Montheism. l2 They also include Bonaparte’s Edgar Allan Poe,’ Eissler’s Goethe: A Psychoanalytic Study5 and Leonardo Da Vinci: Psychoanalytic Notes on the Enigma,4 Erikson’s Childhood and Society,s Young Man Luther,7 and Ghandi’s Greenacre’s Swift and CarroN.‘3 Hitschmann’s Great Men: Truth,6 Psychoanalytic Studies, l4 and Reich’s The Mass Psychology of Fascism. lg With the exception of Ghandi’s Truth, all of these studies were written before 1960.
With a very few exceptions, ethical considerations (aside from those generally applicable to historical and psychiatric scholarship) seem not to be very weighty with respect to studies of subjects no longer living or active. Such considerations do, on the other hand, assume considerable weight, when, as has increasingly been the case in recent years, the psychohistorical effort is directed to the study of a living individual or a currently active group. They assume still further weight when the individual or group is a fellow-citizen or a functioning component of the *Freud
did not know, as a matter
time of publication
of fact, that Judge Daniel Schreber
of his Psychoanalytic
Paranoia, but he noted that, in the preface to the autobiography, “qualified authorities.
. hold
was no longer living at the
Notes on an Autobiographical
Account
of a Case of
Schreber had expressed the wish that
some enquiry into my personal experiences.”
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same nation as the writer. And, of course, they are gravest of all when the psychohistorian is a physician. Consider then, the most difficult case, that in which the psychohistorian is a psychiatrist and his subject is a prominent living person and a conational. The central issue derives from the two related facts that (1) by reason of his special equipment and knowledge (the special perceptive and deductive skills acquired in his psychiatric and/or psychoanalytic training, and the special knowledge of the principles of depth-psychology that is a part of such training), the author-investigator is likely to be in a position to “see” certain things about the subject’s mind and behavior that are not “visible” to the subject himself or to those observers lacking the special training and knowledge, and (2) by reason of his special status as a physician, a psychiatrist, and a scientist, the author-investigator is, to a considerable extent, accepted by a large segment of our society as having special powers, and his report is therefore likely to be taken very seriously, often as having even greater authority than he claims for it. In a case in which the psychiatrist had reasonably ample data (let us say, several interviews with the subject, interviews with persons on familiar terms with the subject at various periods of his life, access to some of the subject’s personal correspondence, and, of course, knowledge of all of the subject’s productions and behavior which were in the public domain) his psychohistorical analysis of the subject would be analogous to the preparation of clinically deductive reports of x-ray films of the patient’s body. (Of course, the more limited were the psychological data, the weaker the analogy would be, but even if the data were considerably more limited than in the hypothetical example given, it would hold to a degree.) Now, if he had been given the informed consent of his subject to make and publish his anal_vsis, the psychiatrist-psychohistorian would seldom encounter ethical problems which could not be solved through good taste and commonsense. (An example of such conditions is afforded by Zeligs’ analysis of Alger Hiss in Friendship and Fratricide.““) If, unlike Hiss, a subject were currently in a significant and sensitive government position (as, to take an obvious example, an Ambassador to the United Nations), common-sense ethics would clearly have to take into account the possibility that the discovery and public mention of a psychological vulnerability, unrecognized by the subject and perhaps not within his ability to modify voluntarily, would place him, and therefore the nation, at a disadvantage in negotiations with the representatives of foreign powers. In such an instance, the common-sense ethical response of the psychohistorian should certainly be to delete this portion of the analysis. It would, however, seldom be the case that a major public figure, whether or not currently in an official position, would give consent to the publication of a searching psychohistorical inquiry (as Chambers did not, with respect to Friendship and Fratricide). If the subject were currently in an official position, the likelihood of his giving consent would be even smaller. It is not merely that he might fear bias in the psychohistorian (a subject to be taken up later), but that he would experience a perfectly natural reluctance to having his intimate, personal conflicts and psychological defenses identified and speculated upon in the public view. (It might even be that, the more accurate the identification and the more valid the speculations, the greater, in many instances, would be the reluctance. AS
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H. L. Mencken once said, in a somewhat different context, “Injustice is easily borne; it is justice that stings.“) What, then, of the propriety of a psychiatrist’s publishing a psychohistorical study which includes a psychodynamic (and perhaps psychogenetic) formulation of his living subject or subjects under conditions which exclude (A) psychiatric interviews and (B) informed consent? Under such circumstances, it at once seems obvious that the writer should confine himself, in data gathering, to the use of material in the public domain plus that obtainable from interviews with persons knowing the subject, freely and informedly given. He should refrain from attempting to obtain data, such as correspondence, journals, and diaries, which are legally the property of the subject. But should he proceed at all under such circumstances? One notes that some behavioral scientists have expressed the opinion that it is not only ethically permissable but ethically desirable for psychohistorians to do this very thing. Reduced to simplest terms, the chief line of argument runs like this: things are going so badly that our Western society needs all the help it can get. Since scientific means are available by which the workings of the minds of our public figures, and more particularly, their weaknesses, immaturities, and limitations, can be discerned, analyzed, and exposed to full public view, this course should be, of course, taken. If public opinion is thereby swayed, with political action resulting, so much the better. The public good will outweigh any private harm that may be done. There is, one feels, something to the argument. Yet it holds disturbing implications. This is essentially the philosophy of some journalism and of a number of pretentious and widely sold books, as for example, The Kennedy Neurosis3 and President Nkon’s Psychiatric Projile.2 Minus the trimmings, this is the philosophy of much soap-box oratory, and it sounds like philosophy publicly advocated in 1973 by John Erlichman, who said, in effect, that he considered it the duty of a public-spirited citizen to ferret out and publicize the character flaws of his political foes. It is true that the line of argument speaks (as a rule, all to confidently) of “scientific means”. Yet, in brief, it sets up against the likelihood of private harm which is considerable and, as noted earlier, relatively independent of the validity of the psychohistorical analysis. a faith, wholly naive if genuine, in (A) the ability of the psychohistorian (working under severe limitations as compared with the psychiatrist or analyst in the clinical setting) to rise above his personal values and political biases in achieving objectivity, and (B) the proposition that public knowledge of all truths about an individual is clearly in the public interest. The truth is that books such as Friendship and Fratricide, President Nixon’s Psychiatric Profile, and The Kennedy Neurosis demonstrate the fallacy of the former belief, and it is not difficult to think of situations which would invalidate the latter. These reservations apply with special cogency to the psychiatristpsychoanalyst when he attempts psychohistory because of his time-tested commitment to the welfare of the individual and by reason of the fact that, when he speaks in his professional capacity (as he has usually claimed to do in writing psychohistory), he is likely to be taken by the public as a highly authoritative voice. It is obvious, of course, that the situation is not identical with the clinical one.
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The psychiatrist-psychoanalyst, in publishing psychohistorical works which include analyses of living persons, is not under the contractual obligation which obtains in his practice. The situation more closely resembles that of research. Here too, however, one immediately comes up against the question of consent. It has traditionally been the position of psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, and psychologists (and it is affirmed in the formal Codes of Ethics of these groups) that research experimentation on human subjects, no matter how harmless it may appear, should not be undertaken without informed consent. In the case of the writing and publication of psychohistory (including psychobiography and psychiatric profiling), there is, of course, no experimentation, but there is research; there is the question of invasion of privacy, and there is the distinct possibility of doing harm to the subject, directly or indirectly. This irremovable possibility of doing harm would seem, in effect, to preclude the psychiatrist-since he is using his professional skills-from writing and publishing psychohistorical studies of living subjects without their consent. In accordance with these considerations, I am inclined to propose a position such as the following with respect to the publication of psychohistorical studies It shall be unethical for apsychiatrist to publish apsychohistorical study of a living person (including psychobiography and psychiatric profiling) without first obtaining his written, informed, and freely given consent for (A Jpersonal interviews and (B) publication. In this context, ‘informed consent’ means consent after full disclosure to the subject by the psychiatrist of the way in which the material is to be used andpublished.
There is the closely related question of ethical guidelines in the case of psychohistorical studies involving analyses of figures recently deceased, in which the definite possibility of injury exists for the next-of-kin. The situation appears less clear-cut than when the subject is living, and accordingly, I somewhat tentatively propose the following statement It shall be unethical to publish a psychohistorical study involving analysis of a recently deceasedperson without the written, informed, freely-given consent of the next-of-kin, who might otherwise sufSer undue embarrassment and an undesired invasion of their privacy in respect to their relationship to the deceasedperson.
The case of psychohistorical studies (notably psychiatric profiling) which are not intended for publication, but for the use of some agency, governmental or otherwise, appears to be somewhat different. One obvious precedent here is afforded by Walter Langer’s (eventually published) study, The Mind of Adolf Hitler,‘” written during World War II for the Office of Strategic Services. It is impossible to find any ethical considerations which would have militated against such a study. Nor could one find such considerations with respect to a study entitled The Mind of Joseph Stalin, supposing there to have been such a study, and this notwithstanding the circumstance that the U.S.S.R. was a nominal ally of the United States. It seems, in fact, doubtful if there are strong ethical considerations militating against the production not for publication of psychohistorical studies of living figures, whether of individuals alone or of group phenomena involving key individuals (nazism, communism, socialism, monarchism, etc.), when the subjects are extranational and of concern to governmental agencies in the legitimate exercise of their functions. Without both of the above
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qualifications, the case seems different. Psychiatric profiling of a fellow-citizen, whether for governmental or private agencies, appears too much like the case of publishing an unauthorized psychobiography of a living person to be comfortably accepted. A major difficulty with respect to ethical guidelines for unpublished studies lies in their covert nature. The weight of public or of official professional opinion cannot really be brought to bear upon the authors in such situations. Then too, this type of activity blends by imperceptible degrees into such activities as the compiling of an informal and basically harmless dossier of an individual’s life style; studies of this sort are, of course, widely practiced by respected businesses, educational institutions, and charitable organizations, etc., with respect to key individuals with whom they are required to deal. I am, nevertheless, inclined to propose some such position as the following. It shall be unethical for a psychiatrist, acting in his professional capacity, to produce a psychiatric projile of a fellow-citizen whose identity is known to him without the consent of his subject.
The qualifying clause, “whose identity is known to him,” allows for what seems to me to be a legitimate use of the psychiatrist’s special training and knowledge, namely, the production of a psychiatric profile of an unknown criminal on the basis of data in the possession of law-enforcement authorities. Scholarly Issues
It would scarcely be possible to offer here a comprehensive discussion of the scholarly issues in the writing of psychohistory, but it is relatively easy to indicate a number of the more troublesome areas. For one thing, there is the matter of the psychohistorian’s training. In view of the arduous nature of the disciplines, it is not surprising that there have been very few writers of psychohistory who have been well trained in both historiography and psychoanalysis or dynamic psychiatry. Since the historian has remained less specialized than the psychoanalyst or psychiatrist, it seems natural that it has been (at least in the past) far more common for a psychiatrist-psychoanalyst to attempt the writing of psychohistory than for a historian to do so. Since the psychiatrist-psychoanalyst has usually been untrained (or self-trained) in historiography, he has been prone to many errors. The most common has probably been naivete with respect to source material, with frequent reliance upon secondary sources instead of primary ones, a circumstance naturally resulting in an inadequate perception of the sociocultural matrix in which the subjects functioned. (A classical example* involves Freud’s errors in his study of Leonardo of accepting it as a given fact that his subject had an infantile memory of a vulture, when it was, in fact, of a kite, and of his attaching personal significance to certain features of Leonardo’s paintings which are far more likely derived from a mere acquiescence in certain conventional modes of representation.) This error-inadequate attention to primary sources, and particularly to primary sources other than material supposedly emanating from the subject or subjects-is one to which the psychiatrist-psychoanalyst is especially prone, partly as a result of *First pointed out by Meyer Schapiro
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insufficient training in historiography, but also because, in his own discipline, he has learned to emphasize “psychic reality” with some consequent neglect of “external” or “objective” reality. More recent psychohistorical works by psychiatrists and psychoanalysts have tended to pay far more attention to the socioculture matrix of events, but the problem still remains. In writing psychohistory, the professional historian has usually worked under analogous limitations in education and training. His knowledge of dynamic psychiatry has usually been informal. He is likely to be well-read in psychoanalytic theory, he may have taken some relevant courses at an analytic institute or a and he may himself have experienced analytically-oriented university, psychotherapy on psychoanalysis. Only very seldom, however, has he performed psychotherapy, and inevitably he has not borne the full clinical responsibility of the treatment of patients. These limitations of experience are likely to have several consequences for his scholarship, of which the following is the most important. In brief, the armchair analyst, whether he is a historian, a literary critic, or an art critic, has difficulty in handling the problem of motivational overdetermination. Since he lacks the experience of repeatedly testing the weight of, not so much conflicting, but coexisting psychodynamic speculations in the clinical setting, he has had much less opportunity of developing an ability at discrimination between sequences likely to have the more significant influence and those likely to have the less in a given set of circumstances. This circumstance sometimes favors “wild analysis,” i.e., a choice of certain speculations which may be the more colorful or intellectually the more intriguing (and which need not be incorrect) but which are eclipsed in behavioral significance by other sequences of a more prosaic nature. What would appear to be the ideal solution for the kinds of limitations we have been discussing, namely, that the psychohistorian have extensive, formal training in both psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic psychiatry and historiography, will be feasible on only a modest scale. In the face of such limitations, the obvious remedy is to make use of extensive collaboration between the psychiatrist or psychoanalyst and the historiographer. While consultation of one with the other has become common, it usually stops short of collaboration. A subtler, and in the long run perhaps graver, problem in scholarship for the psychiatrist-psychoanalyst in writing psychohistory is that of countertransference or other bias. The point is that, in view of the immense amount of effort involved in the production of a major psychohistorical work, it naturally follows that one is unlikely to undertake it if he is not sustained by motives other than mere investigative curiosity. For example, it seems clear that Freud’s choice of Leonardo as a subject was largely determined by personal motives, of which the most obvious was his wish to demonstrate further the great importance of infantile sexual life. Another example is Freud’s and Bullitt’s Wilson, in which the authors’ resentment of Wilson and need to denigrate him has been remarked by nearly all critics. (To Freud’s great credit, in this enterprise, his bias is very frankly stated in the introduction.) As a closely related point, it may be mentioned that it seems very likely that the existence of a widespread politicalideological bias among American psychiatrists was correctly identified and capi-
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tahzed upon by the editors of FACT Magazine in the notorious Goldwater episode of 1964. In general, it can be said that the larger the subject, and the closer the subject is to the contemporary scene, the more likely is there to be an ideological bias in the author. Thus, in the present early and somewhat naive state of psychohistorical inquiry, the ideal subject-from the standpoint of unbiased scholarly inquiry-would probably be small in scope. Such questions as, “Why did Alexander Hamilton fire in the air (if that is what he did) in the Burr-Hamilton duel?’ or “Why did ‘Stonewall’ Jackson get himself killed (if that is what he did) at Chancellorsville?” are likelier to be approached in an unbiased way than a question such as, “Why did Churchill get himself and Great Britain in such a mess at the Dardenelles?” And the latter question would, no doubt, elicit less bias than an examination of Roosevelt’s foreign policy, military and political, during World War II. Similarly, an ideal subject from the standpoint of unbiased scholarship would not be of the present. An ideological bias is, for example, usually still detectable in writers of the Civil War period; more so in writers of the Second World War period, and still more so in writers on figures and events of the present and very recent past. Since one cannot ask of psychohistorical writers that they confine their efforts to small or remote matters, it is appropriate to consider corrective measures to correct the inevitable ideological bias. It is a curious fact that one such measure, seemingly obvious, is seldom resorted to. It is analogous to that increasingly utilized in the case of limitations arising from the writer’s professional identity. Just as it is of high value for the psychiatrist to consult or collaborate with the historiographer, and vice versa, so here it would be of high value for the psychohistorian, of whatever primary discipline, to consult with other psychohistorians holding differing ideologies. Sometimes the problem is handled by reviewers (Cf. van den Haag’s article “Psychoanalysis and Fantasy,“2’ written in review of Zeligs’ Friendship and Fratricide,22 or Lehmann-Haupt’s article “Presumptious Psychiatry” I7 in review of Lifton’s Home From the War),” but such correctives are likely to be polemical. The thesis and antithesis, taken together, are often of less value than would be a reasoned synthesis written by an author after consultations with colleagues having different ideological positions. The problem of evaluating the validity of psychohistorical studies involves the basic question of whether or not psychohistory is, at least in part, a scientific undertaking. The most defensible position would probably be that, whereas history in general is rather more an art than a science, psychohistory, drawing heavily upon psychoanalysis, psychiatry, sociology, and other behavioral sciences, does have some claim to being, at least in part, a scientific endeavor. If this position is accepted, the question then arises as to what criteria are available by which the degree of scientific validity of a given work of psychohistory may be judged. It has usually been accepted that value with respect to prediction, the foremost criterion by which scientific hypotheses are measured, is not applicable to psychohistory. A close scrutiny of the existing material shows, however, that this is not always the case. An example is afforded by Ella Sharpe’s essay, “From King Lear to The Tempest.“20 Although a serious student of
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IN PSYCHOHISTORY
Shakespeare’s writings, Sharpe was, at the time of writing essay, unacquainted with details of Shakespeare’s life.
the first draft
of the
“Further deductions followed. I came to the conclusion that in this play there are evidences of Lear’s mother’s two pregnancies (i.e., the poet’s mother). One occurred when his sphincter control was not stabilized, and he became incontinent, this being dramatized in the Goneril-Lear quarrel concerning his knights. The second pregnancy occurred when the child was accustomed to walk about independently. I deduced that child Lear Shakespeare had a long reign of sovereignty in an adoring household which carried out his bidding. . I had not till this moment interested myself in the lives of the poet’s parents. Data were available from E. K. Chambers and Joseph Quincy Adams: a son, Gilbert, was born two-and-ahalf years after William; a daughter, Joan, when William was five. The deduction that child Lear lapsed from continence to incontinence at the time of his mother’s first subsequent pregnancy and wandered from home at her second is consonant with the ages of two-and-a-half and live years. The cause of more than the usual devotion of a devoted mother came to light in Joseph Quincy Adams’ book. Sh e h a d 1OSt t wo babies in earliest infancy before William was born. In the first year of his life the plague swept Stratford-on-Avon. Every seventh inhabitant died. William survived.”
In writing of a contemporary figure, the possibility of the appearance or discovery of fresh data, either confirmatory or destructive of a psychodynamic speculation, is, of course, far greater. Thus one may note that, in his In Search of IVix~n,*~ Mazlish correctly predicted (and offered a plausible explanation of) Nixon’s very frequent use of certain types of censorable expressions in private speech several years before the “expletive deleted” phenomenon. These examples suggest a valuable bit of psychohistorical methodology; that an author deliberately refrain from studying one or more bits of data which he knows to be available until after he has committed to paper and shared with colleagues portions of his formulations which could be confirmed or negated by the evidence in question. This principle would be applicable to psychohistorical works of either the present or the past. There appear to be several other criteria, any one of them less convincing than the ability to make correct predictions, which, taken collectively, carry at least a moderate amount of weight with respect to estimating the scientific validity of a psychohistorical formulation. These criteria can be very briefly summarized as follows: (1) The economy of formulation. That is to say, will a given psychological or psychohistorical assumption, not inherently unlikely but not susceptible of proof by direct evidence, make comprehensible a series of events otherwise requiring a number of separate assumptions or going unexplained? (2) The consistency of a psychodynamic explanation with the reasoning in accepted models or analogies (e.g., it would be relatively sound, if one were certain of the facts, to infer a subject’s use of the mechanism of projection on the basis of his sustained, objectively-baseless, suspicion). (3) The internal consistency of the psychohistorical argument. It is, after all, upon criteria analogous to these that hypotheses in the physical sciences are announced, and often accepted to a degree, before the point at which more substantial evidence of correctnessP“proofs” .-can be adduced. This was, for example, the case with Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, which while economical, internally consistent, and consistent with methods of physical rea-
CHARLES
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K. HOFLING
soning, received real confirmation only after its publication with the observations of (A) a red shift of the spectral lines in the light of white dwarf stars, and (B) a bending of the light from distant stars passing close to the sun’s gravitational field. Similarly, Dirac’s postulation of the existence of antimatter, on deductive grounds, was given rather wide credence before its actual discovery. It is, of course, a far cry from physics to dynamic psychiatry, let alone psychohistory. There is, therefore, another criterion of scholarship in the latter field to be mentioned which appears to be the most important of all. It is not a criterion of the validity of psychohistorical work, but rather a frank admission of the inevitable limitations of validity. It has to do with the scientific respectability of psychohistorical presentations, and it is at this point that issues of ethics and issues of scholarship come most clearly together. Complete honesty in presentations can do much to compensate for limitations in the evidence upon which the presentation is based. This criterion might be phrased as follows: The invariable indication of mere probabilities as such, and the realization (and indication) that, in building a structure of probabilities, one can put together only a very short sequence of reasoning before reaching an improbable conclusion (which nevertheless might be the likeliest conclusion).
Finally-and this point, too, has to do with the scholarly respectability of psychohistory rather than with details of scholarship, per se-there is one aspect of the handling of the author’s biases which should be reemphasized. Ideally, the psychohistorian would be sufficiently aware of his biases, particularly those in the areas of values and ideology, to make corrections for them by consultations with colleagues of strongly differing biases. Since, however, this degree of awareness may remain exceptional, one can hope that the next best measure, a frank statement by the psychohistorical author of his identity in this area and his stance with respect to political, religious, social, and other values, will be regularly offered. REFERENCES I. Bonaparte M: The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe. London, Imago, 1949 2. Chesen E: President Nixon’s Psychiatric Profile. New York, Wyden, 1973 3. Clinch NC: The Kennedy Neurosis. New York, Grosset and Dunlap, 1973 4. DaVinci L: Psychoanalytic Notes on the Enigma. New York, International Universities Press, 1961 5. Eissler K: Goethe: A Psychoanalytic Study, 2 ~01s. Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1963 6. Erikson E: Ghandi’s Truth. New York, Norton, 1969 7. Erickson E: Young Man Luther. New York, Norton, 1958 8. Erikson E: Childhood and Society. New York, Norton, 1950 9. Freud S. Bullitt WC: Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1967
IO. Freud S: Leonardo Da Vinci and a memory of his childhood, in Standard Edition, vol. I I, London, Hogarth, 1957 I I, Freud S: Psychoanalytic notes on an autobiographical account of a case of paranoia, in Standard Edition, vol. 12, London, Hogarth, 1958 12. Freud S: Moses and Monotheism, in Standard Edition, vol. 23, London, Hogarth, 1964 13. Greenacre P: Swift and Carroll: A Psychoanalytic Study of Two Lives. New York, International Universities Press, 1963 14. Hitschmann E: Great Men: Psychoanalytic Studies. New York, International Universities Press, 1955 15. Langer W: The Mind of Adolf Hitler. New York, Basic Books, 1972 16. Lehmann-Haupt C: Presumptious psychohistory. The New York Times, August 6, 1973
PROBLEMS
17. Lifton
RJ:
Home
From
York, Simon and Schuster, 18. Mazlish York
239
IN PSYCHOHISTORY
B: In
the War.
New
1973
Search
19. Reich
W: The
Mass
of
Nixon.
20. Sharpe
EF: From
Psychology
Orgone,
in Collected
London, Hogarth, New
Basic Books, 1972
cism (ed 3). New York,
pest,
of Fa-
1946
King Lear to The Tem-
Papers
on
Psychoanalysis.
1950
21. van den Haag E: Psychoanalysis tasy. National 22. Zeligs New York.
Review, March MA:
Viking,
Friendship 1967
and fan-
21. 1967 and
Fratricide.