Psychohistory - Criticisms

Criticisms

There are no departments dedicated to "psychohistory" in any institution of higher learning, though some history departments have run courses in it. Psychohistory remains a controversial field of study, and deMause and other psychohistorians face criticism in the academic community. DeMause's formulations have been criticized for being insufficiently supported by credible research. Psychohistory uses a plurality of methodologies, and it is difficult to determine which is appropriate to use in each circumstance. The discipline has the advantage of being able to deal with motive in history and is useful in developing narratives, but is forced to psychoanalyse its subjects after the fact, which was not considered when the theory was developed and expanded. Recent psychohistory has also been criticized for being overly-entangled with DeMause, whose theories do not speak for the entire field.

The 1974 book in which deMause included essays of nine professional historians, The History of Childhood, offers a survey of the treatment of children through history. Although critics generally spare these nine historians, they see deMause as a strong proponent of the "black legend" view of childhood history (i.e. that the history of childhood was above all a history of progress, with children being far more often badly mistreated in the past). Similarly, his work has been criticized for being a history of child abuse, not childhood.

The History of Childhood, authored by ten scholars (including deMause), is often linked to Edward Shorter's The Making of the Modern Family and Lawrence Stone's The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800, because of the common ground they share in agreeing with a grim perspective of childhood history. But deMause's work in particular has attracted hostility from historian Hugh Cunningham. Thomas Kohut went even further:

The reader is doubtless already familiar with examples of these psychohistorical "abuses." There is a significant difference, however, between the well-meaning and serious, if perhaps simplistic and reductionistic, attempt to understand the psychological in history and the psychohistorical expose that can at times verge on historical pornography. For examples of the more frivolous and distasteful sort of psychohistory, see The Journal of Psychohistory. For more serious and scholarly attempts to understand the psychological dimension of the past, see The Psychohistory Review.

DeMause and the psychohistorians respond that their detractors are not largely moved by evidence, but rather are unconsciously motivated to attack those who would challenge the idea of "good parenting" even in very primitive tribes or cultures.