Psychogenic Mode
Psychohistorians have written much about changes in the human psyche through history; changes that they believe were produced by parents, and especially the mothers' increasing capacity to empathize with their children. Key to deMause's thought is the concept of psychoclass, which emerges out of a particular style of childrearing, and child abuse, at a particular period in a society's development. The conflict of new and old psychoclasses is also highlighted in psychohistorians' thought. This is reflected, for instance, in the clash between Blue State and Red State voters in the contemporary United States.
Another key psychohistorical concept is that of group fantasy, which deMause regards as a mediating force between a psychoclass's collective childhood experiences (and the psychic conflicts emerging therefrom), and the psychoclass's behavior in politics, religion and other aspects of social life.
A psychogenic mode in Psychohistory is a type of mentality (or psychoclass) that results from, and is associated with, a particular childrearing style. The major psychogenic modes described by deMause are:
| Mode | Childrearing characteristics | Historical manifestations |
|---|---|---|
| Infanticidal | Early infanticidal childrearing: Ritual sacrifice. High infanticide rates, incest, body mutilation, child rape and tortures. |
Child sacrifice and infanticide among tribal societies, Mesoamerica and the Incas; in Assyrian and Canaanite religions. Phoenicians, Carthaginians and other early states also sacrificed infants to their gods. On the other hand, the relatively more enlightened Greeks and Romans exposed some of their babies ("late" infanticidal childrearing). |
| Late infanticidal childrearing: While the young child is not overly rejected by the mother, many newborn babies, especially girls, are exposed to death. |
||
| Abandoning | Early Christians considered a child as having a soul at birth, although possessed by evil tendencies. Routine infanticide was replaced by joining in the group fantasy of the sacrifice of Christ, who was sent by his father to be killed for the sins of others. Routine pederasty of boys continued in monasteries and elsewhere, and the rape of girls was commonplace. | Infanticide replaced by abandonment. Those children who survived the experience did not internalize a completely murderous superego. Longer swaddling, fosterage, outside wetnursing, oblation of children to monasteries and nunneries, and apprenticeship. |
| Ambivalent | The 12th century saw the first child instruction manuals and rudimentary child protection laws, although most mothers still emotionally rejected their children. Children were often treated as erotic objects by adults. | The later Middle Ages ended abandonment of children to monasteries. early beating, shorter swaddling, mourning for deceased children, a precursor to empathy. |
| Intrusive | During the 16th century, particularly in England, parents shifted from trying to stop children's growth to trying to control them and make them obedient. Parents were prepared to give them attention as long as they controlled their minds, their insides, their anger and the lives they led. | The intrusive parent began to unswaddle the infant. Early toilet training, repression of child's sexuality. Hell threats turned into the Puritan child so familiar from early modern childrearing literature. On the other hand, the end of swaddling and wet-nursing made possible the explosive modern takeoff in scientific advance. |
| Socializing | Beginning in the 18th century, mothers began to actually enjoy child care, and fathers began to participate in younger children's development. The aim remained instilling parental goals rather than encouraging individuation. Psychological manipulation and spanking were used to make children obedient. Hellfire and the harsher physical disciplinary actions using objects to beat the child disappeared. The Socializing Mode remains the most popular model of parenting in North America and Western Europe to the present day. | Use of guilt, "mental discipline", humiliation, rise of compulsory schooling, delegation of parental unconscious wishes. As parental injections continued to diminish, the rearing of the child became less a process of conquering its will than of training it. The socializing psychoclass built the modern world. |
| Helping | Beginning in the mid-20th century, some parents adopted the role of helping children reach their own goals in life, rather than "socialize" them into fulfilling parental wishes. Less psychological manipulation, more unconditional love. Children raised in this way are far more empathic towards others in society than earlier generations. | Children's rights movement, deschooling and free schooling, natural childbirth, Taking Children Seriously and the abandonment of circumcision. |
Psychohistorians maintain that the six modes of abusive childrearing (excluding the "helping mode") are related to psychiatric disorders from psychoses to neuroses.
The chart below shows the dates at which these modes are believed to have evolved in the most advanced nations, based on contemporary accounts from historical records. A black-and-white version of the chart appears in Foundations of Psychohistory.
The timeline doesn't apply to hunter-gatherer societies. It doesn't apply either to the Greek and Roman world, where there was a wide variation in childrearing practices. It is notable that the arrival of the Ambivalent mode of child-rearing preceded the start of the Renaissance (mid 14th century) by only one or two generations, and the arrival of the Socializing mode coincided with the Age of Enlightenment, which began in the late 18th century.
Reports of selective abortion (and sometimes exposure of baby girls) especially in China, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, New Guinea, and many other developing countries in Asia and North Africa explain why millions of women are "missing" in Asia. From the psychohistorical view, this demonstrates that the earlier forms of childrearing coexist with later modes, even in the most advanced countries. However, the chart should not be regarded as an accurate representation of the relative prevalence of each mode in the present day, as it is not based on large-scale, formal surveys.
According to psychohistory theory, each of the six psychoclasses co-exists in the modern world today, and, regardless of the changes in the environment, it is only when changes in childhood occur that societies begin to progress.
The Y-Axis on the above chart serves as an indicator of the new stage and not a measurement of the stage's size or relation to the x-axis.
Read more about this topic: Psychohistory
Famous quotes containing the word mode:
“Poor John Field!—I trust he does not read this, unless he will improve by it,—thinking to live by some derivative old-country mode in this primitive new country.... With his horizon all his own, yet he a poor man, born to be poor, with his inherited Irish poverty or poor life, his Adam’s grandmother and boggy ways, not to rise in this world, he nor his posterity, till their wading webbed bog-trotting feet get talaria to their heels.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)