The evolution of psychohistory as a separate field has been slow and has involved much controversy in the last 30-40 years. Though there are still those who are skeptical about the worth and validity of the field, we have not been intimidated and continue to advance the work slowly and patiently. There are a variety of reasons why psychohistory is not more prominent on the scholarly/intellectual stage. Among them are anxiety about facing and realizing the force of emotion in history, philosophical complexities inherent in interdisciplinary study, current socio-cultural animosity to psychoanalysis, and fear of the unknown. These forces have not been able to destroy our field, because we are developing an important paradigm. We are realizing that human beings in the theater of history are driven far more than we might like to imagine or know by emotion and fantasy on both individual and shared levels, and are increasingly able to show how this is so. Our insights are here to stay.
Henry Lawton (Sat,) studied this question.