Psychohistory 2000 and Beyond

As multi-disciplinary field or distinct discipline, psychohistory has produced an extensive and impressive track record over the last half-century (if one begins counting from the early usage by Erik Erikson). Yet in crucial ways it has become the victim of its own successes. A healthy pluralism which co-existed along with certain founding documents (most notably by Lloyd deMause in the branch with which I’m most familiar) has on the one hand led to a wide-ranging but healthy proliferation of intellectual offshoots, while on the other hand has resulted in marginalization and fragmentation. If in these collective endeavors there is an emerging core, no one so far has come forward to pull it all together. And while such expectations may simply be wishful thinking, they comprise an urgent future task.