Talk:Lloyd deMause

The following looks like a content fork - the page is about deMause, and while his work is going to be part of the page, the core should be the man and his life, not an explanation of his theory. This content might be more fruitfully integrated into the Psychohistory main page, right now the page is almost exclusively about the theory of psychohistory, and virtually nothing about the man beyond what is in the lead and info box.

Also note that in my trimmings, I had removed bibliographical items that were duplicated in the footnotes, in removing this information I may have removed some of the footnotes and now the bibliography section is missing content.

Psychohistory, the study of the psychological motivations of historical events, remains a controversial field of study, and deMause and other IPA scholars have detractors in the academic community. Some historians and anthropologists claim that deMause's own formulations are insufficiently supported by credible research.^[1] DeMause believes that his detractors are not largely moved by any evidence, but rather are unconsciously motivated to attack those who would challenge the idea of "good parenting" throughout the many of cultures.^[1]

The conflict of new and old psychoclasses is also pivotal in Demausean thought. This is reflected, for instance, in the clash between Blue State (presumably the new psychoclass) and Red State voters in the contemporary United States.^[2] Another key 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.^[3]

The History of Childhood 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. On the other hand, deMause's work has attracted hostility from historian Hugh Cunningham.^[4] It has been argued that he has written a history of child abuse and not of childhood.^[5] Also, some critics claim that the sources he used lack the systematic analysis that would give the reader confidence in them as reliable evidence.

WLU (talk) 19:32, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

OK: I'will try to move that to the Psychohistory article. —Cesar Tort 19:35, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Cool. The deMause page still desperately needs expanding with more info about the man. Any chance he's been in any torrid love affairs or international espionage incidents? That could be fun to write about... WLU (talk) 22:30, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I looked up deMause the other day in Wikipedia, and I was very surprised by the tiny size of the entry. On reading this Discussion page I learned of the controversy over his notability. As an applied mathematician (specializing in the social sciences), psychohistory is way outside my domain of professional expertise, but perhaps I can contribute something useful and quantitative to this discussion anyway.

My exposure to deMause and psychohistory came about in an unusual way: my wife was the copy editor for the Journal of Psychohistory for many years. She would periodically bring articles to my attention, and over the years I have read quite a few. I want to try to bring some perspective to this discussion with two contributions: some facts about psychohistory as a scholarly endeavor, and an independent analysis of the significance of deMause in the history of ideas.

First, some facts about psychohistory as a legitimate domain of inquiry:

• The International Psychohistorical Association, founded in 1977 by Lloyd de Mause, has annual meetings every year for 30 years. I have never attended, but friends tell me that they are well-attended by psychoanalysts, therapists, and authors from around the world.

• The Journal of Psychohistory (founded and edited by deMause) is listed in the 2005 catalog of journals held by 500 or more libraries around the world. Source: http://www.ilstu.edu/~brstoff/ebss/psycjournals305.htm

• The Journal of Psychohistory had an impact factor of 0.47 in 2001. In the list of all social science journals, ranked by impact factor, J.Psychohistory appears on page 17 out of 27 pages. In other words, it ranked higher than 37% of all journals in psychology in impact factor. It was very close to the Journal of Forensic Psychiatry, the Journal of Psychosocial Oncology, and the Journal of Mathematical Sociology. (Impact factor is calculated by dividing the number of current citations to articles published in the two previous years by the total number of articles published in the two previous years, among all journals indexed by the Social Science Citation Index.) Source: http://www.psych.uw.edu.pl/doktoranckie/n2/pliki/impact_factor.pdf

• At Journal-Ranking.com, which uses a more broadly-based index of journal quality, the Journal of Psychohistory ranks #4662 out of all 8000 journals ranked. Within the category of "Psychology - Multidisciplinary", the Journal of Psychohistory ranked #52 out of 106. Source: http://www.journal-ranking.com/ranking/listCommonRanking.html?journalListId=423&citingStartYear=1901&selfCitationWeight=1&pagingPage=1&externalCitationWeight=1&

For all these reasons it would seem that psychohistory — a discipline founded by deMause — has a legitimate claim to space within Wikipedia. Now let me turn to my view on the notability of deMause himself.

It seems to me that deMause has contributed ideas to the social sciences in two distinct areas: (a) the frequency and severity of child abuse in European history, and (b) the fantasy-life of nations. The second of these two areas is distinctly speculative and non-scientific, and I have little use or respect for it. The first, on the other hand, contains original and important scientific hypotheses that someday will be verifiable with empirical data.

Let me draw an analogy between the ideas of deMause and those of Lawrence Keeley, professor of Archeology at the University of Illinois:

• Keeley holds that the frequency of deaths from warfare was greater in the past than it is today, and that it has been decreasing for the past two or three millennia. This directly contradicts the commonly-held opinion, both within anthropology and the public mind, that "primitive" societies were much more peaceful than modern societies (this is the "Myth of the Peaceful Savage"). Keeley's 1996 book, "War Before Civilization" adduced an enormous amount of historical and archeological data in support of his controversial thesis.

• DeMause holds that the frequency and severity of child abuse was greater in the past than it is today, and that it has been decreasing for the past two millenia or so. This directly contradicted the then commonly-held opinion, both within anthropology and the public mind, that neither "primitive" nor modern societies treat their children badly at all. DeMause's breakthrough 1978 monograph, "The Evolution of Childhood", was hugely controversial, despite the enormous amount of scholarly historical references that deMause brought to bear on this question.

In my non-expert opinion as a mere mathematician and statistician, deMause's career has been hampered by two things: his theory emerged 20 years too early for it to have been taken seriously, and he had no education in epidemiology or quantitative social science. He attempted to justify his theory using methods that were standard in psychoanalysis at the time, but which bear little resemblance or connection to real science. Despite his very weak scientific methodology, however, I do believe that his theory deserves respect and testing by others more knowledgeable of how to do the testing, exactly as Keeley's theory has.

Almost all of the "knowledge" that we thought we had back in the 1960s and 70s on contemporary rates of child sexual abuse are now known to be radically understated, for girls and even more for boys. The "Battered Child Syndrome" was only recognized in medicine in 1962, by Dr. C. Henry Kempe. If we were in such ignorance and denial then, only forty years ago, how much more might it have been during the Victorian Era, say, or the Middle Ages?

I think it is important to realize that when deMause first advanced his hypothesis about child abuse in history, he was being hard-nosed in comparison to his contemporaries. The mythology of the day held that child abuse was virtually non-existent, and that the past experiences of children were idyllic. DeMause attacked those ideas with hundreds upon hundreds of written historical documents that indicated otherwise. That effort inspired the early pioneers of the movement to uncover contemporary child abuse, and for that contribution alone deMause is notable. I believe that his historical theory will one day be testable, just as Keeley's parallel theory is now. No matter whether deMause is ultimately found to be right or wrong, his notable contribution was to be the first to raise the question, and thus to inspire others to look into the topic of the effects of child abuse generally.

Here is what Alice Miller, a popular author who has a substantial biography in Wikipedia, recently wrote about deMause (the bold emphasis is mine):

"But working toward a better, more aware future cannot be done in isolation from the ongoing attempt to understand our history in all its facets, for us as individuals and as society. The work started by Lloyd deMause and continued by him and other psychohistorians is to my knowledge the first systematic research in this direction. The history of child-rearing might be more illuminating than many others in illustrating the dangers for society at large attendant on willful ignorance about child development. The ongoing research on babies from birth to three might be helpful for eventually overcoming this ignorance. It may enable some historians to raise more frequently the question raised for the first time by Lloyd deMause: what does it feel like to be an abused infant, without any enlightened witnesses? Unfortunately, the early childhood of people who recently mercilessly killed in Rwanda has not yet become an issue for psychological or sociological investigation. But should empathic psychohistorians once become interested in finding out and describing the atmosphere of the first years of the killer's life, they could probably be able to explain some of the events that still seem inexplicable." — Quoted in: http://www.naturalchild.org/alice_miller/political.html

For all of these reasons, I urge that the deMause biography receive better treatment in Wikipedia, including a discussion of the notability of his creations, the discipline of psychohistory, its journal, its institute, and its 30 years of international conferences — all undertaken in a climate of extreme denial of the realities of child abuse. —Aetheling (talk) 20:15, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

• "I looked up deMause the other day in Wikipedia, and I was very surprised by the tiny size of the entry."

Dear Aetheling, as you can appreciate in the above discussion, some content has been moved from this article to Psychohistory in order to comply with the Wikipedia policy to avoid Content Forks.

I agree with you that the page size is tiny. Perhaps you that seem to know deMause much better than me can contribute to expand the page by adding biographical information. DeMause's scholarly work is fully described in the articles Psychohistory and Psychohistorical views on infanticide.

I look forward to find biographical info of deMause for this article.

—Cesar Tort 21:51, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

It seems rather odd that even the basic list of his works was removed during the controversy on NPOV. I've restored that--I assume it must have been accidental.
As for "content fork", it is invariably the case that some indication of the work of a scholar be given at the biographical article of the scholar. The general subject article should not be devoted to any one scholar's view, but should show the diversity of opinion. As I've never though much about him before this week, I'll try to restore a suitably objective discussion. I have formed some impression from the above discussion of what has been going on: first, any discussion of child abuse is going to be very controversial. In a broader sense, there is obviously no agreement between historians generally about the possible benefit of a viewpoint based on psychoanalysis or each of the various schools of psychoanalysis, just as there is no agreement about a viewpoint based on Marxism.

and I can tell you one thing very clearly as a librarian: the data given above on the Journal of his journal shows it to be a real but not very important journal. an impact factor like that is nothing to boast about. Nor is a rank on other factors merely midway among psychology journals. However, I will take a look at the article in WP on it at some point. DGG (talk) 01:04, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I did not intend to imply that the Journal of Psychohistory is "important", only that it has a following and cannot be dismissed so cavalierly. While you are looking up things, perhaps you could look up the entry for Lloyd deMause in the Social Science Citation Index. How many citations has he been getting recently? I don't have institutional access, so I can't do the research myself. —Aetheling (talk) 04:53, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I searched the Web of Science (combining the SSCI and SCI; my access covers 1975 till present). 39 publications are listed that have been cited a total of 82 times (the maximum being 15). Excluding self-citations leaves 58 articles that cite him. His h-index is 7. As this is all unbelievably low, I tried searching for different name variants: "Author=(mause dl*) OR Author=(demause L*) OR Author=(de mause l*)", but that didn't change anything. Something must be wrong here, I know postdocs that have more citations than that... Most citations seem to come from the Journal of Psychohistory, which has a 2006 Impact factor of 0.389 (the vast majority of citations being from the journal itself). This ranks it 73 out of 99 journals in its ISI category, "PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY". 709 citations to deMause come up if I search for "cited reference", which still is not really that much but does show that most citations are to his works published in sources that are not covered by the SSCI and SCI. Perhaps someone here has an explanation for the low citation figures that I find for deMause, they seem decidedly unrealistic for someone who more or less founded a field (even one considered as fringe by some). --Crusio (talk) 11:19, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

You searched in the web of science. I am a total newbie about these matters but of course psychohistory, like the humanities, is not a hard science. I guess the journal we are talking about belongs in the category of "Psychology - Multidisciplinary"? Is there a specific search engine to measure these journals' ratings?—Cesar Tort 16:30, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Psychology and humanities in general are certainly considered "science" by me (and I'm a life scientist myself). In any case, WoS includes the SSCI. Sorry that I did not expand that abbreviation: it stands for Social Sciences Citation Index (as well as the Arts & Humanities Citation Index , by the way). For journals' ratings, the most authorative source is the JCR (Journal Citation Reports), from which I took that category heading "Psychology - Multidisciplinary". --Crusio (talk) 16:42, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I've just come across this Wikipedia entry, and I'm surprised and disappointed by it. It seems to have been edited in way that is hostile to a great man; presumably, by a behaviourist on a mission. There is no doubt that Lloyd DeMause has made one of the greatest contributions to the development of psychoanalytic thought over the past forty years. His books are fascinating. His chapter 'The Evolution of Childhood' in the book 'The History of Childhood.' (1974: The Psychoanalytic press) is a scholarly but highly readable work. It has had a great influence on Psychoanalysis, and on our understanding of families. I'm amazed that the Wikipedia has such great content on minor computer geeks whose influence is comparatively minor and transient, whereas a man like Lloyd DeMause, whose eminence is widely acknowledged by his peers, and by academia in general, is given such short shrift. Even if you disagree with psychohistory, it is well-worth study. It is as rigorous as any other aspect of the study of history, thanks to Lloyd. I would add, on a more personal note, that his famous analysis of the Nixon Tapes, completely changed my view of World Politics. His conclusions were frightening at the time, but have been borne out by subsequent events.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by AndrewRMClarke (talk • contribs)

This article should be expanded with info about Lloyd's life. With regard to psychohistory, the article Psychohistory also needs work. I agree with you that we need more balanced articles on this subject. Which specific sentences would you dispute in either of these articles? —Cesar Tort 15:37, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Recently I have witnessed online discussions that deMause might be of Jewish heritage. But blogs and forums are not reliable sources. Any reliable source that confirms that? 189.249.225.211 (talk) 00:33, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Where did you see this discussion? Has he ever commented about being Jewish or not? I've read some of his articles on Jewish history. Can you put a link? — Preceding unsigned comment added by ‎Madgambler (talk • contribs)

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