The Methodological Characteristics of Psychohistory

Abstract

Psychohistory, which sets up its purpose of seizing the human subjects on the basis of the methodology of psychiatry, would be expected to contribute to the sociology of education in terms of theory and methodology; it intends to refine the theory of human development and of group consciousness on one hand, and the metholology on the other which can deal with the qualitative aspects of historical events.Psychohistorical approach can be divided into two basic types, namely the great-man pasadigm (E. H. Erikson) which concentrates on a historical great-man on the one hand and the shared-psychohistorical-themen (R. J. Lifton, K. Keniston) which is observed in people exposed to particular kinds of collective experiences on the other. Their signs could already be seen in Freud's historical studies such as “Woodrow Wilson” coinciding with the former and “Totem and Taboo” corresponding with the latter. But these Freud's studies fell into reductionism depriving them of the historical peculiarity, because he applied his theories of psychiatry excessively to the objects.So, psychohistory tries to overcome the two forms of reductionism by means of the following two methodologies, which constitute the basic characteristics of psychohistory.First, in order to overcome the reduction on the time-axis connected with teleology, the dialectic characteristic would be applicable. For example, Keniston finds the dialectic contradictions between the value-free technism and the subjective anarchism within the dominant knowledge sector of technological society. In addition to this, the identity crisis, the most characteristic view of the Erikson's epigenetic developmental theory, is the constituent concept under which the internal conflicts of a person can be joined to the social and historical contradictions.Second, the reduction on the space-axis connected with methodology could be overcome by the characteristic of structuralism. Lifton gives the general idea of symbolic immortality to a mental process maintaining an inner sense of continuous symbolic relationship, over time and space, with the various elements of life. The symbolic immortality in subclassified into the five modes. These modes convert into another modes each other in history, and also gain the ideal integration as a whole. The method of deductive abstraction that makes clear the latent structure hidden behind the reality is usually called the method of structuralism.Two methodological characteristics examined above are now being integrated through mutual study and endeavour of psychohistorians.