Tema 4
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Norman Simms
Waikato University
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"History as Cruelty, Abuse and Trauma:
Using Psychohistory to Understand History of Mentalities"
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>>Most writing about abused children and the consequences of their traumatic
>>experiences focus on contemporary issues, where immediate clinical and
>>therapeutic models are urgently needed. Psychohistorians attempt to set
>>the current crisis into a historical context by showing that what is
>>happening today is not a sudden aberration in behaviour or a mere
>>perversion brought on by contemporary political events. Instead, they
>>attempt to show that child abuse is the essential flaw in human history
>>which, gradually, and with many reversals, has progressed towards the
>>beginnings of a self-conscious understanding allowing for deliberate steps
>>towards amelioration, correction, and prevention of further abuse.
>> The function of this paper to show that historical research can be
>>enriched by new ways of reading and evaluating documents and other texts
>>from the past from a psychohistorical perspective. This does not mean
>>that psychohistory replaces normative history of political, social,
>>military and economic matters, for instance. Nor does it mean we impose
>>some kind of Freudian narrative pattern of development on events and
>>persons of the past; no more so than we attempt to lie historical
>>characters on the couch and psychoanalyse them from inadequate and
>>fragmentary data. Nor does it mean that social history can be widened to
>>include such topics as childrearing, maternal care, and early education at
>>home and in school. Rather, much more deeply, it means that the treatment
>>of the essential caregiver-infant in the first three years of life shapes
>>the personality and the affect-parameters of later life, with some
>>dialectical reciprocity the other way, from adult institutions back on to
>>primary emotional-social development. In other words, I wish to argue
>>that attention to these basic human experiences of early childhood
>>revealed through Psychohistory are as powerfully formative for social
>>groups and historical movements as they are to individuals and private
>>life and feelings.
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