Lloyd deMause (pronounced ''de-Moss''; September 19, 1931 – April 23, 2020) was an American lay psychoanalyst and social historian, best known for his pioneering work in the field of

psychohistory Psychohistory is an amalgam of psychology, history, and related social sciences and the humanities. Its proponents claim to examine the "why" of history, especially the difference between stated intention and actual behavior. Psychobiography, chil ...

. He did graduate work in

political science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

and later trained as a psychoanalyst. He is the founder of the ''

Journal of Psychohistory The ''Journal of Psychohistory'' (,) is a journal established in 1973 in the field of psychohistory, edited by Lloyd deMause and published by the Institute for Psychohistory (IP) . The journal has been originally published as ''History of Childhoo ...

''.

Psychohistory

Beginning in the 1970s, DeMause began conceiving of

, a field of study of the psychological motivations of historical events, and their associated patterns of behavior. It seeks to understand the emotional origin of the social and

political Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that stud ...

behavior of groups and nations—past and present—by analyzing events in

childhood A child (plural, : children) is a human being between the stages of childbirth, birth and puberty, or between the Development of the human body, developmental period of infancy and puberty. The legal definition of ''child'' generally refers ...

and the

family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...

, especially child abuse. Psychohistorians endorse trauma models of schizoid,

narcissistic Narcissism is a self-centered personality style characterized as having an excessive interest in one's physical appearance or image and an excessive preoccupation with one's own needs, often at the expense of others. Narcissism exists on a co ...

, masochistic, borderline, depressive and neurotic personalities. The chart below shows the dates at which gradual forms of child abuse are believed by psychohistorians to have evolved in the most advanced nations, based on accounts from historical records; for reasons of limits of research and of societal morale, the timeline does not apply to hunter-gatherer societies, nor to the ancient

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

and

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...

societies where there were a wide variety of childrearing practices. The major childrearing types described by Lloyd deMause are:
Image-Evolution of psychogenic modes

With the exception of the "helping mode of childrearing" (marked in yellow above), for psychohistorians the major childrearing types are related to main psychiatric disorders, as can be seen in the following ''Table of Historical Personalities'': According to deMause's research, each of the above psychoclasses coexist in the modern world today, and are underlying factors of society that allow patterns of abuse to continue.

Legacy

In a 1994 interview with deMause in ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'', interviewer Stephen Schiff wrote that "to buy into psychohistory, you have to subscribe to some fairly woolly assumptions .. for instance, that a nation's child-rearing techniques affect its foreign policy", but confessed that "deMause's analyses have often been weirdly prescient."

Controversy

Contributing to his ostracization from psychoanalytic circles, deMause was a contributor to the

Satanic ritual abuse The Satanic panic is a moral panic consisting of over 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of Satanic ritual abuse (SRA, sometimes known as ritual abuse, ritualistic abuse, organized abuse, or sadistic ritual abuse) starting in the United States in th ...

hysteria of the early 1990s, in part via the circulation of his article "Why Cults Terrorize and Kill Children", where he labelled skeptics of reports of the abuse "molesters" and "pedophile advocates". The article was used as a reliable source by ritual abuse proponents.

Publications

DeMause published over 90 scholarly articles and several books.

Books

* * * * * * * * *

Articles (selection)

* DeMause, Lloyd (1974): The Evolution of Childhood. In: ''History of Childhood Quarterly: The Journal of Psychohistory'', 1 (4), p. 503-575. (Comments and reply: p. 576-606) * DeMause, Lloyd (1987): The History of Childhood in Japan. In: ''The Journal of Psychohistory'', 15 (2), p. 147-151. * DeMause, Lloyd (1988): On Writing Childhood History. In: ''The Journal of Psychohistory'', 16 (2), p. 35-71. * DeMause, Lloyd (1989): The Role of Adaptation and Selection in Psychohistorical Evolution. In: ''The Journal of Psychohistory'', 16 (4), p. 355-372 (Comments and reply: p. S. 372–404). * DeMause, Lloyd (1990): The History of Child Assault. In: ''The Journal of Psychohistory'', 18 (1), p. 1-29. * DeMause, Lloyd (1991): The Universality of Incest. In: ''The Journal of Psychohistory'', 19 (1), p. 123-164. * DeMause, Lloyd (1997): The Psychogenic Theory of History. In: ''The Journal of Psychohistory'', 25 (1), p. 112-183.

Notes

External links

DeMause's bio
* *
On-line repository of deMause' books
{{DEFAULTSORT:Demause, Lloyd 1931 births 2020 deaths Writers from Detroit Columbia University alumni 21st-century American historians American male non-fiction writers 21st-century American psychologists Child abuse Historians from Michigan 21st-century American male writers