Lloyd deMause (pronounced ''de-Moss''; September 19, 1931 – April 23, 2020) was an American lay

psychoanalyst PsychoanalysisFrom Greek language, Greek: + . is a set of Theory, theories and Therapy, therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a bo ...

and

social historian Social history, often called the new social history, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in his ...

, best known for his pioneering work in the field of psychohistory. He did graduate work in political science at Columbia University and later trained as a psychoanalyst. He is the founder of the '' Journal of Psychohistory''.

Psychohistory

Beginning in the 1970s, DeMause began conceiving of psychohistory, 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 behavior of groups and nations—past and present—by analyzing events in childhood and the family, especially

child abuse Child abuse (also called child endangerment or child maltreatment) is physical, sexual, and/or psychological maltreatment or neglect of a child or children, especially by a parent or a caregiver. Child abuse may include any act or failure to a ...

. Psychohistorians endorse trauma models of schizoid, narcissistic,

masochistic Sadomasochism ( ) is the giving and receiving of pleasure from acts involving the receipt or infliction of pain or humiliation. Practitioners of sadomasochism may seek sexual pleasure from their acts. While the terms sadist and masochist refe ...

, 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 A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, ...

societies, nor to the ancient Greek, Roman and Chinese 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 The term modern period or modern era (sometimes also called modern history or modern times) is the period of history that succeeds the Middle Ages (which ended approximately 1500 AD). This terminology is a historical periodization that is applie ...

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'', interviewer

Stephen Schiff {{Infobox person , name = Stephen Schiff , image = , image_size = , alt = , caption = , birth_name = , birth_date = , birth_place = Detroit, Michigan, ...

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 A State (polity), state's foreign policy or external policy (as opposed to internal or domestic policy) is its objectives and activities in relation to its interactions with other states, unions, and other political entities, whether bilaterall ...

", 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 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