[lit-ideas] Re: Gerhard Weinberg and Hari Seldon
- From: david ritchie <profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2020 13:46:47 -0800
On Feb 16, 2020, at 12:40 PM, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
I haven’t heard the term “psychohistorian” since reading Isaac Asimov’s
Foundation. I thought of that and Hari Seldon, but then I thought, surely
not. Surely Weinberg is being serious. As David Ritchie comments,
historians keep advancing (or something like that). Maybe modern historians
use the term (knowingly borrowed from Asimov) to refer to historians who
delve into psychological elements of a major-person’s history. Shoot, I
don’t know.
I open the book yesterday and found that I’m in for more than a thousand pages.
In preparation for next Friday I must read Keegan’s book about naval warfare,
so I’ll be behind you for a while. Psychohistory was developed by Freudians,
among them my Ph.D. advisor H. Stuart Hughes. His second wife Judith Hughes
wrote about a cohort of European leaders but the books that gave the discipline
what attention it received were Erik Erikson, “Young Man Luther” way back in
1958 and a multi-volume study of nineteenth century bourgeois life by Peter
Gay. I checked to see if the Journal of Psychohistory is still alive and well.
It is.
https://psychohistory.com/ ;<
https://psychohistory.com/>
https://history.ucsd.edu/people/faculty/hughes.html
I haven’t read any in a long time.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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