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ROBERT JAY LIFTON
missal of all psychological approaches to history - and even from ,
the more subtle
dismissal
of psychological efforts by an insistence
upon the inability to "really know" anything significant about the
minds of men (great or ordinary) of the past, or about the ways
in which current individual and collective ideas and emotions con–
nect with wider historical currents.
We are dealing then with three levels of skepticism: immediate
and total rejection (the assumption that the knowledge sought is un–
obtainable and the whole enterprise futile); anticipated rejection
(the attitude, "You have to show me": implicitly, "I don't expect
or
wish
to be shown"); and a sense (which I share with a number
of colleagues in the enterprise) that the kind of knowledge we seek ,
is extremely refractory, and our methods of seeking it highly vul–
nerable.
This
third stance turns out to be in many ways the most
skeptical of all.
It is tempting, especially for those with clinical experience,
to
speak of the forms of skepticism that dismiss out-of-hand, or nearly
so, as "resistance." For the term suggests the kind of psychological
force and need that can accompany the rejection. But I think the
temptation itself should be "resisted," because the word also implies
- whether used by classical psychoanalysts or Protestant evangel–
ists
or Chinese thought-reformers - that there is a true direction or
t
intention that is ultimately, to be accepted, even embraced, once
the "resistance" has been overcome. This last assumption, dubious
enough when applied to the individual, could be disastrous when
applied to history. Moreover, by invoking the term resistance one
could all too readily fall into the psychologistic fallacy of explain–
ing away criticism by examining critics' involvements and needs,
thereby avoiding any consideration of the weaknesses of that which
is
being criticized.
Yet the psychological approach to history does cause discom–
fort - because it entails formidable problems in method, and be–
cause, for many working in both traditions and in other branches
of social thought, it threatens to undermine explicit concepts and
implicit images about how men behave, why societies change and
what constitutes an acceptable professional discipline or "field." We
are all, in other words, formatively bound by our own psychohis-
torical "place," and by our activity in that place. And so we should
