PARTISAN REVIEW
31
lcssness,
in
both their readers and themselves. It will not be easy
to
discover, and then collectively maintain, the kind of authoritative
conceptual principles we have come to expect and depend upon
within an intellectual tradition. Moreover, there is a sense in which
psychohistory adds to the burdens of a historical discipline already
immersed in difficult struggles to replace no longer acceptable nine–
teenth-century versions of history as clear narrative or epic or inevita–
ble destiny, struggles to come to grips with the convoluted, opaque
and deadly actualities of the twentieth century. Psychohistory, at least
in the version I have been describing, tends to "complexify" rather
than simplify, which I think is as it should be. And Protean ten–
dencies among scholars can render them receptive to the new prin–
ciples of psychohistory and yet cautious in granting them intellectual
authority, which is also as
it
should be.
Within these uncertainties lie extraordinary possibilities. These
too are Protean, and I think one can observe in contemporary man
an increasing capacity for coming to what would have previously
been viewed as impossible intellectual combinations and innovations.
Compared to his predecessors, he is not only less bound by tradition
but much more fluid in his potential integration of very diverse
conceptual elements. And the new psychohistory - having stated my
reservations and qualifications I think I can begin to call it that–
emerges as itself a radical investigative response to a radically dis–
located historical epoch.
Despite what I speak of as Protean possibilities, ,and what some
perceive as an exotic aura surrounding the idea of psychohistory, all
that I have said here and experienced in my investigations militates
strongly against facile intellectual efforts or the creation of "instant
psychohistorians." To the contrary, the approach seems to require
not only a central commitment to one of the disciplines (or a relat–
ed one) and a considerable knowledge of the other, but something
more: a considerable ethical concern with the problems being in–
vestigated. Erik Erikson has hardly been neutral in his feelings about
Luther's achievements or about what Gandhi's might still mean for
the world. Nor has Keniston been neutral about student radicals,
Coles about minority-group aspirations nor I about Hiroshima and
its legacy. Rather, all of us have been struggling toward ways of
acknowledging our involvements and exploring their relationship to
