THE PLACE OF HISTORY IN HISTORY:
O'Brien, Dennis
BOOKS THE PLAGE OF HISTORY IN HISTORY DENNIS O'BRIEN Clio and the Doctor*: Psycho-history, Quanto-history and History JACQUES BARZUN University of Chicago, $7.95 Queen: Thou know'st tis...
...Both therapies offer to put history on a sound scientific regimen...
...This death is a unique one and the Danish throne is not the same though a king reigns...
...My only fear is that the barbs will not sink deep enough...
...He often seems to be objecting on stylistic grounds to the introduction of quantitative material: "Narrated instances coupled with a verbal summary of effects strike different nerves and evoke different images from those brought into play by ratiocina-tive perception of graphs and figures...
...John Austin, the Oxfordian leader of the school until his death in 1960, in a paper entitled "A Plea for Excuses" sets down the following principle for verbs: no modification without aberration...
...But men as merely natural objects are indeed common—"passing through nature to eternity" or "passing through the Oedipal crisis to neurosis"—and Hamlet or the historian's curious interest in what is particular is lost on nature...
...But when I just wash my hands, well, I just wash my hands...
...Either answer seems silly...
...and for the Court—which retains unchanging kingship though the king should die...
...Hamlet's madness is no late development in the play, it is present in these opening lines which reject "nature's primal sanity...
...For example: one of Barzun's repeated points about history is that it is an "ordinary language" discipline and he takes amusing potshots at the pretentious rhetoric of the social scientist: "Action potentials are to a large extent exercising an influence on my set when I perceive the behavior of another person and thereby influence what sens I shall perceive in a given material sequence . . ." But, having noted the peculiarity of this language, Barzun can only conclude that it is of no use to the historian merely because it is not part of common converse...
...His point is that we do not adverbially qualify our verbs of action unless there is some specific reason to think that the action has gone wrong in some fashion...
...It is the burden of Barzun's essay that the proposed methods remedy the miseries of Clio only by definitively putting her out of her misery...
...It is not scientifically obscurantist to refuse to look for explanations where none are called for (not all actions demand explanation and excuse...
...The psychoanalyst doctors have been particularly insistent in urging their nostrums on the practicing historian...
...If we regard men in the universal dimensions of common biological or psychological careers, then we can indeed attain a theory of man but at the expense of a history of man...
...Barzun shows sure historical instincts, but he often scores only rhetorical points off his mathematicizing opponents...
...To the psychoanalyst doctor, these efforts have been quite unprofessional...
...These materials cannot be analyzed for the nuance of political phrase or cultural style, they must be massed and ordered statistically...
...Barzun gave one of the principal speeches—in defense of traditional history—and the book is an expansion of those remarks...
...Historians have frequently suffered bouts of conscience about the fact that history is usually the record of elites...
...it introduces ways of modifying words of action, excusing conduct which is odd, queer or bizarre...
...Now, the problem with psycho-history is that it wishes to adverbially modify all verbs...
...Just as death is a common natural event, so it would appear that psycho-dynamic structures of the unconscious and its cohorts are universal factors in shaping all personalities...
...Barzun notes the existence of Arthur Danto's work and has obviously read Louis Mink's fine study of R. G. Collingwood but that is it...
...The cures, however turn out like Hamlet's trip to England: prescriptions with murderous intent...
...As Barzun sees it, the two primary therapies for Clio's sad condition are Psycho-history and Quanto-history...
...Hamlet will not think of common death but insists on the unusual character of this king and this death...
...The trick of psycho-history is to regard all cases as susceptible to the modifications necessary when dealing with the odd cases...
...It is clear that historians have traditionally trafficked in "psychology," explaining actions in terms of motives and desires...
...Fortunately, the modern age is not without its cures and Jacques Bar-zun's charming little volume recounts the perils of Clio and her doctors...
...All these are questions that come up when the action misfires somehow...
...I just yawned, that's all...
...Considering the disaster the higher classes have made of history and fired by a populist vision of returning history to the masses, historians with conscience have sought to circumvent traditional historical sources and write the history of the common man...
...He washes his hands compulsively—all the time, beyond necessity to be clean...
...If Hamlet's sifting of the past bespeaks a sickness, consider Clio forever raking over the records of irrecoverable ages...
...In a theory such as Freud's we, have, presumably, a scientific picture of human motivation which relegates the ordinary motivational explanations of historians to the same antique shop as the theory of humors which explained Hamlet's melancholia as an excess of black bile...
...Hamlet and the historian insist we deal with particulars...
...Thus Malthus is basically correct when he says, "The histories that we possess are histories only of the higher classes...
...One never simply yawns, lights a cigar, drafts a treaty—all the ostensible actions of men become some sort of inadvertent, unintentional, by-the-way actions performed by a psyche hell-bent for more sensational ends...
...As a man who has made his mark in the history of ideas, it is no wonder that Barzun rejects an historical methodology more properly adapted to economic history where ideas are merely ideologies of class...
...As to political conservatism: in Nature and the Great General Theory of Society, man is universalized and quickly becomes tediously common...
...Queen: If it be, Why seems it so particular with thee...
...From the standpoint of quanto-history, traditional history stands convicted of elitism...
...Euthanasia will "cure" susceptibility to disease after a fashion...
...The principal difficulty, however, with the psychoanalytic cure for history is that it reworks our understanding of history on models of nature...
...unintentionally...
...Did I do it voluntarily, intentionally, deliberately, impulsively, compulsively...
...It is traditional history in its belief in the novel particular that makes the very concept of revolutionary change possible...
...BOOKS THE PLAGE OF HISTORY IN HISTORY DENNIS O'BRIEN Clio and the Doctor*: Psycho-history, Quanto-history and History JACQUES BARZUN University of Chicago, $7.95 Queen: Thou know'st tis common all that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity...
...That is good enough prima facie argument against graphed history, but it doesn't get much beyond that...
...Hamlet protests that he considers a particular death, not nature's common round, and that he also broods on the death of a king, not the Danish death rate—even the statistics for criminal homicide...
...Barzun's criticism of quanto-history suffers most from lack of conclusive argument...
...I suspect that the primary audience for Clio and the Doctors will be historians and I wonder if any minds are likely to be changed by Barzun's stylish defense of Clio's conservative manners...
...But, I am getting ready for bed, I yawn...
...But what if—God forbid!—people started talking like social scientists at the butcher's and the baker's, would it then be acceptable to history...
...Quanto-history works another variation on common-ness...
...This model of revelations at a deeper level is so ingrained in our notion of what it is to understand or explain something that the poor traditional historian may well appear as a very superficial thinker indeed—merely describing when we seek explanation and understanding...
...Only if you think it odd, gauche, immoral for me to yawn, take a stroll, post a letter, is it necessary to excuse and explain away my action...
...We are accustomed to the replacement of common sense by science, the revelation of hidden inner mysteries by special analytic tools...
...The example of natural science is so influential that we are easily persuaded that it should be followed by serious historians...
...Ordinary descriptions of events are replaced by technical descriptions in psychoanalytic or sociological jargon, by graphs, charts and diagrams...
...Do I yawn intentionally...
...We catch sight of the common man in church registries, tax records, voting lists...
...The common man, for most of history at least, has not left us literary records: the staple of traditional history...
...I spill the tea tray in your lap...
...But the prince's insanity is nothing less than the peculiar—most peculiar—belief in the reality of history which, to Nature and Social Order, must appear a melancholic obsession with mere particulars...
...Since Barzun opts for ordinary language in history, he would profit from the arguments of "ordinary language" philosophy...
...Quanto-history's allure rests on the same general appeal to "science" that supports psycho-history...
...Barzun's traditionalist position is attacked by the new methodologists as scientifically obscurantist, politically elitist and conservative...
...The University of Chicago Press should credit its book designers...
...Both reject a common sense view of historical action in terms of something hidden and deep...
...When Barzun comes to discuss the vexed problem of explanation in history, there is not the slightest hint that this problem has been examined extensively with great insight and subtlety by contemporary philosophers like Hempel, Dray, Donagan, Scriven and others...
...On psycho-history he is closer to conclusive refutation, but there too, he might have profited from the discussions of contemporary philosophers...
...Barzun seems to suggest it might...
...A desire bora of social conscience to relocate the subject matter of history calls forth a quantitative methodology...
...I think the criticisms miss the mark...
...The Psychoanalysis of Everyday Life) The source of the fault here is obvious...
...Barzun offers a persuasive case for his position but it seems to me there are even more conclusive arguments than he presents...
...The methods of natural science are appropriate to natural objects and it is only if one regards human actors as natural objects that the methods work...
...Hamlet: Aye, madam, it is common...
...Individual careers are reduced to psycho-dynamics, the ideas of kings to hidden social forces revealed in demographic tables...
...It is the politicians and statesmen, captains and crusaders who make history...
...As a sustained polemic against the bewitchment of this "chemical model" for historical understanding, Barzun's book seems to me admirable...
...While the motivation of psycho-history is peculiarly scientific and therapeutic, the motive of quanto-history is more political and reformist...
...Gertrude speaks for Nature—which regards all lives as common passage...
...I hope it is not mere academic bickering to chide an historian for failing to be a philosopher, but Barzun is into philosophy willy-nilly, so there it is...
...The problems with which the conference and Barzun's book are concerned are undoubtedly philosophical problems, and yet it may be a measure of the non-influence of philosophy today that in a book rich with interesting citations there are no contemporary philosophers quoted...
...The description of action in ordinary language is just as it should be unless there is some reason to suggest oddity...
...In my judgment, his views on history are generally correct and he touches on many of the aspects of history which justify a rejection of the new methodologies, but it seems unfortunate that he does not avail himself of the recent literature in English on the philosophy of history...
...These people are invariably the wealthy and literate and it is their records which constitute historical material...
...Particular history turns out to be vaguely an illusion, it only "seems," because basically every history is the same identical story: the common tale of life to death, the common conflict of child and parent...
...Barzun is no less firm in rejecting quanto-history and its attendant social program...
...Psychoanalysis is developed as a therapy...
...To be sure, it radically reorients our common sense view of things and comes with all the trappings of deep science, but the new description is not just rare among native speakers, it is based on the unacceptable notion that all action requires excuse (explanation as some other action than it appears...
...The origin of Barzun's study was a conference held in 1971 at the City University in New York to discuss the "revolution" in historical methodology...
...As Barzun says: "Once the character of a man or group has been diagnosed and described by psycho-history, man or group no longer has a real history in the sense that we expect true novelty...
...A final note: the book is unusually handsome with Victorian style end papers (in keeping with the grand traditionalism of the author, no doubt...
...It is a charge which Barzun accepts...
...This prescription from the psychoanalyst appears very potent...
...At one point he defines the task of history: "[It] takes the product that influential events and persons have deposited or injected into the public mind and sifts, corrects, and clarifies it...
...Denying nature and political structure to brood over this father dead is unhealthy and subversive...
...The primary audience, then, was other historians including the practitioners of the new methods...
...The appearance is overthrown, the underlying reality made plain...
...I believe there are stronger arguments than mere lack of general use for the exclusion of clinical terminology from history...
Vol. 101 • January 1975 • No. 13
