Joel Kovel and Robert Jay Lifton: Two Psychohistorical Modes

The intent of this paper is to describe an orientation toward psycho-history which appears most explicitly in two recent works by Joel Kovel1 and Robert Jay Lifton5 that apply symbolic modes transact-tionally across levels ranging from the biological to the historical. These modes have roots in universal events of human infancy and unfold as cultural and historical themes. But Kovel and Lifton regard the fundamental character of the crucial symbolic elements differently, Kovel emphasizing the biological pressures that lead toward separation-individuation and Lifton the historical forces that influence de-differentiation and connectedness. These contrasting themes are reminiscent of the classical philosophical problem of the one and the many which psychohistory, as a contemporary discipline striving to relate human nature to the complex social events that have overwhelmed previous disciplines, attempts to understand in a new way. Our intention here is to begin to clarify the dimensions of such a redefinition.

I. Kovel: The Paradoxes of Separation

Kovel's White Racism has topical importance as an anguished attempt to cut through the delusions and fantasies of race; it also has the wider objective of reconstructing the frame of reference through which we understand man's historical nature and possibilities. Secular modern man's assumptions have been shattered by the events of recent history; the psychohistorical approach represents above all his effort to reimagine himself, to refine new images in the face