One area where I believe we’ve the best potential for developing a more wholistic kind of Asimovian psychohistory is in and through the applications of cognitive and humanistic models to human affairs. This is esp. so, I’d say, through the psychologies of Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Abraham Maslow.

For those of who would like to brush up on their theories, check out these links:

www.piaget.org
www.excent.com . . .
yhspatriot.yorktown.arlington.k12.va.us . . . adolescence/tsld009.htm
honolulu.hawaii.edu . . . guidebk/teachtip/maslow.htm

Now while it is true that these models deal with stage theories of human psychological growth, and focus almost exclusively on childhood development, this doesn’t mean there isn’t any import in them for us to use and work with. The childhood “psychohistorians”, after all, have shown impt. connections between what happens in the wider social world/the world of history and what transpires and develops from childhood and the maturation of children from infancy to/through adolescence.

What to get out of Piaget, Kohlberg, and Maslow? Mainly I think we have something of merit in them in the idea that a society’s dynamic cultural system (of values, laws, ideals, mores, and experiences) is very similar to Piaget’s notion of a “schemata.” As the “schemata” grows with the child’s psyche, growing and adapting with changes in the child’s world and sphere of cognition, so too analogously we can chart the development of a society with its culture. The object of a society’s development is the optimization of its culture to the highest potential f/ the development of its members. Thus, in the kind of society and culture where a true sense of freedom and potential for possibility exists for all its citizens, we can see the fulfillment of Kohlberg’s Post-Conventional Level of Moral Development, Piaget’s Formal Operational Stage, as well as Abraham Maslow’s concept and Hierarchy of Self-Actualization.

I do realize it’s stretching it a bit to consider this material in a psychohistorical sense as a way of understanding societal development and the evolution of human civilizations in history. But if we recognize here the purpose of human society’s existing in the first place, then we can use Piaget & Co. to great benefit in our work. Metaphorically, and even concretely, we can begin to chart out and describe the history of a society’s development according to the phases it goes through to realize its communitarian potential and the potential of its peoples.

The only add-on we’d have to make in our theory is for how such communities crumble and fall apart after they’ve reached a peak experience and/or social-cultural-psychological climax. But this can itself be gotten through theories like Toynbee’s and Spengler’s, other more contemporary social science/psychological models of societal decay, etc. So, it’s not like our expanding psycho-historical model would be one-sided either. We would be able to be more complete with it. And, that is why it would benefit us to apply some of these thinker’s models to our field here. Seems to me “psychohistory” of any stripe could use such more comprehensive inputs.

Are there any further ideas from people on the applications of these models to Psychohistory? If you do have some, please share them with me here. Thanks.

--Brassbabboon

Hi,
I'm a new member and i'm from Mathematics.I want to start reading Psychology to be able to do research in Psychohistory Can you recommend some books and bring me upto date with the present perspectives of the subject?
Hoping for your reply
bye

Hello, Moses. Here’s what I’d suggest. Start out, of course, with Asimov’s Foundation Series to get the “feel” of Asimovian Psycho-History and the gist of its metaphors & approach.

Second, think about doing some reading into the dynamics and psychology of social groups. I’d recommend using two kinds of books, one on the SOCIOLOGY of mass human behavior, activity, plus societal processes and another on ORGANZATIONAL BEHAVIOR (preferably from more of a psychology perspective, although even one from a business-management perspective would do good as well). For instance, here I would recommend a text like “Behavior in Organizations” by Greenberg and Baron for your reference on the OB topic.

Next … Psychology. On this, I’d recommend starting out with DeMausean psychohistorical studies beginning with Lloyd DeMause’s “Foundations of Psychohistory” and the “Emotional Life of Nations.” Now I know other people here on Psychohistory.Org are critical of the DeMausean childhood-based, trauma-oriented paradigm of the subject; still it gives us a template to consider for how we should link up historical factors with psychological ones in examining human events. Take it, leave it, or better conceptualize the matter: the kid-history approach gives us an example to work from in more thoroughly and validly establishing such a connection. Also, it focuses us on an essential aspect of any psychohistorical analysis – looking at the MOTIVATIONS behind human activity in history. And from there, we can concentrate on the broader framework of human motives outside the psychoanalytic, psychohistorical approach … provided, in turn, through our readings into cognitive psychology, behaviorism, and humanistic psychology.

So what books to look at besides the DeMausean ones? Try these for starters: Maslow’s “Toward a Psychology of Being”, “Piaget’s Psychogenesis and the History of Science”, BF Skinner’s “About Behaviorism” and his “Reflections on Behaviorism and Society.” And, if you want, later on, can follow these up by looking at any of their more extensive bibliographies online at either:

www.unige.ch . . .
www.maslow.com
www.bfskinner.org . . .

If you’d like something a little more current, look at “The Theory and Practice of Cultural-Historical Psychology” by Seth Chaiklin for some of this material.

To access psychology journals (in print and electronically), go to The Psychology WWW Virtual Library at
(www.clas.ufl.edu . . .).

And, while there, you may find such publications as “The Journal of Memetics”, and “Noetica” to be of use in your researches as well.

You should be able to get all these books I’ve suggested either through Amazon.Com or, as you prefer, an interlibrary loan program in your area. Hope these recommendations are of help.

-- Brassbabboon

I have looking into Memetics and find it interesting but not yet convincing. It does have some possible good insights.

Hi all,

I have read recently about knowledge representation and related aspects of knowledge and understanding as we humans are given to percieve the surroundings. I find that we need to use these in our cognitive/humanistic model.

The non linear effects of morality, emotion and similar "soft" aspects of human behaviour, the behaviour which is not readily influenced by the rational mind, can be modelled by potentials which we have to define, whcih are like class variables applicable to all models of the cognitive mind, all sides of our thinking.

Especially knowledge representation I think will have a role to play in organizing the model of mind which we will have to create eventually. The model of mind would have to include the model of an individual's mind and a sort of collective psyche, thereby giving wind of the perceptions of an individual and a group of a certain process/object.

Do comment and help me cogitate on this matter. You comments are welcome.

Cheers,
Fulcrum

I have been more interested in Evolutionary Psychology as of late. I have been looking into the notion of human beings as "domesticated" hunter-gatherers. The idea here is that the characteristics we accept as "human" are within a context of social organization that humans were never evolved to deal with. Leading further on with this notion, the idea is that social organization since the agrarian revolution has been primarily focused with dealing with a "new" way of making a living (within larger, and more specialized economic groups). Agrarian society introduced the fixed location for economic activity as opposed to the constant movement and activity of the hunter-gatherer group. It also introduced larger and larger groups living within the geographical region and forming a group identity, which is to say a political identity. This change is at odds with our "nature" and we see the pronounced social issues involved with large gathering of people on a day-to-day basis. Please tell me what you think of this.

The evolutionary psychologists make a plausible case, I think, that our human default mode when attacked or made fearful is to seek revenge and to take care of our own even at the expense of many others. Yet many people develop a post-conventional mode of valuing that carries them beyond the limits of these innate tendencies. Similarly we are mostly more comfortable with concrete operational thought than with the rigors of a well developed formal operational approach, yet many people do habitually engage in the more critical methods of formal operational thought. Formal education, of course, offers means to help people develop beyond the limits of automatic revenge-seeking and kin-favoritism. I recommend Kieran Egan's Vygotsky-inspired book, The Educated Mind (University of Chicago Press, 1997) for more on this. Egan tends to put Vygotsky in opposition to Piaget. Piaget is said by Egan to think that development is fairly automatic, given standard stimuli in life, whereas Vygotsky emphasizes the importance of social influence. I think that Egan exaggerates the differences, however.

At the center of modern Evolutionary Psychology is the cognitive capabilities of the "human animal." Human reasoning and social interaction in the modern community is believed to have roots in our ancient evolutionary past. These very qualities let to a mastery of social relationships that underlay the hierarchical social organization of every group from the tribe to the nation state. The existing and historical social organizations are characterized by a set of beliefs that can only be described in terms of mythology. The mythology, as a set of stories serving usually to explain some phenomenon of nature, the origin of man, or the customs, institutions, religious rites, etc, of a people, is an evolved characteristic. Even the most primitive people have a sophisticated explanation of the world as part of their myth. Another evolved characteristic is that of a sophisticated language which is able to handle the hierarchical nature of social relationships and myth. With these evolved features, the hunter-gatherer human had the capability to form what we call society.

The Human simulation, as it is called, is already happening. At IBM they have the largest supercomputer in the world. they are using it to simulate the human mind and body on an atomic level. If we had about 8 billion of these supercomputers running all at once, plus a model of the world with the people acting in this VR (virtual reality), then we could make our simulation. Actually, the computers would have to be faster than they are. We would have to run a faster than real time simulation of the human brain.

~Zantrua~

It is tempting to view the problem from a very granular level, in this case modeling the individual and then integrating these individual models. There are many practical problems to doing this even if such an approach was highly effective. I am not sure that this approach is effective. In my Psychohistory models, I have specifically avoided looking at the individual. The practical issues are present of course, though more to the point, it better to model on a group level. Human beings do not act as individuals within an “individual” setting but as individuals within a group setting. Individual behavior is a social issue. There is value to understanding individual characteristics; I am just not convinced that Psychohistory can ever be a practical discipline with this emphasis.