Lloyd deMause est une figure centrale de la psychohistoire, un domaine dédié à l'exploration des motivations psychologiques derrière les événements historiques. Son travail se penche sur les origines émotionnelles du comportement collectif et national, avec un accent particulier sur l'enfance, les dynamiques familiales et surtout la maltraitance infantile, ainsi que des études psychologiques anthropologiques et ethnologiques. Bien que la prémisse selon laquelle les techniques d'éducation des enfants d'une nation peuvent influencer sa politique étrangère puisse sembler non conventionnelle, l'approche de deMause offre une lentille distinctive à travers laquelle comprendre les racines du développement social et politique.
Frühe persönliche Erfahrungen determinieren politisches Verhalten: Attentate auf Führer - Der Golfkrieg als emotionale Störung - Kindheitsursachen des Terrorismus / Psychohistorische Theorie: Die Wiederaufführung früher Traumata in Krieg und sozialer Gewalt - Die psychogene Geschichtstheorie - Krieg als „gerechte“ Vergewaltigung und Läuterung / Psychohistorische Evolution: Kindheit und kulturelle Evolution - Die Evolution der Kindererziehung - Die Evolution von Psyche und Gesellschaft
from the Foreword: Possibly the heartless treatment of children, from the practice of infanticide and abandonment through to the neglect, the rigors of swaddling, the purposeful starving, the beatings, the solitary confinement, and so on, was and is only one aspect of the basic aggressiveness and cruelty of human nature, of the inbred disregard of the rights and feelings of others. Children, being physically unable to resist aggression, were the victims of forces over which they had no control, and they were abused in many imaginable and some almost unimaginable ways by way of expressing conscious or more commonly unconscious motives of their elders... The present volume abounds in evidence of all kinds, from all periods and peoples. The story is monotonously painful, but it is high time that it should be told and that it should be taken into account...
from the Foreword: Possibly the heartless treatment of children, from the practice of infanticide and abandonment through to the neglect, the rigors of swaddling, the purposeful starving, the beatings, the solitary confinement, and so on, was and is only one aspect of the basic aggressiveness and cruelty of human nature, of the inbred disregard of the rights and feelings of others. Children, being physically unable to resist aggression, were the victims of forces over which they had no control, and they were abused in many imaginable and some almost unimaginable ways by way of expressing conscious or more commonly unconscious motives of their elders... The present volume abounds in evidence of all kinds, from all periods and peoples. The story is monotonously painful, but it is high time that it should be told and that it should be taken into account...