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Preface
The purpose of this book is to reveal for the first
time how the ultimate cause of all wars and human misery is the parental
holocaust of children throughout history--an untold story of how literally
billions of innocent, helpless children have been routinely killed,
bound, battered, mutilated, raped and tortured and then as adults
have inflicted upon others the nightmares they themselves experienced.
Most of what you will read here will be new, upsetting and difficult
to believe, despite the extensive historical, anthropological, clinical
and neurobiological evidence I will present. But after you read it
I think you will be able to understand for the first time why what
Kierkegard called "the slaughterbench of history" happened, where
we are today in the evolution of humanity and what we can do tomorrow
to bring about a peaceful, happier world.
In these pages I hope to accomplish the following ten goals:
(1) to provide a new psychogenic theory
of history as an alternative to the sociogenic theories of all other
social sciences,
(2) to show that childrearing evolution is an independent cause
of historical change, with love as the central force in history,
creating new kinds of personalities-new psychoclasses-that then
change societies,
(3) to demonstrate that historical progress depends less on military
conquests and more on the migration patterns of innovative mothers
and "hopeful daughters,"
(4) to show how political, religious and social behavior restage
early traumas, even those occurring before birth, recorded in separate
areas of our minds called social alters,
(5) to show that social institutions are not just utilitarian but
are also designed to be self-destructive, representing shared ways
of dealing with emotional problems caused by deep personal anxieties
surrounding growth and individuation,
(6) to explain how a new historical tool, fantasy analysis, can
objectively discover shared emotions and group-fantasies that occur
in lawful stages which determine the sequence of political events,
(7) to show that groups go to war to rid themselves of shared feelings
of sinfulness and fears of disintegration, cleansing their feelings
by sacrificing victims containing rejected parts of themselves,
(8) to show why we need enemies, why we feel depressed when enemies
disappear, and what this has to do with our periodic need for wars
and economic crises whose purpose is to reduce our anxieties about
success and prosperity,
(9) to show why history is now a race between too slowly improving
childrearing and too fast evolving destructive technology, and
(10) to demonstrate that new ways for more advanced parents to help
other parents-such as parenting centers with home visiting programs,
which have been shown capable of eliminating child abuse-and allow
us to avoid global genocide.
The first third of the book is devoted
to describing how early personal experiences determine political behavior.
It begins with three chapters describing recent American political
events-the shooting of two American presidents, the group-fantasies leading
up to the Gulf War and the childhood origins of terrorism-in order
to show how hidden shared emotions cause political violence.
The second third of the book is devoted to detailing a psychohistorical
theory of history, first as it applies to politics, secondly as it
explains the causes of war and thirdly as it shows the connections
between childhood and the evolution of the psyche and society.
The final third of the book is a history of how childhood in the West
evolved, era by era, and how better childrearing produced new psychoclasses,
who then created new social, religious and political institutions.
I have tried to include in this book most of what I have learned about
childhood and history during the past four decades. I would welcome
hearing from you what you think about what I say here, and I promise
you a personal reply to your email or letter.
Lloyd deMause | email: psychhst@tiac.net | postal address: 140 Riverside
Drive | New York, NY 10024-2605
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