Paul H. Elovitz (1937-) is an American historian, psychohistorian, psychobiographer, and psychoanalytically trained scholar. He was a founding faculty member of Ramapo College of New Jersey, where his teaching included history, psychohistory, and interdisciplinary studies. His scholarship has focused on the history and methodology of psychohistory, psychobiography, and the psychological study of political leadership, particularly American presidents and presidential candidates.
Elovitz founded the Psychohistory Forum in 1982, and Clio's Psyche in 1994, and was a founding member and later president of the International Psychohistorical Association. He is the author of The Making of Psychohistory: Origins, Controversies, and Pioneering Contributors (Routledge, 2018). In a review in Psychodynamic Practice, sociologist Michael Rustin characterized Elovitz as a leading figure in psychohistory and described the book as a valuable record of the field's development.
Education and academic career Elovitz studied at the University of Connecticut and received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Rutgers University. Ramapo College's faculty records identify his academic areas as history, psychohistory, and interdisciplinary studies.
He taught at Temple University before joining Ramapo College of New Jersey in 1971. Ramapo identifies Elovitz among its founding faculty and staff, and institutional records describe him as an associate professor of history, psychohistory, and interdisciplinary studies.
Elovitz also undertook postgraduate psychoanalytic training. The Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis states that he trained and practiced as a psychoanalyst and was designated a Research Psychoanalyst by the New Jersey Institute for Psychoanalysis in 2019.
In addition to his university teaching, Elovitz has taught postgraduate courses in psychohistory and psychobiography at the Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. The institute states that he has taught there since 2020, including courses in psychobiography and psychohistory for mental health professionals.
Contributions to psychohistory Elovitz became involved in the organized psychohistory movement during the development of the field in the 1970s. He was a founding member of the International Psychohistorical Association and later served as its president.
From the mid-1970s into the early 1980s, he convened the Saturday Workshops of the Institute for Psychohistory. In 1982, he and Henry Lawton founded the Psychohistory Forum as a separate scholarly organization. The Forum developed meetings and research groups concerned with psychohistory, psychobiography, historical dreamwork, political psychology, and related interdisciplinary approaches.
In 1994, Elovitz founded Clio's Psyche, a journal devoted to psychohistory and related psychological approaches to history, culture, biography, and society, and became its editor-in-chief. His institutional work has accompanied scholarship examining the development and methodology of psychohistory itself. His 2014 chapter, "The Successes and Obstacles to the Interdisciplinary Marriage of Psychology and History," appeared in Cristian Tileagă and Jovan Byford's Cambridge University Press volume Psychology and History: Interdisciplinary Explorations.
In 2021, Elovitz edited The Many Roads of the Builders of Psychohistory, a collection of autobiographical and intellectual accounts by contributors to the field of psychohistory, focusing on the personal and professional paths through which they entered and helped develop the discipline.
Elovitz has also written about the methodological boundaries and limitations of psychohistory. In The Making of Psychohistory, he argues that psychological assumptions are often implicit in historical interpretation and that psychohistorical work should make those assumptions explicit and subject them to disciplined inquiry. He has also criticized speculative psychobiography and the use of psychiatric diagnosis of historical figures as a substitute for sustained historical research.
Elovitz also co-edited Immigrant Experiences: Personal Narrative and Psychological Analysis with Charlotte Kahn, a volume examining immigration through personal narratives and psychological perspectives, with attention to both differences in cultural background and recurring features of immigrant experience.
In 2023, Elovitz contributed "My Psychoanalytic Psychobiography and Methodology" to the Springer volume Beyond WEIRD: Psychobiography in Times of Transcultural and Transdisciplinary Perspectives. The volume addresses the extension of psychobiographical research beyond predominantly Western subjects and frameworks. Its editors place Elovitz's work within the development of psychohistorical and psychobiographical scholarship.
Psychobiography and presidential studies A substantial part of Elovitz's psychobiographical scholarship concerns American presidents and presidential candidates, an area of research he has pursued since the 1970s. His work examines political leadership through developmental history, personality, motivation, and relationships between individual psychology and historical circumstances.
His contributions to Politics and Psychology: Contemporary Psychodynamic Perspectives included "George Bush: From Wimp to President," co-authored with Glen Jeansonne, and "Presidents Carter and Sadat: The Repudiation of the Peacemakers," co-authored with Mohamed Shalaan.
In 2003, he contributed "Psychoanalytic Scholarship on the American Presidency" to James William Anderson and Jerome A. Winer's edited volume Psychoanalysis and History.
Elovitz later examined Donald Trump and Joe Biden in "How Paul Elovitz Used What He Learned about Childhood, Leadership, Listening, and Personality to Become a Presidential Psychobiographer of Trump and Biden," published in Psychoanalytic Inquiry in 2021 and subsequently included in the Routledge volume Leadership, Psychoanalysis, and Society.
In their independent prologue to the 2021 Psychoanalytic Inquiry issue, Michael Maccoby and Mauricio Cortina describe Elovitz as a psychohistorian and student of American presidential personality. They note that his contribution traces Trump and Biden from childhood to the presidency, examining the development of their motivations and personal philosophies.
Psychoanalytic work and teaching Elovitz's work in psychohistory developed alongside his psychoanalytic training and clinical experience. The Object Relations Institute's faculty biography states that after completing his doctorate in history he trained and practiced as a psychoanalyst.
His teaching has similarly crossed disciplinary boundaries. At Ramapo College, his work included history, psychohistory, and interdisciplinary studies, while his later postgraduate teaching at the Object Relations Institute has focused specifically on psychohistory and psychobiography for mental health professionals.
This combination of historical research, psychoanalytic training, psychobiographical writing, and teaching also informs his methodological publications, particularly his writings on how psychological interpretation can be integrated with historical evidence.
The Making of Psychohistory Elovitz's The Making of Psychohistory: Origins, Controversies, and Pioneering Contributors was published by Routledge in 2018. The book traces the emergence and development of psychohistory and discusses figures and debates involved in the organized field, while also drawing on Elovitz's experience as a participant in it.
The book received attention in both psychohistorical and broader psychoanalytic scholarship. Michael Rustin reviewed it in Psychodynamic Practice in 2019, describing it as a valuable record of the development of psychohistory and its major contributors.
Ken Fuchsman reviewed the book in The Journal of Psychohistory in 2020, discussing Elovitz's position as a participant in and historian of the organized psychohistory movement and his long involvement in presidential psychobiography and psychohistorical institutions.
Peter W. Petschauer reviewed the book in Clio's Psyche in 2018.
In History and the Unconscious, historian Tomasz Pawelec discusses The Making of Psychohistory in relation to the historiography and methodology of psychohistory.
Selected works The Making of Psychohistory: Origins, Controversies, and Pioneering Contributors. London and New York: Routledge, 2018. . The Many Roads of the Builders of Psychohistory (editor). New York: ORI Academic Press, 2021. 286 pp. . Immigrant Experiences: Personal Narrative and Psychological Analysis (co-edited with Charlotte Kahn). Madison, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. "Psychoanalytic Scholarship on the American Presidency." In James William Anderson and Jerome A. Winer, eds., Psychoanalysis and History. The Analytic Press, 2003. "The Successes and Obstacles to the Interdisciplinary Marriage of Psychology and History." In Cristian Tileagă and Jovan Byford, eds., Psychology and History: Interdisciplinary Explorations. Cambridge University Press, 2014, pp. 83–108. "How Paul Elovitz Used What He Learned about Childhood, Leadership, Listening, and Personality to Become a Presidential Psychobiographer of Trump and Biden." Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 41(7), 2021, pp. 527–539. "How Paul Elovitz Used What He Learned about Childhood, Leadership, Listening, and Personality to Become a Presidential Psychobiographer of Trump and Biden." In Michael Maccoby and Mauricio Cortina, eds., Leadership, Psychoanalysis, and Society. Routledge, 2022. "My Psychoanalytic Psychobiography and Methodology." In Claude-Hélène Mayer, Roelf van Niekerk, Paul J. P. Fouché, and Joseph G. Ponterotto, eds., Beyond WEIRD: Psychobiography in Times of Transcultural and Transdisciplinary Perspectives. Springer, 2023, pp. 313–328.
See also Psychohistory Psychobiography Clio's Psyche International Psychohistorical Association Psychohistory Forum
References
External links Clio's Psyche Psychohistory Forum International Psychohistorical Association Object Relations Institute faculty profile