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Sigaba · 09-28-2009, 21:59

"Simple answers are not possible."* Or so concluded Ian Kershaw <<LINK>> when he addressed the place of Hitler, and by extension, Mein Kampf, in the history of Nazism. This is to say that professional historians of all stripes working on both sides of the Atlantic for over sixty years still don't know what it was all about.

Three small points.

"Stockholm Syndrome" is not recognized in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR [2000]). It remains to be seen if that syndrome will be recognized when DSM-V is published in a few years.
Even if Stockholm Syndrome were recognized, the application of a modern psychological diagnostic protocol without an actual examination in a professional clinical environment (an examination that would include, among other things, a living person in the same room with the clinician) would be of questionable intellectual value and reflect, at best, questionable professional conduct. (FWIW, such an exercise would be very bad form among polite company.)
The introduction of psychological concepts to a discussion centering around religious faith is problematic. Generally, psychologists frown on concepts of divine beings.** Case in point. I once asked a training analyst (a clinical psychoanalyst who trains aspiring psychoanalysts) if he believed in God. He smiled kindly at me, tilted his head back, laughed, and laughed some more. After a while, his face drained of all humor and said he didn't. Outmoded practices from the sixteenth century, he explained. (The laughter was appropriate--he was mentoring me, not analyzing me.)

A (rhetorical) question. Or three.

The first question academic historians--and others in the Ivory Tower--ask when assessing discussions/interpretations of primary source materials is this.

Are the viewpoints based upon a reading of the documents in their original languages or weretranslated versions used?

This is a vitally important question. Translating a document is a form of editing. Editors make editorial decisions. Editorial decisions change the nature of a work. Hence, the second question is:

What decisions did the translator make and why?

And from there comes a third question.

To what extent do those decisions shape a discussant's experience with (and understanding of) a document, text, or tome?

How an individual addresses these questions often plays a vital role in establishing his (or her) credibility on a given topic. For this reason, Americanists often experience the reproachful glares of Europeanists who have more diverse language skills. John Lewis Gaddis abandoned his plans to be a historian of Russia in favor of American foreign relations because he had difficulty mastering Russian.** More recently, a prominent naval historian took a major professional risk by offering a new interpretation of Clausewitz after reading that theorist in English alone.***

This isn't to say that reliance on translated works is automatically frowned upon. The Standard Edition of The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey, remains the foundation of the study of psychoanalysis in America. Most students are going to encounter The Iliad of Homer as translated by Robert Feagles (so far, I'm still not convinced his translation is superior to Richard Lattimore's, but who asked me?) But the viability of these works rests on the fact that the translations have been vetted by professionals who themselves have been vetted.
__________________________________________________ _____
* Ian Kershaw, Hitler, vol. 1, 1889-1936 Hubris (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999), p. xxi.
** This information comes from an interview I had with R.A. Divine at the University of Texas at Austin on 22 April 1992. Divine was Gaddis's dissertation adviser. Always the paragon of humility, when asked what Divine did to train Gaddis, he would always respond "I got out of his way." (During his time at the Forty Acres, Gaddis was considered hands down the most skilled graduate student in the faculty's collective memory. Lewis L. Gould, introductory remarks, George W. Littlefield Lectures for 1992 given at the University of Texas as Austin, 30 March- 1 April 1992, lecture of 31 March 1992.)
*** John Shy, review of Jon Tetsuro Sumida's Decoding Clausewitz: A New Approach to On War, Journal of Military History, 73:2 (April 2009): 642-644. MOO, Shy's questioning of Sumida's ability to read German makes for a devastating review as devestating as Larry McMurtry's broadsides against Patricia Nelson Limerick (and others) in his, “How the West Was Won or Lost: The Revisionists’ Failure of Imagination,” The New Republic (22 October 1990):32-38. YMMV.

09-28-2009, 21:59	#17
Sigaba Area Commander Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Southern California Posts: 4,483	Two cents from a back bencher. "Simple answers are not possible."* Or so concluded Ian Kershaw <<LINK>> when he addressed the place of Hitler, and by extension, Mein Kampf, in the history of Nazism. This is to say that professional historians of all stripes working on both sides of the Atlantic for over sixty years still don't know what it was all about. Three small points. "Stockholm Syndrome" is not recognized in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR [2000]). It remains to be seen if that syndrome will be recognized when DSM-V is published in a few years. Even if Stockholm Syndrome were recognized, the application of a modern psychological diagnostic protocol without an actual examination in a professional clinical environment (an examination that would include, among other things, a living person in the same room with the clinician) would be of questionable intellectual value and reflect, at best, questionable professional conduct. (FWIW, such an exercise would be very bad form among polite company.) The introduction of psychological concepts to a discussion centering around religious faith is problematic. Generally, psychologists frown on concepts of divine beings. Case in point. I once asked a training analyst (a clinical psychoanalyst who trains aspiring psychoanalysts) if he believed in God. He smiled kindly at me, tilted his head back, laughed, and laughed some more. After a while, his face drained of all humor and said he didn't. Outmoded practices from the sixteenth century, he explained. (The laughter was appropriate--he was mentoring me, not analyzing me.) A (rhetorical) question. Or three. The first question academic historians--and others in the Ivory Tower--ask when assessing discussions/interpretations of primary source materials is this. Are the viewpoints based upon a reading of the documents in their original languages or weretranslated versions used? This is a vitally important question. Translating a document is a form of editing. Editors make editorial decisions. Editorial decisions change the nature of a work. Hence, the second question is: What decisions did the translator make and why? And from there comes a third question. To what extent do those decisions shape a discussant's experience with (and understanding of) a document, text, or tome? How an individual addresses these questions often plays a vital role in establishing his (or her) credibility on a given topic. For this reason, Americanists often experience the reproachful glares of Europeanists who have more diverse language skills. John Lewis Gaddis abandoned his plans to be a historian of Russia in favor of American foreign relations because he had difficulty mastering Russian. More recently, a prominent naval historian took a major professional risk by offering a new interpretation of Clausewitz after reading that theorist in English alone.*** This isn't to say that reliance on translated works is automatically frowned upon. The Standard Edition of The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey, remains the foundation of the study of psychoanalysis in America. Most students are going to encounter The Iliad of Homer as translated by Robert Feagles (so far, I'm still not convinced his translation is superior to Richard Lattimore's, but who asked me?) But the viability of these works rests on the fact that the translations have been vetted by professionals who themselves have been vetted. __________________________________________________ _____ * Ian Kershaw, Hitler, vol. 1, 1889-1936 Hubris (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999), p. xxi. This information comes from an interview I had with R.A. Divine at the University of Texas at Austin on 22 April 1992. Divine was Gaddis's dissertation adviser. Always the paragon of humility, when asked what Divine did to train Gaddis, he would always respond "I got out of his way." (During his time at the Forty Acres, Gaddis was considered hands down the most skilled graduate student in the faculty's collective memory. Lewis L. Gould, introductory remarks, George W. Littlefield Lectures for 1992 given at the University of Texas as Austin, 30 March- 1 April 1992, lecture of 31 March 1992.) * John Shy, review of Jon Tetsuro Sumida's Decoding Clausewitz: A New Approach to On War, Journal of Military History, 73:2 (April 2009): 642-644. MOO, Shy's questioning of Sumida's ability to read German makes for a devastating review as devestating as Larry McMurtry's broadsides against Patricia Nelson Limerick (and others) in his, “How the West Was Won or Lost: The Revisionists’ Failure of Imagination,” The New Republic (22 October 1990):32-38. YMMV. Last edited by Sigaba; 01-23-2010 at 22:32.
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