Psychohistory?

[Travis Retriever]

I recently subbed to Stefan Molyneux's Freedomain Radio pod-casts and am downloading them as I speak.
In them, I found a podcast to a book called Lloyd deMause's 'The Origins of War in Child Abuse'.
And around that, a page regarding something called, "Psychohistory".

Has anyone heard of this stuff?
If so, do you know if this stuff and his book is bogus?
I figured I'd get a second opinion before listening any more than I already have.

[Gumba Masta]

Well I only know that I want to rule the world with an iron fist because my grandparents never let me have a goldfish but I'm not exactly sure that that's what you ment.

[Travis Retriever]

My only complaint about them is that for a society to survive and evolve, they have to pass on their genes.
Because we are by nature a social species (hard wired empathy, etc), we would have to have used that to survive and pass on our genes, care for our young, etc.
In short, morality is an evolutionary advantage.
Other things equal, then, humans which have better care of their children, have children more likely to survive.
Children more likely to survive are more likely to pass on their genes.
Basic fact of evolution.
Yet Lloyd deMause tends to say that even relatively recent (2000 years recent), infanticide was very very common.
Which is strange, considering basic evolutionary fact.
He might as well be saying that the state came before civilization, which, economically makes zero sense, and is not possible, given that the state is a parasite; so how could it have?

[AHPMB]

I've always considered psycho-history to be complete bunk and speculation.  By its very nature psychoanalysis requires you listening to someone talk, something historian can not do, and are not trained to do.  Psycho-history is essentially an attempt to glean what someone's psychological issues might be based on their writings, and even worse, writings about them.  Now, there are some occassions where psycho-history works.  For instance, when we read about Mary Todd Lincoln's behavior and mood swings, we can be almost certain that she had bipolar disorder, mainly because there were professional doctors who were examining her, whose writings we can examine.  Sure they didn't have a modern name for it, they referred to it as melancholy and hysteria, but its still a medical examination.  More often then not, it's pure speculation disguised with jargon.  Most of the time, there isn't even enough evidence to speculate, and so essentially they're left trying to guess a mental state by deconstructing text.  Post-constructionalist nonsense.

[Travis Retriever]

Yeah, my bogometer reacted when he said that "the end of swaddling and wet-nursing made possible the explosive modern takeoff in scientific advance." (from Wikipedia, mind you).
Sounds like post ad hoc BS in my honest opinion.