by Lloyd » Wed Aug 19, 2020 7:51 am
I would agree with Lloyd, suppression of memories of catastrophes is a significant part of Catastrophist literature. I think this is because Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky was a psychiatrist who had studied under the German psychologist, Freud. He saw the memories of past planetary instability in the solar system as a collectively held, and a collectively suppressed, traumatic memory. He saw the passionate reactions against the idea of past planetary instability as additional evidence of a repressed, traumatic memory.RELIGION
Brigit, the psychology of suppression of memories of terror is a significant part of Catastrophist literature, as you know. You can do a search at https://www.catastrophism.com/intro/sea ... oom_query= on terms like psychology, collective amnesia, religion etc to find a lot of good info.
It is true, Velikovsky's hypothesis that the earth once had another sun is startling, and difficult to imagine or take in, mostly for cultural reasons -- and probably from sheer habit of thought.
For those who are willing to examine the scientific case for a wandering brown dwarf star having penetrated the Sun's heliosheath, and then having subsequently been captured by our Sun, the idea never really does cease from being deeply unsettling. It is also true that the opposition to Velikovsky's work was not just hostile but extraordinarily so. So in all of this we see all kinds of psychological and emotional reactions at play. Nevertheless, it is 2020, and the space age has revealed that brown dwarf stars, and brown dwarf binaries, and their satellites, are every bit as plentiful as the other stars in the Galaxy.
Velikovsky's work included searching for leads in world wide myths, examining the many flaws in traditional dating and archaeology, and amassing astonishing examples of sudden burial and preservation -- which did not fit the by-then ossified Lyellian dating. If the hostility and opposition to his work was extraordinary, so were his labors; he may even have been motivated and inspired by the institutional antagonism which was directed at him. (That happens a lot.) But one thing is clear, he was inspired in part by his psychoanalytical background and training. This is the subject of his book, Mankind in Amnesia.
As a topic of a thread, I thought it might be a fun and interesting to explore the various models of history which historians use in presenting to us their versions of the events of the past -- including the psychoanalytical model of history.