Jerome Lee Shneidman

Jerome Lee Shneidman (June 20, 1929 – July 29, 2008) was an American historian of medieval and early American history. He had a wide range of interests and publications in various fields. His contributions are in the fields of medieval history, psychohistory, and early American history.

Shneidman was born as the eldest of two sons on June 20, 1929 in New York City to a family of Jewish immigrants from the Tsarist Russian Empire. He grew up in the Bronx but moved when he was 13 to the Upper West Side where he resided until his death in 2008. His father Bernard was a dedicated Marxist and his mother, Fanya Raskin, supported their family with a modest laundry business. Shneidman later made note of this humble upbringing, suggesting that his youth was comfortable enough. Authors of his obituary quoted him as stating, “[there] was always enough money for books, magazines, and the right [i.e. left wing] causes", but often not enough money for clothes or doctors.

Shneidman’s life was greatly altered by cancer. He was diagnosed with melanoma when he was about six months old. A major skin graft rearranged elements of his body and the hated hospital dominated his existence for the next 13 years. On two separate occasions his parents were told he would not live until morning and, once he survived both instances, he was banned from boyhood activity and all sports.

Confined to a hospital ward without privacy and often ignored behind a curtain, the boy read a great deal, and was ultimately drawn to history, which kept his mind active. Later he confessed that he fantasized often about his participation in the historical events he read about because it afforded him the opportunity to drift mentally from his physical confinement.

Medical intervention was a frequent obstacle for Shneidman, who was physically altered by his numerous surgeries.

At the age of eight, Schneidman began referring to medieval Aragonese Kings as “my friends” and even started doodling maps (as he would for the rest of his life). He chose history as his profession early in life. Beyond his home education in radical ideas and self-education in various hospitals, Shneidman was educated in the New York public schools, graduating from Stuyvesant High School prior to attending the Heights Campus of New York University (BA, 1951), New York University (MA, 1952); and the University of Wisconsin–Madison, (PhD, 1957). Shneidman did post-doctoral study as a Research Candidate at the Columbia University’s Psychoanalytic Clinic for Training and then at the Rubin Fine Psychoanalytic Institute where the instructors eventually insisted he see living patients—eventually he dropped out because he “only wanted to analyze dead people,” as he put it.

Shneidman was a distinguished professor at Adelphi University for 45 years. He also taught at Brooklyn College, the College of New York, Fairleigh Dickinson University, and the University of Maryland at Frankfurt A/M in Germany and Libya. In 2001 he achieved the title emeritus at Adelphi, although he continued to teach historical methodology afterward.

His academic career and private decisions might best be described as contrarian—a label which the authors of his obituary believed was accurate and inspired by the competitive relationship he and his father had.

Shneidman published over 100 articles, individual book chapters, and book reviews on a variety of topics, including: Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton, Karl Marx’s alienation, Catherine De Medici, Ivan the Terrible, his own motivation and patterns as a historian, historical philately, Jewish history, and psychohistorical methodology.

He was a member of approximately 20 different professional organizations including the Board of Collaborators of the Indice Historico Español of the University of Barcelona (since 1965) and the Aaron Burr Association.

The young Shneidman accepted the ideals of communism, but found the Soviet reality too detached from the grandiose virtues that initiated revolution. After the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Friendship Pact, Shneidman professed his lost faith in Stalin and Soviet communism, while his father clung to Soviet Russia's iconic leader and his agenda. Father Bernard often contended with his son that the world could be remade perfect and communist. Shneidman, however, attached himself to liberal reform movements in the metropolitan area.

Shneidman served as a New York County Committeeman starting in 1970, under the auspices of Tammany Hall. His political advocacy was in English and Yiddish.

In 1973 and 1975 he served as a Scholar-Diplomat for the U.S. State Department. In 1965 he established the “Seminar in the History of Legal and Political Thought and Institutions” at Columbia University, serving as chair from 1985 to 2002.

Shneidman was an active psychohistorian, meaning he sought historical perspective by applying psychoanalysis to historical figures and events. Much of his work dealt with psychobiography and the methodology of psychohistorians.

In 1986 Shneidman began editing the Bulletin of the International Psychohistorical Association. He joined the Psychohistory Forum in the mid 1980s, becoming a recognizable intellectual in the community. When in 1991 the Psychohistory Forum’s "Communism: The Dream That Failed" research group was created, Dr. Shneidman was designated group leader due to his particular knowledge in the field.

His psychohistory honors include being an “Invited Participant” of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Interdisciplinary Colloquium on “Problems of the Psychoanalytic Theory of Aggression” from 1979-1996.

Shneidman died on July 29, 2008, only seven months after the sudden death of his wife Conalee, with whom he had been married for 45 years.

• The Rise of the Aragonese-Catalan Empire: 1200-1350 (2 volumes, 1970, translated into Catalan)
• Spain & Franco: Quest for International Acceptance, 1949-1959 (1973)
• John F. Kennedy (1974, with Peter Schwab)
• Leading from Weakness: Jefferson’s Overt and Covert Relations with Spain and the Barbary States: 1801-1807 (manuscript not yet published).

• Great Lives from History: American Series, 5 vols., (Pasadena: Salem Press, Inc., 1987), 1: 360-365).
• “Marx’s Road to ‘On the Jewish Question.’” Clio’s Psyche, Vol. 4, No. 4 (March 1998): 117-122.
• “On the Nature of Psychohistorical Evidence,” The Journal of Psychohistory, 16 (New York, 1988): 205-212.
• “On the Teaching of Psychohistory to Adelphi University Undergraduates,” The Journal of Psychohistory, 15 (New York, 1988): 456-459.