Ever sense I first read Isaac Asimov's Foundation I've been intrigued by the concept of Psychohistory as he defined it. But when I did a search on it, I find it's a branch of study that has nothing in common with Asimov's construct.
I could be way off base here as one of these versions is considered fictional. However, Asimov's version seems to have valid reasoning behind it. First of all does anybody know if Asimov coined the term 'Psychohistory' first, before it became a field of study? The reason I ask is maybe Asimov should have come up with another name, but if he was first maybe they should have come up with another name. Comments and opinions are welcomed.
Psychohistory is the controversial study of the psychological motivations of historical events. It combines the insights of psychotherapy with the research methodology of the social sciences to understand the emotional origin of the social and political behavior of groups and nations, past and present. Its subject matter is childhood and the family (especially child abuse), and psychological studies of anthropology and ethnology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory
Psychohistory is a fictional science in Isaac Asimov's Foundation universe which combines history, sociology, and mathematical statistics to make (nearly) exact predictions of the collective actions of very large groups of people, such as the Galactic Empire. It was first introduced in the five short stories (1942–1944) which would later be collected as the 1951 novel Foundation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_(fictional)