Contributions to Psychohistory: V. East-West Dimensions of Ideology Measured by Transtemporal Cognitive Matching

Abstract

Contemporary romantic revival bears close resemblance to previous romantic movements in ways of structuring reality, styles of thought, and partisan support of certain types of preferred societal outcomes. The quantification of the postulated structural similarity between two recent romantic periods was discussed using the method of transtemporal cognitive matching. The target structure was based on analysis of Goethe's Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers; referent neoromantic structures were derived from Reich's The Greening of America and Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Relationships between target and referent structures were quantified and interpreted within the context of Apollonian and Dionysian styles of thought and East-West categories of value systems.