I too am curious about how Griffin sees family history as a parallel or perhaps metaphor for history. When I was a young(er) person studying history in high school (heck, even as an undergrad in college), no one asked me to think about my family's behavior (dysfunctional or not) as a way of understanding or mirroring historical events or situations. When I first read Griffin, I thought she was nuts...brilliant, but nuts!

I knew that she was brilliant because somehow, even if there was no direct parallel between Griffin's alcoholic mother and Himmler's abusive parenting, I knew that psychologically something was similar. It made sense that the difficulties he experienced (granted, even that is speculation based on her reading of child rearing practices)as a child MUST have impacted the way that he acted in the world.

Still. This is not history the way my old high school teacher taught it, and it feels risky. On page 350 of the essay is that paragraph about history being more like a field of gravity, that things are both causes and effects. This bends my mind a bit when it comes to trying to understand what she is after. How do you make sense of her definition?