Psychobiography

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Psychobiography aims to understand historically significant individuals, such
as artists or political leaders, through the application of psychological theory and
research.
Through its merging of personality psychology and historical
evidence,[1] psychobiography may be considered a historical form of therapeutic case
study: it represents a growing field in the realm of biography.[2] Psychopathography is
sometimes used as a term to indicate that the person being analyzed was not mentally
healthy, "path" coming from pathos (πάθος)—Ancient Greek for suffering or illness.

Contents

• 1Background
• 2Origins and development
• 3Methodology
• 4Contributors
o 4.1Sigmund Freud
o 4.2Elms
• 5Criticism
• 6References
• 7Further reading
• 8External links

Background[edit]
Psychobiography is a field within the realms of psychology and biography that analyzes
the lives of historically significant individuals through psychological theory and research.
Its goal is to develop a better understanding of notable individuals by applying
psychological theories to their biographies to further explain the motives behind some of
the subjects actions and decisions. Popular subjects of psychobiographies include
figures such as Adolf Hitler, Vincent van Gogh, William Shakespeare, Martin Luther
King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, and Saddam Hussein. A typical biography is often very
descriptive, and tries to record every notable event that happened in a person's lifetime,
whereas a psychobiography primarily focuses on some particular events, and tries to
better understand why they happened. This field's potential has not only aided in
developing a better understanding to many notable biographies throughout history, but
has also inspired direction and insight into the field of psychology.
One of the first great examples of this field's utility was Dr. Henry Murray's report on the
analysis of Adolf Hitler's personality during the end of World War II. Forced to
psychoanalyze from a distance, Dr. Murray used multiple sources, including Hitler's
genealogy, Hitler's own writings, and biographies of Hitler, so that the Allied forces could
understand his personality to better predict his behavior. By applying a theory of
personality that consisted of 20 psychogenic needs, Dr. Murray presumed Hitler's
personality as "counteractive narcism", and was able to correctly predict the German
leader's suicide in the face of his country's defeat. This work by Dr. Murray not only
helped establish personality psychology as a behavioral science, but it also showed
how the field of psychobiography could be applied as a means of psychoanalysis.[3]

Origins and development[edit]

Sigmund Freud's analysis of Leonardo da Vinci (titled Leonardo da Vinci, A Memory of
His Childhood) is generally considered the first "modern" psychobiography.[4] Persons
who have been the subject of psychobiographical research include Freud, Adolf
Hitler,[5] Sylvia Plath, Carl Jung, Vincent van Gogh, Martin Luther,[6] Abraham
Lincoln, Elvis Presley, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche,[7] Andrew Jackson,
and Richard Nixon.[8]
Major psychobiographical authors include Erik Erikson,[9] James William
Anderson, Henry Murray, George Atwood, and William Runyan.[citation needed]
Many psychobiographies are Freudian or psychodynamic in orientation, but other
commonly used theories include narrative models of identity such as the life story
model, script theory, object relations, and existentialism/phenomenology; and
psychobiographers are increasingly looking for explanatory complexity through an
eclectic approach.[10]
Though there were other psychobiographies written before Freud's Leonardo da Vinci
and A Memory of His Childhood in 1910, it is considered the most significant
contribution of its time, despite its flaws. Psychobiographies about William
Shakespeare (Jones, 1910), Giovanni Segantini (Abraham, 1912), Richard
Wagner (Graf, 1911), Amenhotep IV (Abraham, 1912), Martin Luther (Smith, 1913),
and Socrates (Karpas, 1915) were also published between 1910 and 1915, but are not
as well known.[11] Between 1920 and 1926, psychobiographies of Margaret
Fuller (Anthony, 1920), Samuel Adams (Harlow, 1923), Edgar Allan Poe (Krutch, 1926),
and Abraham Lincoln (Clark, 1923) were published by authors from a psychoanalytic
perspective without a background in psychoanalysis. During the
1930s Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Molière, Sand, Goethe, Coleridge, Nietzsche,
Poe, Rousseau, Caesar, Lincoln, Napoleon, Darwin, and Alexander the Great were the
subjects of psychobiographies, and soon afterward in 1943 a psychobiography of Adolf
Hitler, predicting his suicide, was written during World War II, but was not published until
1972. Recent, significant contributions between 1960 and 1990 include
psychobiographies of Henry James (Edel, 1953–72), Isaac Newton (Manuel,
1968), Mohandas Gandhi (Erikson, 1969), Max Weber (Mitzman, 1969), Emily
Dickinson (Cody, 1971), Joseph Stalin (Tucker, 1973), James and John Stuart
Mill (Mazlish, 1975), T. E. Lawrence (Mack, 1976), Adolf Hitler (Waite,
1977), Beethoven (Solomon, 1977), Samuel Johnson (Bate, 1977), Alice
James (Strouse, 1980), Wilhelm Reich (Sharaf, 1983), and William James (Feinstein,
1984).[12] Some psychobiographies at this time were also written about groups of people,
focusing on an aspect they had in common such as American presidents, philosophers,
utopians, revolutionary leaders, and personality theorists. These psychobiographies are
the most well known, but since 1910 there have been over 4000 psychobiographies
published.[11]
As psychobiography gained recognition, authors from a variety of professions
contributed their own work from alternate perspectives and varying methods of analysis
of the psychobiographical subjects, significantly expanding psychobiography beyond
the psychoanalytical perspective. Apart from psychoanalysts and psychiatrists who
wrote the first psychobiographies, there have been historians, political
scientists, personality psychologists, literary critics, sociologists,
and anthropologists that have contributed to the growth of the field.[11] Psychobiography
has also conflicted with contemporary views of science since its origin because it
contains no controlled variables or experimentation. In its early years it was dismissed
as unscientific and not a legitimate addition to the field of psychology due to the push
towards experimentation focused on physiological and biological factors, and away from
philosophical psychology, to establish it as a natural science. The value of
psychobiography to psychology is comparable to forensic science and archaeology,
offering detailed analyses of subjects with an emphasis on contextual information, but
due to the qualitative nature of this information it remains a challenge to validate
psychobiographical works as empirically based applications of psychology.[12]

Methodology[edit]
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The discipline of psychobiography has developed various methodological guidelines for

psychobiographical study. Some of the most prominent are these:

1. The use of prototypical scenes in the life of the

subject to serve as a model of their personality
pattern
2. The use of a series of indicators of salience,
markers such as primacy, frequency, and
uniqueness of an event in a life, to identify
significant patterns
3. The identification of pregnant metaphors or
images that organize autobiographical narratives
4. Logical coherence or consistency as a criterion
for adequate psychological interpretations
Scholars untrained in the discipline who do not follow these guidelines continue to
produce psychobiographical studies.

Contributors[edit]
Sigmund Freud[edit]
Freud's psychoanalytic approach (Freudian perspective) is not commonly used in its
entirety in psychobiography, but it has had a lasting influence on the analysis of
behavior in other areas of psychology. To sift through a lifetime of information and
locate significant areas in the subject's development requires a system of identification,
and psychoanalysis provided the base for this. Primacy, the initial exposure or
experience, was recognized by Freud as an important factor in personality development
and has remained an important aspect of personality psychology, psychotherapy, and
psychobiography. Frequency, repeated exposure or actions, is also important, but its
significance can vary. If the frequency of an action is low then it is seen as unimportant,
and if the frequency is too high it becomes passive and overlooked, also becoming less
important in psychobiography. Freud's knowledge of the importance of frequency is
shown in the analysis of dreams, slips, errors, and humor by recognizing that repetition
leads people to disregard these behaviors or stimuli. The importance of error in
psychobiography, including slips and distortions, is also rooted in Freudian
psychoanalysis and is used to identify hidden motives.[13]
Elms[edit]
Elms has contributed to psychobiography through many published works including
psychobiographies on Allport (1972), Freud (1980), Skinner (1981), and Murray (1987).
He has also written about the subject of psychobiography in Psychobiography and Case
Study Methods and Uncovering Lives: The Uneasy Alliance of Biography and
Psychology defining psychobiography and its methods, and explaining the value of
psychobiography in psychology.[14][15]

Criticism[edit]
Psychobiography has faced criticism from the very start,[16] crystallised above all in the
production of what Erikson caricatured as "originology"—the explaining away of
significant public events and actions as the product of some minute childhood detail. [17]
Bad psychobiography—using mechanical psychologising, a selective mining of the
facts,[18] overdeterminism, and a tendency to pathologise[19]—is considered easy to
write. Anna Freud condemned the study of Woodrow Wilson Freud himself co-authored
with William Bullitt on just such grounds,[20] and the haphazard historical evolution of the
disciple has not helped reduce its prevalence.[21]

References[edit]
1. ^ B. J. Carducci, The Psychology of Personality (2009) p. 196
2. ^ C. Rollyson, Biography (2007) p. 3
3. ^ Murray, Henry. "The Analysis of The Personality of Adolph
Hitler." The Analysis of The personality of Adolph Hitler
(1943). N.p., n.d. Web
4. ^ Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time (1989) p. 268
5. ^ Waite, Robert G.L. The Psychopathic God: Adolf
Hitler. New York: First DaCapo Press Edition, (1993) (orig.
pub. 1977). ISBN 0-306-80514-6
 6. ^ G, R, Elton, The Practice of History (1969) p. 39
7. ^ Safranski, Rüdiger. Nietzsche: a Philosophical
Biography Granta Books, London, (2002); Vienna, (2000);
New York (2002) ISBN 0-393-05008-4
8. ^ J. Barzun/H. F. Graff, The Modern Researcher (1977) p.
199
9. ^ Carducci, p. 197
10. ^ Alan C. Elms, Uncovering Lives (1997) p. 9
11. ^ Jump up to:a b c Runyan, W., M. (1988). Progress in
psychobiography. Journal of Personality, 56, 295-326.
12. ^ Jump up to:a b Schultz, W., T. (2005). Handbook of
psychobiography. New York, NY: Oxford University Press
13. ^ Alexander, I., E. (1988). Personality, psychological
assessment, and psychobiography. Journal of Personality, 56,
1.
14. ^ Elms, A. C. (2007). Psychobiography and case study
methods. In R. W. Robins, R. C. Fraley, & R. F. Krueger
(Eds.), The Handbook of Research Methods in Personality
Psychology. New York: Guilford Press, pp. 97-113.
15. ^ Elms, A. C. (1994). Uncovering Lives: The Uneasy Alliance
of Biography and Psychology. New York and Oxford: Oxford
University Press. Paperback reprint, 1997.
16. ^ Gay, p. 312-3
17. ^ Elms, p. 4
18. ^ Barzun, p. 203
19. ^ Elms, p. 10-11
20. ^ Gay, p. 559 and 776
21. ^ Elms, p. 8

Further reading[edit]
• Ogilvie, Dan (2004). Fantasies of Flight. New York:
Oxford University Press.
• Runyan, William (1982). Life Histories and
Psychobiography. New York: Oxford University
Press.
• Schultz, William Todd (2005). Handbook of
Psychobiography. New York: Oxford University
Press.

External links[edit]
• What is Psychobiography?
• Analysis of the Personality of Hitler

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