psychobiography

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The term psychobiography in its broadest sense designates any approach to biography that emphasizes inner life and psychological development, but in the more specific sense, it means the use of a formalized psychological theory and concepts in writing biography, and it received its decisive impetus from psychoanalysis. Psychobiography in the broad sense goes back at least to Plutarch, but Freud's book on Leonardo's childhood (1910) is often seen as one of the first to apply a formalized metapsychology.

Although many biographies in the past had dealt with psychological development, the arrival of psychoanalysis in the twentieth century has offered a comprehensive psychological theory of early human development that explains the shaping of the life course. Psychobiography generally focuses on the formative early years of life in an effort to uncover the relational dynamics, traumas, or complexes that might explain later behavior.

Psychobiography is a major instrument of psycho-history for the study of leading historical figures. But the two are not identical since psychohistory is especially concerned with group behavior.

The focus of psychoanalysis on the first few years of life has led to the sharpest criticisms of psychoanalytic psychobiography. The most often heard objections center around the charge of reductionism. First, psychobiography is criticized for its focus on psychological factors to the exclusion of cultural, social, economic, and other external factors. Psychoanalytic psychobiography in particular is often accused of reducing the subject's life to determination by complexes established in the first few years of childhood, e.g., fixation on the oral or anal stage or to a failure to successfully pass the oedipal period. Critics also point out that reliable evidence on early childhood is often almost impossible to obtain. As a result of the absence of data, many psychoanalytic biographers have used theory to project an image of what the subject's infancy must have been like. This practice has brought especial discredit on the psychoanalytic approach since it is accused of inventing facts. A fourth objection holds that psychoanalytic biography lacks the central tool of psychoanalysis in the clinical setting—free association. Finally, there is the moral objection that psychoanalytic approaches have often denigrated the memory of great men and women by portraying them in terms of pathology or unresolved infantile conflicts.

Obviously, the more sensible and cautious psycho-biographers have avoided reductionistic claims. The best psychobiographies also avoid over-confident assertions about the existence of childhood events based only on the evidence of adult behavior. The absence of a living subject's "free association," however, is viewed as less of a handicap than critics assert because the psychoanalytic biographer can often draw upon an abundance of diaries, letters, and other writings as well as sound recordings, photographs, and films for more recent subjects. Finally, to the objection that psychobiography maligns the reputation of exemplary figures, one may reply that the same objection can be made to any critical biography which explores the determination of character.

Many of the standard objections to psychoanalytic biography are also mitigated by the application of those psychoanalytic theories which place greater emphasis on ego development. In some versions of ego psychology the personality is said to continue to develop across the life span with the possibility that later experiences can modify processes rooted in early childhood. According to such perspectives there are important psychological stages and tasks to be accomplished beyond the oedipal period, as illustrated in Erik Erikson's Gandhi's Truth, which deals with a crisis in Gandhi's mature years. In the early twenty-first century, psychoanalytic theories provide a variety of perspectives that can illuminate all stages of the life span, accounting for psychological health and triumph as well as the persistence of destructive traits fixed in infancy.

Bibliography

Erikson, Erik H. (1969). Gandhi's truth. New York: W. W. Norton.

Freud, Sigmund (1910). Leonardo da Vinci and a memory of his childhood. SE, 11: 57-137.

Runyan, William McKinley (1982). Life histories and psycho-biography. Explorations in theory and method. New York: Oxford University Press.

Strozier, Charles B. (1982). Lincoln's quest for union. Public and private meanings. New York: Basic.

Tucker, Robert C. (1973). Stalin as revolutionary, 1879-1929. A study in history and personality. New York: W. W. Norton.

Further Reading

Mijolla, Alain de. (1996). Psychoanalysts and their History. International Psychoanalysis: The Newsletter of the IPA, 5 (1), 25-28.

——. (1998). Freud, biography, his autobiography, and his biographers. Psychoanalysis and History, 1 (1), 41.

—LARRY SHINER

• Schools, Styles, and Forms - psychobiography: biography that stresses childhood trauma or other bases for the unconscious motives of its subject

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (March 2012)

Psychobiography aims to understand historical individuals such as artists or political leaders, through the application of psychological theory and research. It is, in essence, a form of case study.

Sigmund Freud's analysis of Leonardo da Vinci (titled "Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood") is generally considered to be the first "modern" psychobiography. Persons who have been the subject of psychobiographical research include Freud, Adolf Hitler, Sylvia Plath, Carl Jung, Vincent van Gogh, Abraham Lincoln, Elvis Presley, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche and Richard Nixon. 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.

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

However, scholars untrained in the discipline who do not follow these guidelines continue to produce psychobiographical studies. Major psychobiographical authors include Erik Erikson, James A. Anderson, Henry Murray, George Atwood, and William Runyan.

Examples

• Elms, Alan (1993). Uncovering Lives. New York: Oxford University Press.
• 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.
• Safranski, Rudiger. Nietzsche: a Philosophical Biography Granta Books, London, (2002); Vienna, (2000); New York (2002) ISBN 0-393-05008-4
• Waite, Robert G.L. The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler. New York: First DaCapo Press Edition, (1993) (orig. pub. 1977). ISBN 0-306-80514-6.

See also

• Psychohistory

References

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