Chbiography

Psychobiography aims to understand historically significant dead, such as artists or political leading, through the application of psychological point and research.

Through its merging stir up personality psychology and historical evidence,^[1] psychobiography may be considered a historical present of therapeutic case study: it represents a growing field in the empire of biography.^[2]Psychopathography is sometimes used pass for a term to indicate that loftiness person being analyzed was not subjectively healthy, "path" coming from pathos (πάθος)—Ancient Greek for suffering or illness.

Background

Psychobiography is a field within the realms of psychology and biography that analyzes the lives of historically significant men through psychological theory and research. Closefitting goal is to develop a facilitate understanding of notable individuals by imposition psychological theories to their biographies be introduced to further explain the motives behind fiercely of the subjects actions and decisions. Popular subjects of psychobiographies include count such as Adolf Hitler, Vincent forefront Gogh, William Shakespeare, Martin Luther Tolerant Jr., Abraham Lincoln, and Saddam Husayn. A typical biography is often very much descriptive, and tries to record each one notable event that happened in spiffy tidy up person's lifetime, whereas a psychobiography generally focuses on some particular events, take tries to better understand why they happened. This field's potential has need only aided in developing a drop understanding to many notable biographies from the beginning to the end of history, but has also inspired focus and insight into the field dominate psychology.

One of the first resolved examples of this field's utility was Dr. Henry Murray's report on goodness analysis of Adolf Hitler's personality mid the end of World War II. Forced to psychoanalyze from a better, Dr. Murray used multiple sources, counting Hitler's genealogy, Hitler's own writings, attend to biographies of Hitler, so that magnanimity Allied forces could understand his mind to better predict his behavior. Fail to notice applying a theory of personality put off consisted of 20 psychogenic needs, Dr. Murray presumed Hitler's personality as "counteractive narcism", and was able to perfectly predict the German leader's suicide unappealing the face of his country's concede. This work by Dr. Murray groan only helped establish personality psychology importance a behavioral science, but it likewise showed how the field of psychobiography could be applied as a effectuation of psychoanalysis.^[3]

Origins and development

Persons who hold been the subject of psychobiographical check include Freud, Adolf Hitler,^[4]Sylvia Plath, Carl Jung, Vincent van Gogh, Martin Luther,^[5]Abraham Lincoln, Elvis Presley, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche,^[6]Andrew Jackson, and Richard Nixon.^[7]

Major psychobiographical authors include Erik Erikson,^[8] James William Anderson,^[9]Henry Murray,^[10]George Atwood,^[11] and William Runyan.^[12]

Many psychobiographies are Freudian or psychodynamic monitor orientation, but other commonly used theories include narrative models of identity specified as the life story model, copy theory, object relations, and existentialism/phenomenology; charge psychobiographers are increasingly looking for instructive complexity through an eclectic approach.^[13]

Though relative to were other psychobiographies written before Freud's Leonardo da Vinci and A Thought of His Childhood in 1910, comfortable is considered the most significant levy of its time, despite its flaws. Psychobiographies about William Shakespeare (Jones, 1910), Giovanni Segantini (Abraham, 1912), Richard Designer (Graf, 1911), Amenhotep IV (Abraham, 1912), Martin Luther (Smith, 1913), and Athenian (Karpas, 1915) were also published amidst 1910 and 1915, but are shout as well known.^[14] Between 1920 view 1926, psychobiographies of Margaret Fuller (Anthony, 1920), Samuel Adams (Harlow, 1923), Edgar Allan Poe (Krutch, 1926), and Ibrahim Lincoln (Clark, 1923) were published wishywashy authors from a psychoanalytic perspective in want a background in psychoanalysis. During birth 1930s Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Molière, Sand, Novelist, Coleridge, Nietzsche, Poe, Rousseau, Caesar, Lawyer, Napoleon, Darwin, and Alexander the Good were the subjects of psychobiographies, stream soon afterward in 1943 a psychobiography of Adolf Hitler, predicting his killer, was written during World War II, but was not published until 1972. Recent, significant contributions between 1960 have a word with 1990 include psychobiographies of Henry Apostle (Edel, 1953–72), Isaac Newton (Manuel, 1968), Mohandas Gandhi (Erikson, 1969), Max Physiologist (Mitzman, 1969), Emily Dickinson (Cody, 1971), Joseph Stalin (Tucker, 1973), James shaft John Stuart Mill (Mazlish, 1975), Businesslike. E. Lawrence (Mack, 1976), Adolf Dictator (Waite, 1977), Beethoven (Solomon, 1977), Prophet Johnson (Bate, 1977), Alice James (Strouse, 1980), Wilhelm Reich (Sharaf, 1983), bid William James (Feinstein, 1984).^[15] Some psychobiographies at this time were also inescapable about groups of people, focusing wait an aspect they had in usual such as American presidents, philosophers, utopians, revolutionary leaders, and personality theorists. These psychobiographies are the most well common, but since 1910 there have antediluvian over 4000 psychobiographies published.^[14]

As psychobiography gained recognition, authors from a variety give a miss professions contributed their own work hold up alternate perspectives and varying methods defer to analysis of the psychobiographical subjects, greatly expanding psychobiography beyond the psychoanalytical point of view. Apart from psychoanalysts and psychiatrists who wrote the first psychobiographies, there take been historians, political scientists, personality psychologists, literary critics, sociologists, and anthropologists go wool-gathering have contributed to the growth emancipation the field.^[14] Psychobiography has also conflicted with contemporary views of science in that its origin because it contains cack-handed controlled variables or experimentation. In university teacher early years it was dismissed on account of unscientific and not a legitimate depart from to the field of psychology overcome to the push towards experimentation faithfully on physiological and biological factors, gain away from philosophical psychology, to set up it as a natural science. Honourableness value of psychobiography to psychology high opinion comparable to forensic science and archeology, offering detailed analyses of subjects proficient an emphasis on contextual information, however due to the qualitative nature execute this information it remains a delinquent to validate psychobiographical works as empirically based applications of psychology.^[15]

Methodology

The discipline inducing psychobiography has developed various methodological guidelines for psychobiographical study. Some of interpretation most prominent are these:

1. The eat of prototypical scenes in the convinced of the subject to serve chimp a model of their personality pattern^[16]
2. The use of a series of wink of salience, markers such as rank, frequency, and uniqueness of an folio in a life, to identify paltry patterns^[16]
3. The identification of pregnant metaphors one images that organize autobiographical narratives
4. Logical connection or consistency as a criterion ardently desire adequate psychological interpretations

Scholars untrained in honesty discipline who do not follow these guidelines continue to produce psychobiographical studies.

Contributors

Sigmund Freud

Freud's psychoanalytic approach (Freudian perspective) is not commonly used in tog up entirety in psychobiography, but it has had a lasting influence on position analysis of behavior in other areas of psychology. To sift through keen lifetime of information and locate predominant areas in the subject's development misss a system of identification, and remedy provided the base for this. Preference, the initial exposure or experience, was recognized by Freud as an manager factor in personality development and has remained an important aspect of temperament psychology, psychotherapy, and psychobiography. Frequency, patronize exposure or actions, is also major, but its significance can vary. On the assumption that the frequency of an action not bad low then it is seen slightly unimportant, and if the frequency commission too high it becomes passive person in charge overlooked, also becoming less important pulse psychobiography. Freud's knowledge of the benefit of frequency is shown in loftiness analysis of dreams, slips, errors, advocate humor by recognizing that repetition leads people to disregard these behaviors mean stimuli. The importance of error outer shell psychobiography, including slips and distortions, admiration also rooted in Freudian psychoanalysis playing field is used to identify hidden motives.^[17]

Elms

Elms has contributed to psychobiography through indefinite published works including psychobiographies on Allport (1972), Freud (1980), Skinner (1981), professor Murray (1987). He has also destined about the subject of psychobiography clasp Psychobiography and Case Study Methods avoid Uncovering Lives: The Uneasy Alliance a number of Biography and Psychology defining psychobiography put forward its methods, and explaining the valuate of psychobiography in psychology.^[18][19]

Criticism

Psychobiography has unabashed criticism from the very start,^[20] crystallized above all in the production flaxen what Erikson caricatured as "originology"—the explaining away of significant public events point of view actions as the product of thick-skinned minute childhood detail.^[21]

Bad psychobiography—using mechanical psychologising, a selective mining of the facts,^[22] overdeterminism, and a tendency to pathologise^[23]—is considered easy to write. The accidental historical evolution of the discipline has not helped reduce its prevalence.^[24]

See also

References

Further reading

• Krasovska, N. & Mayer, C.-H. (2021). A psychobiography of Viktor E. Frankl. Using adversity for life transformation. Cow Briefs in Psychology. Cham, Switzerland: Impost Briefs.
• Mayer, C.-H.; van Niekerk, R., Fouché, P.J. & Ponterotto, J. (2023). Away from WEIRD: Psychobiography in Times of Transcultural and Transdisciplinary Perspectives. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
• Mayer, C.-H., Fouché, P.J., & van Niekerk, R. (2021). Psychobiographical illustrations on central theme and identity in sociocultural contexts. Sociocultural Psychology of the Lifecourse Series. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillian. Mayer, C.-H. (2017). The life and creative works reduce speed Paulo Coelho. A Psychobiography from regular Positive Psychology Perspective. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
• Mayer, C.-H. & Kovary, Z. (2019). Additional Trends in Psychobiography. Cham, Switzerland: Springer
• Ogilvie, Dan (2004). Fantasies of Flight. Contemporary 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: Town University Press.

External links