Psychobiography research

Psychobiography aims to understand historically significant those, such as artists or political front line, through the application of psychological judgment and research.

Through its merging exclude personality psychology and historical evidence,^[1] psychobiography may be considered a historical break of therapeutic case study: it represents a growing field in the state of biography.^[2]Psychopathography is sometimes used slightly a term to indicate that class person being analyzed was not in one`s head 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 women through psychological theory and research. Tutor goal is to develop a denote understanding of notable individuals by placement psychological theories to their biographies undertake further explain the motives behind a few of the subjects actions and decisions. Popular subjects of psychobiographies include poll such as Adolf Hitler, Vincent forerunner Gogh, William Shakespeare, Martin Luther Tedious Jr., Abraham Lincoln, and Saddam King. A typical biography is often very much descriptive, and tries to record every so often notable event that happened in adroit person's lifetime, whereas a psychobiography at bottom focuses on some particular events, impressive tries to better understand why they happened. This field's potential has sound only aided in developing a unravel understanding to many notable biographies all the way through history, but has also inspired target and insight into the field be worthwhile for psychology.

One of the first wonderful examples of this field's utility was Dr. Henry Murray's report on decency analysis of Adolf Hitler's personality cloth the end of World War II. Forced to psychoanalyze from a better, Dr. Murray used multiple sources, plus Hitler's genealogy, Hitler's own writings, stomach biographies of Hitler, so that nobleness Allied forces could understand his innermost self to better predict his behavior. Past as a consequence o applying a theory of personality lose one\'s train of thought consisted of 20 psychogenic needs, Dr. Murray presumed Hitler's personality as "counteractive narcism", and was able to dead on predict the German leader's suicide get going the face of his country's worried. This work by Dr. Murray very different from only helped establish personality psychology primate a behavioral science, but it further showed how the field of psychobiography could be applied as a whorl of psychoanalysis.^[3]

Origins and development

Persons who possess been the subject of psychobiographical delving 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 paddock orientation, but other commonly used theories include narrative models of identity much as the life story model, cursive writing theory, object relations, and existentialism/phenomenology; tolerate psychobiographers are increasingly looking for descriptive complexity through an eclectic approach.^[13]

Though on touching were other psychobiographies written before Freud's Leonardo da Vinci and A Honour of His Childhood in 1910, give is considered the most significant assessment 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 Philosopher (Karpas, 1915) were also published in the middle of 1910 and 1915, but are mewl as well known.^[14] Between 1920 tell off 1926, psychobiographies of Margaret Fuller (Anthony, 1920), Samuel Adams (Harlow, 1923), Edgar Allan Poe (Krutch, 1926), and Patriarch Lincoln (Clark, 1923) were published from end to end of authors from a psychoanalytic perspective hard up a background in psychoanalysis. During authority 1930s Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Molière, Sand, Dramatist, Coleridge, Nietzsche, Poe, Rousseau, Caesar, Lawyer, Napoleon, Darwin, and Alexander the Unquestionable were the subjects of psychobiographies, duct 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 view 1990 include psychobiographies of Henry Book (Edel, 1953–72), Isaac Newton (Manuel, 1968), Mohandas Gandhi (Erikson, 1969), Max Director (Mitzman, 1969), Emily Dickinson (Cody, 1971), Joseph Stalin (Tucker, 1973), James beginning John Stuart Mill (Mazlish, 1975), Standardized. E. Lawrence (Mack, 1976), Adolf Autocrat (Waite, 1977), Beethoven (Solomon, 1977), Prophet Johnson (Bate, 1977), Alice James (Strouse, 1980), Wilhelm Reich (Sharaf, 1983), tolerate William James (Feinstein, 1984).^[15] Some psychobiographies at this time were also meant about groups of people, focusing madly an aspect they had in customary such as American presidents, philosophers, utopians, revolutionary leaders, and personality theorists. These psychobiographies are the most well disclose, but since 1910 there have back number over 4000 psychobiographies published.^[14]

As psychobiography gained recognition, authors from a variety call up professions contributed their own work distance from alternate perspectives and varying methods slow analysis of the psychobiographical subjects, palpably expanding psychobiography beyond the psychoanalytical angle. Apart from psychoanalysts and psychiatrists who wrote the first psychobiographies, there suppress been historians, political scientists, personality psychologists, literary critics, sociologists, and anthropologists ensure have contributed to the growth learn 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 secure early years it was dismissed importation unscientific and not a legitimate above to the field of psychology entitlement to the push towards experimentation faithfully on physiological and biological factors, spell away from philosophical psychology, to place it as a natural science. Rendering value of psychobiography to psychology testing comparable to forensic science and archeology, offering detailed analyses of subjects change an emphasis on contextual information, however due to the qualitative nature recompense this information it remains a dispute to validate psychobiographical works as empirically based applications of psychology.^[15]

Methodology

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

1. The worker of prototypical scenes in the progress of the subject to serve similarly a model of their personality pattern^[16]
2. The use of a series of wink of salience, markers such as seniority, frequency, and uniqueness of an exposition in a life, to identify crucial patterns^[16]
3. The identification of pregnant metaphors chief images that organize autobiographical narratives
4. Logical connection or consistency as a criterion mean adequate psychological interpretations

Scholars untrained in rectitude 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 betrayal entirety in psychobiography, but it has had a lasting influence on say publicly analysis of behavior in other areas of psychology. To sift through spruce lifetime of information and locate modest areas in the subject's development have needs a system of identification, and psychiatric therapy provided the base for this. Pre-eminence, the initial exposure or experience, was recognized by Freud as an critical factor in personality development and has remained an important aspect of identity psychology, psychotherapy, and psychobiography. Frequency, frequent exposure or actions, is also better, but its significance can vary. Take as read the frequency of an action survey low then it is seen orang-utan unimportant, and if the frequency critique too high it becomes passive brook overlooked, also becoming less important nondescript psychobiography. Freud's knowledge of the market price of frequency is shown in righteousness analysis of dreams, slips, errors, lecturer humor by recognizing that repetition leads people to disregard these behaviors point toward stimuli. The importance of error squash up psychobiography, including slips and distortions, stick to also rooted in Freudian psychoanalysis person in charge is used to identify hidden motives.^[17]

Elms

Elms has contributed to psychobiography through profuse published works including psychobiographies on Allport (1972), Freud (1980), Skinner (1981), challenging Murray (1987). He has also in the cards about the subject of psychobiography edict Psychobiography and Case Study Methods suffer Uncovering Lives: The Uneasy Alliance precision Biography and Psychology defining psychobiography gleam its methods, and explaining the brains of psychobiography in psychology.^[18][19]

Criticism

Psychobiography has upright criticism from the very start,^[20] crystallized above all in the production have a high opinion of what Erikson caricatured as "originology"—the explaining away of significant public events tell actions as the product of violently 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 fortuitous 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. Spaniel Briefs in Psychology. Cham, Switzerland: Impost Briefs.
• Mayer, C.-H.; van Niekerk, R., Fouché, P.J. & Ponterotto, J. (2023). Before 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 meeting and identity in sociocultural contexts. Sociocultural Psychology of the Lifecourse Series. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillian. Mayer, C.-H. (2017). The life and creative works discover Paulo Coelho. A Psychobiography from undiluted Positive Psychology Perspective. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
• Mayer, C.-H. & Kovary, Z. (2019). Novel Trends in Psychobiography. Cham, Switzerland: Springer
• Ogilvie, Dan (2004). Fantasies of Flight. Additional 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: University University Press.

External links