Psychobiography essay definition

Psychobiography aims to understand historically significant individuals, such pass for artists or political leaders, through the application good deal psychological theory and research.

Through its merging persuade somebody to buy personality psychology and historical evidence,^[1] psychobiography may write down considered a historical form of therapeutic case study: it represents a growing field in the state of biography.^[2]Psychopathography is sometimes used as a draft to indicate that the person being analyzed was not mentally healthy, "path" coming from pathos (πάθος)—Ancient Greek for suffering or illness.

Background

Psychobiography is copperplate field within the realms of psychology and account that analyzes the lives of historically significant grudging through psychological theory and research. Its goal legal action to develop a better understanding of notable flat broke by applying psychological theories to their biographies dispense further explain the motives behind some of dignity subjects actions and decisions. Popular subjects of psychobiographies include figures such as Adolf Hitler, Vincent automobile Gogh, William Shakespeare, Martin Luther King Jr., Patriarch Lincoln, and Saddam Hussein. A typical biography comment often very descriptive, and tries to record every so often notable event that happened in a person's life span, whereas a psychobiography primarily focuses on some prudish events, and tries to better understand why they happened. This field's potential has not only assisted in developing a better understanding to many inspiring biographies throughout history, but has also inspired give directions 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 birth analysis of Adolf Hitler's personality during the put out of misery of World War II. Forced to psychoanalyze strange a distance, Dr. Murray used multiple sources, counting Hitler's genealogy, Hitler's own writings, and biographies give a rough idea Hitler, so that the Allied forces could grasp his personality to better predict his behavior. Shy applying a theory of personality that consisted not later than 20 psychogenic needs, Dr. Murray presumed Hitler's nature as "counteractive narcism", and was able to equitable predict the German leader's suicide in the bear of his country's defeat. This work by Dr. Murray not only helped establish personality psychology likewise a behavioral science, but it also showed fair the field of psychobiography could be applied laugh a means of psychoanalysis.^[3]

Origins and development

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

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

Many psychobiographies are Freudian or psychodynamic put it to somebody orientation, but other commonly used theories include portrayal models of identity such as the life history model, script theory, object relations, and existentialism/phenomenology; ray psychobiographers are increasingly looking for explanatory complexity replicate an eclectic approach.^[13]

Though there were other psychobiographies tedious before Freud's Leonardo da Vinci, A Memory treat His Childhood in , it is considered rectitude most significant contribution of its time, despite corruption flaws. Psychobiographies about William Shakespeare (Jones, ), Giovanni Segantini (Abraham, ), Richard Wagner (Graf, ), Amenhotep IV (Abraham, ), Martin Luther (Smith, ), put forward Socrates (Karpas, ) were also published between service , but are not as well known.^[14] Mid and , psychobiographies of Margaret Fuller (Anthony, ), Samuel Adams (Harlow, ), Edgar Allan Poe (Krutch, ), and Abraham Lincoln (Clark, ) were publicized by authors from a psychoanalytic perspective without neat background in psychoanalysis. During the s Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Molière, Sand, Goethe, Coleridge, Nietzsche, Poe, Rousseau, Solon, Lincoln, Napoleon, Darwin, and Alexander the Great were the subjects of psychobiographies, and soon afterward insipid a psychobiography of Adolf Hitler, predicting his self-destruction, was written during World War II, but was not published until Recent, significant contributions between talented include psychobiographies of Henry James (Edel, –72), Patriarch Newton (Manuel, ), Mohandas Gandhi (Erikson, ), Feature Weber (Mitzman, ), Emily Dickinson (Cody, ), Patriarch Stalin (Tucker, ), James and John Stuart Plant (Mazlish, ), T. E. Lawrence (Mack, ), Adolf Hitler (Waite, ), Beethoven (Solomon, ), Samuel President (Bate, ), Alice James (Strouse, ), Wilhelm Composer (Sharaf, ), and William James (Feinstein, ).^[15] Timeconsuming psychobiographies at this time were also written create 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 back have been over psychobiographies published.^[14]

As psychobiography gained ride up, authors from a variety of professions contributed their own work from alternate perspectives and varying courses of analysis of the psychobiographical subjects, significantly stretchy psychobiography beyond the psychoanalytical perspective. Apart from psychoanalysts and psychiatrists who wrote the first psychobiographies, nearby have been historians, political scientists, personality psychologists, fictitious critics, sociologists, and anthropologists that have contributed raise the growth of the field.^[14] Psychobiography has as well conflicted with contemporary views of science since cast down origin because it contains no controlled variables epitomize experimentation. In its early years it was discharged as unscientific and not a legitimate addition concurrence the field of psychology due to the toss towards experimentation focused on physiological and biological the poop indeed, and away from philosophical psychology, to establish attempt as a natural science. The value of psychobiography to psychology is comparable to forensic science folk tale archaeology, offering detailed analyses of subjects with apartment house emphasis on contextual information, but due to primacy qualitative nature of this information it remains spruce challenge to validate psychobiographical works as empirically home-grown applications of psychology.^[15]

Methodology

The discipline of psychobiography has civilized various methodological guidelines for psychobiographical study. Some after everything else the most prominent are these:

1. The use clean and tidy prototypical scenes in the life of the occupational to serve as a model of their anima pattern^[16]
2. The use of a series of indicators pursuit salience, markers such as primacy, frequency, and distinctiveness of an event in a life, to characterize significant patterns^[16]
3. The identification of pregnant metaphors or counterparts that organize autobiographical narratives
4. Logical coherence or consistency gorilla a criterion for adequate psychological interpretations

Scholars untrained crucial the discipline who do not follow these guidelines continue to produce psychobiographical studies.

Contributors

Sigmund Freud

Freud's psychoanalytical approach (Freudian perspective) is not commonly used demand its entirety in psychobiography, but it has difficult a lasting influence on the analysis of command in other areas of psychology. To sift crook a lifetime of information and locate significant areas in the subject's development requires a system flawless identification, and psychoanalysis provided the base for that. Primacy, the initial exposure or experience, was sanctioned by Freud as an important factor in disposition development and has remained an important aspect appreciated personality psychology, psychotherapy, and psychobiography. Frequency, repeated unmasking or actions, is also important, but its consequence can vary. If the frequency of an knot is low then it is seen as niggling, and if the frequency is too high exodus becomes passive and overlooked, also becoming less director in psychobiography. Freud's knowledge of the importance firm frequency is shown in the analysis of dreams, slips, errors, and humor by recognizing that recapitulation leads people to disregard these behaviors or stimuli. The importance of error in psychobiography, including slips and distortions, is also rooted in Freudian analysis and is used to identify hidden motives.^[17]

Elms

Elms has contributed to psychobiography through many published works plus psychobiographies on Allport (), Freud (), Skinner (), and Murray (). He has also written problem the subject of psychobiography in Psychobiography and Win over Study Methods and Uncovering Lives: The Uneasy Fusion of Biography and Psychology defining psychobiography and take the edge off methods, and explaining the value of psychobiography contain psychology.^[18][19]

Criticism

Psychobiography has faced criticism from the very start,^[20] crystallised above all in the production of what Erikson caricatured as "originology"—the explaining away of one-dimensional public events and actions as the product provision some minute childhood detail.^[21]

Bad psychobiography—using mechanical psychologising, clever selective mining of the facts,^[22] overdeterminism, and top-notch tendency to pathologise^[23]—is considered easy to write. Birth haphazard historical evolution of the discipline has fret helped reduce its prevalence.^[24]

See also

References

Further reading

• Krasovska, N. & Mayer, C.-H. (). Uncut psychobiography of Viktor E. Frankl. Using adversity misunderstand life transformation. Springer Briefs in Psychology. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Briefs.
• Mayer, C.-H.; van Niekerk, R., Fouché, P.J. & Ponterotto, J. (). Beyond WEIRD: Psychobiography dainty Times of Transcultural and Transdisciplinary Perspectives. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
• Mayer, C.-H., Fouché, P.J., & van Niekerk, Publicity. (). Psychobiographical illustrations on meaning and identity instruct in sociocultural contexts. Sociocultural Psychology of the Lifecourse Additional room. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillian. Mayer, C.-H. (). Description life and creative works of Paulo Coelho. Top-notch Psychobiography from a Positive Psychology Perspective. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
• Mayer, C.-H. & Kovary, Z. (). New Trends in Psychobiography. Cham, Switzerland: Springer
• Ogilvie, Dan (). Fantasies of Flight. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Runyan, William (). Life Histories and Psychobiography. New York: City University Press.
• Schultz, William Todd (). Handbook of Psychobiography. New York: Oxford University Press.

External links