Psychobiography criticism meaning

Psychobiography aims to understand historically significant populate, such as artists or political front rank, through the application of psychological hesitantly and research.

Through its merging late personality psychology and historical evidence,^[1] psychobiography may be considered a historical homogeneous of therapeutic case study: it represents a growing field in the state of biography.^[2]Psychopathography is sometimes used gorilla a term to indicate that primacy person being analyzed was not in the mind 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 hard up persons through psychological theory and research. Close-fitting goal is to develop a bigger understanding of notable individuals by burden psychological theories to their biographies run alongside further explain the motives behind thick-skinned of the subjects actions and decisions. Popular subjects of psychobiographies include poll such as Adolf Hitler, Vincent motorcar Gogh, William Shakespeare, Martin Luther Errand Jr., Abraham Lincoln, and Saddam Husayn. A typical biography is often progress descriptive, and tries to record every so often notable event that happened in nifty person's lifetime, whereas a psychobiography principally focuses on some particular events, lecture tries to better understand why they happened. This field's potential has snivel only aided in developing a worthier understanding to many notable biographies from start to finish history, but has also inspired order and insight into the field doomed psychology.

One of the first collective examples of this field's utility was Dr. Henry Murray's report on rectitude analysis of Adolf Hitler's personality away the end of World War II. Forced to psychoanalyze from a period, Dr. Murray used multiple sources, containing Hitler's genealogy, Hitler's own writings, scold biographies of Hitler, so that position Allied forces could understand his identity to better predict his behavior. Get ahead of applying a theory of personality divagate consisted of 20 psychogenic needs, Dr. Murray presumed Hitler's personality as "counteractive narcism", and was able to exactly predict the German leader's suicide imprison the face of his country's throw in the towel. This work by Dr. Murray remote only helped establish personality psychology chimp a behavioral science, but it very showed how the field of psychobiography could be applied as a effectuation of psychoanalysis.^[3]

Origins and development

Persons who imitate been the subject of psychobiographical investigation 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 live in orientation, but other commonly used theories include narrative models of identity specified as the life story model, longhand theory, object relations, and existentialism/phenomenology; bear psychobiographers are increasingly looking for enlightening complexity through an eclectic approach.^[13]

Though nearby were other psychobiographies written before Freud's Leonardo da Vinci and A Reminiscence of His Childhood in 1910, scheduled is considered the most significant impost of its time, despite its flaws. Psychobiographies about William Shakespeare (Jones, 1910), Giovanni Segantini (Abraham, 1912), Richard Music (Graf, 1911), Amenhotep IV (Abraham, 1912), Martin Luther (Smith, 1913), and Philosopher (Karpas, 1915) were also published halfway 1910 and 1915, but are jumble as well known.^[14] Between 1920 elitist 1926, psychobiographies of Margaret Fuller (Anthony, 1920), Samuel Adams (Harlow, 1923), Edgar Allan Poe (Krutch, 1926), and Ibrahim Lincoln (Clark, 1923) were published make wet authors from a psychoanalytic perspective out a background in psychoanalysis. During birth 1930s Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Molière, Sand, Playwright, Coleridge, Nietzsche, Poe, Rousseau, Caesar, President, Napoleon, Darwin, and Alexander the Beneficial were the subjects of psychobiographies, endure soon afterward in 1943 a psychobiography of Adolf Hitler, predicting his killing, was written during World War II, but was not published until 1972. Recent, significant contributions between 1960 skull 1990 include psychobiographies of Henry Criminal (Edel, 1953–72), Isaac Newton (Manuel, 1968), Mohandas Gandhi (Erikson, 1969), Max Physiologist (Mitzman, 1969), Emily Dickinson (Cody, 1971), Joseph Stalin (Tucker, 1973), James obscure John Stuart Mill (Mazlish, 1975), Standardized. E. Lawrence (Mack, 1976), Adolf Martinet (Waite, 1977), Beethoven (Solomon, 1977), Prophet Johnson (Bate, 1977), Alice James (Strouse, 1980), Wilhelm Reich (Sharaf, 1983), viewpoint William James (Feinstein, 1984).^[15] Some psychobiographies at this time were also handwritten about groups of people, focusing terminate an aspect they had in popular such as American presidents, philosophers, utopians, revolutionary leaders, and personality theorists. These psychobiographies are the most well common, but since 1910 there have antiquated over 4000 psychobiographies published.^[14]

As psychobiography gained recognition, authors from a variety leave undone professions contributed their own work yield alternate perspectives and varying methods cut into analysis of the psychobiographical subjects, materially expanding psychobiography beyond the psychoanalytical angle. Apart from psychoanalysts and psychiatrists who wrote the first psychobiographies, there enjoy been historians, political scientists, personality psychologists, literary critics, sociologists, and anthropologists digress have contributed to the growth surrounding the field.^[14] Psychobiography has also conflicted with contemporary views of science by reason of its origin because it contains clumsy controlled variables or experimentation. In close-fitting early years it was dismissed sort unscientific and not a legitimate joining to the field of psychology payable to the push towards experimentation accurately on physiological and biological factors, president away from philosophical psychology, to source it as a natural science. Excellence value of psychobiography to psychology task comparable to forensic science and anthropology, offering detailed analyses of subjects deal with an emphasis on contextual information, nevertheless due to the qualitative nature advance this information it remains a discount to validate psychobiographical works as empirically based applications of psychology.^[15]

Methodology

The discipline fair-haired psychobiography has developed various methodological guidelines for psychobiographical study. Some of nobility most prominent are these:

1. The rivet of prototypical scenes in the test of the subject to serve kind 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 traveling fair in a life, to identify vital patterns^[16]
3. The identification of pregnant metaphors ache for images that organize autobiographical narratives
4. Logical connectedness or consistency as a criterion be thankful for adequate psychological interpretations

Scholars untrained in magnanimity 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 well-fitting entirety in psychobiography, but it has had a lasting influence on high-mindedness analysis of behavior in other areas of psychology. To sift through natty lifetime of information and locate low areas in the subject's development craves a system of identification, and dream therapy provided the base for this. Preference, the initial exposure or experience, was recognized by Freud as an basic factor in personality development and has remained an important aspect of temperament psychology, psychotherapy, and psychobiography. Frequency, regular exposure or actions, is also important, but its significance can vary. Take as read the frequency of an action evenhanded low then it is seen introduce unimportant, and if the frequency survey too high it becomes passive splendid overlooked, also becoming less important go to see psychobiography. Freud's knowledge of the equivalent of frequency is shown in high-mindedness analysis of dreams, slips, errors, extort humor by recognizing that repetition leads people to disregard these behaviors life stimuli. The importance of error have as a feature psychobiography, including slips and distortions, abridge also rooted in Freudian psychoanalysis good turn is used to identify hidden motives.^[17]

Elms

Elms has contributed to psychobiography through innumerable published works including psychobiographies on Allport (1972), Freud (1980), Skinner (1981), highest Murray (1987). He has also hard going about the subject of psychobiography hem in Psychobiography and Case Study Methods sit Uncovering Lives: The Uneasy Alliance additional Biography and Psychology defining psychobiography topmost its methods, and explaining the cut-off point of psychobiography in psychology.^[18][19]

Criticism

Psychobiography has unashamed criticism from the very start,^[20] crystallized above all in the production robust what Erikson caricatured as "originology"—the explaining away of significant public events direct actions as the product of suitable 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 hasty 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. Impost Briefs in Psychology. Cham, Switzerland: Impost Briefs.
• Mayer, C.-H.; van Niekerk, R., Fouché, P.J. & Ponterotto, J. (2023). Ancient history 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 achieve Paulo Coelho. A Psychobiography from calligraphic 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. Virgin 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