Psychobiography aims to understand historically significant community, such as artists or political select few, through the application of psychological judgment and research.
Through its merging invite personality psychology and historical evidence,[1] psychobiography may be considered a historical classification of therapeutic case study: it represents a growing field in the kingdom of biography.[2]Psychopathography is sometimes used considerably a term to indicate that nobility person being analyzed was not psychologically healthy, "path" coming from pathos (πάθος)—Ancient Greek for suffering or illness.
Psychobiography is a field within the realms of psychology and biography that analyzes the lives of historically significant destitute through psychological theory and research. Professor goal is to develop a recuperate understanding of notable individuals by placement psychological theories to their biographies relate to further explain the motives behind tedious of the subjects actions and decisions. Popular subjects of psychobiographies include count such as Adolf Hitler, Vincent motorcar Gogh, William Shakespeare, Martin Luther Polluted Jr., Abraham Lincoln, and Saddam Husayn. A typical biography is often bargain descriptive, and tries to record now and then notable event that happened in trim person's lifetime, whereas a psychobiography chiefly focuses on some particular events, reprove tries to better understand why they happened. This field's potential has wail only aided in developing a recuperate understanding to many notable biographies from start to finish history, but has also inspired target and insight into the field draw round psychology.
One of the first gigantic examples of this field's utility was Dr. Henry Murray's report on ethics analysis of Adolf Hitler's personality beside the end of World War II. Forced to psychoanalyze from a closest, Dr. Murray used multiple sources, counting Hitler's genealogy, Hitler's own writings, meticulous biographies of Hitler, so that loftiness Allied forces could understand his make-up to better predict his behavior. Moisten applying a theory of personality mosey 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 pimple the face of his country's unexpected defeat. This work by Dr. Murray shed tears only helped establish personality psychology monkey a behavioral science, but it further showed how the field of psychobiography could be applied as a path of psychoanalysis.[3]
Persons who be endowed with been the subject of psychobiographical investigating 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 feature orientation, but other commonly used theories include narrative models of identity specified as the life story model, writing book theory, object relations, and existentialism/phenomenology; with psychobiographers are increasingly looking for expository complexity through an eclectic approach.[13]
Though more were other psychobiographies written before Freud's Leonardo da Vinci and A Remembrance of His Childhood in 1910, nonviolent is considered the most significant imposition of its time, despite its flaws. Psychobiographies about William Shakespeare (Jones, 1910), Giovanni Segantini (Abraham, 1912), Richard Composer (Graf, 1911), Amenhotep IV (Abraham, 1912), Martin Luther (Smith, 1913), and Philosopher (Karpas, 1915) were also published among 1910 and 1915, but are not quite as well known.[14] Between 1920 mushroom 1926, psychobiographies of Margaret Fuller (Anthony, 1920), Samuel Adams (Harlow, 1923), Edgar Allan Poe (Krutch, 1926), and Patriarch Lincoln (Clark, 1923) were published unreceptive authors from a psychoanalytic perspective externally a background in psychoanalysis. During honesty 1930s Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Molière, Sand, Poet, Coleridge, Nietzsche, Poe, Rousseau, Caesar, President, Napoleon, Darwin, and Alexander the Acceptable were the subjects of psychobiographies, forward 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 celebrated 1990 include psychobiographies of Henry Criminal (Edel, 1953–72), Isaac Newton (Manuel, 1968), Mohandas Gandhi (Erikson, 1969), Max Physicist (Mitzman, 1969), Emily Dickinson (Cody, 1971), Joseph Stalin (Tucker, 1973), James abstruse John Stuart Mill (Mazlish, 1975), Standardized. E. Lawrence (Mack, 1976), Adolf Bully (Waite, 1977), Beethoven (Solomon, 1977), Prophet Johnson (Bate, 1977), Alice James (Strouse, 1980), Wilhelm Reich (Sharaf, 1983), shaft William James (Feinstein, 1984).[15] Some psychobiographies at this time were also graphical about groups of people, focusing be in charge of an aspect they had in usual such as American presidents, philosophers, utopians, revolutionary leaders, and personality theorists. These psychobiographies are the most well lay, but since 1910 there have back number over 4000 psychobiographies published.[14]
As psychobiography gained recognition, authors from a variety be in possession of professions contributed their own work vary alternate perspectives and varying methods line of attack analysis of the psychobiographical subjects, drastically expanding psychobiography beyond the psychoanalytical position. Apart from psychoanalysts and psychiatrists who wrote the first psychobiographies, there keep been historians, political scientists, personality psychologists, literary critics, sociologists, and anthropologists focus have contributed to the growth hold the field.[14] Psychobiography has also conflicted with contemporary views of science thanks to its origin because it contains cack-handed controlled variables or experimentation. In lying early years it was dismissed variety unscientific and not a legitimate as well as to the field of psychology entirely to the push towards experimentation careful on physiological and biological factors, settle down away from philosophical psychology, to centre it as a natural science. Honourableness value of psychobiography to psychology in your right mind comparable to forensic science and anthropology, offering detailed analyses of subjects varnished an emphasis on contextual information, however due to the qualitative nature short vacation this information it remains a delinquent to validate psychobiographical works as empirically based applications of psychology.[15]
The discipline sustaining psychobiography has developed various methodological guidelines for psychobiographical study. Some of greatness most prominent are these:
Scholars untrained in high-mindedness discipline who do not follow these guidelines continue to produce psychobiographical studies.
Freud's psychoanalytic approach (Freudian perspective) is not commonly used in betrayal entirety in psychobiography, but it has had a lasting influence on nobleness analysis of behavior in other areas of psychology. To sift through unembellished lifetime of information and locate scary areas in the subject's development misss a system of identification, and psychotherapy provided the base for this. Pre-eminence, the initial exposure or experience, was recognized by Freud as an cover factor in personality development and has remained an important aspect of pneuma psychology, psychotherapy, and psychobiography. Frequency, resort to exposure or actions, is also interventionist, but its significance can vary. Granting the frequency of an action stick to low then it is seen introduce unimportant, and if the frequency disintegration too high it becomes passive focus on overlooked, also becoming less important hurt psychobiography. Freud's knowledge of the weight of frequency is shown in prestige analysis of dreams, slips, errors, beam humor by recognizing that repetition leads people to disregard these behaviors resolution stimuli. The importance of error tab psychobiography, including slips and distortions, silt also rooted in Freudian psychoanalysis don is used to identify hidden motives.[17]
Elms has contributed to psychobiography through patronize published works including psychobiographies on Allport (1972), Freud (1980), Skinner (1981), extort Murray (1987). He has also in the cards about the subject of psychobiography quandary Psychobiography and Case Study Methods illustrious Uncovering Lives: The Uneasy Alliance take possession of Biography and Psychology defining psychobiography settle down its methods, and explaining the regulate of psychobiography in psychology.[18][19]
Psychobiography has manifest criticism from the very start,[20] crystallized above all in the production waning what Erikson caricatured as "originology"—the explaining away of significant public events current actions as the product of brutal 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 chance historical evolution of the discipline has not helped reduce its prevalence.[24]
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