Book Review - Handbook of Psychobiography

Handbook of Psychobiography. Edited by William Todd Schultz. New York: Ox- ford University Press, 2005. Pp. 400. $67.50 (cloth).

In 1971, Rae Carlson confronted her fellow psychologists with the question “Where is the person in personality research?” (“Where Is the Person in Personality Research?” Psychological Bulletin 75, no. 3 [1971]: 218). Her query arose from a growing alarm with the fragmentation of personality and social psychology into hundreds of empirical studies about discrete traits, cognitions, perceptions, and other microphenomena. How many studies could be generated about cognitive dissonance or locus of control? Would the accretion of these investigations actually lead the field to develop more useful and complex models of intentionality, purpose, and decision making? Like social work in the late twentieth century, psychology strove mightily to rid itself of grand unified theories (GUTs) and to embrace a rigorous empiricism with the idea of doing better science. Fifteen years later, Carlson’s question still provides an important challenge to those who desire neither a return to the GUTs of the past nor an uninformed empiricism.

Psychology can best find the answer to Carlson’s question, argues William Todd Schultz, editor of Handbook of Psychobiography, through the study of his book’s subject, which represents the “return of the repressed” (3) in the field of psychology. Psychobiography is distinctive from biography in significant ways: “The former most often targets one facet of a life at a time, a more or less discrete episode or event or action, not ‘the’ life in all its yawning immensity. . . . The clarity sought is psychological in nature. It has chiefly to do with the subject’s interior world, the effects of his life history on his mind and actions. The perspective is person centered” (9).

This handbook seeks to accomplish an ambitious agenda, namely, to definitively institutionalize a field of studies that has been limited to a small number of practitioners laboring in rewarding, productive, but isolated associations that are split off from the discipline and profession of psychology. Some observers note that, despite promising beginnings, psychobiographical scholarship has not progressed because too few hands have worked the field, so that even high- quality work has generated no sustained, critical response. Academic psychologists generally do not attend to this type of soft, “idiographic” (15) scholarship, instead preferring the pursuit of rigorous methods and nomothetical problems. At the same time, historians and biographers generally do not appreciate the specific theoretical and analytic tools that psychobiographers have employed.

In summary, psychobiographies were produced by a few fellow travelers and then left alone. This has produced, as Bruce Mazlish argues, “little cumulative power and thus a mainly limited future” (“The Past and Future of Psychohistory,” Annual of Psychoanalysis 31 [2003]: 256).

All of this transpired despite what seemed a promising future when Erik H. Erikson found great success with Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (New York: Norton, 1958) and Gandhi’s Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence (New York: Norton, 1969). These were essentially psychobiographical studies marshaled to explore the conceptual power of his psychosocial theory of the human life cycle. Erikson’s work attracted some of the most promising minds of the day, and Robert Jay Lifton assembled many of them at his vacation retreat in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod. These annual Wellfleet gatherings were designed to generate ideas, excitement, and intellectual networks. They helped launch young scholars (like Mazlish, Robert Coles, Kenneth Kenniston, and Philip Rieff) who were typically working without the firm infrastructures or blessings of traditional academe, but the events did little to establish a new discipline. Indeed, Lifton would later reflect that progress toward a new discipline was impeded by the lack of an established psychohistorical theory and by individual commitments: “Immersed in our individual work, we were unwilling to give the time and energy we knew such an institution would demand” (Explorations in Psychohistory: The Wellfleet Papers [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974], 15). And, more provocatively, he wrote, “Some of us felt that dependency upon the Academy, any academy, could serve to blunt and mute whatever intellectual (if not political) subversion we were capable of mounting” (15).

Indeed, the development of psychobiography can be seen as a series of rebellious excursions against established forms of theorizing. In his chapter within the Schultz volume, Irving Alexander argues that Erikson’s move to do psycho- biography was a rebellion against the psychoanalytic establishment that rejected Erikson’s “way of looking at things” (Erikson, A Way of Looking at Things: Selected Papers from 1930 to 1980, ed. Stephen Schlein [New York: Norton, 1987]) as heretical, especially objecting to his explorations of how historical, social, reli- gious, and cultural factors synergistically shaped mind and society. Erikson’s psychobiographical studies allowed him a way to write about new ideas, testing them outside of the standard genres, the analytic pathography, and the metapsychological treatise.

The other problem for the field has been the burgeoning popularity of main- stream biography. This popularity has proven a financial windfall for contemporary publishing houses. The American public now reads and thinks about history, and even about the present, primarily through biography. Witness the presence of Doris Kearns Goodwin, David McCullough, and Joseph Ellis (biographers of the Roosevelts, Kennedys, Abraham Lincoln, Lyndon Johnson, Harry Truman, and the founding fathers) on Meet the Press and Jim Lehrer’s NewsHour. These writers attempt to explicitly understand history through the lives of important personalities, using that understanding to analyze contemporary problems and generate strategies for addressing them. Even books on business management call upon lives as various as those of Attila the Hun, Jesus, and Ulysses S. Grant to help executives run twenty-first-century multinational companies. Yet, as Alan Elms persuasively argues (Uncovering Lives: The Uneasy Alliance of Biography and Psychology [New York: Oxford University Press, 1994]), otherwise fine biographies frequently fall short because they do not rigorously explore the psychological and relational problems that are integral to the lives of those worth studying.

This volume joins a growing body of conferences, dedicated journals, refereed publications, and doctoral dissertations that announce the intent to demonstrate psychobiography’s relevance and significance. In effect, the volume attempts to establish psychobiography as a permanent disciplinary specialty. This purpose influences the organization and approach of the book. The first section carefully presents a history of psychobiography, starting with Freud’s important but flawed venture “Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood” (in Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, Leonardo da Vinci, and Other Works, vol. 11 of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey [1910; repr., London: Hogarth, 1957], 63–137).

The volume then moves into a discussion of the formal development of personology from 1930 to 1950, a period dominated by Gordon Allport and Henry A. Murray. The highly influential work of Erikson and Robert White (see White, ed., The Study of Lives: Essays on Personality in Honor of Henry A. Murray [New York: Atherton, 1963]) in the 1950s and 1960s demonstrates that psychobiography can test psychological theories and constructs through intensive case studies that do not center on clinical psychopathology. Subsequent work by Elms, Alexander, Mazlish, Schultz, and their colleagues represents a period of experimentation with approaches that fall both within and outside of applied psychoanalytic psychology.

William McKinley Runyan’s publication of Life Histories and Psychobiography: Explorations in Theory and Method (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982) was an especially important event (the chapter “How to Critically Evaluate Alternative Explanations of Life Events: The Case of Van Gogh’s Ear” [96–102] is based on methodological strategies first presented in that earlier book). Runyan under- stands that psychobiography will always be hamstrung by the epistemological problems attached to psychoanalytic theory if the “study of lives” (96) exclusively relies on psychoanalytic approaches. He argues that the field would be better served by the careful analysis and management of the validity problems that vex all social sciences. Although some psychobiographers have not been interested in what the philosophy of science (especially Karl Popper’s critical realism) might offer, Runyan has spent his career attending to the development of methodological rigor in the field. He also points to the importance of analyzing social, cultural, economic, and other significant contexts that shape lives. In his contribution to this volume, Runyan places the study of lives within the context of the larger personological tradition, reminding the reader that it is crucial to understand how psychobiography is historically and epistemologically situated.

In his contribution to the volume, Dan McAdams asserts that if psychobiographers are to truly benefit from and meaningfully contribute to the science of personality, they need to make greater efforts to understand the past 20 years of personality research. He strongly criticizes some psychobiographers’ unreflective use of GUTs, arguing for a multilevel approach that analyzes persons’ dispositional traits, characteristic adaptations, and integrative life stories. In fact, McAdams argues that scholars should “look skeptically upon broad assertions regarding basic needs, fundamental complexes, or universal patterns of human individuality. . . . No single goal, schema, defense mechanism, motivational pattern, or value cluster provides the key, integrative construct for understanding the person” (73). Theoretical and methodological pluralism is demanded here. The inclusion of this chapter indicates that the editor is serious about the epistemological tasks that face psychobiographers if they are to contribute to personality psychology. However, it must be noted that almost all of the studies included in this handbook do not meet McAdams’s criteria, especially his call to utilize “Big Five” (69) trait theory.

Indeed, Elms argues that psychobiographers need to avoid the procrustean error of wedging and stretching biographical data in order to fit favored theories. He instead advocates allowing the data to lead the way in all their complexity and contradictions. Theory selection is an iterative process that is successfully complete only after the researcher experiences an analytic immersion in the life history data. In addition, the selected theory should be tested against other important biographical information in the database, and the selection should be compared with the work of other psychobiographers. In her contribution, Kate Isaacson emphasizes that this process will be significantly enhanced through the use of “multiple case psychobiography” (104), which can analyze persons who have filled similar roles (e.g., Abraham Lincoln and Gerald Ford); persons in interesting and influential relationships (e.g., Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud); and even important historical, political, or social movements (e.g., the civil rights movement). Rich insights into specific phenomena of interest (such as the psychology of leadership) can be gained by contrasting and comparing persons who have similar roles but are separated across time, culture, and geography. Such examinations can also reveal such theoretical issues as a proposed integrative psychology of personality. Multidisciplinary work is crucial to this type of psychobiography and requires the psychobiographer to utilize other branches of psychology, as well as history, political science, and critical theory.

The driving force (and animating voice) of this book is editor William Todd Schultz, who also wrote five of the 24 chapters. He argues that “bad psychobiographies” (119), which are characterized by pathographical, speculative, and retrospective reconstructions, have seriously delayed the maturity of the field and should be excluded from the canon. Delineation of proper methodology and theory will ultimately demonstrate the field’s promise for psychology by bringing useful and representative work to the foreground. Schultz identifies features that mark “good psychobiography” (7). These, he argues, include co- gency, sound narrative structure, comprehensiveness, data convergence, sudden coherence, logical soundness, consistency, and viability. He demonstrates how to develop these outcomes in a chapter called “How to Strike Psychological Pay Dirt in Biographical Data” (42–63), which uses Alexander’s “primary indicators of psychological saliency” (44). This is a fascinating approach to biographical data reduction and analysis. Schultz draws upon McAdams’s narrative approaches (especially his use of “nuclear episodes” [62]) and Silvan Tomkins’s script theory (especially affect-laden scripts). These are also utilized by many of the other contributors to this handbook. Schultz advances his own approach, finding and analyzing “prototypical scenes” (48). These scenes are life events characterized by vividness and emotional intensity; they usually involve developmental crises, family conflicts, and significant life disruptions. Such scenes are recounted and often reenacted by the person throughout life, and in the case of a writer like Sylvia Plath (who lost her idolized father at an early age), they will be represented across poems, novels, memoirs, and letters. Schultz skillfully walks the reader through this approach in his psychobiographical analysis of the avant-garde photographer Diane Arbus.

The second section of the volume presents exemplary psychobiographical studies of writers and artists. Schultz argues that these studies benefit psychology because they shed light on the “outlier” (136) of artistic personality. In some cases, this represents high levels of psychological health and creativity. These chapters are authored by Alan Elms and Bruce Heller (“Twelve Ways to Say ‘Lonesome’: Assessing Error and Control in the Music of Elvis Presley” [142–57]), Daniel Ogilvie (on James M. Barrie [175–87]), and James Anderson (“Edith Wharton and Ethan Frome : A Psychobiographical Exploration” [188–99]). Along with Schultz’s own analysis of Sylvia Plath (“Mourning, Melancholia, and Sylvia Plath” [158–74]), the psychobiographical studies in this section demonstrate how the approaches laid out in the book’s first section can be used to study different types of artists working in very different genres. One is struck by the powerful psychological and intergenerational struggles that generate the books and music commonly recognized as standards of highbrow and popular culture. Paradoxically, the widespread appreciation of such works can obscure their origins in psychological suffering and strangeness and, in effect, tame them. In opposition to this process, these psychobiographers would affirm Carolyn Forche ́’s assertion that “all art is the result of one’s having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end” (The Angel of History [New York: HarperCollins, 1995], 19). Psychobiography is an indispensable way to understand and reconsider the process of artistic creativity, as well as the effect of creativity on the lives of the artists.

The third section turns to the psychobiographical study of psychologists. The reader soon realizes that this inward turning of the lens is unique in psychology, and the dysphoric effects of such self-scrutiny may cause some to fear or shun psychobiography. Is it not important to those who embrace the most ascetic forms of positivism that ideas themselves should be seen as externally discovered, in the sense that they are grounded in nature? In psychology, this position would be especially embraced by “operationism” (286), the scientific worldview developed and advanced by Stanley S. Stevens, who is the subject of a chapter authored by Ian Nicholson (285–300). Although Stevens built a highly successful career as an experimentalist determined to eliminate subjectivity from the science of psychology, Nicholson argues that this life project was driven by the nonrational need to reject the evils of religion, literature, and the other humanities by emulating physics in its early twentieth-century empiricism. Nicholson discusses how Stevens was inexorably influenced by the Mormon religion that he rejected in favor of a scientific psychology. The influence was both conceptual (with the religion’s apotheosis of the “physicality of God” [193]) and ecclesiastical (with its centrality of patriarchal authority and lineage). Even at the zenith of this extraordinary intellectual pursuit, capped by receipt of the American Psycho- logical Association’s Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award, “he was infuriated by what he perceived as a lack of regard for his work, and he felt increasingly unappreciated and resentful” (296).

Notwithstanding the question of whether operationism is the superior path for psychology, Nicholson’s psychobiographical conclusion is that Stevens’s flight from childhood family losses, personal unhappiness, and fervent religiosity led him to direct his prodigious intellectual and emotional energies into establishing the hegemony of operationism in American psychology. Some readers will be outraged by this depiction and consider it a caricature of an important scientific pioneer; others will see it as an implicit indictment of any psychologist who argues for empiricist (evidence-based) approaches. Such considerations are raised but insufficiently analyzed in this book, and they point to the need for a much more careful exploration of the ethical problems facing psycho- biographers.

In the second of his contributions, Anderson argues that it is neither reductionistic nor pathographic to assert that “theorists are drawn to explore certain areas because these areas have been meaningful in their own lives, and ultimately they become convinced of their conclusions only if these conclusions are con- sistent with their own experience. There is, moreover, a dynamic interaction between theorists and their ideas. Their ideas help them understand themselves and often enable them to work out vexing problems” (204). If this is true, psychobiography should help us better understand theories, to effectively identify theorists’ blind spots and limitations (especially theoretical overgeneralizations), to avoid professional idealization of particular theorists, to better un- derstand the creation of current technologies (psychotherapies, tests), and to encourage greater discrimination in the use of psychological theories. In other words, just as political history is made accessible through the biographies of specific leaders, the student of psychological theories will benefit from biographical analyses of their creators.

Here it is useful to turn to Freud’s (1910) psychobiography of da Vinci. In his chapter on the work, Elms agrees that Freud’s account is flawed because of its reliance on Leonardo’s autobiographical memory of the vulture dream. In a French text, Leonardo is said to have dreamed that when he was a helpless infant, a vulture flew into his crib and thrust its tail into his mouth. Freud relied on this vivid account to construct an interpretation of Leonardo’s homosexual orientation. This might be the most famous example of inferential error in psychology, as it was later found that the French text was translated incorrectly. It seems that the poetic vulture, a creature rich in mythological significance, was actually a prosaic “kite” (212). This error has been an especially sharp arrow in the quiver of anti-Freud warriors, who use it to demonstrate Freud’s char- acteristic arrogance and sloppiness. However, Elms instead asks that one pause and consider the bigger picture. Freud opens his study with a discussion of errors to be eschewed (e.g., avoid arguments built on a single clue, avoid pathologizing and idealizing the subject, avoid drawing strong clues from weak evidence). It is thus remarkable that he proceeds to ignore his own prescriptions. The psychobiographer should be concerned with the possible reasons why Freud allowed this to happen. Elms discusses Freud’s profound identification with Leonardo, noting that Freud viewed him as an exemplary artist-scientist. Elms also notes Freud’s well-documented intellectual and psychosexual struggles as a middle-aged man. These elements, Elms argues, suggest that each inferential error can shed light upon the lives of both Leonardo and Freud. Furthermore, Freud’s errors illuminate the representative problems faced by creative individuals and the inadequacy of formulating intellectual creativity only as a paradigm of heroic sublimation. Finally, Elms observes that Freud’s Leonardo provides psychobiographers with “a kind of cautionary tale” (221), depicting an all-too- human Freud whose scotomas are not unique to him. Freud’s mistakes demonstrate the ongoing intellectual risks for all who venture into this type of psychological study. Elms demonstrates that neither hagiography nor demonology is necessary when approaching Freud’s work. He also shows that careful historical, biographical, and textual analyses permit fresh perspectives.

Ultimately, theoretical work must stand on its own merits and should neither be rejected nor accepted primarily because of the life history of the originator. Is it not reasonable, however, to argue that knowing the life story will add a depth of understanding and thereby illuminate the theorizing? This knowledge of the life story is especially important to consider in examining philosophical theory. In Kyle Arnold and George Atwood’s psychobiographical chapter on Friedrich Nietzsche (240–64), the authors forewarn the reader about the difficulty of the subject by noting an epigram drawn from Nietzsche’s letter to Cosima Wagner: “I am thy labyrinth” (240). Their study is based on close readings of Nietzsche’s notoriously paradoxical and dense texts, especially those concerned with the “eternal return” (255). Linking the life with the philosophy, “the manifestation of a specific, temporally situated, human subjectivity” (240) risks reductionistic readings but not inevitably. In fact, Arnold and Atwood assert that psychobiography invites us to “critically reflect on the relationship between our own subjectivities and the theories to which we adhere. . . . In doing so, we are given the chance to examine and thereby gain some mastery over the emotional prejudices that may compel us to adhere dogmatically to one theory rather than another” (241). This claim is foundational to the relationship be- tween the study of lives and the history of ideas.

Not until in the book’s final section does one learn that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency employs a staff of psychobiographers and that their work is a significant part of the database that U.S. leaders use in developing foreign policy, including the decision to go to war. In addition, social scientists have shown that voters often choose their political leaders on the basis of their per- ceptions of candidates as persons rather than through systematic analyses of the public policy record.1 While many social scientists question psychobiography’s relevance, those who actually wield political and social power see its pursuit as crucial for effective decision making. Nonetheless, psychobiographers face many validity problems when they turn to the study of significant political leadership. Contemporary leaders are extraordinarily guarded about their public presentations of self, and they are less accessible than deceased subjects (on whom data can be found in books, on film, and in archives) or unimportant persons (who will sit for a psychobiographical research interview). Indeed, only a few political subjects can be studied “up close” (302); the majority are examined from a “middle distance” (302). Those who are running the United States (e.g., the president and his staff) and those who are enemies of the United States (e.g., Osama bin Laden and Kim Jong Il) will be necessarily studied from a “far distance” (302). Elms and Anna Song discuss the methodological approaches to psychobiographical study from each distance category. They suggest that psychobiographers studying distant figures should carefully analyze the public data, examining, for example, the nature of first political successes, which often involve expressions of personality prior to the arrival of the handlers. Elms and Song also stress the significance of analyzing important public statements and consistency across forms of behavior (especially decision-making styles), as well as other categorization techniques. The problems of bias and idiosyncratic analysis are best handled, they suggest, by “multiple psychobiographies of an individual subject” in order to trace “convergent” and “divergent” conclusions as part of an iterative analytic process (308).

The chapters in the volume’s fourth section include psychobiographies of Kim Jong Il and George W. Bush, but the most interesting is Anthony J. Dennis’s study of Osama bin Laden. One learns that Bin Laden was not born a jihadist but actually lived the conventional life of a wealthy Saudi college student and successful businessman, a life marred only by the untimely death of his father during Osama’s early teens. Unlike other Saudis who supported the resistance to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Osama personally traveled with sup- plies and funds to Afghanistan and then became galvanized by the mujahideen cause. He eventually joined the struggle, employing his considerable logistical and financial resources for the resistance. He created a clearinghouse known in Arabic as “al-Qaeda” (315). Dennis suggests that a number of events converged to create Osama’s personal transformation: his uncanny knack for survival in wartime conditions that were fatal to many others (seen as a sign of God’s favor?); the intense religiosity of his fellow warriors; the ideological tutelage and psychological support of his mentor, Sheik Abdallah Yussaf Azzam; and, finally, the almost unthinkable success of defeating the Soviet superpower. Dennis tracks Osama’s development as a young man who became a “celebrity” (320) irrevocably committed to the “heroic script” (317) of driving out the infidel and restoring Islamic rule in the Arab world. This analysis creates a coherent picture of a figure who must not remain “two-dimensional” (311) if he is to be defeated. Indeed, the findings of such an analysis not only detail sources of his personal and political power but also areas of potential psychosocial, religious, and political vulnerabilities.

Betty Glad closes this volume by recommending that political psychobiography might help to avoid international crises by predicting the behavior of tyrants. Although politicians are fond of identifying tyrants as insane or evil, Glad recommends a psychobiography that takes a closer look at the life history of threatening leaders in order to fashion a successful foreign policy. Madness sometimes seems a well-suited description of brutal leadership, but psychobiographical data can help analysts understand leaders’ perceptions of opportunity, constraint, and threat; such perceptions usually trigger aggression. What seems madness may, in fact, be instrumental rationality made unrecognizable through limited cultural and nationalistic schemas.

The Handbook of Psychobiography offers much to the student of human development and behavior. Psychobiography’s focus on the person as the center of empirical and theoretical analysis is a reminder that human agency is a crucial part of psychosocial explanation. Social work researchers and theorists should pause to consider how psychobiography might contribute to the understanding of the complex psychosocial problems they investigate. This need not entail a return to intrapsychic musings bereft of evidence-based theory. Neurobiologist and Nobel laureate Eric Kandel (In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind [New York: Norton, 2006]) recently implored personologists and psychotherapists to join neuroscientists in refining empirical investigations of the brain and in developing more robust conceptual frameworks. Neither brains nor minds act in the world; persons do. Nonetheless, a renewed psychobiography that is open to pluralistic and translational approaches could significantly con- tribute to one of contemporary science’s most important projects: the science of mind. This calls for multidisciplinary efforts in which researchers from social work, psychology, psychiatry, and other disciplines ought to meaningfully engage.

James J. Clark

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2018-07-21 李亮创建