Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A biography that analyzes the psychological makeup, character, or motivations of its subject: "We are given a kind of psychobiography which ultimately pictures a deeply egotistical individual, unable to tolerate anyone else's success” ( Leon Botstein).
- n. A character analysis.
Wiktionary
- n. A biography that emphasises the psychological aspects of its subject
Etymologies
- psycho- + biography (Wiktionary)
Examples
“BRACE: James David Barber is a very senior professor at Duke University who wrote a very influential book called "Presidential Character," and he employs a methodology typically called psychobiography, in which he examines the biographies of individuals, in this case, presidents, and tries to arrive at a judgment about their future behavior based upon elements of their past.”
“Nothing about Mugabe's earlier life portended his swift rise, the South African journalist Heidi Holland notes in her "psychobiography" Dinner with Mugabe.”
“There is a "psychobiography" by Stefan Zweig, The Queen of Scots (London: Cassell and Company, Ltd. ”
“Neither psychobiography nor any other method can explain that.”
“In An Emergency in Slow Motion, William Todd Schultz rushes toward Arbus convinced of the viability of psychobiography, of using general research findings in psychology to make sense of individual lives.”
The Huffington Post: Michael Roth: Thinking Photography With Diane Arbus and Errol Morris
“My wife is reading this new psychobiography about Bill Clinton by John Gartner, which she quite likes.”
VDARE.com: Blog Articles » Print » “In Search of Bill Clinton: A Psychological Biography”
“Claims that Newman had homosexual inclinations first emerged in Geoffrey Faber's 1933 Freudian psychobiography Oxford Apostles.”
“Doing so properly would require much research and a sensitivity to the perils of psychobiography.”
“For literary critics, the encounter with Freud was practically "transference" at first sight; classics such as "Moby-Dick" were subjected to psychoanalytic review, and psychobiography became a trendy approach to writing lives.”
“For literary critics, the encounter with Freud was practically “transference” at first sight; classics such as “Moby-Dick” were subjected to psychoanalytic review, and psychobiography became a trendy approach to writing lives.”
The Wall Street Journal: One Hundred Years of Freud in America
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