Psychobiography aims to understand historically significant individuals such as artists, political leaders, and so on, through the application of psychological theory and research. It is, in essence, a form of case study.

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...

's analysis of Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...

 (titled "Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood") is generally considered to be the first "modern" psychobiography. Persons who have been the subject of much psychobiographical research over the years include Freud, Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

, Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...

, Carl Jung

Carl Jung

Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...

, Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh

Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...

, Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...

, Gordon Allport

Gordon Allport

Gordon Willard Allport was an American psychologist. Allport was one of the first psychologists to focus on the study of the personality, and is often referred to as one of the founding figures of personality psychology...

, Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley

Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....

, Søren Kierkegaard

Søren Kierkegaard

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was a Danish Christian philosopher, theologian and religious author. He was a critic of idealist intellectuals and philosophers of his time, such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel...

, Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...

 and Richard Nixon

Richard Nixon

Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...

, among others. Many psychobiographies are Freudian or psychodynamic in orientation, but other commonly used theories include narrative models of identity (such as Dan McAdams's life story model), script theory

Script theory

Script theory is a psychological theory which posits that human behaviour largely falls into patterns called "scripts" because they function analogously to the way a written script does, by providing a program for action...

, object relations, and existentialism

Existentialism

Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...

/phenomenology

Existential phenomenology

Existential phenomenology is a philosophical current inspired by Martin Heidegger's 1927 work Sein und Zeit and influenced by the existential work of Søren Kierkegaard and the phenomenological work of Edmund Husserl....

.

The discipline of psychobiography has developed various methodological guidelines for psychobiographical study (see, for examples of many of these, Schultz, 2005). Some of the most prominent are these:

1. The use of prototypical scenes in the life of the subject to serve as a model of their personality pattern

2. The use of a series of indicators of salience, markers such as primacy, frequency, and uniqueness of an event in a life, to identify significant patterns

3. The identification of pregnant metaphor

Metaphor

A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...

s or images that organize autobiographical narratives

4. Logical coherence or consistency as a criterion for adequate psychological interpretations

It is worth noting, however, that there continue to be psychobiographical studies produced by scholars untrained in the discipline who do not follow these guidelines.

The most productive psychobiographers working today are William Todd Schultz and Alan C. Elms (Schultz was Elms' student at UC Davis). Schultz's book is listed below; Elms' is titled Uncovering Lives: The Uneasy Alliance of Biography and Psychology. Schultz maintains a website on psychobiography, as does Elms.

Other major psychobiographical authors include Erik Erikson

Erik Erikson

Erik Erikson was a Danish-German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on social development of human beings. He may be most famous for coining the phrase identity crisis. His son, Kai T...

, Irving Alexander, James A. Anderson

James A. Anderson

James A. Anderson is a Professor of Cognitive Science and Brain Science at Brown University. His multi-disciplinary background includes expertise in psychology, biology, physics, neuroscience and computer science. Anderson received his Ph.D...

, Henry Murray

Henry Murray

Henry Alexander Murray was an American psychologist who taught for over 30 years at Harvard University. He was Director of the Harvard Psychological Clinic in the School of Arts and Sciences after 1930 and colluded with Stanley Cobb, Bullard Professor of Neuropathology at the Medical School to...

, Dan Ogilvie, Nicole Barenbaum, George Atwood

George Atwood

George Atwood was an English mathematician who invented a machine for illustrating the effects of Newton's first law of motion...

, William Runyan, and Robert White.

Examples

• Elms, Alan (1993). Uncovering Lives. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Ogilvie, Dan (2004). Fantasies of Flight. New 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: Oxford University Press.
• Safranski, Rudiger. Nietzsche: a Philosophical Biography Granta Books, London, (2002); Vienna, (2000); New York (2002) ISBN 0-393-05008-4
• Waite, Robert G.L. The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler. New York: First DaCapo Press Edition, (1993) (orig. pub. 1977). ISBN 0-306-80514-6.