Psychobiography and Life Narratives

Psychobiography and Life Narratives explores a number of exciting new approaches to the psychological understanding of individual lives. Eleven prominent scholars in personality and social, developmental, and clinical psychology have contributed chapters presenting innovative perspectives on discerning and developing "the story of my life" that each person tells and lives by. Five chapters show how differing psychobiographical approaches can illuminate the lives of Richard Nixon, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Eleanor Marx (Karl Marx's youngest daughter), author and feminist Vera Brittain, psychologist Henry Murray, and Sigmund Freud (whose peculiar relationship to Leonardo da Vinci shaped and distorted the first psychobiography every written). Two chapters concentrate on the analysis of life histories collected from contemporary American adults at mid-life crises, and the remaining three chapters provide bold new conceptual and methodological perspectives from which to view the study of individual lives and life stories. This landmark volume promises to make a major contribution to the growing literature on biography and personality.Contributors. Irving E. Alexander, James William Anderson, Leslie A. Carlson, Rae Carlson, Alan C. Elms, Carol Franz, Lynne Layton, Dan P. McAdams, Richard L. Ochberg, George C. Rosenwald, William McKinley Runyan, Abigail G. Stewart, Jacquelyn Wiersma, David G. Winter