The Methodology of Psychoanalytic Biography

Charles Kligerman defined the methodological focus of the Panel by contrasting it with that of its 1956 predecessor on the "Contribution of Psychoanalysis to the Biography of the Artist." This Panel aims to discuss the biographical methods of psychoanalysis for subjects in any field of activity and will not consider the ancillary issue of creativity. Kligerman expressed doubts about the content of the 1956 Panel on only three points: the unwarranted assumption of one specific psychological constellation for "the artist," excessive optimism about the capacity of ego psychology to solve the methodological dilemmas of analytic biography, and unacknowledged value judgments about narcissism as a pathological trait in the personality. In the intervening years, this Journal has published two excellent reviews on our topic (H. Kohut, 1962 and J. E. Mack, 1971).

Increasing emphasis on the genetic point of view in formulating psychoanalytic data has gradually led to a rapprochement between psychoanalytic biography and clinical work. Although free association may leave lacunae in our knowledge of the analysand's functioning in conflict-free areas, proper assessment of his personality demands the reconstruction of the vicissitudes of multiple developmental lines in a manner which can correlate these with both psychic reality and the actualities. Analytic biography should aim for a similarly rounded picture of its subject's mental life.

Every biography worthy of the name, starting with those of Plutarch, has given a meaningful account of the subject's personality and motivations; great biographers have succeeded in making sensitive psychological estimations. These have to be based on some, albeit unarticulated, theory of personality; as psychoanalytic personality theory is the most profound, it has in fact become the standard utilized in the field of biography—no other psychological approach now receives serious consideration from scholars in