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Biography today is no mere recounting of facts, no accumulation of dry bones; it is a re-creation of a life and it aims to understand the relation of the person to his work. The biographer and the psychoanalyst have in common their sense of the continuity of the life of a man, and biography is a reconstruction not dissimilar to the reconstructive activity of psychoanalysis. In the specific instance of the biography of the artist it permits a view of the creative mind, the nature of imagination.
It is a significant mark of the widening influence of psychoanalysis that there is in a series of literary lectures delivered at a university a sober and balanced chapter on psychoanalysis. This small volume comprises the Alexander Lectures delivered at the University of Toronto by Dr. Leon Edel, who is a professor in the Department of English at New York University and well known as biographer and editor of Henry James.
The author describes the aims, problems, and techniques of the biographer. He distinguishes the contribution of psychoanalysis from that of psychological insight, which has been applied for centuries to biography and literary criticism. To illustrate his thesis, Dr. Edel uses the interesting device of examining Willa Cather's The Professor's House from three aspects, that of the conventional critical approach, that of the psychoanalytic approach, and finally the combined approach which synthesizes the first two.