Freud as Leonardo: Why the First Psychobiography Went Wrong

Abstract

ABCTRACT The first genuine psychobiography, Sigmund Freud's Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory c^His Childhood (1910Childhood ( /1957b, presented several important guidelines for psychobiographical research Among them were the rejection both of pathography and of idealization, and the avoidance both of arguments built upon a single clue and of strong conclusions based upon inadequate data Though the guidelines are sound, Freud violated those guidelines in the very work where they first appeared Freud's methodological errors and his "obsession" with the Leonardo book are traced in part to his projective identification with Leonardo, incorporating aspects of his own sexual history and his anxieties about the future of the psychoanalytic movement Sigmund Freud's book on Leonardo (1910Leonardo ( /1957b) is widely regarded as the first genuine psychobiography Other researchers, including Mobius and Sadger, had previously concemed themselves with the psychology of "great men," but their main goal was to amve at a specific diagnosis of psychopathology In Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood, Freud went much farther He applied a systematic theory of personality to the entire span of a creative individual's life, and he provided psychological explanations for certain of Leonardo's achievements as well as his failuresMore than 75 years later, Freud's book remains m several regards a model psychobiography He chose one of the most important and chal-

Significant samples: The psychological study of eminent individuals.

“…The main methodological question is whether the psychologist has handled the biographical materials in a competent, scholarly fashion (but see Alexander, 1988). For instance, the psychoanalytic argument in Freud's (1910Freud's ( /1964) psychobiography of Leonardo was partially undermined by a flawed German translation of a key Italian word (Elms, 1988). In contrast, measurement issues are critical to both psychometric and historiometric studies-as is implicit in the suffixes of both adjectives.…”

Shakespeare's Sonnets: A Case of and for Single–Case Historiometry

“…Simonton search may be styled psychohistory in the genenc sense that these studies apply psychological theones and techniques to histoncal and biographical data (Simonton, 1983b) Given this broad conception, psychohistorlcal practice has adopted two main forms On the one hand, psychobiography purports to favor the ldiographic analysis of a single case, employing qualitative methodologies (Runyan, 1982(Runyan, , 1988 This tradition may be said to have been launched by Freud's (1910Freud's ( /1964) classic treatment of Leonardo da Vinci (Elms, 1988), even though its major proponent withm personality psychology may have been Gordon Allport (1961), the champion of the ldiographic perspective (see also Enkson, 1958Enkson, , 1969 On the other hand, histonometry prefers the nomothetic analysis of multiple cases via quantitative methods This alternative tradition started with Galton's (1869) Hereditary Genius, albeit the term "histonometry" was not coined until the present century (Woods, 1909), when the methodology became more fully developed as well (Cox, 1926, Thomdike, 1950 ' Nevertheless, when we more closely inspect how psychobiography and histonometry are actually practiced, the distinction between the two begins to break down To begin with, much psychobiography is truly nomothetic If ldiographic analysis is construed as an attempt to unearth the regulanties or pattems unique to a single life, then to apply some nomothetic theory hardly provides a bona fide illustration Indeed, psychobiographers frequently operate, at least implicitly, according to Hempel's "covenng law" model of explanation (Hempel, 1965) Particular events m individual biography are subsumed under general psychological pnnciples such that the single case becomes an illustration of a more pervasive phenomenon "History is not of interest for its own sake, rather, it is used to populanze or confirm current psychoanalytic theones" (Kohut, 1986, p 343) Again, Freud's treatment of Leonardo may offer the model, for certainly Leonardo was pnmanly viewed not as an exception but as an exemplification of psychoanalytic laws (Elms, 1988) On the other side of the distinction, even if the norm has been for histonometncians to analyze dozens, and sometimes thousands of cases, it IS not true that histonometry is lnvanably a large-N enterpnse At times quantitative and nomothetic techniques will find applications in the lives of a single creator or leader, such as Napoleon (Simonton, 1979), Robert E Lee (Suedfeld, Corteen, & McCormick, 1986) Nixon (Winter & Carlson, 1988), Henry Kissinger…”

Helen Suzman: a psychobiographical — psychosocial developmental trajectory study

“…Two decades ago, Elms (1994) had issued a call for psychologists to "take hold of psychobi ography" (p. 5) in order to ensure a high standard of quali ty in the application of psychological interpretations to the biographical endeavour. In the light of the upsurge in both national and international interest in psychobiographical research, it is not surprising that various researchers have advocated its value (e.g., Carlson, 1988;Elms, 1988Elms, , 1994Fouché & Van Niekerk, 2010;McAdams, 1988;Runyan, 1982;1984;Schultz, 2001c;2005a). We constructed Suzman's psychobiography framing it on Erik Erickson's psychosocial stages of development.…”