Psychobiography Training in Psychology in North America: Mapping the Field and Charting a Course

Abstract

Psychobiography holds an important position in the history of psychology, yet little is known about the status of psychobiographical training and dissertation research in psychology departments. This brief report identified psychobiography courses throughout North America and content analyzed a sample of 65 psychobiography dissertations to discern the theories and methods that have most commonly anchored this research. Results identified few psychology courses specifically in psychobiography, with a larger number of courses incorporating psychobiographical and/or narrative elements. With regard to psychobiography dissertations, the majority focused on artists, pioneering psychologists, and political leaders. Theories undergirding psychobiographical studies were most frequently psychoanalytic and psychodynamic. Methodologically, a majority of the dissertations were anchored in constructivist (discovery-oriented) qualitative procedures, with a minority incorporating mixed methods designs. The authors highlight the value of psychobiographical training to psychology students and present avenues and models for incorporating psychobiography into psychology curriculums.

Careerography in Career Counseling Practice, Research, and Training

“…Psychobiographers have well articulated the benefits of training in psychobiographical research to the professional development of counselors (Ponterotto, 2017a) and psychologists (Kőváry, 2018; Ponterotto, 2017b; Schultz & Lawrence, 2017). Many of these benefits extend to the specialty of careerography, among which include learning diverse career theories in applied and interesting ways; enhancing career counseling skill development through training in in-depth interviewing; learning the importance of sociocultural, historic context in understanding career and work patterns across time; promoting interdisciplinary learning where work and career intersect with history, economics, politics, and religion; promoting methodological pluralism in that various qualitative and quantitative approaches may be used in careerography; and enhancing multicultural, social justice, and multilingual competence as relevant to profiling exceptional work/career lives internationally over time (du Plessis, 2017; Elms, 1994; Kőváry, 2011; Ponterotto, Reynolds, Morel, & Cheung, 2015; Runyan, 1982; Schultz, 2005). Despite numerous benefits to including psychobiographical and careerography training to psychologists, professional organizations have been slow to include these areas as significant to the training of all psychologists.…”

“…Psychobiography is “the intensive life-span study of an individual of historic significance in a socio-cultural context using psychological and historiographic research methods and interpreted from established theories of psychology” (Ponterotto, 2015, p. 379). While early psychobiographies were primarily rooted in psychoanalytic theory, evident in the works of Freud (1910/1957) and Beres (1951), there has been a recent trend of authors utilizing their own and others’ personality, developmental, social, and cultural theories to analyze the motives, experiences, significant events, and personality development of historic individuals (du Plessis, 2017).…”

Levinsonian Seasons in the Life of Steve Jobs: A Psychobiographical Case Study

“…Ponterotto (2015a) provided a cogent argument for the role of psychobiography in psychology. Ponterotto et al (2015) defined psychobiography as "the intensive life-span study of an individual of historic significance in socio-cultural context using psychological or historiographic research methods and interpreted from established theories in psychology" (p. 3). Psychobiography entails a way of undertaking psychological research by making extensive use of biographical data to examine original thinking, creativity and productivity in unusual individuals (Howe, 1997).…”

“…As Elms (1994) asserted, psychobiography has proven to be an invaluable method to investigate aspects of individual development in a holistic way. Ponterotto, Reynolds, Morel, and Cheung (2015) have found it surprising that psychobiography does not draw more attention as a research method, as this approach has made significant contributions to psychological theory and our understanding of human development. Psychobiography as a specialised field of practice has witnessed prolific growth (Du Plessis, 2017) and is experiencing an upswing internationally, such that it is anticipated that a growing number of students and scholars will engage in this process (Ponterotto, 2015a).…”

A Cautious Alliance: The Psychobiographer’s Relationship with Her/His Subject

“…Another important distinction between psychobiographical and other types of psychological research is that psychobiographical subjects are often deceased, sometimes long-deceased. In fact, a recent content analysis of 65 psychobiographies found that 97% of the historic subjects studied were deceased (Ponterotto, Reynolds, Morel, & Cheung, 2015).…”