Life histories and psychobiography

The understanding of individual lives is pursued within the social sciences, humanities, and clinical professions, yet is everywhere haunted by troubling methodological problems. William McKinley Runyan reviews and responds to major criticisms of psychobiography and of the case study method, and suggests criteria for evaluating and improving in-depth studies of individual lives. Theoretical points are vividly illustrated with examples from the lives of, among others, Vincent Van Gogh, Emily Dickinson, Abraham Lincoln, Shakespeare, Malcolm X, Woodrow Wilson, Virginia Woolf, and several of Freud's classic case studies.