Lester, David (Guest Editor). "The Suicide of Sylvia Plath--Current Perspectives." Death Studies 22.7 (1998).

American poet Plath has long fascinated biographers, partly for her searing, psychologically-focused later poetry, partly for her marriage to the late poet Ted Hughes, and partly for the manner of her death. She gassed herself in her flat while her two toddlers slept, roughly a month after the publication of her autobiographical novel The Bell Jar. This special issue contains the following entries--

Shulman, Ernest. "Vulnerability Factors in Sylvia Plath's Suicide," 597-614.

Lenaars, Antoon & Susanne Wenkstern. "Sylvia Plath--A Protocol Analysis of Her Last Poems," 615-636.

Runco, Mark. "Suicide and Creativity--The Case of Sylvia Plath," 637-654.

Lester, David. "Theories of Suicidal Behavior Applied to Sylvia Plath," 655-666.

Firestone, Lisa & Joyce Catlett. "The Treatment of Sylvia Plath," 667-692.

Erdo, Paul. "Freud's Psychoanalysis--Interpretation and Property." American Imago 55.4 (1998)--459-482.

Asserts that Freud's "interpretations and discoveries are never just epistemological" but get woven into the very process of self-definition.

Grivet-Shillito, Marie-Laure. "Carl Gustav Before He Became Jung." Journal of Analytical Psychology 44.1 (1999): 87-100.

Links the dynamics of Jung's recently published first works to certain "autobiographical or epistolary confidences."

Mohavedi, Siamak. "The Utopian Pursuit of Death." American Imago 56.1 (1999)--1-26.

Analysis of final letters, near-death or suicide notes in terms of the "tell-worthiness" of their stories.

Alford, C. Fred. "A Psychoanalytic Study of Evil." American Imago 56.1 (1999)--27-52.

Author interviews 68 subjects on the topic of evil, 50 of whom are "average citizens," 18 of whom are mostly murderers at a maximum security prison.

Dervin, Daniel. "The Absent Father's Presence in Modern and American Gay Drama." American Imago 56.1 (1999)--53-74.

Pursues representations of the absent father in modern drama, with discussion of Tennessee Williams, Oscar Wilde, and Tony Kushner, among others.

Schultz, William Todd. "Off-Stage Voices in James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men--Reportage as Covert Autobiography." American Imago 56.1 (1999)--75-104.

Looks into the essential role of sexuality in Agee's stridently idiosyncratic, putatively journalistic masterpiece.

Long-Innes, Chesca. "The Psychopathology of Post-Colonial Mozambique--Mia Cuoto's Voices Made Night." American Imago 55.1 (1998)--155-184.

Reads Cuoto's stories, their peculiar blend of fantasy and reality, as a psychopathology of post-colonial Mozambique, "in which the society as a whole is figured as caught in the grip of a profound depression or melancholia."

Harned, Jon. "Harry Stack Sullivan and the Gay Psychoanalysis." American Imago 55.3 (1998)--299-317.

Ponders the riddle of Sullivan's odd personal insignia, etched by a friend at his request, and its significance for Sullivan's life and theorizing, concluding that "homosexuality is the repressed other of interpersonal psychoanalysis."

Greenberg, Judith. "The Echo of Trauma and the Trauma of Echo." American Imago 55.3 (1998)--319-347.

Suggests how "trauma studies" help to expose issues at stake in Ovid's story of Echo and, conversely, how the myth of Echo can provide a paradigm for listening to trauma survivors' stories.

Rudnytsky, Peter. "The Analyst's Murder of the Patient." American Imago 55.3 (1998)--349-359.

Uses Sandor Ferenczi's Diary, and one comment from it in particular, to explore Ferenczi's relationship with Freud.

Daschke, Dereck. "Desolate Among Them--Loss, Fantasy, and Recovery in the Book of Ezekiel." American Imago 56.2 (1999)--105-132.

Invokes Freud's theory of mourning to interpret the actions of the prophet Ezekiel.

Oster, Corinne. "Dead Ringers--A Case of Psychosis in Twins. American Imago 56.2 (1999)--181-202.

Assesses the psychopathology of the Mantle brothers in the film Dead Ringers in light of director David Cronenberg's tendency towards the blending of self and other.

Modleski, Tania. "Axe the Piano Player." Psychoanalytic Review 84.5 (1997)--727-742.

Seeks to "affirm the artistry of director Jane Campion and to follow her in her bold forays into how women find space for their eroticism within the violent structures of patriarchy."

Young, Robert. "Deadly Unconscious Logics in Joseph Heller's Catch-22." Psychoanalytic Review 84.6 (1997)--891-903.

Uses Kleinian object-relations theory to explore themes of death and psychotic breakdown in Heller's sarcastic masterpiece.

Burston, Daniel. "Archetype and Interpretation." Psychoanalytic Review 86.1 (1999)--35-62.

Investigates the theme of "sexual anguish" running repeatedly through Freud's writing, with particular attention paid to the fraught relationship between Freud and Jung.

Schultz, William Todd. "The Riddle That Doesn't Exist--Ludwig Wittgenstein's Transmogrification of Death." Psychoanalytic Review 86.2 (1999)--1-26.

Describes Wittgenstein's quasi-delusional fear of death and how it collided with his early philosophizing.

Wyatt-Brown, Bertram. "When the Melancholy Fit Shall Fall--Modern Southern Writers and Despair." Journal of Psychohistory 27.1 (1998)--1-18.

Looks into the incidence of depression in Southern writers, focusing on Ellen Glasgow, Reuben Davis, and Richard Wright, concluding that "dejection, when not emotionally paralytic, may be the actual source of creativity itself, however mysterious and still unfathomable it is."

Miliora, Maria T. "JFK--A Narcissistic Political Leader." Journal of Psychohistory 27.1 (1998)--19-36.

Diagnoses Kennedy as suffering from "developmental arrests in the narcissistic sector of his personality."

Dahmane, Razak. "Memory, Mimicry, and the Vindications of Ventriloquism in Dickens' Hard Times." Journal of Psychohistory 27.1 (1998)--37-84.

Finds in Hard Times the riddling symbolism of a secret autobiography.

McAdams, Dan P. "The Role of Defense in the Life-Story." Journal of Personality 66.6 (1998)--1125-1146.

Hypothesizes that defense mechanisms may specify certain narrative strategies that persons use to shape how their lives are told to others and to their own internalized audiences.

Mendelson, Edward. Later Auden. New York--Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999.

A history of Auden's poems from 1939-1973, and the private and public events that went into them.

Mariani, Paul. The Broken Tower--A Life of Hart Crane. New York--Norton, 1999.

Probes the poet's inner demons, promiscuity, alcoholism, and self-destructive behavior which prefigured his suicide at age 32.

Sounes, Howard. Charles Bukowski--Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life. New York--Grove Press, 1999.

Aims to reveal the extraordinary true story of this Dirty Old Man of American literature.

Volkan, Vamik, Norman Itzkowitz & Andrew Dod. Richard Nixon--A Psychobiography. New York--Columbia U Press, 1997.

First thoroughly psychological portrait of this notorious 37th President. Employs a "rigorous psychoanalytic methodology" to uncover "three faces" in Nixon's psyche--the grandiose persona, the peacemaker, and the degraded self.

Hellman, John. The Kennedy Obsession--The American Myth of JFK. New York--Columbia U Press, 1998.

Traces Kennedy's self-invention via cultural figures like Lord Byron, Hemingway, and Cary Grant.

Amburn, Ellis. Subterranean Kerouac--The Hidden Life of Jack Kerouac. New York--St. Martin's Press, 1998.

Promises to "gaze into the writer's psyche" and there to find conflicting desires and beliefs centering around Kerouac's sexual relationships with men.

Schiff, Stacy. Vera (Mrs. Vladmir Nabokov). New York--Random House, 1999.

Estimates her subject's remarkable literary partnership with her genius husband.

Friedman, Laurence. Identity's Architect--A Biography of Erik H. Erikson. New York--Scribner, 1999.

Psychohistorian Friedman traces the relationship between Erikson's personal life and his groundbreaking ideas. First comprehensive biography of this hugely influential psychological figure who, among innumerable other achievements, wrote two of the most important psychobiographical works of this century, Gandhi's Truth and Young Man Luther.

Simonton, Dean Keith. Origins of Genius--Darwinian Perspectives on Creativity. New York--Oxford U Press, 1999.

Father of modern historiometry argues that creativity can be understood as a Darwinian process of variation and selection.

Simon, Linda. Genuine Reality--A Life of William James. New York--Harcourt, Brace & Co, 1998.

First full biography of James "in nearly a generation." An immensely interesting, multifaceted, and sometimes contradictory rebel, James "laid the groundwork for modern psychology," many of his ideas still remarkably fresh and remarkably prescient.

George, Alexander & Juliette George. Presidential Personality and Performance. Boulder, CO--Westview Press, 1998.

Examines the leadership styles and decision-making practices of presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Bill Clinton. Includes essays on the methodological problems involved in writing personality-oriented biography.

Ferris, Paul. Dr. Freud--A Life. Washington, D.C.--Counterpoint Press, 1998.

Biography focused on the details of Freud's life and family.

Crimmins, Susan. Lethal Losses--When Women Kill. Boulder, CO--Westview Press, 1999.

Looks at links between early life experiences and later acts of lethal violence based on interviews conducted with women who have killed.

Gill, Gillian. Mary Baker Eddy. Reading, MA--Perseus Books, 1998.

Based on unparalleled access to Church archives, author questions how a frail, impoverished invalid rose from her bed after a life-threatening fall, asked for her Bible, and subsequently took the first steps towards the founding of Christian Science.

Rugg, Linda Haverty. Picturing Ourselves--Photography and Autobiography. Chicago--U of Chicago Press, 1997.

Reads the history of self-representation through the double lens of the photographic record and the autobiography.

McAdams, Dan P. & Ed de St. Aubin. Generativity and Adult Development: How and Why We Care for the Next Generation. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association Press, 1998.

Explores Erikson's concept of generativity, the concern for and commitment to promoting the next generation, and its central place in adult life, with chapters on Martha Graham, Frank Lloyd Wright, and other case studies.

Alexander, Paul. J.D. Salinger: A Biography. New York: Renaissance Books, 1999.

Another effort to pin down the almost tiresomely un-pin-downable recluse and inventor of the fictional Glass family. Takes up the recent revelations concerning Salinger's penchant for very young women.

Evans, Mary. Missing Persons: The Impossibility of Auto/Biography. London: Routledge, 1999.

Pursues the various vexations of the autobiographical enterprise, mostly of the epistemological variety. Sections on the Royal Family, Germaine Greer, Sylvia Plath, Tobias Wolff, and others.

Hoffman, Edward. The Right to be Human: A Biography of Abraham Maslow. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1999.

Revised and updated edition includes new material from unpublished works and private diaries. Maslow made it his life's work to describe and explain the characteristics of the "fully-functioning," actualizing personality.

Spoto, Donald. The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock. New York: Da Capo Press, 1999.

Argues that Hitchcock's films constitute a subtle, revealing autobiography.

Dickey, Christopher. Summer of Deliverance: A Memoir of Father and Son. New York: Touchstone Books, 1999.

Tells story of the making of his father's book, Deliverance, into a Hollywood film. A sort of inadvertent biography of the volatile poet.

Fletcher, Tony. Moon: The Life and Death of a Rock Legend. New York: Avon, 1999.

Biography of the Who's spectactularly immoderate drummer who died by overdose at age 32. Diagnoses Moon as a "borderline personality."

Hare, Robert. Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us. New York: Guilford, 1999.

Theory and research of psychopathy along with detailed case descriptions.